Where does the time go?

Let me ask a question: would you rather live in a crappy, sub-par house but have life-giving, deep, meaningful relationships with those around you? Or would you rather live in a large, beautiful house, but have broken, draining relationships with those around you, leaving you feel unloved? If you're like me, you'd opt for #1. Now here is a question to think about: does your expenditure of time, energy, and thought reflect those priorities? Or does it reflect something else?

Prerequisites

A prerequisite for loving your neighbor as yourself... is loving yourself.
You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (Mark 12:31)

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A prerequisite for denying yourself... is having a self to deny.
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. (Mark 8:34)

Invitations to the Invisible World

It seems like Christ in the gospels is constantly calling us to value, to pursue, and to delight in the world of the invisible. It's not that the visible, touchable, smellable, tasteable, and audible are unimportant. It's very clear that Jesus cares a great deal about the physical needs of men and women.

Even with that tangible care, though, Christ continually calls us to life that values invisible realities more than material circumstances.

Highlighting the Difficulty of the Evolutionary Process

Martin Luther King Jr. and the choice

I wonder if I'm at a point like this in my life (whether I realize it or not).

“I say to you, this morning, that if you have never found something so dear and precious to you that you will die for it, then you aren’t fit to live.
You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be, and one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid.
You refuse to do it because you want to live longer. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab or shoot or bomb your house. So you refuse to take a stand.
Well, you may go on and live until you are ninety, but you are just as dead at 38 as you would be at ninety.
And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.
You died when you refused to stand up for right.
You died when you refused to stand up for truth.
You died when you refused to stand up for justice.”
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Francis Schaeffer's Journey

The way to read my books, then, is to realize that I came through a real struggle in those early days, and I’ve tried to be honest in my study ever since. I try to approach every problem as though I were not a Christian and see what the answer would be.

Later on in my ministry I faced another crisis that equally influenced the writing of my books. It came after I had already been a pastor for ten years in the U.S. and a missionary to Europe for five years. Throughout this period one thing was dinned into my thinking: “Why,” I asked, “is there so little reality among orthodox evangelical Christians? Why is there so little beauty in the way Christians deal with one another?”

This led to doubts about the reality of spiritual things in my own life. I realized that although I had been studying for years and although I had been active in Christian ministry and although I was becoming more and more known in certain Christian circles, the reality of my own spiritual life was diminished. Somehow I had lost what I had when I first became a Christian.

For about two months I walked out in the Swiss mountains. When it rained, I walked in the old hayloft above our chalet. And as I prayed, I went all the way back to my agnosticism. With as much honesty as I could, I asked myself, “Was I right in becoming a Christian as a young man?” The unreality I had found in the Christian world, the ugliness I saw in Christian relationships, the fact that Christians were not able to talk to twentieth-century people—all these things made me ask, “Was I right?”

And finally the sun came out. I saw that my earlier decisions to step from agnosticism to Bible-believing Christianity was right, and I also discovered that I had been missing something vital in my biblical understanding. It was this: that the finished work of Christ on the cross, back there in time and space, has a moment-by-moment meaning. Christ meant His promise to be taken literally when He said that He would bear His fruit through us if we allowed Him to do so, not only in our religious life but in all of our life. Christ meant to be Lord of my whole life. This brought my life to a great shattering moment. What began as struggle ended in a song. Without that crisis, I could never have written True Spirituality, for that book is the outcome of that personal struggle.

—Francis A. Schaeffer, “Why and How I Write My Books,” Eternity Magazine, vol. 24 (March 1973): 64f.

I am drawn to friends for different reasons. With some I share common values and interests, but I also enjoy eccentric friends who encourage me to see things unconventionally. In either case I look for someone who will reward my honesty and not punish it; who will push my introverted self to a deeper level of intimacy. I look for companions along the journey ... I want someone I can count on.
-Phillip Yancey, Prayer I, Brett Ripley, am that eccentric friend :)