Strangely Stunning

I have one annoying final left. It’s the one I’ve taken before (x2). Failing sucks.

I’m fairly sure people are made to be good at what they’re god at. My sister can do science and math without paper. But if I don’t have paper (or my phone) I’m almost worthless (if you don’t see me write it down, it’s not gonna happen.)

The brain amazes me.

My earth science class was full of ‘em. Some folks in there could tell you what the answer to question seven on test #2 was, while others had a terrible time trying to figure out how many 500 year floods could occur in 500 years.

Yet we all exist together, at the same time, interacting and laughing (and hating class) with each other. Funny how that works, isn’t it?

All our diversity and all our oddities and all the weird people (‘i’ before ‘e’ -- weird, right?) all together. Sounds like a mess -- cause it is.

So, while I write this on a break from Algebra homework and sit in Meads with all the characters inside and outside, it’s easy to say (while NEEDTOBREATHE pumps into my ears), “We are who God has made us, and is making us, to be.” (Which is no excuse to be lazy or dumb, cause shoot, God’s not lazy or dumb.)

Practically all us uniquely strange people are going to step on each other’s toes, break each other’s hearts, try to save some face, and do it all again.

A neat little spiral, which ought to lead us to one thing, one blaringly stunning perfect truth, Jesus saves us strangely sinful people.

Okay, now back to algebra...

A Pigeon Pair

Every now and again a pigeon pair will sit outside the window by my chair (rhymed!). They’ll sit there cooing softly to one another, preening each other, or just being around each other.

I like those pigeons.

It’d be cool if I had something to tie that little tid-bit to, but I don’t. It’s just a very small happening – very rare one – for the pigeons to be there.

We’re an analytical bunch aren’t we?

Tying webs from that to this and there to here. Making the world smaller while building it infinitely larger. Sure webs are beautiful and they help us understand more fully the nuances of science, history, psychology, etc…

But do we always need to add to the web?

Maybe cause finals are just in the upswing and I know my mind will be a wasteland in a couple weeks, but is there no reason to see to pigeons sitting in a window and simply think, “Ahhh, that’s cute.” And leave it there?

(Sure it’ll affect some sort of worship, hopefully, but that should be pre-tied into all things.)

(The picture is of art done by Hannah Scott.)

Windage

Last night I had Earth Science at WSU. You know that one science credit you don’t get done until senior year? Yea, that one. We had a test (surprise!)

After I finished I decided to walk around, I’d never seen campus at night (and since a guy had just been held up at gun point it seemed like a good idea). Walking through the RSC where no one was; over in front of the library (which, is it still open at 8pm?); and down back to the biology building.

But only one thing was nice about the walk, the wind.

It felt like it was forcing me to live. To see reality with eyes wide open and not forget the circumstances and all the happenings of life. (It also slapped me in the face with a leaf.)

(I saw a tweet by a friend, which read, “Just had a horrible nightmare and had to go outside to let that wind wake me up.” Which is exactly what I was feeling.)

I don’t want to over-spiritualize it, the wind. I won’t make a reference to Job and say that’s what I thought about, ‘cause it’s not. Nor will I reference John, ‘cause I didn’t think about that either.

Simply, I want to point to the beauty of it all. This place we inhabit, this creation we see, feel, and know. When under our feet hot hell rages, and above our heads a vast void extends, but on our faces the wind blows past. Trees grown under its pressure and seem to talk to one another (Ents!).

(Ironically enough my science class is all about how the world changes all the time, but climate change is bad… thatisall)

So feel the wind and see the clouds blow by, hear the birds sing their songs and the binding of the trees and know two things, we are not home yet and we are here, now for a reason.

Be not too easily pleased.

Christopher Hitchens

“Christopher Hitchens died today, he was 62.” This is what will be published in articles across the world. Many know him as a scathing writer. His books against the existence of God are well known; his speeches are all over YouTube. His calling Mother Theresa a, “Fraudulent fanatic,” is remembered well.

Cancer is what killed him. The incurable disease, the one science can’t fully fix. Irony, for the man who put his ‘faith’ in science to be killed by its failure at the end.

But to damn the man in a blog post is to affect nothing. Sure I could rant at his open disbelief in God, but I think that cowardly since he can’t offer a rebuttal.

No, I will call him a well-written man and a wonderful rhetorician. Causing all kinds of people to think and consider. Whether they were Atheist or Christian. I will pity his death; for I rather enjoyed listening to him speak.

But I will also say, there is more to life then being well written and a beautiful speaker. There is more to life than making people think. There’s more to life than all this life and death and tragedy and comedy. There’s love

Not the blind love of youth. Nor the love I have for Oreos. But the love of a Savior for his people, which causes faith in what is unseen.

‘Cause that’s all faith really is, believing what you can’t see to be. Hitchens’ had it in the power of words and our modern sciences; I have it in the power of words and the work of Jesus. While science astounds me it cannot redeem me.

But see, that’s just it; I feel the need of being redeemed from my sins. I feel the need for a Savior. Hitchens never did. It can’t be because his brain was more evolved than mine. Nor can it be that his studies revealed more to him than the studies of C.S. Lewis or Sir Isaac Newton.

Perhaps I’ve believed the lie. Perhaps he believed the lie. I won’t damn him, that’s not my place nor my job and he won’t damn me.

All I know is this; I will die for this Gospel, this Savior, this Jesus. Willingly and lovingly die. I proclaim until then His worth and Excellency and work. As Hitchens wrote so I shall write, as he spoke I shall speak. Yet the difference shall be this one thing: there is a God and He’s knowable.

So, I thank Christopher Hitchens for who he was, for his devotion to his faith and his bold proclamation of it. And I say this meaningfully, he will be missed.