I died nearly two weeks ago. I have died nearly every day since then. It isn't a physical death. It's dying of a different sort. I think we all view death as being somewhat final, but that is not right. Death doesn't end anything, its just a different, darker, unnatural living.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. He created all the plants, animals, sun, moon, stars, sky, water, land, and man (the all inclusive man). There was no death, only Life. Life unlike what we have ever experienced, yet I believe we are remember it somewhere deep inside us. Echoing faintly from our souls. God looked at all the Life he created and it was good, man was very good. God spoke to man and woman, his crowning achievements, the epitome of Life, and he said "This is all yours, rule it, name it, own it, you have dominion over all, but you cannot eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil". Ok, I paraphrased that a bit, but in essence that is what He said. Then we did the worst thing we could do. We, Man, ate of the Tree forbidden us. That day we Died. It wasn't a physical death, it was dying of a different sort. It was separation. It was not what God intended, it wasn't natural. Adam and Eve and we, their children, continued to live, but we no longer had Life.

When I say I died nearly two weeks ago, I mean I have been separated from the closest thing to Life one can experience on this earth. Until I am reunited with Christ, I cannot imagine anything else on this earth closer to that Life Christ promises me. I had love and love had me. Now it is gone, but I don't believe it is dead. I suppose that means I'm not really dead either, wounded perhaps, but not dead, not really. Hope is keeping me alive.

Now hope is an interesting elixir. Where love brings us the closest we could ever come to Life, hope only keeps us barely alive. If Love is a river, constantly renewing itself, then Hope is a trickle, sustaining but not satisfied. Hope is a bitter elixir; though it keeps you alive, it can make your heart sick. However, I will not stop drinking in Hope, for life in any sort is better than true death.

No, I am not dead. I am merely sick. Love has not seen the last of me.

So for those in the same condition as I, drink in hope until you can again swim in love. And when you are swimming in love, swim in love until you drown in it.

-Art

I think a lot. About all sorts of things. Depending on the day I will think about wondrous things, like just how does your hand work and how cool it is that it actually does work, or how we are able to stand on two not very large flat supports known as feet. It is amazing really. On other days I find myself thinking about my relationship, or my friends, or my seeming continuous lack of money. We all think about things, and as always I have been thinking again.

I decided last night that I need to start writing again. It has been awhile, and while I may not have that many readers rushing to read my new writings, it is still helpful none the less. Well, upon deciding I need to write again I began to think about why I felt this urge, this compulsion to write. While I don't think I have any conclusive mind blowing reasons, I believe fairly strongly that it has to do with my recent lack of motivation. I feel like I have not been fully in God's will.

Often times I will end up in a position where I just coast. Feeling like I am doing a good job. I gathered momentum and now I am able to sit back, relax, and still watch the scenery change. There is a problem with coasting. Eventually you run out of momentum and you come to a stop. Let me tell you, getting moving again after a complete stop is not easy. It would have been better if I just kept working.

I hate swimming. Well, hate is a fairly strong word, but a dislike it. I find it to be a lot of work. This summer I was visiting my girlfriend (sorry all you single ladies) up at her parents lake house. It was a gorgeous sunny day with a lot of wind. I feel so alive when the wind plays through my hair. It is an adventurous feeling. It was a warm day and the lake water was very inviting. So after awhile we decided to go swimming. I got in the water before my lady and it was the perfect temperature. Just a degree or two cooler than a warm bath. So I went out swimming a ways. We decided we would go swim out to the floating dock, about 100 feet away. It was a choppy day on the lake with all the wind, and after we got out about 40 feet we decided it was too difficult to make it against the current. We had worked hard for very little ground, or water. So we turned back. Even with the water now pushing us back to shore, I realized just how difficult that initial swim had been. I was very tired. If I had been in better shape perhaps this wouldn't have been such an issue, but I was really starting to worry if I could make it back. It was all I could do to put one arm in front of the other. I was starting to get this panicky feeling as the waves started to crash over me. It seemed like I wasn't getting any closer to shore. Of course Laura was not aware of these thoughts, I had to look like a man. So I pressed on with what strength I could muster. Finally I made it back with great relief.

That isn't just a random story. I used it to illustrate my point. If I hadn't kept swimming I would have likely drowned. I had to keep going, even when it seemed difficult. So why don't I do that in my spiritual life. It as if I think I have a life vest on and I can just rest a bit until I get moving when in reality as soon as I stop I start to drown spiritually. Its not an easy world. Maybe that's why Paul said he was pressing on to the goal. Pressing on doesn't suggest it is easy or even fun, but it has to be done or death is the only other option.

I still don't like swimming, but I like it better than drowning. Here's to swimming.

-Art

If one day I am able to look back on all my experiences and all my life, I don't think I would be able to honestly say that things went the way I wanted them to. Im not saying that this is a bad thing though. In fact I am hoping that when I look back on my life I will see that things went better (in the long run) then I could have ever planned for myself. After all, its not my life, Im just using it.

The reason I bring this up? No more summer cross country road trip. I was initially disappointed by this. I was really hoping there would be an opportunity for new expreiences and a chance to see some old friends and make some new friends. Life was going to be different and it was going to be good. And it turns out that life is different, and it is good.

The freedom and unexpectedness I was looking forward to in that trip is still happening. Just not the way I expected. Now I am the director of Young Adult Ministry, my business nearly got sued and lost a lot of money, but now we are doing better than could have been expected.
I have become busy in ways I didn't expect to be busy, and in many ways can't help but wonder if this might not be a better option to my summer trip. I am hoping that I will still get the chance to make my trip. Its just that the circumstances will be different.

For now I will just see where God is taking me. Either way, I know it is going to be good. Maybe difficult, maybe not even fun, but good. So stick around. Soon I will give more insight into the way things have been changing, until of course Life Changes Again...

-Art

Soon I will be treking across the country and back again with my good friend and roomate, Mike, and possibly my brother, Joel. It will just be us and our required supplys in a car for three months or as long as the money holds out. I have dreamed of doing this for years and years, and now it is going to finally happen. I am captivated by the freedom in the idea. It feels so romantic to me to just go without any idea of what the next day, much less the next five min, will bring. I know we never really know, but we always have an idea based on routine. This trip however will have no routine to it, or a very minimal one. Adventure will be at every turn and on ever golden horizon.

There are still several months left before we can take off on this trip, we probably won't leave till late May and we still have logistics planning to do. It feels like it will never come time to leave but at the same time I know it will come upon us so fast that we won't be fully prepared for it. I love it.

The other day I was thinking about what this all will mean in some great depth and I scared myself. I WON'T KNOW WHAT TOMORROW HOLDS! I know, as I said before, that we never know for sure, but to realize that I will be leaving all I know and find comfort in kinda freaked me out. It is exciting and invigorating think I will have no control but for the present. It is also a very sobering and scary thing. I want to go deperately, and I am afraid to leave because of what it might mean.

When I came to that conclusion I realized something else. My journey with God is the same way. I know that God has enormous things planned for me. Things I cannot even fathom. Life changing moments. Joy and pain. Laughter and Tears. I desire to experience all this soo very much. I want to go on this God adventure so desperately and yet find myself afraid to leave.

For months I would lay in bed and ask God why I haven't experienced the closeness with God I have been yearning for. I wanted to know what was missing. I didn't understand why. I know I had felt that closeness in the past, but only ever for fleeting moments. Now I know that all that time God was calling me to leave on a spiritual trek with Him and I heard the call but wasn't leaving because I was afraid. I am still afraid, and I still haven't left. I don't know how to leave or how to abandon my fear.

See, though there are similarities in the two trips, there are also some important differences. I have spent so much time in this physical plain that I understand how to move and act in it. I have learned enough to know how to manipulate my physical surrounding to actually do something. I can actually overcome my fear by simply putting one foot in front of the other. I am not as familiar with the spiritual world to simply let go. Why am I not as familiar...? Its probably due to a lack of faith I suppose. No matter how much will you have, if you don't have the muscle to move on the physical plain then you can't move. Faith is the muscle of the spiritual world and I haven't exercised it enough.

God told us he would never give us more than we can bear when testing our faith. I believe that is true, but far to often I have not even tried to flex my faith against the tests before me. I have just let things consume me. Just like building muscle is work, so is building faith and I just haven't been doing it.

I may never be able to bench press a mountain physically, but with time I will be able to move one with faith.

-Art

I am always seeking out those combinations of words that stir the heart deep inside and evoke and feeling that spreads out to every limb. I seek them out in my writing of lyrics and poetry and prose; and I seek them out for my everyday language.

It is in my design; I often stumble over my words when speaking from a very emotional level because I want to do more than just express what I am feeling. I want people to actually feel it. I try desperately to find the string of words that will, by some affect of magic, transform their understanding to full experience. It's not easy to do.

For the increasing need for instant information communication, we have abandoned the art of speech. The great orators of our time are all nearly several generations old. We have forgone thoughtful and eloquent tongues for the atrocious abbreviations of the instant messaging world. Perhaps we have been sitting in the dull roars of our modern world for so long that we have forgotten the beauty of the spoken and sung words we were all gifted with. The backdrop sound has become so loud that shouting is the only way we can be heard and it has become nothing more than a whisper. I want to escape all this. I want to hear a whisper ring in my ears like a shout. I want to hear a shout that is so loud it makes the earth tremble. I want my ears to be filled every day with the beautiful sounds of silence so that the voice, when heard, conveys more emotion and beauty and life than I could ever contain pouring into me.

I will continue to seek out those words that radiate warmth from the center of ones soul out to the fingertips and emanate from the skin something like light. If all I ever find are words that evoke only a tenth of the power of the words God uttered when he spoke all creation into existence, they will still be greater and more beautiful than any words I have ever known before.

-Art

For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks...

Listen good for my heart is gushing forth with emotion and I can no longer contain what spills from my lips. I am so desprately torn apart in a furry of emotion. I feel as if I am loosing a friend, I am losing a friend.

When Christ spoke those words he was speaking of evil, but I believe they ring true in all occasions. My heart is bursting with tears and fear. I am crying deep in my soul for a friend/ a brother, who has walked away from his Father and Creator. He is full of anger and I sense even some hate in his voice and actions. I am scared to lose him, I am scared to see him struggling like this, and I am even more scared to become him. I take that last phrase back, I don't believe I could ever lose my faith in God, I have come to depend on him so much. What I am truely scared of is the fact that it is even possible to lose such faith.

I love God so much, he has blessed me so greatly, I am growing daily in my faith and learning more and more about the one who loves me. I don't understand how someones faith could be so shaken to turn away from such a loving and caring God. Only through a great deception can I imagine this to be possible. I think I have just become aware that Satan does exist.

I always knew Satan existed, but I think I treated his existence like one treats a figure in a history book. Real, but not someone I would ever have to cross or meet. I was so wrong. This here is a real enemy, really here, really standing over my shoulder, really a threat... There is a saying that suggest the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. There is alot of truth to that, but there is a second trick equally as good, that is convincing those that believe he exists that he is not a threat. I fell prey to this for too long.

My friend and brother knew God and still heard the lies and walked away from God. The only way to protect yourself is to do more than know God, but know him fully, follow him closely, love him dearly and seek his protection. Christ is the only one that can save us and it is only in his strenght that we can do anything. If you thought a title was enough to protect you I want you to know that a title does you little good against one so clever as Satan, intimacy is your protection. Intimacy with the Father.

Dear God hear me cry in my soul for my brother
know the love I have for him and bring him home
seek him with all you are and awaken his heart again
Protect him, protect me, and protect those that seek to know you
Amen

-Art

Who would have ever thought that I could be dealt such a blow that would leave me disoriented for days. One moment is all it took to let those words drop.

A friend of mine told me that he is walking away from his faith, from God. I don't understand that. But somehow I am affected by it. I never expected anyone to say that to me, and I never expected I would be hurt by such things.

If I am hurting like this I can't imagine how God must feel. The tears of the father must be like death.

Im sorry if I ever caused you pain.

-Art