Time Enough

Sometimes, it's fun to take life at a fast pace - say 1.5x. But sometimes...it's just a tad much. School is much like living at 1.5x, whereas summer, to me, is more like normal, or 1x. After too much 1x, it's hard to get back into the rhythm of 1.5x, but once you do, it's rather catchy. There lies the problem - had you ever tried listening to something fast, then slowly? It's agony, listening to notes that used to take a mere split second drag on for what seems like hours. If you're used to living quickly, then it's nigh on impossible to slow down to normalcy.

The change is hard, yes...but most often, it's good. When I'm speeding on down the road, enjoying speed, I forget how I love to reach my arm out the window and pretend to fly, or the teasing pull of the air in my hair, whipping it into my eyes and stinging them. I forget how I love to drive slowly along the streets, noting each tree and house, and enjoying how unique each is.

Maybe that's why I love autumn so much...it's a time of change, but it's slow and tangible. It doesn't happen overnight, and yet somehow it creep up on you. I walk my paths, the leaves falling across my way, the wind caressing the same leaves, urging them to let go of all they've ever known, assuring them that the fall is not painful; that they will guide them.

How simple, how pleasurable it would be, to be a falling leaf, crossing the sky, then falling to rest gently and skittishly on the ground, 'til the wind chose to guide me farther, in whirling eddies in the streets, or joined with many others and serving to cushion children as they lay on me. Or, to serve a great honor, and be taken up by a child, and become part of a collection, chosen to show my beauty for years to come.

Ah, yes...when I am moving at 1.5x, I forget what it is to live simply, and to take joy in that existence. I forget how I love God, and the wonders He works upon the world at the change of seasons. I forget the change that He wants to work in my heart, even as the cool wind sweeps in and changes the season.

But He works, and is faithful to complete His work.

"There is a time for everything, and a season for ever activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

What does the worker gain from his toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil - this is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere Him." ~Ecclesiastes 3:1-14

There is a time to live in 1.5x, and a time to settle in 1x.

~Fumble

Remember the Past

Right and wrong. How can what seems to be a simple concept become such a beast to understand? And what if there is no right, and only wrong on either side of the equation? In the Dakota War of 1862, neither side was in the right. Certainly, the Indians committed great savagery, and I'm not justifying it, but consider what was going on between the Europeans and the Indians at that time. Just as there was savagery on the part of the Native Americans, there was also a "refined" savagery - if you can call slowly killing a people through starvation and debt. One way or the other, the whites would have been the death of the Indians - and sooner or later, the Indians would decide that enough was enough and retaliate before another blow could hit them. The impulsiveness of four braves would cause the deaths of hundreds - both white and Indian.

Each side had their reasons; their "right", but you ask me who was right, and who was wrong? There is no answer. There is no gray. History is oft a hard lesson; why? Because we learn that we are not infallible; the human race, whatever skin color, will ultimately fail. We've seen it again and again in history - as it is said: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."(George Santayana) In my words - if you refuse to learn from what has been proven to happen, if you refuse to believe that the heart of humanity is depravity - then you refuse to realize that you will repeat it.

Reaching into a fire will cause pain and burns, but to be so foolish as to reach for it once again?

God is our only hope. Why?

Because He's the only one who can stop our nation from going to Hell - and staying there.

~Fumble

The Last Laugh

Why is it that every time I think I start to understand something, I end up more confused than ever? Is everything in life going to have that extra facet, just around the corner, that stumps me and sends me right back to the beginning? I mean, really, what's the deal? God, couldn't you make anything simple enough for me to understand? But then again...I suppose if I really understood things, I'd take them for granted, and then eventually I would have more losses...but I take things for granted anyway; my friends, my family, church...I even take God for granted. It's so very hard knowing that I am the heart of every problem I have. God has never been the source of my problems; it's always been me trying to excuse my behavior, my thoughts, my inclinations.

Fortunately, He's always there to help me back on my feet, after I cripple myself. Honestly, the human race is so self-destructive...before we can ever get ahead, we hamstring ourselves with our ideals and fancies, when God has a simple, relatively "easy" plan to follow. All He asks is that we cast everything aside and follow Him, and only Him, with nothing between us, or any such. It strikes me that it really should be easy. In fact, it's laughably easy - at least, until I try to do it. But then, in come all the places where I've compromised myself, all the things that I've put higher on my priority list than God...it's a painful realization, that I have so very many things that I "love" more than my Savior.

And yet it's so hard to give them up. Sometimes I feel as if the only way I could ever truly give everything up for Him is if I was at the point of Death, and understanding the regrets I had never understood before, and He brought me back. It seems as if my impossibly hard heart would need a radical change like that. Otherwise, it's too easy to slip back into every habit, every pattern of living I had hoped would have been left behind.

Truly, the only thing between God and myself is, indeed, myself. To die to oneself...it's a hard thing, but necessary. To give up everything and follow Him, daily taking up my cross...I know that the only way that will happen is if God gives me grace to do so. It'll be a choice I have to make eventually.

Either way, God will have the last laugh.

I can only hope I'll be laughing with him.

~Fumble