Timeless

Can I get my nerd on?

Thanks. =D

I've probably talked about this many times, but I'm going to do it again because it continues to fascinate me. I can really see how we were created to live forever, transcending time, basically. We say that time is constant: one second will always be one second. Time is a way to measure forward motion, and I think it's a pretty neat concept that we've managed to develop. But if time doesn't change, then how come there are periods where an hour feels like a minute and vice versa?

That's why I really think we were meant to not be bound by time, to live in eternity. I know it's a crazy idea to try to wrap our heads around, but I think we can experience glimpses of it on earth.

Example. If you told me, right now, that I've spent two and a half weeks at home already, I probably wouldn't believe you. I cannot explain to you how fast the last couple weeks have felt to me. I've basically lost track of time - part of trying to break into this dimension of timelessness. My entire mind, body, and spirit have seemed to enter this realm where time doesn't really exist, but at the same time does because of the reality of things. So, maybe instead of saying that my holiday has gone by too fast, I should say that this whole idea of time passing by has just kind of evaporated. Being in school and all that jazz seems so distant, like it's just a figment of my memory of something that happened some while ago. But, not only was it just a few weeks back that I was still writing and studying for finals, it kind of almost even seems like an irrelevant memory - it doesn't matter when it happened, it just did. So given my current state of existence, the only way I can really describe it, is that, I kind of just am. Time hasn't had its control on me because there haven't been any deadlines to meet, any errands to keep track of, all that kind of stuff that we usually pin some sort of time to.

This is why I love those stories that deal with time or different realms so much. Stuff like Chrono Cross, Inception, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, all that kind of stuff just blows my mind because they not only do they make you feel dumb by throwing all your presuppositions of this world out the window, but they make the understandings look real scrub. Furthermore, what I just said kind of reinforces even more the whole idea of timelessness. If we can somehow grasp these things, these unnatural phenomenon, and kind of turn them into something we can understand, then there's got to be some understanding or at least hypothetical grasps of something that exceeds anything we've ever come to know. All of our "laws" are made by these concepts to look like we're stupid and in some ways, these ideas feel even more real than what reality currently is.

Uhh, I think I may be going crazy. I think all of what I just wrote is what you call madness.. or maybe weird. Hard to believe that all of this sprouted from having an amazing week spent with my cousins for their winter holidays. I am glad that I had spent my last couple weeks the way I did, and it's given me insight into what I can expect life to be when it is fulfilled.

We really were made to transcend time and live in eternity. Just look at how the human body works and you might be able to see what I'm seeing.

Just Chill

I think most students, when they enter any sort of extended break, feel some kind of angst in that they keep feeling like they need to be doing something or else they are wasting the day away. A week and a half back, I'm in that situation. I don't think I've gone to bed any night without thinking like I needed to do something productive during the day.

We talk about it all the time, and some even start to try it, but the thing is that we never actually take breaks. And when we do, they're halfassed breaks. The break consists of maybe spending an hour or two watching a TV show proceeded by some sort of cleaning or tidying. When the cleaning and tidying starts, you start to work again. Now that your body is into that motion and rhythm, the brain responds by saying you need to work. There goes the "break".

It's tough, at least I think, to go so heavy into working nonstop and then doing next to nothing for over a week. I keep feeling like, and I'm sure a lot of others do as well, I need to be doing something. Except I don't really know what I should be doing other than looking ahead to next term. I told myself that I have ~a month off, so my first two weeks will be spent doing nothing but the things that I love doing, no matter how much I feel the need to do something that is a mandatory type of thing.

So, I hope that everyone can be encouraged to take some time off just to chill and enjoy themselves and not feel guilty about it. It's Christmas season after all! Take time out for yourself and think about those chore-like tasks some other time!

Depending on whether or not I get another post out by Christmas, I'll just say is now: Merry Christmas to everyone! I hope that it's an awesome one for you and your loved ones.

Another One Down!

I have officially completed another semester! It always feels so strange to be sitting in my room at night and hearing complete silence. The only noise that gets processed through my brain is the sound of my typing and the static that my ear hears. The static, or white noise or whatever - I'm not actually sure, is pretty interesting because I don't know how much of it I've always heard in my life. But ever since I moved to res at school, I've become much more aware of the silence I get at home. I have to say that I love it, though it can seem a bit creepy because I'm just not used to it anymore.

Either way, I'm so stoked to have, yet again, another Christmas to spend with my family and friends back home. The drive home was rather smooth; there was only a small portion near Leduc where the visibility was pretty bad due to the snow that had fallen earlier in the day. And when I got back into the city, there were a couple icy parts, but it wasn't unmanageable.

So, for the next two days, I'm just going to spend my time at home except for when I have to go play music for the youth ministry thing that I wrote about a while ago in being delegated as worship leader when I didn't even want to do it. As I am with trying new things, I'm always a bit reluctant, so I hope I have fun. Other than that, I'm probably going to try to make a trip or two to WEM before it gets overly busy with Christmas shopping.

Aside from those that I've mentioned, I don't really have plans at all! So if you aren't too cool for me, hit me up and we'll go do something! (=

Sympathy

This morning, I woke up and felt rather excited to write my second final of my three in total. I didn't do too much studying for this class, but it was only because I felt I had a strong grasp on all the things we learned already. Theology From the Margins has been, by far, my favorite class of the semester. We got to learn about four different theologies within four different people groups, and how their view of the gospel and the Christian faith is so close to what we might consider classical Christianity or orthodoxy, and yet still be missing some things so that it isn't actually Christianity.

As much as I loved this class, it was a lot of work. Regrettably, it may have been the only class where I spent more than a single day on any assignment this term. Yes, that speaks to my sloppy work in most cases; but on the other hand, it also tells that I actually cared enough about this class to start my homework earlier than I needed to - partly because I had no choice.

Unfortunately, our term paper and the last assignment was due within the span of a week. And because the weeks that these two were due, I had several other assignments due. So, as it was in the last couple weeks of November, they were two weeks of death. I felt the effects of it too. After each assignment I finished, I felt so drained that I really had no idea that I'd be able to finish the next one. The effects of being drained meant I ended up handing a couple assignments in late - which is something I never do, by the way. So you might be able to tell that it really did take its toll on me.

However, back to this morning's final. I was excited to be able to walk out of my final and discuss the questions with my friend. However, as the exam started, he was nowhere to be seen; we ended up starting a few minutes late in hopes that he just slept in or something. But after a while, he never showed up, so we just started.

There were several points during the exam where I started to think about him, but I knew I had to finish the exam first. After I finished, I went to his room to see him watching a cartoon. I was kind of shocked to see that he didn't go to the exam. He told me he never actually handed the last two assignments in; and because of that, he thought he failed the class because it was a course where we had to submit all assignments to pass. So, I guess he thought that he failed, and just gave up.

As a dude, I'm terrible with this compassion stuff. I didn't know what to say. I don't even remember what I said. But the expression my friend had on his face was one of such defeat, I'm not sure anything I could've said would've done anything. It's really too bad, because he's one of the smartest guys I know; and to see him go down, probably burnt out, like that really hurts me.

All I remember is, as I walked out of his room, I said, "I don't want you to fail, ____." I think he needed his space, so that's why I didn't want to poke at him anymore. All I can really say is that I feel terrible. I don't know if he will pass the class now, and I don't know if he cares.

Well, I guess that it's a choice that was made; so, everyone will have to live with the consequences. It's one thing to get knocked down; but another to get knocked down and get back up, or to just lay their making friends with the ground.

Empowerment - Pt. 2 // What It Looks Like

I have an overdue paper, another paper due Friday, and an entire course's worth of Greek assignments to finish - this doesn't even include the fact that my first final is on Friday. However, that's not going to stop me from blogging! Procrastination is my strength, after all. Haha.

It's been, what, 3 weeks since my first post on this subject? I won't lie, I've somewhat lost track of where I wanted to go from the end of my last post, but I'm going to do my best to pick it up from where I left off.

I remember being part of a conversation where it was made known to me that the group of "leaders" before the current group at the time never passed down anything they had learned or experienced from their times before they all left to do different things in their lives. As a result, the next group was forced to, not even pick up where they left off, but to start the whole thing all over again. I think I was in grade 12 when this conversation happened. It stood out to me so much because it made complete sense to me.

When I was young, there was a very strong group of leaders that did almost everything for us. They kind of paved the way, I'd even argue much more than any group of leaders had done so after they had left, for a strong community. The evidence is found in that, while many of them nowadays are off doing their own things in different parts of the world, they are still connected somehow.

Up to that point in the conversation, I really saw the people in my age range start to take leadership of the congregation. It wasn't all that obvious yet, because we were still on the cusp of breaking out. It was strange, but I saw it the whole time. I really felt that our group had the potential to become the leaders of, not only the congregation, but the church as well. I'm sure I'm not the only one that saw that. I think a huge reason for that was because we had to learn everything by ourselves - with guidance, of course. We had learned what it was like to have God run the show while we stood there as the instrument or even if it was simply just to watch as the story unfolded.

I was ready as well. I wanted so desperately to become a leader in the church. I wanted so badly to make sure that the group coming up after us would be able to not go through the growing pains that we did, to be able to learn and experience what we've been able to see because of God's grace. I wanted to empower as many people as I could.

I don't know how successful I was. If I think about it now, I don't think I was successful at all. It might have manifested a bit when I was still living in Edmonton, but it clearly didn't last. I don't know how much of what I did back then, is still influential in the way things happen now.

To be honest, before I really got to do much, God called me away from home. I wanted to do so much for my church, but God knew that it was time for me to move out; and, quite frankly, I couldn't have agreed more. At the time, it was time for me to move away from home.

So, the way that I look at it, right as I felt like I was going to really step out as a leader in the church, I had to leave. Sure, I managed a year on the English Ministry Committee, and I was one of the leaders of the worship team, but I don't think I really did much. I never got the chance to share with people all the things that I had learned over the years. I never got the chance to bring up someone who might have been entering high school or junior high, put them on a worship team, and let them see what it's like. Basically, I never got to pass down anything before I had to leave.

Actually, though, I really don't know what that would look like. I don't know what I'd actually be able to teach, tell, or whatever to anyone to make them realize and see the things that I see or from the way I see it. But the more I thought about it, I think what empowering someone would really look like, if it was up to me, is to allow someone to blossom into their own person in Christ. The only thing I can do, is open the pathway to let that happen. So, if it meant to have someone play alongside me on a Sunday, or just to hang out and get to know him or her, that already is empowerment. The whole point is to speak Jesus into people's lives, both ways, so that we feel moved into action and growth.

Empowerment doesn't mean that I am "better" or "more experienced" than you are, so I'm going to teach you. It's simply the community between people, where the sharing of experiences allow for each other to be built up in a way that they can each play to their own strengths and as an entire unified body, live for Christ.

When a group of people don't step up and pass along all their growth and experience to those that are not yet at the stage, it gets wasted. In my life time, I've seen it happen twice now; and it pains me every time I think about what could have been, but isn't. Church just becomes a vicious cycle where a group of people are forced to learning the ropes by themselves because they have no idea what happened to the people before them. And when they finally grow up and learn how to take on the leadership of a church, they aren't able to pass on anything they've learned either before they leave; so it just resets the cycle.


So then, how does it look like if it works? Well, I kind of touched on it a bit already. I don't think that someone needs to be an amazing worship leader, an amazing preacher, an amazing prayer warrior, or whatever to empower people. Sure, a lot of times it will be these people because they're the upfront and center figures that kind of lead the charge. But I feel like a lot of, and maybe even more so, are the people that just take time out of their week to go have coffee with someone. Make it a routine! Go every week. It's amazing how God works when a routine is developed. What do I mean? Try finding a specific time in the day to meet with God, whether by prayer or scripture; it'll be amazing. For example, wake up at 8am every morning to do your devos. When God knows that you've set a time in your schedule for him, he will meet you there. It's just like having appointments with people. It doesn't make any sense if you just casually go about saying, "here, let's meet," while not giving any details as to when you want to meet or where.

The whole idea of community is empowerment. Fellowship is empowerment. When there is fellowship, there is empowerment happening. The very thing with sharing life with people, whether in small groups or large, it allows for the Spirit to work. The more we share life with each other, the more we grow, and the more we learn about amazing things. So, instead of just being like, "oh my gosh, that worship leader is so cool! I wish I could be like him," (as if he was some sort of celebrity) you can say, "I know that guy! He's my friend; and we're tight!"

Eventually, these relationships get contagious. People start to see that the bond between a group of people are strong; and it'll stop them in their tracks, make them turn towards the community, and want to be part of that community. So, it's extremely important to remain open as a group. Don't make it exclusive. Jesus is not exclusive; he died for all. Some of us just choose not to want him; so it's even more important to reach out to those that are struggling. You see where I'm going with this? I hope so.

"For where two or three gather in my name, there am I [Jesus] with them." - Matthew 18:20