The heart of you…is to Lift and Sing Free

Our Canadian standard of living correlates directly with climate change. Without a doubt, the reason Canada maintains such a healthy economy is because of the consumption of fossil fuels. As the planet is warming up more and more, our inadequate action to reduce emissions is now shifting into a moral problem. How long before wealthy nations have accountability for their wasteful, poisonous actions?

             Developing nations want what we have. Statistics show that industrialized countries emit much more greenhouse gasses per capita than developing countries. In other words, wealthy nations do not produce more emissions because of their population; rather, they produce more because of wasteful consumption of energy. This waste is necessary to maintain the standard of luxury that we enjoy. However, as western media and advertising is present in developing countries, global citizens below the poverty line can see our cars, homes and boats. In turn they covet our extravagant lifestyles.     

       Global warming affects the lives of the poor more than the lives of the wealthy. The greenhouse emissions from industrialized countries are creating negative impacts on poor countries. The world’s shifting climate has had an impact on drought cycles in many developing countries. Ethiopia, for example, is experiencing increasingly intense droughts more frequently. As droughts increase in these countries, crop failure will increase as well. This climate change will have a devastating affect on the residents of developing countries, whose economy is mainly agricultural.            

           Wealthy countries must change their values and actions. As the developed countries are the main contributors towards global warming, they must be the first to set an example to drastically reduce greenhouse emissions. The task must start at a personal level. As Canadian citizens change their values and live more conscientiously, the government will reflect and act upon these values. As this pressure is put on the government, they will create legislation that will reduce emissions as a whole. In turn, this example will teach developing countries to reduce their emissions as well.         

          Canadians must live less wastefully in order to reduce the impacts of global warming. As we have become a major player in the world stage, our actions are setting an example to the rest of the planet. This example starts at a personal level; it starts with you.

 Psalm 62:11-12

11 One thing God has spoken,
       two things have I heard:
       that you, O God, are strong,

 12 and that you, O Lord, are loving.
       Surely you will reward each person
       according to what he has done.

This is a great promise that has been stuck in my head this week.

God is Love, (1 John 4:8) and His love is a very strong love. The two words really should not be sperated ever! The idea that love goes hand in hand with strength is an important one for us to grasp and live out.

Yet the psalmist closes with an idea of justice.

We are given a reward based what we have done with God’s gift of love.

Do something with it.

I read this in a novel called “Life of Pi.” I read it in english class, this paragraph was my favourite part of the book. I have yet to figure out why I like it so much.

 “If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? Isn’t love hard to believe?’

‘Mr. Patel-’

‘Don’t you bully me with your politeness! Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe?’

‘We’re just being reasonable.’

‘So am I! I applied my reason at every moment. Reason is excellent for getting food, clothing and shelter. Reason is the very best tool kit. Nothing beats reason for keeping tigers away. But be excessively reasonable and you risk throwing out the universe with the bathwater.�

Yesterday Gareth and I became I lifeguards. It was a spring break packed with chlorine, but it was good fun.

“So now I am giving you a new command: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.�
-Jesus from John 13:34

Could someone please tell me what it means to truly love each other?

In complete honesty, I am not great at loving people. In the same way God looks down on us and loves us, I want to love the people I look at. I want to obey this command from Christ.

But as much as I want this, I really do not see what God sees when I look at the world. When I walk through the hallways of my school I am not overwhelmed with some fuzzy feeling, like the feeling I get hanging out with my grandma. What is wrong with me? How do I love people? How do I acquire such a love?

Is Jesus calling us to feel a love for people, or to show love to people?

Love is fully an action; it’s a verb (as dcTalk reminds us.) Love is serving your neighbors and the people around you, love is going out of your way to help someone, and love is sacrificing your time and talents. Yet in this verse I believe it is clearly a feeling as well…

The beauty of the verse is that Christ does not specify whether this LOVE is an action or a feeling. I believe the answer is both. We are called to feel love, and to show it.

“For God so LOVED THE WORLD, that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.�
-John 3:16

It is through an action that we are enabled to feel love. It took the original spark of feeling, when God said, “I love you because I created you� and he sends his son to take our sins away. THIS IS CLEARLY ACTION. This is the greatest act of love mankind has ever seen. And I believe, with all my heart, that it is through this action that we are able to feel a bond of love between God and us.

Did you catch that? Love is a feeling. But it takes an action to get there. We are commanded by Christ to love each other. But in order to really feel this love we must first DO SOMETHING.

What will you do today to show love?

To start, a quick apology for anyone who has been to this web-page repeated times looking for something to read, but only finding the same old blog. It’s been a busy month.

Here we go.

 ”Searching for meaning is like breathing.It is something intrinsic [natural] to the human spirit. It’s all inside us, and it’s there from the very beginning. Or is it only my children who are so inquisitive? Barely able to walk, they are already asking the most profound philosophical question know to humankind:

Why?

 It’s the question that drives every parent insane.”

               -Erwin McManus

            I find it amazing that we can live in a world that completely ignores meaning. We never really stop to think about WHY things happen. We always strive to know who, what, where when, and how. But we never chill out long enough to ask WHY?

Yet we so desperately want meaning.

The other day I typed in “Meaning of life” on Wikipedia. I couldn’t believe what popped up. Check it out.

• …to live everyday like it is your last and to do your best at everything that comes before you
• …to be always satisfied
• …to eat pretzels
• …to live, go to school, work, and die
• …to accumulate wealth and increase social status
• …to survive and reproduce
• …to destroy others who harm you, or to practice nonviolence and nonresistance
• …to die having succeeded in your purpose
• …to gain and exercise power
• …to leave a legacy, such as a work of art or a book
• …to prepare for death
• …to produce offspring through sexual reproduction (alike to participating in evolution)
• …to protect and preserve one’s kin, clan, or tribe (akin to participating in evolution)
• …to pursue a dream, vision, or destiny
• …to seek freedom, either physically, mentally or financially
• …to observe the ultimate fate of humanity to the furthest possible extent
• …to seek happiness and flourish, experience pleasure or celebrate
• …to survive, including the pursuit of immortality through scientific means
• …to complete your list of life goals
• …to find something to believe in
• …to succeed in our dreams, and live at your best and satisfaction.
• …to think, and open the other 85% of our minds.
• …to have fun, and enjoy life the way you desire.
• …to be a part of history

It all seems so pointless. All of it, it’s meaningless.

But most importantly, it doesn’t answer my big question of “WHY?”

“If you think about it, all the other big questions- who, what, when, where, how- can be explained by our struggle to survive as a species. Evolution easily addresses the development of the questions. Who got eaten? What ate them? Where did it go? When did it come? And most important, how did you get away?

Why, on the other hand, just doesn’t fit in. It is not really necessary for survival. I just can’t see early humans needing to ask, Why did the raptor eat Krug? Why did it have to happen to him? Why do they have to be carnivores? Why did we have to be made of meat? It would have been so much easier if we had been made of a polyester blend or synthetic.

Asking why isn’t about survival of the fittest; it’s about the soul’s craving for meaning.”

                 -McManus

         Where do we go from here? What is life’s meaning? The goal of science is to elaborate forever on “how it happened, and what is happening.” The problem is that the earth and everything in it will die, God and science both agree about this. The sad part is that sience believes there is nothing more than the earth. Science will never begin to touch the most important question, “Why it happened.”  There is a deeper logic. A greater  reasoning. .

So here is my conclusion.

            The greatest news in all the world is that there is no conflict between my passion for meaning, and God’s passion for his glory. In other words, loving God, serving God, following God brings him the most glory and me the greatest meaning…and joy, a joy that surpasses pleasure.

           Meaning comes when we realize that we have been created, and that our creator LOVES us like you could never understand, and died for us, just so we can be with him. The meaning of life is to first get right with God, and then enjoy and delight in God.  

Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

             -Mathew 22: 37-40

Some good quotes from my friend C.S. Lewis.

“Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism.”
–The Abolition of Man

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
–The Problem of Pain

“God will look to every soul like its first love because He is its first love.”
–The Problem of Pain

“No good work is done anywhere without aid from the Father of Lights.”
–Reflections on the Psalms

“Christ died for men precisely because men are not worth dying for; to make them worth it.”
–The World’s Last Night

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
–Mere Christianity

“There is a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious. It is too good to waste on jokes.”
–The Last Battle

“Joy is the serious business of Heaven.”
–Letters to Malcolm

“Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self…”
–Mere Christianity

“‘Safe?’ said Mr. Beaver…’Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. but he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.’
–The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Jesus Walks on Water
Mathew 14: 22-33

“Immediately after this, Jesus made his disciples get back into the boat and cross to the other side of the lake while he sent the people home. Afterward he went up into the hills by himself to pray. Night fell while he was there alone. Meanwhile, the disciples were in trouble far away from land, for a strong wind had risen, and they were fighting heavy waves.
About three o’clock in the morning Jesus came to them, walking on the water. When the disciples saw him, they screamed in terror, thinking he was a ghost. But Jesus spoke to them at once. “It’s all right,� he said. “I am here! Don’t be afraid.�
Then Peter called to him, “Lord, if it’s really you, tell me to come to you by walking on water.�
“All right, come,� Jesus said.
So Peter went over the side of the boat and walked on the water toward Jesus. 30 But when he looked around at the high waves, he was terrified and began to sink. “Save me, Lord!� he shouted.
Instantly Jesus reached out his hand and grabbed him. “You don’t have much faith,� Jesus said. “Why did you doubt me?� And when they climbed back into the boat, the wind stopped.
Then the disciples worshiped him. “You really are the Son of God!� they exclaimed.

I am fully amazed by Peter. He says “Lord, if it is really you, tell me to come to you by walking on the water.�

And then he goes over the side of the boat.

It’s almost as if my own heart echoes his words, “Lord, if this is the life you have for me, tell me to come to you by walking on the water.�

Then Jesus says “All right, come.�

A friend of mine once told me that one-day he would like to try walking on water, but he said he thought it ought to be done during the right conditions.

You see it takes little faith for somebody to try walking on water at the swimming pool. It is another thing to attempt the act in the middle of a storm. It is easy to trust God when the sailing is fast, smooth and fun. But as soon as the storm comes, we panic! We don’t trust God the same as when life was safe and comfortable. We ask ourselves “Where is the Jesus that was with us the last time we were in the storm? (Mathew 8:24) Why isn’t He here with us so that we can wake him up and get him to calm our storms again?� It is as if Jesus is slowly training us by greater degrees of difficulty to live by faith, and not by sense.

I have come to realize that it is through the storm that Christ accomplishes his plans for us. It is during the trial, the challenge, and the danger, that God accomplishes his dreams for us. When we follow Jesus, we are not led along an easy life. It is a stormy life that a Jesus follower lives.

It is interesting that at the beginning of the passage we realize it is not ourselves that choose the adventure. It is Christ. He tells his disciples to get into the boat, knowing full well that the storm will come! And the reason for the storm is so that we will walk on water! It is an amazing thing to walk on water. When we put all our trust in Christ’s plans we start to do incredible things that we would have never done before!

We shouldn’t let the waves make us worry or panic. Is it not God that made the storm? Isn’t it God that puts us through challenges? We should put our faith in Jesus and jump over the side of the boat. Because this faith enables God’s plan to be carried out in our lives, in such an incredible way it is seemingly impossible.

Fully-Lit.

“For I am the LORD your God, who stirs up the sea, causing its waves to roar. My name is the LORD Almighty. And I have put my words in your mouth and hidden you safely within my hand. I set all the stars in space and established the earth. I am the one who says to Israel, ‘You are mine!’ �
-Isaiah 51:15-16