15 minutes

Not all princesses wear crowns.  They don't all live in castles either.  No, there is a princess that lives in darkness...in pits so deep that not only does light fail to reach her, but even the notion of light is foreign. Yet she is royalty.

A noble prince riding in an throwing her a line is an idea for fairytails.  This princess doesn't live in a fairy tail, her dark and grim reality is marred by abandonment, neglect, and abuse.  She is utterly hopeless.

Then the earth shook and a faint sliver of light broke through.  She was speechless, she didn't cry out.  She didn't believe it.  After all these years her eyes must be deceiving her. She knew no hope, so this light provided none.  But somewhere, deep inside, a spark was kindled.  She covered that spark, afraid to believe.  Afraid of hope.  Afraid to hurt again.

A team of rescuers was dispatched.  They had heard of this princess and they loved her.  Before they knew her, they loved her.  So they did what they could to reach her.  They threw her a line.  She didn't take it.  They cried out to her trying to help her to understand that they loved her, that they were trying to rescue her, that there was an abundant amount of light, warmth, hope, and love...she just needed to reach out her hand.

But people change when they live in darkness.  Their eyes and skin get sensitive to the light.  Her skin is scarred from the pain of reaching out.  The darkness is cool.  It is not entirely pain free, but it can become comfortable once you get used to it.  The light can hurt your eyes.  It takes an incredible amount of courage to reach a hand up, to grab on to the rope.  "What if I fall when I'm half way up?  I'll still be in the dark, but in so much more pain.  What if the rescuers change their mind and toss me back into the pit?  What if they don't love me after all?"

Our princess isn't a creature of darkness.  She's a creature of light that has been imprisoned in darkness.  Hope is within her, but it is lost within her.  Only a miracle can reach her now.  The choice to reach out her hand is hers.

#trust30 writing pledge

I stumbled upon Seth Godin's work about a year ago.  I found his perspective and vision inspiring.  Now he has challenged me to participate in a 30 day writing challenge. To be honest, he has no idea who I am, it was a email sent out to a ton of people, but I was on the list.  Finding the time to write has been a challenge for me, so my hope is that this throw-down will help me kick it into gear. More information can be found here:  http://ralphwaldoemerson.me/

God only knows what will come of this.  I know I am not qualified for this...I'm an IT guy not a "thought leader" or even a writer.  My blog is little more than an infrequently updated personal diary of my own spiritual walk. One of the inspirations for this challenge is Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self Reliance" which is not exactly well accepted within the Christian community (then again, neither am I).  Not only that, I've spent the last few years giving up my "self reliance" and learning to rely wholly on Christ.  But I accept this challenge.  I accept it knowing that I do not rely on myself, but on God. 

Letters

God loves you so much that He wrote you 66 different love letters. He knows that sometimes it can be hard to tune out the world and listen to Him. Sometimes you just don’t have time to read the letters He has written. So He put a lot of variety in them. There is poetry, history, geneaology, stories of action, love stories, list of rules...sometimes He uses metaphor, sometimes allegory. They vary in length from as short as a page to the size of a novel. There is variety beyond belief within these 66 letters. But they all have one theme that is consistent throughout them all. He loves you. He wants to draw you in closer to Him. He would do anything to have you near Him, even lay down his own life. You know what I’m talking about...He loves you so much that you don’t even have to hunt for these letters. Most of us have multiple copies sitting around our house collecting dust. It’s the Bible.

It's about availability, not ability

I have a love/hate relationship with writing.  I love to write.  But my standard for myself is so high that I can't allow myself to write.  I am always waiting for the elusive perfect and unique collision of inspiration and availability.

During the year that I lead worship, I sent out a set list to the band every week.  The idea was that everyone would be on the same page showing up to practice, plus it allows us to connect during the week.  We were all so new to the experience, I thought I should send out some inspirational words...share some verses and maybe some of my own insight and observations.  This weekly email became something I had to do.  And I couldn't just leave it at the list of songs, I had to share more.  After a few months, I realized that I was doing a lot of writing...and that I was actually looking forward to sitting down and typing out those emails.  I might not have any idea of what I was going to say when I started, but I would find myself writing for hours sometimes.  And it wasn't because I was inspired, it was because I made the time.

My time as worship leader was up a few months ago and I've not written much since then.  I find myself in a place where I have many thoughts I need to work out and it seems writing is the only way for me to do that.  I can't seem to make the time.

One thing I love to do is teach.  I love the way the spirit inspires me every week, I love searching through God's word for more inspiration, and I love getting up and leading people to a new understanding of stories they thought they new.  More than anything, I love seeing Christ change lives.  Including my own, which He does every time I teach!  Win-win.  One of my biggest challenges is limiting how much I cover each week.  Every week my wife asks me how it's going and my response has been consistently the same "Way too much to cover, not enough time." Tonight, as I was down to the bottom of the second page of typing, I started to think..."what if I organized my thoughts and threw them onto the blog and then simplified what I taught."  That would allow the class to be a little more interactive and discussion-oriented while allowing me to hit all the points I wanted to hit (just not in class).

In the interest of staying out of the state of denial, I would like to acknowledge right here and now that I understand a few things about this blog:  1.) the only person that ever reads it is my wife, and she only reads it because I get cranky if she doesn't.  2.) most people out there aren't interested in my 1,000 word rambling about Elijah or any of my other ramblings.  But, I seem to have more in me than I can contain, so this blog will continue to function as mile markers along the road of my own spiritual growth and development.  If someone else finds it and gets something out of it, that'd be super too.