My first blog. A chance to speak my mind and share some of the experiences I have had. To be who I am. An Influencer. An Artist. A Pastor. This may only happen on Fridays. As my life is right now, there is a short window right after lunch that my wife is at work and the kids are taking a nap...and I have the day off! When I turned 30, I had a friend tell me I should start blogging. She said it would have a lot of value. So here goes. 7months later....
I can remember when I was in college and I had this pet peeve of the question, "whats wrong?" I always seem to be the source of that question in those days. I look back on pictures and videos now and think," wow, now I know why? I always look upset or "somewhere else"'. One day, a girl finally put the right word to my face. Pensive. thinking passionately. Thats me. On a whim, I can escape to some place and be the vessel, the person, the life that I always wanted. When I have that face, that is where I am. Perhaps it is a defense mechanism I have established because of the bad things I have experienced growing up. That is a good argument. It could be I am just prideful. I want to be valued and accepted. In my head I am. that could work too. Maybe you are reading this and you are thinking, I am doing that right now, because this is the most boring blog ever!"
I am a natural escape artist.
However the good experiences of my life, which are quite a few, have slowly been turning those escape tactics in to moments for great forward thinking and vision. I would escape for hours and create artistic ideas and concepts that have benefitted a lot of situations and people. My faith is one of those positive things. It is the one thing that has validated my imagination and furthered my visioneering. I have been found by a God who loves me and cares for my future and life. In those pensive moments, He has shown me His heart and His purposes for my life. Sometimes I listen and sometimes I don't. There are times I want escape on my own and have my way, my visions. But like Peter Gabriel writes, "No matter which way I choose, I come back to the place you are." I always end up back at the feet of Jesus Christ.
How do we get there? For me its the face of my children, the love of my wife. The support of a colleague. The challenge of a friend. Or it can be the supernatural invasion of my thoughts by the God of the Universe telling me ,there's more than what I can think or imagine planned for me if I will surrender. Keep being pensive. God can meet you there.
Yaaaaay! Please keep blogging! I love hearing what you have to say!
ReplyDelete"Pensive, thinking passionately.... When I have that face, that is where I am"....
ReplyDeleteThese comments are what stand out most when I read your interesting post.
It may be strange that I would select those lines over the obviously more important ones such as your faith, love for your wife and kids - things I totally agree with and admire when so openly acknowledged by anyone. But being pensive and thinking passionately and being "where your face is at" is something I identify with and would like to allow myself to dwell on that, if only for a brief moment.
Where would man be if it was not for passion? Probably still running around wearing fig leaves, right? Yes, it is true that the whole fig leaf issue is a discussion for another day, but as it came about after man's fall, man was forced to make it on whatever resources were available then and seeing that fig trees were somewhat in excess at that time, it wasn't too much of a challenge to think up a way to cover man's bareness with a leaf and the obvious choice was a fig leaf. However, as we soon realize, fashion awareness didn't too take long to step in and voila, we soon saw how fig leaves eventually evolved into proper clothing. At some stage someone must have seen the need and decided to meet that need with the limited resources at his ( …or her, you decide which one... but keep that for a discussion for some other time!) disposal. Enter good ol' Economics 101!
The driving force for this "evolution" (Don't worry, I am not going Darwin here!)was passion. And without going into too much detail, the fashion industry is probably one of the most dynamic and growing industry on the planet.
So, suffice it to say : TO BE PASSIONATE IS A GOOD THING!!
Let's face it, were it not for passion, where would we be in terms of our relationships, our work, our ministry, our families. Without passion, these would simply stay mundane, menial and often boring tasks. But bring passion into it and it is like sprinkling some type of wonder potion on whatever it is you are doing and then all of a sudden, the mundane, plain things we are busy with come back to life again, bringing meaning to what we are doing and ultimately inspiring us to do even more.
Passion inspires us to do our best and doing our best is what our Lord expects of us - that's all. When we sometimes want to give up, slack off or just cool it, it's passion that rekindles us, causes us to go further, work harder and reach deeper. God likes passion...
In fact, He loves it!
Think of how much passion went into His creation. How he created the earth, the stars, the animals, the fish, the oceans and above all, Man. Just think of how tenderly and passionately He went about knitting us together, one cell at a time, until one day, He stood back, took a long, loving look at His creation and was PLEASED!
NOW THAT IS PASSION!
So what if we sometimes allow our faces to show where we are at. That is a sign of passion, because we take the things in our life so seriously. We are in a time where we need the type of God inspired passion to get through each day.
And we have God's promises as a back up, so that we can go ahead every day expecting something good. That is enough reason to keep going on - and to keep doing everything we are doing to His glory... passionately!!!
"The fervent prayer of the righteous avails much!:......
God bless!