Something Is Not Quite Right: A Descriptive Writing Essay

            Anyone who’s broken a bone will tell you that there’s something absolutely unnatural about it. Sprinting through the unmown grass in the deserted baseball field in front of our house, my first signal that something wasn’t quite right was the resounding CRACK!

Falling, my shoulder imprinting on the soft, moist ground on that sunny April day, my older brother running past in his soccer cleats with the ball; all of this happening before I knew the reason for it. It was my leg.

Oddly, as I sat there in the jersey I had chosen to wear to soccer try-outs that day, what I felt most wasn’t pain; it was panic. What? Why? How? What do I do? These questions racing through my mind while I tried in vain to reassemble the once-sturdy object that had been my left leg. My leg, that moments before had been strongly propelling me forward, was now just a bag of Jell-O and sticks. My heart racing and head pounding; sweat, that had begun while I ran, was now fueled by alarm.

My brother running back to me saying something I couldn’t quite make out was the first sign that my hearing had gone all funny. “Are you all right? What’s wrong?” The words were muffled and seemed to ignite a loud ringing that I hadn’t noticed before. My eyes stung as he stood over me questioningly, red-faced in front of the sun. “What happened?” He asked again. Such a simple question that I could hardly concentrate enough to answer. My whole body shook, and my mouth felt full of sand as I tried to form the words: “I think my leg is broken. Go get Mom.”

Even as I sat in that field, itching from the grass and the bugs, my head was swimming so much that I couldn’t wrap my mind around what had happened. I heard my brother yelling in the distance as he ran to the house. It was so far away. How would I ever make it across the field? Maybe if I could scoot backwards, I could get there. STARS, JELL-O, NAUSEA; these sickening reminders of why I should not move my leg became all too clear as I tried moving ever so slightly towards the house.

Then, they were there; my mom and brother were right next to me. How had they gotten there so quickly? They decided to carry me to the car as I held my leg close trying not to move it even the slightest bit. I tried helping with my good leg, but it was a struggle regardless as my 14-year-old brother and mom half-carried-half-dragged 12-year-old me to the waiting car.

            When we made it to the hospital, they had put me on a table and cut-off my brand-new, Adidas shin-guards to look at my leg. The nurse came to place an I.V. and I looked away only to feel a slight poke. Seeing my elbow in a small pool of blood on the sheet was a shock as I decided to turn back. Then they told me that they needed me to extend my leg that I had been holding so dearly, close to my body. My bones rolled around like bowling pins as I straightened it for the first time since the crack.

Even years later, I’ve always thought the worst part was the waiting. Waiting as my mom parked the car, ran back into the house, and tried to call someone to come watch my siblings. Waiting and wincing over every bump as we drove across town (and the railroad tracks) to the hospital. Waiting while the doctors talked and talked and then finally gave me something for the pain. And lastly, waiting to go home and sleep. It is an experience that I will never forget, and I remember it like it was yesterday.

Paradox Of Opposition

Breathe your first breath

Love and warmth 

Or hate and death

Is there purpose?

Is there truth?

Two rocks

Which is heavier?

Fate for some

Choice for others

A treasure hunt

A war of romance 

Will you search for hope?

Will you fight for meaning?

Desperation

Resignation

Wine and ashes

Inebriation

Dehydration

Chaos and peace

The yoke and the white

Deceptions of life

Can that be right?

The bang

The apocalypse

The pre-hereafter

Beginning

End

Middle

Now shrieks of laughter

The metaphors of lies and fire

Captivating desire

The paradox of opposition

Bringing order to position

The Beginning Of A Journey

So, I've been reading these journals of mine that I started writing when I was probably 14 or 15 years old. Some people may not realize it now, but I love to write, and I used to journal a lot. I would write out my thoughts, prayers to God, even poems. I actually just started up another journal not too long ago for the first time in years. I'm not sure why, but I stopped writing a while back, and now that I've started up again I've realized how much God used to speak to my as I wrote.

It all started for me when I was a teenager. A leader in our church invited me and some other kids to join a group that he was starting. It was just 4 of us that ended up joining. Our church had a prayer room with various worship teams playing music and worshiping God throughout the week, and he invited us to come to one of the worship times and journal. That was it. We sat as the worship team did their thing and wrote in our journals. We would write specifically about a Bible verse. Just one verse. It went like this: Psalm 16:11, "You will show me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore." The whole point of our assignment was to learn more about God and His word in the Bible. You see, there is infinite depth to the Word of God, and He reveals His heart, personality, and ways to us when we spend time reading it and asking Him questions about it. So that's what we did. We would read the verse, write the verse out, paraphrase the verse, pray the verse back to God, and even sing the verse (The worship team was already playing. I mean hey, why not?).

You may be thinking one of two things as you read this. Maybe it's, "Wow, that sounds pretty cool!" Or, you could be thinking something similar to what I was thinking when he first told us what we would be doing, and that was, "Wait... what?"

I was willing to give it a shot though. I was hungry to know more about God, and I trusted the guy leading us. So, that first night I did it... for two hours (Oh did I forget to mention that's how long the worship set was?). I THOUGHT THAT I WOULD DIE FROM BOREDOM!!! Now, after two hours of banging my head against the same verse of the same 22 words and the same 93 letters, you would think (as I did) that I would know just about all that I could about it without doing an in depth study using lexicons, commentaries, and other sorts of educated shenanigans. I was wrong.
We came back the next week, and we did the same exact thing! For two more hours I stared at the same words, wrote out five different ways of saying the same thing, and asked God the same questions. We did this week after week!

And then... it happened. God started to speak.

In movies and other media, the act of God speaking to a person is stereotypically portrayed as a voice thundering from heaven as lightning strikes nearby sinners that were unlucky enough to be walking by (okay slight exaggeration there, but you get where I'm coming from). However, this isn't what happened to me as I sat in a room staring at those words. God's Holy Spirit spoke to me from within, and I began to write more than I ever thought possible about one verse! I experienced for the first time the reality that God speaks to us today all of the time, but we rarely dedicate time to listen! Let me tell you, after such monotony of focusing on that verse for so long, I was definitely listening!

I tell you all of this because that experience was the start of a journey. As I've read through my other journals I've been reminded of God's goodness in my life. I read through all of the struggles that I've gone through. Time after time of being anxious of my future, worried about money, seeking God's guidance in relationships, and praising God for His faithfulness. It's incredible to me, 10 years after the experience I just described, that each of the same struggles kept popping up, and each time God's hand was with me through it all. Each time that I chose to put my trust in Him and His leadership it was worth it. Every time I turned to Him full of doubt, shame, fear, worry, or sorrow He has proven Himself to be truly good. There is no one more trustworthy for you to give your life to. He will never leave you. He will never fail you. He will never stop loving you with the same passion that He showed as He gave His body to be broken for you and carried your pain, mistakes, hurts, and sorrows. The test of time in my life has only made me more confident that even though I don't always understand His ways or see Him working in my life, He is worth my all. I continually give him my future, my hopes, my fears, my passion, my possessions, my thoughts and words and actions. He has not failed me yet, and He never will.

I've failed Him times without number, but He has always stood there with open arms calling me to run back to Him. Wherever you are on your journey, (a teenager trying to get through school, a college student on the brink of starting the rest of your life, a young adult trying to figure this life thing out, in your middle years just struggling to get by, or in the crown of your later years) I hope that my story can be of encouragement to you. I know that I'm still just a young buck with so much yet to experience and learn, but I've known the goodness of God, and I know that He is worth every breath that I have left to give. You are the apple of His eye. Never forget how greatly He loves you. And if you aren't sure of His love, just ask Him. Ask Him to speak to you. He will.

"The LORD is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth."  - Psalm 145:18

Thanks for taking the time to read my story. Now, go talk to God!

 

Eyes Like A Flame Of Fire

I've often contemplated what John the Beloved meant when He described Jesus as having "eyes like a flame of fire." Were His eyes like human eyes with fiery irises? Was there just burning fire coming out of the holes where His eyes should be? Did seeing His eyes captivate you the way staring at fire does? Were His eyes just really bright? WHAT IN THE WORLD DID HE MEAN?!! Then, I started thinking more about the person and less about the eyes. Think about what it would be like to look into the eyes of One WITHOUT AGE. The eyes of Someone who is INFINITE. Someone who knows ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING about you. Eyes burning with the fullness of DESIRE for your heart. Eyes set ablaze with ZEALOUS, JEALOUS LOVE for you. Eyes that you CANNOT ESCAPE from. Eyes that you DON'T WANT TO ESCAPE from. Eyes that are so ALIEN, UNNERVING, AND TERRIFYING that you're trembling all over with fear, but at the same time are so FAMILIAR, COMFORTING, AND BEAUTIFUL that you don't want to look away. Eyes that hold the very essence of LOVE, MERCY, AND TENDERNESS, but also the absolute potency of WRATH, JUSTICE, AND ZEAL. The eyes that see into the deepest darkest abyss of your wickedness, sin, and filth, yet they are the same eyes that looked upon you in the epitome of desire and asked the Father for you to be with Him forever. These are the eyes which radiate with the love that is stronger than the grave. These are the eyes kindled with the yearning that caused a perfect, holy God to take on human flesh, live a human life, be bound by puny Roman chains, scorned, spit upon, slapped, punched, beat, scourged, mocked, humiliated, blasphemed, nailed to a tree, and to give up His very life for the weak, broken, inconsistent, unfaithful, inglorious, unworthy, inferior, selfish, pitiful love that we would give Him in return. These are the eyes of perfect wisdom. These are the eyes of endless beauty. These are the eyes that we are all meant to spend our lives gazing upon and loving. One glimpse of these eyes is worth highest price, the greatest sacrifice, the fullest surrender. One glimpse of the eyes of this Man is all that I am living for.

Update

So, I've been doing a poor job of spending time on my blog and I think that it's mostly because up until now I've only been putting teaching-like posts on it. However, I'm going to try to be more diligent about updating it much more frequently hereafter and not focusing my posts entirely on teaching, so that you, my faithful few followers, can know what's going on. I'm fairing extremely well here in Kansas City as an FSM student and Intercessionary Missionary. I'm currently also delivering pizza for Papa John's Pizza, and as a result I am almost more busy than I know how to handle. I'm growing so much with God at the same time though, and overall I'm just really excited about the season that I'm in. More updates to come soon! Bless you!

The Patriarch

I've been studying Abraham lately. In the past, I never really paid any special attention to this man who is so important in the story of God. I mean I knew all the different stories about him from Sunday School and stuff growing up so when I got to the parts about him in the bible I would just read them as that: stories. This time around though I stopped and started really thinking about what I was reading, and I noticed a lot of things that I feel like aren't really emphasized enough. Abraham lived the first 75 years of his life outside of the land that would later become Israel. In fact, the first time that it's recorded that God ever spoke to him wasn't until that time. Now, I know that people lived much much longer back then, but I think that the fact that the father of the Hebrew people did not begin his life in God until he was already 75 years old is a very significant thing. I mean that's crazy to my way of thinking! God comes to this guy out of the blue and tells him when he's already 75 to leave the land of his father because he's going to create a great nation from his children! Abraham listened to Him too! He just got up and left. He lived an amazing life after that too. God just kept blessing him and blessing him. I mean he inherited an entire country from God! He was blessed with tons of goods and livestock. He was so wealthy that the people in the land that surrounded where he lived called him a prince. This guy was patient too! He was 75 when God promised him children, and his wife Sarah didn't have the child that God promised him until 25 years later! Twenty-five years of waiting, trusting God, and doing everything that He asked without exception. I know that Abraham lived to be 175, but that does not change the fact that 25 years is FOREVER!!! I mean if I had to wait 25 more years to have children I don't know how I would make it! Abraham was actually called Abram for most of his life. Abraham was the name that God gave him. Abram meant "exalted father" while Abraham meant "father of a multitude". Either way, this man was called to be a father his whole life, and he waited most of his life for it! I think that's amazing! So, here we have this guy who had this amazing relationship with God, was blessed beyond measure, but still he waited 25 years to have Isaac, the child of promise. And after the big wait for this kid; after he waited his whole life to be a father; after he received promise after promise from God that he was going to be the father of nations; God tells him to go up to the mountains, and sacrifice his one and only son that he waited so long for and whom he loves more than anything. This wasn't a "spiritual sacrifice". This was real. God was saying "Abraham, I want you to go up to the mountain and stab to death and burn your one and only son whom you love more than anything. The one whom I promised to you in the first place 25 years before he was born." I don't think I could ever understand what Abraham thought at that moment. He actually did as God asked. He really was going to sacrifice Isaac. It wasn't like he didn't love this kid or care about him. He waited 25 years for him. He was already 100 years old when Issac was born. You cannot even say that it was all God's idea for him to have children and that he never really wanted it. God said"Take now your son, your only son Issac, whom you love..." in Genesis 22:2. That verse is the first time in the entire bible that the word "love" is even used. Abraham loved this child more than you or I have ever loved anything in our lives, and his faith in God was so strong that he was still willing to give him as a sacrifice. As a sign of his love for God, he was willing to give the one thing that he loved most on this earth. We know that he didn't end up having to go through with it and that God provided another sacrifice, but I still cannot even begin to fathom how amazing this story is. I cannot wait to meet him when I get to the New Jerusalem. This man truly was great. God chose him to be the father of His chosen nation. I believe that God also chose him to have the greatest revelation of His heart that anyone has ever had because when Abraham was willing to give up Isaac in love for God he became a picture of God sacrificing His own Son in love for us.   

The First Issue Of My Newsletter

I just completed the first issue of my newsletter  — check it out and let me know what you think!



December2010 Newsletter