Contentment in hair loss

The bulk of this post is just a continuation of some personal thoughts I had while sitting along a rail line in Abbotsford concerning some circumstances in my life right now. Sometimes I think my best thinking happens when I'm alone beside a train track:

I have to learn to be content. That is one thing I have been called to. That doesn't necessarily mean I have to be (or am expected to be, or that I should always be) happy. The Christian faith doesn't automatically bring with it earthly happiness, I don't think. Paul encouraged Timothy to be content. What is contentment? I think contentment is just being able to, in all situations, understand and know that God has everything under control. One of the doctrinal statements of our church is that God is so in control of everything that not even a hair can fall fom our heads without the will of our Father in Heaven. In my human mind, that concept is incomprehensible. Does God really care about a single hair on my head? Biblically, He knows how many hairs are on my head, so I guess in a way he's keeping track. But does he will a receding hairline? I don't know.

What I do know is that He does work out all things for the good of those who put their trust in Him. Is that 'good' judged by human standards? Of course not. If it were, nobody would ever die, cancer would not exist, families would not break apart, relationships wouldn't end. No, the 'good' is based on God's wisdom. God knows what is good for His children a lot better than we think we do. And that's one of the best and worst aspects of the true Christian life. In all things, we are called to trust GOd's wisdom. Even through the crap, the loneliness, the loss...God calls us to trust. That's not an easy thing to do. Trusting in the unknown is not easy. But my limited understanding of God tells me that He understands. He understanes why we'd rather do it our own way. He understands why we would turn our backs on Him. He understands that His 'good' is not the same as ours, but He's gonna teach us that it is even better than the best 'good' we can aim for on our own strength. Our call, my call even now, is to trust that all things happen for a purpose. There's no chance, there's no coincidence. Mabye God wants some of us to be bald and so He actually is willing to let those hairs fall out of our head. I'm not going bald, by the way, it's just an analogy. I don't know.

Yeah, I wish things would work out the way I want them to. I wish my 'good' was good enough for God. I wish I could understand even now the purposes in the seemingly random and unfortunate events that take place in life. Then again, maybe life would be boring. If everything that I wanted in life, that I thought was good came into being, I think I'd be bored. And I would probably think that I don't need God because everything I want is provided. The joy in living a true Christian life, once realized, is that we aren't given everything we want. But God does provide for our needs, and for me, for the most part, that's good enough.

early morning thoughts

5:50 am. What in the heck am I doing up? Better yet, why the heck were there birds chirping outside my window at 5:00 this morning? Anyways, I'll be on my way up to Kelowna in about 10, so thought I'd fill my time with some writing. Funny how the brain doesn't function at this time in the morning. Current thoughts of late that have been preoccupying my mind: accountability (still); summer planning for youth; spiritual dryness; community; moving to New West for the summer; why I don't seem to care about certain things. Hmmm...ride's here, gotta go!

oh....accountability.

i dread that word. accountability. i dread the concept that comes with it. i dread being accountable to someone else and i sure as heck know i suck at holding someone else accountable. i met with a pastor from the local CRC out here at a little coffee shop called Ethical Addictions yesterday. As i waited for the 'guy with a cream-coloured pullover', i looked over at the corner of the coffee shop and saw a pastor of mine from my year at Lifeteams (www.lifeteams.ca). i admire this man simply because he always seemed like a down-to-earth, practical and understandable preacher. he always wants what's best for the church he pastors and it was always evident (haven't been there since returning to BC though...). anyway, he knew that i had just started a youth director position in a church and was eager to share some advice from his 15 years of youth work (that he started when he was 26...i'm about right on there. but he was married. way behind on that one). one thing he suggested to me was just to spend as much time as possible with the students in our church, just hanging out with them. what? i can do that? like, i know it's a part of my job and i've been doing that to some extent, but he was actually suggesting doing that more often and less focused on sitting in a coffee shop and chatting with them one-on-one. wow...i think i've got a sweet job! i still have to wrap my head around that one, but i'm looking forward to see where that goes...

okay, back to the accountability thing. pastor Ray stressed to me the importance of having someone outside of the realm of the church whom i can go to with a mind full of stuff to unload...a sounding board if you will. someone who is not connected to the church so that i can bring my real complaints, my true feelings and my fearful fears of youth ministry. and i know the importance of this...i do. acting on it is somewhat foreign to me though. maybe 'foreign' is the wrong word. difficult. that's the one. i've realized over the past couple of days that i am not one to share my problems with. i would just rather do stuff on my own and spend more time worrying about stuff out of my hands than have someone on the outside tell me that it is out of my hands. i'd rather hold on to my struggles, my pains, my fears, my life than let someone else in on what it is that i hold on so tightly to. and i know God has put people in my life who are willing and able to understand me...and want to understand me. and i also know that i need to step out on that limb and trust that nobody will push me off.

My God is in a box.

I don’t know when exactly it happened. I’m sure there was a time when my God was freely swimming around the vastness of my imagination…diving in and out of its innocent waters, less concerned about my own clean, cool, uninhibiting pond than the neighbour’s dirty green pool. But soon enough, the inevitable occurred. Whether due to a lack of proper care on my part, or whether it was a taught transgression into improper maintenance -- or both -- my God was soon confined to my own dirty green water-filled hole. I have put God in a box.

Once in a while He’ll come out and surprise me with a newfound understanding…just a glimpse of his vastness, his omni-[presence][potence][science]. But it isn’t long before that new understanding frightens me. The fright of it (or the ‘it’ behind the fright) forces me to gently lower Him back inside his holding cell, until, like a Jack-in-the-Box, he will surprise me once again. Was it me who turned that handle? Was it me who caused Him to pop out in the first place? Was it a series of fortunate events, each one giving the handle a quarter-turn? Or was it a power beyond my understanding, such as the third person in the party of three we call ‘Trinity’? I don’t know, most likely a combination of all of the above. Whatever. As long as that handle keeps getting turned. As much as I’d hate to admit, I like the surprise of it all. It’s about time my pal Jack popped out again.