Invisible change
Always slow growth creepin’ in
Discipline: difference.

From whence comes discipline?

I’m a big fan of life chapters. I believe that the emotional associations that come with closing out one part of life and starting another are real and important. The crutch of this is that I can be tempted to wait for major life points to make changes in my life. This is approximately the antithesis of discipline.

I’d like to insightfully relate this to another part of my psyche, but everything I come up is a stretch. I’m just bad at discipline, both in my spiritual life and in my physical life. I’ve been lazily moving in the wrong direction since the last big life event, and I’m now turning myself back toward discipline. Here’s to Bible reading and exercise.

I’m not fond of abstract thinking, as I’d prefer to just do things and be done. But the abstract I’ve been pondering in relation to this runs thus: How does a strong discipline not turn into legalism? Where is the point where doing a thing because it is the right thing to do, and enjoying it because it is good to enjoy rightness, turns into pride over doing the right thing? Where does the good pride turn into the bad pride? These are not all the same question, but they’re darts thrown at the same dartboard.

Praise the Lord that he allows us wandering wonder-ers to be a part of his Kingdom before we figure it all out.

Wolves on the inside
Wolves on the outside
Wolves eating wolves when things don’t go right

We were told it would be this
We were warned of the pain
But it’s still hard to deal with when it goes this way.

Doing the right thing
does not fit on my stat sheet
… maybe a blocked shot

(life intangible)

We are not all nuts.
While some of us are waiting for the end of the world
(who cares?)
some seek the beginning of life
not just for ourselves, but for everyone
because it’s easy to put up painted scenes
and smile like you mean it
but when we are really honest with ourselves,
are we living? usually not.
and that is what Christ came for.
Not that we would live this sphere faster
or win
or flaunt it over those heathens
but that we would know life and spread it
that we would show life and mend it
that is what we are here for:
to have a better life through Christ
otherwise he would have kept us up there
and not had us struggle with death down here
the gospel is about life, and a good one, too,
which we don’t find through money, but truth.
So I will not go Camping this weekend
but I’ll be seeing two friends get married
as a picture of the gospel
and I think that’s closer to the meaning of life
than waiting for a rapture.

I have many things that are happening, but none that have happened enough for me to look back and analyze. Right now I am in process, and instead of worrying, I just am here. This is a first. This is the grace of God working on me and maturing me. I could not have been this way on my own, and I could not have been this way even a year ago. God works, and I see him work. Hallelujah

Sport often causes me to think of how my heart works. I want to know how to capture the fever and fervor of a triple-OT basketball game in my walk with Christ. Not permanently (triple OT would not be exciting if it happened every day), but sometimes. Lord, grace me with a passion for you that will result in these.

Strange days test my joy
Emotions caught between lives
God remains the same

My thoughts are a jumbled mess right now, but they have to do with “place.” I have always wanted a place, and it seems that I am not good at realizing I am always in one.

I want to be present, while preparing to be present somewhere else. How did Christ handle this times 1000? How could he have possibly kept his mind on Earth when there was such a greater glory awaiting him, that he had already seen and knew was better?

We have the same hope, but having never seen it, do not have to deal with that distraction. And besides, the longing for heaven outweighing my longing for Earth is several levels above me. Right now I struggle with longing for where I am not instead of where I am.

Oh Christ, be my place, so that all places are the same to me, all up until the day I leave.

You must not have been afraid to peel
to look inside the layers of yourself and
see all that lay within; but you are God
and also man. So what did you find there?

I so often fear that if I peel away layers
there will be nothing to be at the bottom
I know that I will find you there
for you are the source of the whole world

and I am too selfish a man to believe
that you would want my dreams to be;
but you dreamed them before me.

So what will I find there?