jesus branded

Jesus Branded shirts rock, they are an awesome organization, and I've been wearing shirts since they first released stuff.

check it out now and get your own shirt: Christian Apparel


Here is a picture of me wearing one of their shirts ("God is Love") and with musical artist Jon Mclaughlin:

What is Essential

I began to thank God today for showing me how unreal my relationship with him was.

It is rare that my faith really gets tested, and even more of a spectacle when I ask the right questions. Maybe it is because I am afraid of the consequences that arise from these questions. Sometimes it is because I have twisted reality so much that I can hardly tell the difference anymore.

When I first became a Christian, I read that Phillip Yancey (one of my favorite authors) went away for 2 weeks at a time and would read the whole bible through. I read that John Piper would also go alone to a cabin and study the bible, pray, and worship God. I always thought to myself, "if I had that kind of time I would do the same thing." I found this to be far from the truth this week. I was almost unable to leave my room this week because every time I left, in order to get back in I needed to call someone that I did not know to let me in. This would take hours most of the time because she would usually not be in the dorm or be asleep. This should have been the perfect opportunity to pray, fast, and spend time alone with God but I never imagined that it would be this hard to actually spend time alone with God. Phillip Yancey and John Piper would spend weeks alone with God, but I could not spend one full day with Him. Then one of those big realizations hit me. What I see so often as ideal in the Christian faith, is actually essential to the Christian faith. What I mean by that is we often look at things like going to a cabin for 2 weeks and reading the bible through, or giving all of our money away, or constantly loving and telling others about the galvanizing power of the cross, or clothing the poor, or sexual purity, or actually seeking what God has called us to do (instead of simply what we are good at or feel like we should do), as ideal and unattainable. Every person has different examples of what they think is unattainable in Christianity. The list ends up stretching so long that soon we have taken out every single essential tenet of Christianity except what is convenient for us.

It was the first thought that came to my mind when I couldn't spend more than an hour alone with God. "Who actually spends time alone with God? Only perfect, ideal people do things like that." Then I thought well that is actually essential... If you can't spend time alone with someone you can't be in relationship with them. Maybe this is my idea of fulminating myself and all American Christians for our lukewarm lives. I'm sorry that it took so much to come to the same conclusion that I always come to. That I can never be a passionate Christian by my own effort, and that I am chief among sinners and least among saints.

see xanga for pictures

First Day in New York

I’ve decided to try to blog as much as possible while in New York and Little Lights and bought a camera to enable me to make it more colorful. I’ve always taken snapshots of my life using words and music. I’ve never really used pictures so this will be a nice change.

The first thing that I noticed when I arrived in New York was that I am afraid to be alone. I guess I sort of felt like that first time my parents dropped me off at Emory. I clearly remember the exact place that they dropped me off. As I entered my room in tears and sat down I was like what do I do now? It reminds me of Jerry McGuire and how there was a video during Jerry's bachelor party where everyone he knew echoed the fact that, "Jerry can't be alone." I realize how utterly insecure it is for me to be unable to function alone and that we must always find the places where we are relying too much on other people and too little on God.

The noise in New York can sometimes act as a distraction. Cars and buses honk their horns in a patterned motion with the emphasis of a subway that runs directly underneath my friend's apartment. Every couple of minutes I feel a tiny rumble, like a small earthquake. It happens so often that when I asked about it, my friend said that she did not even notice it anymore. It reminds me of the victims of a larger earthquake in China that has taken more than 15,000 lives. I hope that noise does not make me indifferent to the outside world stifled by a constantly cluttered lifestyle.

As I walked the streets of New York today I tried to figure out north from south, and east from west. I learned that if you are on an even avenue cars are going north, and if you are on an odd avenue cars are going south (ENOS). I learned that avenue's go south to north and streets go east to west (for the most part). What I found most of all though is that a house does not become a home until you know where you are. I guess that is why Atlanta is not my home. I don't ever know where I am and I never cared enough to figure it out; I couldn't tell you the difference between peachtree street, peachtree avenue, peachtree hill, peachtree road NW, peachtree road NE, and peachtree drive. GPS systems are home killers.

My pre-employment appointment is tomorrow morning at 8am and the real fun starts Monday. I'll leave the rest up to the pictures and captions.

See here for pictures too lazy to post twice