Quick update.

       November 25, one month before Christmas, is everyone's overly excited attempt at milking the holidays for all it's worth.  Red cup sleeves, cheerful slogans, the color RED and sometimes green, sparkles, lights, happy music, and the crazy hands of spenders reaching in front of the crazy eyes of sellers.  I was watching something online the other day, and a commercial about the keurig (coffee maker) came on.  I was in another world, it felt like.  I was watching this commercial feeling really sad and acutely aware of just how comfortable and easy I have it in life.  Strange how the phrase "out of sight, out of mind" rings so true in my life.  I have written before about the misery that creeps up on me when I begin to feel the meaninglessness of my life on days where nothing productive or beneficial gets done.  So most days.  I can distract myself with things like movies, drinks, lunch dates, dinner parties, books, and even writing...but the root of my happiness always seems to lie outside of myself.  Distractions just blind my mind to the ever deep and gnawing desire in me to work for something meaningful.  Work can be a distraction as well.  Anything that focuses on pleasing myself (and only myself, for the most part) is an effective distraction, however, I can find meaning in almost anything when I shift that focus from me to the people around me.  This, however, takes great and repetitive and mindful effort, and I'm quite lazy when it comes to jogging psychologically.  I'm trying out something new now.  I have decided to put myself in situations where control over selfishness is weakened, and selflessness takes on a stronger contingency.  For example, the factors that I take into consideration are the people around me, my environment, and money.  I must put myself with people who I don't know very well (so as not to disappoint them...using a bad habit in a beneficial way) and they should also be people who aim for the same kind of selflessness (so as to give an air of competition, another bad habit of mine strained for better purposes).  My environment should be somewhat difficult so as to increase my efforts for trying to remain comfortable (again, another bad habit of mine reused for an effortful pull towards work).  By comfortable I merely mean that I must need to NEED.  And that needing will only be met by God, because the environment will call for such a strength as I do not possess myself.  My environment should also constrain my control over how I use my time.  In other words there must be some sort of structured schedule that I am to follow, because if I am in control of my time I will likely let the time waste away doing something that is really nothing.  Money.  I must have used money to provide myself with the above...to fuel my natural inclination toward greediness that says I should get my money's worth.  haha.  So pretty much, I am manipulating my bad habits to form good things.  Is that not genius?  And no, I am not joining a cult.  haha.  I'm going to a third world country with a team and we will be serving that area.  I'll be with people I don't know, but who are volunteering to serve, in an environment that will be culturally, climatically, and provisionally difficult, and I'll be paying good money to fly there and also for room and board.  I need them, the people I will be "serving", to serve me by allowing me to serve them.  This is my idea on trial.


       Sorry, I'm so lazy right now I can't even edit this let alone write with some sort of fluidity.  It's a stream of my maddening consciousness.  This is probably why I am not a writer...yet.

cheers,
J

Do's and don'ts

Do your good deeds in secret.

(Matthew 6)

Don't worry.

(Philippians 4)

A Prayer

Lord,

You see me.  I ask for courage, for wisdom and for Your leading.  I am so forgetful, so worrisome, and weak.  I know You see me, and I know Your hand is upon me because every night You meet me in my biggest fears, my most awful regrets, and You wipe away every tear that falls.  I see now how far You've led me to get to this point, and it is evidence that You are molding me as clay in the potters hands.  But Lord, once again I ask for bigger faith, I ask for more strength, I ask for courage, and I confess the sins of today and ask for Your forgiveness.  Thank You for Your grace.  Thank You for speaking words of Life into me, and for lighting every dark thought in my mind.  You see me, and I ask for perseverance.  I know I'm asking for a lot, but I know You have a lot :)  Thank You Jesus for Your comfort, please comfort my friends who are hurting and reach them where they are.  You use our weaknesses to bring You glory, use my weaknesses for Your glory.  Help me to trust in You completely, with everything.  I am here now, and You see me.  You see me.  I am not afraid.

In Jesus name I pray,

Amen.