A Glutton In The Mirror

As of late I've been having many problems with the holiday season. 

At the moment I have just helped prepare a rather large feast, bought a cup of Starbucks, I'm listening to my Dad watch a football game(yes you can listen to someone watching any sports), and I'm curled up on my couch writing to you. 

Since I stepped foot outside of Starbucks roughly an hour ago I've been asking myself one thing: Is this all really worth it? Today and tomorrow are days where Americans all celebrate gluttony. Today we eat drink and be merry, and tomorrow we waste our paychecks on thousands of dollars worth of items that we don't need. Well I take that back, sometimes we do actually need a warm coat for this winter weather. We spend and we eat to our hearts content. All the while the vast majority of the world sits at our doorstep staring at us enviously. 

Why do I participate in it? Simply put, I don't know how not to. I was born into a middle class family. Life for me was spent worrying about things like 'what clothes I shall wear tomorrow?' 'does that girl think I'm cute?' 'where do I want to go out to eat?' All the while I am staring at the figures that make up my bank account wondering whether or not I'll be able to maintain the illusion that I'm living the dream perfectly. But I'm not. I haven't lost sleep over the hungary eyes staring at me. I have lost sleep because I am the one sheltered safely on the inside scarfing down as much as I can. 

Can I justify my life any longer while I spend my days contemplating the theories of socialism and communism? Can I maintain my composure any longer?

I don't know.

Your theory is not your faith, nor anything like it. Your faith is your obedience; your theory I know not what. Yes, I will gladly leave you without any of what you call faith. Trust in God. Obey the word-every word of the Master. That is faith; and so believing, your opinion will grow out of your true life, and be worthy of it. Peter says the Lord gives the spirit to them that obey him: the spirit of the Master, and that alone, can guide you to any theory that it will be of use to you to hold. A theory arrived at any other way is not worth the time spent on it. Jesus is the creating and saving lord of our intellects as well as of our more precious hearts; nothing that he does not think, is worth thinking; no man can think as he thinks, except he be pure like him; no man can be pure like him, except he go with him, and learn from him.-George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons, Series III, Justice

"Today, there is an inescapable duty to make ourselves the neighbor of every individual, without exception, and to take positive steps to help a neighbor whom we encounter, whether that neighbor be an elderly person, abandoned by everyone, a foreign worker who suffers the injustice of being despised, a refugee, an illegitimate child wrongly suffering for a sin of which the child is innocent, or a starving human being who awakens our conscience by calling to mind the words of Christ: 'As long as you did it for one of these, the least of my brethren, you did it for me' (Matthew 25:40)"-St Elizabeth of Hungary

From Justice to Belief

I promised to myself that I would always be truthful about my emotions. So here I am going to be honest with the world.

For the past few months I have been happy with who I am becoming. I like where life is headed. There seems to be an odd misconception in American Christianity that if you are happy you are probably not in God's will. Maybe we think this because we don't want the youth to simply feel good, but to be good. Now I must take a good hard look at who I am beginning to become and ask myself how this is being good.

These past few weeks where rough for me. I did something that drugged me into something I am not.

I joined the American Political conversation. It simply became about me and my views. Trying to shove them down someone's throat was my absolute goal. Being good was no where on my radar.

This shows in a letter that has been sitting on my night stand. It is a letter from Compassion International informing me that my payment info was incomplete. And honestly I haven't cared much to respond to it. I've been going back and forth with them since July, waiting to be able to sponsor a child in South America. One letter was lost in the mail, and the other was incomplete. I'm busy as hell, and forget things easily. But this time I have no excuse.

So I need to honestly repent about this. Turn face and walk towards living justly. I admit that i haven't been actually living. But simply thinking and theorizing about how to do things. How much do I really do this?

I don't know exactly where to head on life's journey. But I now truly realize that I need to strive to live justly. Not just in theory, but in reality.

I never knew that God existed before moments like these. Realizations that you can live for others. This is what makes us as humans unique. Not our thumb. It is the fact that we have compassion for those around us. To me this is how I know that God exists. It defies every theory and all logic surrounding the evolution of a species.

What if in all of us we really do have a devil and an angel warring over our souls. One is our animalistic tendencies, the other our God given nature. Such a bold move to say 'God given nature'. But what else is it? What is it that drives us to compassion? Was peer-pressure? If so, who did it start with, and what caused them to think like this? Is it all some giant conspiracy? If it was, would not it be all so obvious?

I cannot help but come to the conclusion that we are lost, wandering through a canyon and are hearing the echoes of our guides voice. He is calling us back to our camp. But maybe I'm completely off. Only God knows what God knows, and I want in on the conversation.