12 May 2004 00:07
why?why do i ask why?
why is a powerful question. three letters. ...and a punctuation mark.
add soem words after it and you can pose powerful and even more interesting quetsions.
like, why do i insist on making myself miserable? ha :). (don't answer that)
i remember asking that question once at about three in the morning after wandering around campus for several hours. that was the same night that i took a fondness to lamentations three. growing up i always hated poetry (oddly enough, i loved dr. seuss). i hated it with a passion. it wasn't until i'd been at college a couple years that i realized i was being a little hard-nosed. (no sarcastic comments please). i still hate most poetry (with a passion). especiall if it rhymes (unless it's dr. seuss). but i accept now that there are many forms of poetry and a number of individual poets with whom i have found affinity.
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality."
it even rhymes! it was the prophets who swayed my thinking. it wasn't until college that i started to identify with their struggles. it wasn't until college that i started finding that i had reasons to sing songs to God. before college i always sneered at the israelites and their stupid sin cycles, now i read judges and cringe, wondering why i haven't been sold into slavery yet. a key point was reading paul bunyan's "pilgrim's progress." a dæmon had driven christian to the ground, apparent victory at hand, when christian quoted micah 7.8, Do not gloat over me, my enemy! Though I have fallen, I will rise. naturally, i swooned immediately at the dramatic flair (gag. poetry tends to embody sappy, maybe that's why i don't like it.) back to lamentations. i'd encourage you to read what i've copied below, but i'd be a hypocrite. i rarely read poetry in books. the last time i went through fotr, i read out loud every song or rhyme i came across for the first dozen chapters, but eventually gave up and just skimmed them. i hate musicals becuase they take so long to say anything. but the following has meaning to me, i'd feel more loss at you not reading the quoted stuff than i'd feel a loss at you not reading what i have written.
I remember my affliction and my wandering,
the bitterness and the gall.
I well remember them,
and my soul is downcast within me.
Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:
Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, "The LORD is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him."
hence the popular hymn, "great is thy faithfulness." i personlly like hymns (as well as modern rock. yes, it's possible, no, i'm not an old fogey). the last two lines look nice on papyrus, but pretty rough in practice.
The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him,
to the one who seeks him;
it is good to wait quietly
for the salvation of the LORD .
It is good for a man to bear the yoke
while he is young.
Let him sit alone in silence,
for the LORD has laid it on him.
Let him bury his face in the dust-
there may yet be hope.
Let him offer his cheek to one who would strike him,
and let him be filled with disgrace.
see, i don't mind burying my face in the dust, but i'm thinking minutes, not years. i don't mind bearing the yoke either... good manual labor is good for the body and mind. plus Jesus' yoke is easy and the burden light. but i don' tknow about bearing the yoke with a bag tied over my head so i can't see what's going on.
For men are not cast off
by the Lord forever.
Though he brings grief, he will show compassion,
so great is his unfailing love.
For he does not willingly bring affliction
or grief to the children of men.
To crush underfoot
all prisoners in the land,
to deny a man his rights
before the Most High,
to deprive a man of justice-
would not the Lord see such things?
to deny a man his rights before the Most High? do we have rights? i was quoted to this morning, the common adage, "there is no great loss without some small gain." "though he brings grief, he will show compassion."
Who can speak and have it happen
if the Lord has not decreed it?
Is it not from the mouth of the Most High
that both calamities and good things come?
Why should any living man complain
when punished for his sins?
right. so does this blog constitute a complaint?
Let us examine our ways and test them,
and let us return to the LORD .
Let us lift up our hearts and our hands
to God in heaven, and say:
"We have sinned and rebelled
and you have not forgiven."
aye. therefore i examine my ways.
the last time i felt like this was 13 months ago when i was repeatedly failing my flight tests. i was asking one question a lot. why?
the way i see it, there are two major categories that answer that question.
i was at fault, i was not at fault. being a christian of course, there's probably a balance, and it's a mixture of the two. does God punish people for their sins? if i were to fall deathly ill, would that be a result of my disobedience? if i corrected my eveil ways, would the illness disperse? if two are standing at a bus stop and a drive-by shooter takes a few pops at them, and one dies, would he be the one who had not repented of his sins? hmm. that's not the way it works. one of the onl yquestions i can safely ask is, "what am i supposed to learn from this?" i don't know. what am i supposed to learn? i suppose i'll have to wait and find out. it is good to wait patiently for the LORD. bah humbug.
it irks me to write this. because i know i'll look back on it two months from now from the saftey of hindsight and shake my head at my stupidity. so i try to shortcut to the answer. but of course, i'm still stuck in the present, with an impatient demand to know now! riiiight. it's like trying to get a straight answer out of gandalf, except worse, because God doesn't even make sarcastic comments. there's just a ringing silence. unless you take events as omens, or as communication from God. whoa, full circle, how do you interpret said signs? am i here because i screwed up, or because i'm being tested, or because it's for my own good?
argh.. it's sooooo frustrating. james said "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds." so i should be experienceing pure joy right now, hmm? i am so far off.
when i was at school, when i was wrapped up in friendships that were bleeding me dry, when my priorties were completely haywire, when something would happen that made things worse, i didn't like to think about it. there was only one way to not think about it... to sleep. so i'd go to bed at six in the evening. when i woke up, i could think about it better. there were times when i'd do that two or three night in a row until i could cope. this is one of those times, last night my only thought was to go to bed, before something else went wrong. i hadn't been that dissappointed in half a year. if i tried to think about it, even objectively, i quickly spiraled down to bitterness and a long litney of "why why why why why?!" on one hand, being dead tired helped me take blow after blow rather philosophically. but when i sat down and had nothing left to do but wait, beign dead tired was not a positive asset. i did okay for a while, staring phlegmatically ahead in a silent but dramatic pity party. then i looked at myself in the dirty reflection of the metro window and decided that the forlorn, doe-eyed, help me i've been wronged look didn't look very well on me. come on, i'm what, 23 now, there wa nothing more i could do, i might as well have enjoyed myself. now i find myself wishing i'd pulled out my book and read some more, i'm curious to konw what happend in the next chapter...
even now i could be enjoying myself, indeed, i did enjoy myself. since one this afternoon, i demolished half a bag of circus peanuts, a can of mt dew, two bottles of ibc root beer, and two little debbies honey buns, plus a pint of sunnyD. okay, so i was still feelign sorry for myself, but doing better (if you count suicide by bad diet "better"). but i finished another book and laughed a little (james herriot). but i still want to konw why. if i did something wrong, then i want to fix it, so that i can get on with life. the problem is, there are so many things i've done wrong that i dont' know which to fix. so i walked into that one. i know, fix them all...
back to being 23... i'm not acting my age with all this melodramatic moping around. writing has always been theraputic for me, but so has a good night's rest. adios
...it's kind of nice to be miserable again.. i'm inclined to take it as punishment, and God konws i deserve it, and i crave the authority.
and despite the therapy, i still haven't figured out what i'm supposed to learn...
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