I have decided to share a few of my thoughts from the book, Crazy Love by Francis Chan. Here is my favorite piece of the first chapter entitled, "Stop Praying"
"Many Spirit-filled authors have exhausted the thesaurus in order to describe God with the glory He deserves. His perfect holiness, by definition, assures us that our words can't contain Him. Isn't it a comfort to worship a God we cannot exaggerate?"
How amazing is it to realize that God is so huge, that we cannot possibly exaggerate Him?! Think about all the things in life that we try to make seem bigger than they really are: the line at walmart, the length of time we sat in traffic, the amount of work that we have to do, anything. We naturally tend to over-express something with words when we are trying to make people understand a certain situation.
But we can never over-express God; it's impossible!! Our words can barely even contain Him, let alone exaggerate Him. How amazing is it that we serve a God that is so great?
Take some time today and think about that.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
The real deal on St. Patrick's Day
Anyone that knows me knows that I like to do things different from everyone else...sometimes to a fault. I have never been one to jump on a band wagon just because everyone else jumped on. In fact, there have been a few wagons that I jumped off of because they go too crowded. I tend to stay away from common practices that the majority follows out of habit or reflex. That is, until I find purpose and intentionality behind something. Then I follow something for a better reason then, "just because".
St. Patrick's Day has kind of been one of those things. I would occasionally wear a little green if I was in the right mood, but most of the time I treated it like any other day. Maybe it was just my way of refusing to conform, I don't know. This year I decided to try to find out why the day is celebrated and what all is behind it. So here's the brief summary.
St. Patrick wasn't actually Irish, but traveled to Ireland with a mission to spread Christianity. During the more than 20 years that he lived there, he gained tremendous favor with the people and won many converts. After his death on March 17, AD 461, the day was used to commemorate his life and work to the Irish people. It was traditionally a Catholic holy day where families would have the day off of work, go to Mass, and have a meal together. Believe it or not, pubs were even closed on this day (until the 1970's). There was a sanctity and holiness to this very sacred holiday - much different then it is today.
Although green is the color that is most attributed to this holiday, it was not the color that was associated with St. Patrick. Blue was his "officially assigned" color, and is still seen on ancient Irish flags and even on the uniforms that the Irish special forces wear today. The "wearing of the green" actually referred to wearing a shamrock: a symbol that St. Patrick used to explain the concept of the Trinity. It represented how the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit could all exist as separate elements of the same entity. St. Patrick's followers began the tradition of wearing a shamrock on his feast day.
In fact, green was a sign of superstitious "bad luck" that had something to do with a folklore legend about fairies kidnapping children who wore too much of their (the fairies) favorite color.
So in my own "I have to be different" sort of way, I'm proudly wearing blue today (with a little bit of green). I couldn't find a shamrock to wear, but that's probably because I didn't really find all of this out until yesterday, and waited until the last minute to look for one. Sometimes I'm different just for the sake of being different; other times I'm different because there's a purpose behind it. As I have discovered a while ago, things tend to last longer when there's intentionality to support it.
St. Patrick's Day has kind of been one of those things. I would occasionally wear a little green if I was in the right mood, but most of the time I treated it like any other day. Maybe it was just my way of refusing to conform, I don't know. This year I decided to try to find out why the day is celebrated and what all is behind it. So here's the brief summary.
St. Patrick wasn't actually Irish, but traveled to Ireland with a mission to spread Christianity. During the more than 20 years that he lived there, he gained tremendous favor with the people and won many converts. After his death on March 17, AD 461, the day was used to commemorate his life and work to the Irish people. It was traditionally a Catholic holy day where families would have the day off of work, go to Mass, and have a meal together. Believe it or not, pubs were even closed on this day (until the 1970's). There was a sanctity and holiness to this very sacred holiday - much different then it is today.
Although green is the color that is most attributed to this holiday, it was not the color that was associated with St. Patrick. Blue was his "officially assigned" color, and is still seen on ancient Irish flags and even on the uniforms that the Irish special forces wear today. The "wearing of the green" actually referred to wearing a shamrock: a symbol that St. Patrick used to explain the concept of the Trinity. It represented how the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit could all exist as separate elements of the same entity. St. Patrick's followers began the tradition of wearing a shamrock on his feast day.In fact, green was a sign of superstitious "bad luck" that had something to do with a folklore legend about fairies kidnapping children who wore too much of their (the fairies) favorite color.
So in my own "I have to be different" sort of way, I'm proudly wearing blue today (with a little bit of green). I couldn't find a shamrock to wear, but that's probably because I didn't really find all of this out until yesterday, and waited until the last minute to look for one. Sometimes I'm different just for the sake of being different; other times I'm different because there's a purpose behind it. As I have discovered a while ago, things tend to last longer when there's intentionality to support it.
Monday, March 16, 2009
I'm really bad at this!
Apparently I'm not as good at updating as I had hoped I would be. I have definitely had several "God thoughts" that would've been good to write out and share, but that's what happens when you keep putting things off....they don't get done.
In the past month I have: finished a book ("The Sacred Echo" by Margaret Feinberg), started a new book ("Crazy Love" by Francis Chan), changed offices, rocked out to a new favorite song, washed my car (like 3 times!), had a good chat with a good friend, fought for a new level of freedom, thought about my future, legally rode shotgun with Matt Murphy (and have lived to tell about it), been stressed about taxes, been ice skating, been able to use the phrase "I'm with the band", and been reminded why dogs are cooler than cats.
So that's the quick update from the life of Mark. Hopefully, the next one won't take as long.
In the past month I have: finished a book ("The Sacred Echo" by Margaret Feinberg), started a new book ("Crazy Love" by Francis Chan), changed offices, rocked out to a new favorite song, washed my car (like 3 times!), had a good chat with a good friend, fought for a new level of freedom, thought about my future, legally rode shotgun with Matt Murphy (and have lived to tell about it), been stressed about taxes, been ice skating, been able to use the phrase "I'm with the band", and been reminded why dogs are cooler than cats.
So that's the quick update from the life of Mark. Hopefully, the next one won't take as long.
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