I started long boarding
during my first semester in college. I had a few friends that got me into it
and had an extra boards that I could borrow before I got my own. One warm
October night, I decided to try a new hill with two friends. It was a beautiful
fall evening and life was good. I was new at school, I was making new friends,
I was learning new perspectives on just about everything on life and things
were looking up. I had plans to get a sweet job, make more friends and get a
cute new girlfriend all while becoming an upcoming biblical scholar.
I started down the hill feeling
confident and at peace. I was getting pretty good at long boarding and felt
great. Until I ran over a sewer grate going 35 miles and hour. I went from
feeling positive and great about my life to thinking "this isn't going to
be so great." in a moment. I knew I was going down and there was nothing I
could do about it. That feeling is quite possibly the most terrifying and
hopeless feeling a person can have. Not knowing what is going to actually
happen but imagining everything that could happen will drive you insane. It's
the complete loss of control.
Control is something we
(Americans) are fed our entire lives. The whole idea of the American dream is
to break away from a society that was under the control of a King so that you
can take control of your life and make it whatever you want. The idea of doing
whatever you want whenever you want however you want is burned into our brains
from birth.
When God was finished
creating the universe the Scriptures say He set the seventh day apart as holy
and that God rested. We call this the Sabbath. God gave special attention to
what He had just created and then came down and dwelled with His creation. He
reflected on all that He did and how good it was. This idea was brought into
the Jewish nation in the ten commandments. Take a day to rest, step back, and
think about two things. Observe and reflect. Observe is to realign your focus
from yourself back to God and to make sure we know our place in life. Observe
that God is God and we are His creation. He is the potter and we are the clay.
The second thing is to reflect on all God has done for you. For the Jews, this
was a time to reflect on God bringing them out of slavery in Egypt. So we
observe and reflect. God is God, and He has brought us out of slavery and continues
to do so.
All throughout Scripture
we see this idea of "be still" when things are going wrong. Exodus 14
tells us the Lord will fight for us and we need only to "be still" or
cease. Psalm 46 paints a picture of the world collapsing and God calls us to
"be still" and know the God is God and that He has and will bring us
out unscathed.
So Scripture is telling us
that God is God and we are not. It's telling us that He has brought our
ancestors out of trouble over and over again and that He will continue to do so
if we trust Him. America tells us there are many gods and it is up to us to
make our own happiness and bring ourselves out of the crap in our lives.
That's a problem.
It's a problem because I
swear I know what I need and I know what is best for me. America says so too. I
know how to do my job, I know my family and the dynamics of the relationships
in my life, I known my bank account, I know how this world works so I'm going
to stick to my guns and follow the god of money, greed, lust, pride, status
etc. I can deal with this on my own and plan my life based on this mindset and
everything will go according to plan because I know best.
This has been the mindset
of men since beginning of time.
And we wonder why the
world is so incredibly messed up.
Genocide, sex trafficking,
war, oppression, depression, abuse, slavery, murder, political corruption,
cheating, stealing, rape, corporate fraud. The list goes on and on. Turn on the
news today and I guarantee you will hear these words. This is the world that we
live in . This is what a life centered around control looks like and yet we
still believe our hearts and are convinced we know what's best.
Maybe we should try
another solution. Maybe we let go of control and trust that the one true God,
in which there are no others, the God who created our abilities to even
understand what control is or to speak that word, the God who has brought the
Jews out of Egypt and has brought us out of death and into life, brought us out
of our depression and divorce and pain and stress over and over again will
bring us out just one more time. When you observe and you reflect, it becomes
silly to think that we should be in control or even think that we could control
our lives and make them better than the one who made us.
That's where heaven and
earth collide. That's how we were made live. That's how life is meant to be.
Thanks for reading,
@pPantzims
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