NYC Reflections

Life is tough but worth it.


I've never been to a place that characterizes that truth better than New York City. For the past five days I've lived here in my brother's apartment. I eat my 0.99$ pizza and smoke my cigarette from his porch on the eight floor of a monolithic apartment building in East Harlem. I watch the passersby and contemplate what living in this concrete jungle does to the human soul. I watch the rats run along the subway tracks and think about the similarities between these rodents who have learned to thrive in their darkened colones and these humans who have learned to thrive in their iron cages. God created Adam and placed him in garden. As a species we have come a long way since then and I don't believe that we can ever return. The modern man who seeks God will not become what Adam was in the garden and we will not have the relationship Adam had with his Maker. For better or worse we have said goodbye to that sort of thing.

I walk the city parks and can't feel grass beneath my feet. The grass seems fake, the trees seem fake, the water seems fake. Everything about this place came in on the back of a truck. Rather than mowers I expect workers to come out with vacuums to clean the grass. Is this what God wanted when He told man to "fill the earth and subdue it"? Meditating at the 9/11 memorial brings into focus the reality that even the strongest must fall. Here in this city steeples are overshadowed by the skyscrapers, the bells are drowned out by sirens and one can not see the stars at night. It makes me sad in a tired sort of way.


I'm often overwhelmed by it all and my mind gets muddled. I don't like that every time I go outside has to be an adventure. The wisdom of Mr Baggins is true here, "It's a dangerous business, going out of your door,' you step into the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.” I like to know when I'm going adventuring and when I"m just going to buy milk. Here you can' t ever be sure. I have a few more days here and hope to learn more. As of now all that I'm sure of is that humans are powerful creatures with amazing abilities to adapt and thrive in the harshest of environments. We are capable of great kindness. I've watched a man with one arm hold the subway door for a commuter who needed to catch his train. I've had two Harlem locals help me push my car when it died in the middle of the street. I don't know that I could enjoy living in this city. I don't know if this city is the ideal location for anyone to live and grow and pursue maturity. If anything it seems like the city forces a child to grow up quick and then restricts them to a stagnating adulthood in which they cease growing up and just get older as the years pass.


Those are my thoughts for now. Thanks for reading.

Friendship With God

We turn today to the topic of friendship as it relates to God. It’s a tough discussion to have primarily because so few people these days have relationships that resemble friendship. In a world of “one-click” friends we can hardly appreciate the earth shattering significance of God choosing to offer us His royal hand of fellowship. Day after day God makes us this generous offer and day after day we are too tired or too busy or too stupid to accept. How foolish can we be? Yet, is not such the sorry state of our human heart? to be foolish? to throw away the life giving medicine? to hide from the light and seek solace in the darkness?

Consider my brother, my sister what is before us. Let’s remove right away a major misunderstanding that friendship with God is simply a gift. Such a thing as a gift of friendship does not exist. A gift is given without the expectation of any sort of return. Yet we somehow have gotten into our heads that God simply offers us this grand gift of friendship with Himself. By using the word gift we subtly allows ourselves to think that God makes us an offer without expecting anything in return. Surely friends will give gifts to each other but both the Old and New Testaments speak to what is required of us to participate in divine friendship.

Psalm 25:14 The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him, and he makes known to them his covenant.

and later in the words of Jesus,

John 15:14 You are my friend if you do what I command.

To be sure humanity is the primary beneficiary of this friendship but to imagine that I can simply accept God’s friendship like I accept a pay-check is woefully ignorant. In any good friendship there is give and take of time, emotions, ideas, and resources. These transactions of the often immaterial and unmeasurable aspects of life rarely follow rules and rarely happen the same way twice. Today you need a hundred bucks, tomorrow I need someone to send me an encouraging song, the day after we need to brainstorm ideas for paying off our students loans. The pleasure and the pain of relationships are the result of them never being the same twice. A ship can make the passage from New York to London a hundred times and will never sail on the same wave.  Friendship will not be confined to a mold and rarely can it even be confined to a pattern. Even  God who remains the same, yesterday, today and forever can only be so specific as to say, “fear me” and “obey my commands” As to the type of fear and the means of obedience, that will depend on the individual and circumstances.

Have you considered the two way nature of any good friendship? Firstly are you responding to God as He has instructed. Do you obey in any sense? Do you fear in any sense? Surely your fear may manifest itself differently than mine, as will your obedience. The master chef tells his cooks to make cupcakes, rarely will a cupcake turn out just the same as another, but who complains so long as it is a good cupcakes? Secondly and as a way of testing whether we are fearing and obeying correctly; does God respond? As we share with Him our hopes, our dreams, our fears and as we give Him our service, our obedience and our trust does He respond by sharing with us His hopes, his plans, his ideas? Has He told you what it would look like for His Kingdom to come and reign in your life? in your family, in your neighborhood, school or country? Are we looking for such a response? If not we must begin for until the sharing of such things is established the circle of relationship will remain broken. God,is amazingly capable of purifying all the garbage of our lives and turning it into something lovely. It functions in a circle.... 

To live as friends of God and not just friends but to actually live as any sort of useful Christian at all requires intentional intensive attention to how He responds. Things are no longer created nor destroyed they simply change forms right? Friendship with God is what transforms the pitiful human animal into the glorious, eternal son of God. History does not know anyone comparable to those whom God has called friends. The generals and kings of Abraham's day paid him tribute and called Him blessed. The Pharaoh of Egypt knelt before Jacob and received the old saints blessing. Moses who spoke with God face to face shown with His glory and His enemies could not stand before Him.

Brother, sister we have been called into a glorious promise. We have been offered the ultimate friendship with the Ultimate reality, the Fountain of Facthood who designs the snowflakes and conducts the thunderstorm, He gives heat to flame and guides the rivers on their paths to the sea. None can stand before His power and all will worship before before His throne.

Let us consider our ways and be wise. All has not been heard but in light of our limited understanding let’s each of us fear God and keep His commandments until the day breaths and the shadows flee away.

Let Us Celebrate (1)

As advent progresses we have the opportunity to meditate on and celebrate what Christmas is all about. During the past week I've reflected on Christ and His coming and how it has changed history.  "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain" "There is so much to learn, to reflect on to appreciate it. So much to teach us how wonderful God is.

A question that comes back to me is why did Jesus have to come to earth and live as we live and suffer as we suffer and die as we die? Surely God could have zapped grace down into the world. Surely God didn't have to watch His Son endure such a terrible passion. I don't know why God organized history to necessitate His Son coming. I am though, wonderfully glad that He did it that way.

We know that the most motivational leader is the one who has walked where we walked and walked on. The leader who has fought the same battles as I'm fighting and emerged victorious is the one I want to take life lessons from. Perhaps God could have saved humanity without Jesus needing to suffer. The fact that Jesus did come and suffer means that God understands us. He understands that we need something tangible. In Jesus we have a savior, a role model, a hero, a King who understands experientially the universal human condition. He lived our life and felt our confusion. Today I'm celebrating Jesus who is the sort of Being that didn't have to suffer but chose to suffer to make it easier for us. I know Jesus isn't just an abstract idea who has been written about. He was and is and will continue to be very real, and practically helpful on a regular basis. Everything about Him makes Him the sort of person that I'd want to submit to. He is kind, caring, personable and right. He doesn't baby His students or do anything other than what's for our best interest.

In this Christmas season for most of us celebration will just happen whether we plan it or not. I think though we ought to choose the reasons for which we celebrate this season and not let the season choose them for us. It's easy to get swept up in the excitement and forget where you're going.