I Quote My Wise Friends

Here are just a few quotes from my friends that I found really inspiring.

"Maybe the problem with Christians is that we're told to live our lives for Christ, when we should really be sacrificing our lives for Christ."
-Joshua T.

"It's so easy to think that if I am pretty good and don't do really bad things throughout the day, I am living a godly life. It's not what we don't do, it's what we do do!"
-Makenna J.

Just some good stuff to think about. The first quote I like a whole lot. We tend to think that Christians will just do the normal unbelieving thing with a few edits here and there, but we're really called to do a whole new thing. We're not called to go to school, do our homework, watch movies, listen to music, hang out with friends at the mall, etc. None of that stuff is wrong, but we're called to be radically different. Jesus certainly was.

And Makenna's quote is also pretty impressive. It's not about what we don't do. In reality, even when we abstain from stuff, we're still doing something: choosing the right path. There is so much more to the Christian life than just not watching any movies over PG-13, not drinking and smoking, and not having sex before marriage. That stuff isn't even the main course, it is (or should be) just a byproduct of a deep, powerful love for our Jesus.

And it is so much more important to choose to do the right thing than to choose not to do the wrong thing.

Learning to Blog

I've always been a writer. When I was very young I would write simple stories with predictable plots and morals. When I was older I would chronicle my life. Those writings usually ended up being deleted permanently from the computer, because they were simply so deep. So into my life. So real. I was afraid of them, because they were so honest.

I wish now that I had kept them. I could have a narration of my life by myself, and see how much I have grown. Things that were huge to me at one point are now silly and inconsequential. Things I thought were insurmountable are now trivial.

I could also see how much I have fallen apart. How far away I have gotten from God. How scary some of my life really was in a spiritual sense. I could see what a shaky, unstable organism I really was. How immature I was. How depraved I had become.

I wish I had chronicled then. I wish I had kept all my old journals and exposed them. So many life lessons can be learned from the scrawling of other human beings as they make their way through life. You can learn so much from what other people have been through.

Especially yourself.

And that is why I'm blogging here. I have longed to have a place to organize all my random thoughts, put the pieces together, see how life fits and flows and moves and loves. And when a good friend of mine got a blog, copycat or not, it was too hard to resist.

This will be my thinking place. The place where I learn from my own mistakes, pick myself up with my own advice. And I hope, in some simple sort of way, that maybe something I've written can help others, too.

I want to learn from this. I want to fit together all the truth that I can, piece my life together, understand it and shape it. I want to learn the simple things, the compelling things, the beautiful things, that I have been learning all my life. I want to learn the essential.

I want to learn to breathe.