The Wisdom of Einstein

"A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving..." - Albert Einstein 

How much more should we exert ourselves then, knowing we are not only the products of the trials and tribulations of those around us, but also from God Himself?

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." - John 3:16

Oh, How He Loves Us

"Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one's life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; Perhaps it crept to one's side like an old friend through quiet ways; Perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and music; Perhaps...perhaps....love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from it's green sheath." - LM Montgomery (Anne of Avonlea)

There are two things that come to mind when I first read this quote.  Firstly, concerning love and relationships: I'm not a believer in love-at-first-sight.  I believe in a love that blossoms through continued friendship and respect and a true desire for the well-being of the other.


Secondly: As I was growing up, like some other Christians, I went through periods of bitterness against God.  There's the normal era of teenage angst and frustration.  And then in my particular case, with my brother, I often asked myself "Why did God put me in this situation?"  I'm forever tied to my brother in more ways than some people realize off the bat.  For so long, my family has had to schedule our lives around his needs solely.  What hours I was available to work (having to drive my brother to and from school, that cuts out most 9-5 jobs).  Sometimes where we could travel (places where we could keep him at arms length without him disturbing others too much).  And many other things.


And then I started seeing the so many blessings I've been given in life that I've taken for granted for so long.  I have two wonderful parents who have prayed over me and continue to support me to this day.  Through the years with my brother, he has shaped virtues in me that I have never realized before.  Over the years, realizing these subtle yet powerful examples of how He has molded me into the young man I am today can only be His absolute love for me.


Just because we aren't loved in the way we want to be loved, doesn't mean we aren't loved at all.


Sometimes it means we're loved more than we realize.

^"but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."  Romans 5:8 

First Love

I had the sudden urge to look for my DC Talk CDs.  Their songs are cheesy, yes, but Jesus Freak and Free at Last were my first Christian CDs.  I would argue these are the quintessential albums for young Christians of my generation.  People may sell these short, thinking DC Talk was only about the title cut, but there are so many amazing songs on these albums.

Imagine my elation after saving up for weeks to finally be able to walk into Borders and check out at the register with my own saved up allowance.  And then to hurry home and listen to the CDs on repeat through the night.  I still have the lyrics of "In the Light" ingrained in my head after all these years.

"What's going on inside of me? I despise my own behavior
This only serves to confirm my suspicions
That I am a man in need of a Savior
I wanna be in the Light, as You are in the Light
I wanna shine like the stars in the heavens
Oh Lord, be my Light and be my salvation
'Cause all I want to be is in the Light"

Being an awkward adolescent that had no idea how to express himself, discovering these song lyrics was like striking gold.  I was hooked and in love.

There's nothing in the world that captures your heart like that feeling of your first love.  Whether it is with a significant other, or a hobby or your profession, your first love has an immense stronghold in who a person is.  It drives how a person acts, how a person thinks, the decisions they make in life.  Mozart understood this fully, saying this:

Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius.  Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.

Too often do we forget that first love we felt in Christ.  It's amazing how subtly the world distracts us from this fact, isn't it?  As we age, we only get busier and busier with our lives.  From school, we get a job.  Most of us will get married.  We might have children.  Bills pile up.  Older loved ones pass away.  Circumstances arise in life that need our attention.  It becomes too easy to cope with the ever-piling load of responsibility by going through the daily motions.  This becomes a slippery slope towards a path of works-righteousness; that we ultimately have this need to perform in our lives to gain favor in the eyes of our loved ones, even God.

I want to remind myself and everyone that it is not our performance that He desires.  He just desires our heart.  Once we find ourselves in that place of rediscovering that first love we felt in Him, everything else will fall into place.

A Year and a Half

I only just remembered I had this.  Call it a desperate attempt at escape from outside responsibilities (aka studying -_-;; ).  But I suppose it's a more wholesome distraction than say... building more pylons and Zealots, or seeing the a Heat player's next attempt for an Oscar.

"Hollywood as hell" as Joakim Noah likes to put it.

Let's talk about the church.  More specifically, what is the church, and His Kingdom supposed to look like?  How is it that we are able to easily welcome newcomers to our church, but so easily also show so much disdain and contempt for people that have wronged us, even within the church?  I wish for my church, and for all churches out there, that people walk in and think "These people are happy."

A place where there is that freedom the bondage of having to perform at a certain standard.

But so many of us don't do this.  We expect people to act a certain way, to do or not do certain things, and we begin to build walls around us.  And we only allow people that fit or act a certain way into those walls.

The Old Testament is familiar to us.  The time when God had His people go through ceremonial cleaning in His temple in order to worship him.  How that turned from recognizing/remember that God was so holy that we as man couldn't attain it, to turning it into legalism... saying "We're going to protect the law, we're going to live out the law."

We know how this goes, better than we even realize ourselves.  You know we have Jesus that we all believe and we follow.  And this Jesus that we know and follow, we feel the need to protect Him.  Protect the Bible, protect the church from those kind of people who can or has defiled it.  Right?  Those people that we think if we allow to sit in our pews or if allow ourselves to know them that the church will become dirty or unclean.  We've become like the spectators when Jesus saw Zacchaeus and said he wanted to stop by his house; we grumble.  We start on the path of ostracizing them in our hearts.

Well guess what.  Jesus was walking around, and a bleeding woman comes up to him and touches His robe and becomes clean.  Why is she healed?  Because with Jesus, there is nothing that can defile Him.  But rather He has the power to cleanse and redeem.  But for some reason we've adopted this stream of thinking that we need to protect the church.  If the Gospel were to come in contact with something that happens or people that are dirty, that it will defile and impurify the Gospel.  That is all wrong.

The church has so many subtle ways of living in this old paradigm of thinking, that Jesus came to undo.

With condemnation of sin also comes restoration.

We need to see how utterly powerful the Gospel is, and see the grace, mercy, joy and forgiveness that flows from that.