Shake shake shake.

There was a 6.1 Earthquake this evening, well by the time this post publishes it will have been several evenings ago.

My thoughts on experiencing an Earthquake from the 4th floor of a building:

Woah! Another earthquake!
Ooooookay, it's been 10 seconds, why is the building still shaking?  Why is it getting stronger?
Alright, I think I might die today.
Okay.

I should mention, the other day I had a dream that there was an incredibly strong Earthquake while I was in a building and the building fell over.  The dream ended with me falling towards the street from 50 feet up in the air.  In my dream, though, I felt like even if I fell, it would be okay.  I ended the dream knowing I would wake up and be okay, even if I hit the ground, and then, right before I hit the ground in the dream I woke up.  And I was okay.

I don't have a death wish, please don't read this and think that.  It's not the truth.  But as clearly as I knew I would be okay in my dream, I knew today, during this earthquake, that I would be okay.  Even if I fell and hit the ground, I would wake up and everything would be okay.

That said, some notes on what an earthquake like that feels like:

When the walls start shaking I can always hear it before I feel it.  Then, when the building sways back and forth it feels like I've climbed to the top of a tall tree and the wind is blowing really hard.  After that feeling passes I get dizzy and I can't tell if the earthquake has ended or not, because I sort of get my quake legs (think sea legs).

Now, some notes on what an earthquake like that makes me think about:

The earth cries out.
The next big, or for many people, the last big earthquake could happen at any time.  How have they prepared?  How have they been prepared?
There will be earthquakes in various places.

I don't believe in predicting the return of Christ (he'll come back like a thief in the night, y'all) and I don't even like talking about the end times, because I don't believe that was the focus of the ministry of Christ, but it's hard not to think about it when you can feel the Earth shaking so violently, as though it was sick of being in the shape it's currently in.  As though even the very ground itself was sick and expressing it's need for the savior.

Again, I'm not trying to sound foolish or like I seek death or anything, but you gotta admit:

That's pretty cool. 

And if you don't think it sounds so cool (mom), then think about this - love transforms the way we think.  Earthquakes remind me of love and of God's love for us and his desire for us to know him, because even if we don't show him love, even if we don't glorify his name, for God's sake (literally) the Earth will!

I caught a cold

For the last few days I've been sick.  It started as a little bit of a headache and stretched to be a full blown achy-body, snot-factory, lung-hacking cold.  I feel pretty bad, but I am also, admittedly, a big baby about getting sick.  In fact, I am absolutely terrible when I'm sick.

My friends who have lived with me (God bless their patience) can probably attest to this.  When I am sick I act like a spoiled child, even more so than when I'm not sick.  I refuse to do anything for myself, I won't even get up from the couch or bed or ground or wherever I've decided to lay down to perform my normal complain, moan, complain routine until someone comes along to take care of me.  It's awful, and I don't know how anyone ever put up with it.


If you're churchgoing folk, you can probably already tell where this is headed, but be patient, I haven't finished the build up yet.


So, most of the time I'm a pretty healthy guy, but when I do get sick it takes me a long time to get better.  Mostly because when I get sick, even though my body starts to get better and heal, I start feeling worse and worse and worse.  There's no escape once I get sucked into the maelstrom of depression from sickness.  As much as people have helped me in the past when I got sick by bringing me soup or gatorade or doing my chores so I can rest or any number of other pleasant things, no one has ever been able to help me recover.  I mean, don't get me wrong, they help my body get better, but the damage my spirit takes when I'm sick sometimes feels irreversible when I'm still feeling sick.


Alright, here it comes:

This is why it's so difficult to follow Christ, but also why it isn't.
I'm not claiming to be a strict Calvinist, I don't know if I could ever make that claim and that could be the subject of a whole different sort of blog post, but I do believe in the total depravity of man.
To some degree, some more than others by way of our choices, we are all spiritually sick, and one of the hardest things to do when you're sick is to take care of yourself, or, in this case, to let someone else take care of you.

I don't think I've made much mention of this yet, but in the months I was planning and preparing to come to Japan I was feeling really sick.  I mean, I was fighting depression and wading through some stuff from the last few years that I'd been putting off confronting, and the whole struggle led me to feel disillusioned a little, and to be honest, pretty angry at God.  I kept asking myself the same question that everyone else was asking.  Why was I going to Japan?  Except for me, the full articulation of this question was more like, "Why am I doing this thing for a God that I don't even feel like I know or particularly want to know right now?"  Luckily I was raised in a family that believed that serving God transcends how you feel, so I was able to base my own answer to my question on optimism that one day I would want to be close again, and in that day I would be glad to have stuck through doing what I knew was the right thing to do, regardless of my feelings.  I guess, to a small extent, this feeling could be classified as faith.  But I'm not talking about faith in this post, because even though it's an important and (at times) difficult concept to discuss, I've got bigger fish to fry here.

Today I'm talking about grace.

I mentioned earlier that sickness, and for me the ultimate feeling of pessimism that comes with it is why it's so difficult to walk with Christ, but also, why it isn't.  It is because in these moments especially I'm like Paul in that what I would, I do not, but what I hate, that I do.  The problem with relating too much to Paul here is that sometimes this is where the comparison ends.  I don't think about the fact that there is another spirit, a holy spirit, willing to work inside me and fight this sinful flesh that I'm trapped inside of.  I don't think about the fact that Jesus still loves and was even willing to die for such a broken, dirty person.  All I see is that which I hate, I do, and in these moments, at these times, I start to see a broken (yet all too prevalent) philosophy creep into my thoughts, and even more damaging, into my feelings:

I start to think that I am the sum of my actions.


What I mean is that I start to think that the definition of who I am is just the sum of my actions.  Therefore, if I walk I am a walker, if I eat I am an eater, if I sin, I am therefore a sinner.  Now, these things are true to the extent that I have all of those aspects inside of me, and they make up part of the mosaic that is my person, but there's also more to me and in these moments of utter weakness I forget what those other things are.  I forget that this mosaic of my person is a window, not one of those stone mosaics, but a stained glass.  I forget about what I look like when the sun shines through, mostly because I've distanced myself from that source of light.  One of my favorite metaphors representing Christ came from (of course) C.S. Lewis.  He said that he believed in Christ like the risen sun, not because he could see it, but because by it he could see everything else.  This is how I often neglect to see myself, especially when I'm sick.  I don't want to see Christ and I don't want to see anything else by his light.  I don't want to know what that mosaic of stained glass looks like when his light shines through.


This is why grace and love (and how they go hand in hand in an unbelievably inseparable way) are still the central message of the gospel to me.


Now, how do I show that, in truth and power, to other people?  How do I affect the people around me so that they can feel this love, so they can experience the refreshing peace offered by grace?  How, in essence, do I show Christ?


Man, this post took an unexpected turn at the end, but it is a valid question, and as I close I should mention that I would LOVE any answers any readers might have to these questions.


Sorry for the length, and if you made it this far, thanks for reading.