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knot4sail16
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Name: Daniel
Country: United States
State: Tennessee
Birthday: 11/27/1984
Gender: Male
Interests: Reading, acting like I know what I'm talking about, friends, writing, SLC (rocks my face off), thinking about random abstract stuff that nobody cares about, theology, singing, taking pictures (not good enough to call it photography really) writing poetry about mental illnesses, writing runn-on sentences on interests sections of xanga sites that are really bad grammatically (hope you enjoy my misplaced modifiers).
Expertise: I aspire to be a writer, hopefully that will take me somewhere. I am majoring in English and Bible & Theology. I'll probably give up soon and just start flipping burgers at McDonald's.
Occupation: Student
Industry: Education/Research
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
3/1/2004
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| okay, no time to comment, but this is a must read. http://www.relevantmagazine.com/life_article.php?id=7283
Enjoy, and tell me what you think.
Peace,
Daniel
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| Okay, so I know what you're thinking, he NEVER updates this blog, so why is he starting yet another one????? That's right count them, 3 blog sites for Daniel. Xanga, Myspace, and now Blogspot. Note I haven't even counted facebook, which doesn't really count as a blog site. It's more like digital striving for social acceptance in a sort of e-middle school on steroids. That said, this new blog is something innovative I am trying. It is not another "Daniel" Blog. Sure, for right now I am the only one posting on it, but that's about to change. I am starting a "community blog" that I will be inviting a couple of others to write on. This means a couple of things: one, I won't be in charge of content. At least for a while I will probably be prodding the direction of the blog, but I won't be in charge of where it goes then. Two, everyone will be able to post responses and replies, just like on any other blog, the difference will be that there will be multiple people posting messages, papers, pictures, and links. Three, while this is being initiated by me, and thus initially coming from my particular perspective, the purpose of the blog is to create dialogue. With that in mind, there will hopefully be a diversity of opinions within the blog posts. As time goes on, I hope that I will be able to step back and be a participant in the blog who can agree, disagree, be outraged, and enlightened by the content.
This is something new and exciting. So, I hope it works. please give it a week or two to get up and running, and then come over and check us out on http://resonancecommunity.blogspot.com | | |
| Life is amazing. I am constantly amazed by the way life spins us around and God just seems to keep on opening up new things every day. Whenever I think I have learned a lesson, I learn that I only thought I knew. Every relationship I have has changed so much in the past few years. I have come to the place where I realize that we are all dynamic, constantly changing and growing, even the most steady people I know are always growing. I guess as a child I thought of people as walking in and out of my life as characters on a stage, taking up where they had left off. In reality we all play parts in each others' lives and the parts we play on the stage of one life may look very different than the parts we play in someone else's life. Unfortunately we forget this, and don't often think about how we change from certain roles, and how others change too. Then when we encounter someone after a long time, we can't expect it to pick up where we left off. Many scenes have happened; dramatic, tragic, poetic, funny... We learn as life goes, to cherish the moments we have and to cherish the discovery and rediscovery of old friends and new ones who look like old ones--even walk in the same flesh as the old ones, but are really new people entirely.
Hmm. What an amazing opportunity we have in this life, to extend grace and hope to one another. We can be free from the roles we have learned to play on some of life's most troubling stages. Through extending grace and community to others, we can find the truth that sets us free, the truth that God intersects our stages, and is with us in our most painful roles, working to write our stories and dynamically transform the characters that we play, moving us each toward a solid, dynamic person that we are becoming that will reflect a heart yielded to the breaking, shaping, sovereign, compassionate hands of God. | | |
| Monday, Feb 20th -1:30 am
So I just started reading Eugene Peterson’s book Eat
This Book. It focuses on the need for spiritual reading, that is
reading that ruminates and “metabolizes” the scripture into our very
actions and lives. I started reading in Acts 2. This is where we are
translating from for class tomorrow, and I thought of a few questions I
had concerning the Greek text. Moreover, I realized after reading it
several times, that there is an essential question upon which the
church is founded on the day of Pentecost. There is a question that
precedes the preaching of a Spirit empowered Peter, and there is
a question that leads to over three thousand being added to their
number in that one day. The question is found in verse twelve and means
so much for the foundation of our church today. Here are people unsure
of what is going on. They are hearing “the wonders of God declared in
their own native languages,” and they ask the compelling question:
“What does this mean?” This question make me leap inside. I cannot help
but latch hold of it and be dragged away in the whirlwind of where it
takes me. This is the essence of our Christian life. “What does this
mean?” What is it that hearing the truth of God declared to us in the
way of our most essential understanding (our own language) does inside
of us. Surely we must come alive when we hear it. Otherwise this truth
of God is no truth at all.
“What does this mean?” The question rings out. It is
not a mere inquiry as to how these uneducated people are declaring
God’s glory in languages they have never learned. No this question is
deeper, and is placed here, in the beginning of the story of the
beginning of the church (in a book called in the Greek, Praxeis, from
which we derive the word praxis, meaning action) for a reason that is
bigger than just this scene. The author of this book places this
question here before Peter’s sermon not just to tell the story but to
facilitate the message and to frame for us the beginning of what would
become the most revolutionary movement in the history of the earth.
Here people ask, “what does this mean?” because they are seeking to
know what this encounter with God’s truth means for their lives. It is
a question about the implications and responsibilities that come with
deeply encountering the Word of God.
When we encounter Jesus Christ, through Scriptures,
we are faced with the reality of the eternal God disclose the wholeness
of the trinity in the person of Jesus Christ. Not only this, but in the
revelation of the Holy Spirit we are faced with the fullness of God
empowering us to engage in this encounter. What does this mean? What
implication does it have on our lives? What does this do to the purpose
and direction in which I am moving. What does this mean for the value
system by which I have organized my life. What does this mean for the
things I rank as priorities in keeping with what my society and
culture; my family and church, have told me is important?
The essentiality of this question is overwhelming.
It serves as a rhetorical punch in the stomach because it jolts me
awake and forces me to taste the bitterness of this bread of life as it
hits my stomach. The words of Christ are life and grace to us, they are
sweet and tender and healing, but they require digestion and
rumination, and finally they require the metabolization that Peterson
describes. The question, “what does this mean?” is essential, not
because it sets the stage for Peter to preach, it is juxtaposed with
the following verse that states that others mocked them saying, they
are drunk.
It is sobering to realize that the encounter with
the Wonders of God declared plainly to us results in either desperate
questioning, or scoffing. I am not even talking about the flat
rejection by those who claim no belief in Christ. I am addressing the
practical atheism of those who claim the name of Christ but mock the
principle that the encounter with God demands of us reciprocal action.
We cannot merely read the word of God. They are the kind of words that
require doing. Moreover, encountering the truth of God is a life
altering event. When we ask the question: “What does this mean?” we are
plunging headfirst into a wonderland sized rabbit hole. What we are
asking is to constantly have our lives pushed and prodded; challenged
and stirred up by the Holy Spirit as God saturates our finite lives
with the infinite Word, revealed through scriptures, pointing to the
truth of God in Jesus Christ.
In asking this question, we are engaging in an
alteration of our categories and stepping into the Kingdom of God that
Jesus preached both before and after his death and resurrection. I do
not believe that Jesus came only to save our souls from hell. No, Jesus
came to introduce the paradigmatic life we can live NOW and eternally.
Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God as being here among us. When we
ask, “What does this mean?” we are asking how to step into this kingdom
and still live in this world. This kingdom is clearly not a separate
entity in which we hide form the world. All the descriptions Jesus
gives of this kingdom suggest instead that it is dynamically involved
in interaction in this realm in which we naturally reside. The kingdom
of God is the paradigmatic living called for when Jesus asks the rich
young man to sell all he has to follow Christ. The values of this
kingdom are upside down in many ways compared to how we see the world.
It is only when we allow the Holy Spirit to immerse us and rebirth us
in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, that we can follow the
example of His life, and see that until entering the kingdom of God, we
have really been the ones living upside down.
In the right-side-up kingdom of God we find the
inversion of self, placing the needs of others ahead of our desires. We
find our value, not in self-obsession, but in being enthralled with the
captivating love of God. “What does this mean?” you ask. It means all
the difference between viewing literally following of Christ as
foolishness–only granting God cognitive ascent, and releasing all your
assumptions of how figurative Christ was when he said “love the Lord
your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength,
and love your neighbor as yourself.” To those ask “what does this
mean?” this Christ says “Deny yourself, take up your cross daily and
follow me.” Herein lies the foundational question upon which we must
begin all inquiry into our faith. This confession of faith: the
expression of desire to move forward into whatever action/life Christ
calls, this is our beginning in the kingdom of God among us.
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| So it is raining, no sleeting, no raining..... eegghh!! I wish the weather would make up its mind. It has been a whirlwind of events and classes and a great semester thus far. I have to say, as crazy as things have been, I am really content this semester. I have spent several long hours talking with people and have written a good deal. Classes are going well, and I can't believe hopw quickly the semester is moving. We are just a few weeks from Spring Break and this year has careened by. I don't know really what my exact plans are for when I graduate. I want to teach in China, but hte program I most want to work with requires a teaching degree or teaching experience. Another option is that I could work for Teach America for a couple of years, save up some money and then go to China. If I did that, I might even be able to work on a night class Masters program and get that degree before leaving for China. Like I said, I am still looking for what will work best, and there are loads of options.
That's really all I've got for now.
Peace,
Daniel
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