Spiritual journey 3 part 2

John 14:1-6

In my house, there aren’t many rooms though I like to tell people that there are more than there really are.  If you need to, you can stay in my house for a day or two as long as you remember that it is my house and you have to act according to my rules.  Everything in my house is mine and I enjoy knowing that I have all of this stuff there and that I have more than someone else.  I depend upon it to make me happy.  If you do need to come to my house, I probably won’t be able to help you get there.  I will be too busy.  If you don’t know the way, don’t worry.  There are many ways on MapQuest that you can find that will take you to my house.  Isn’t it amazing how all those roads will lead to the road on which my house is?

How many of us are this possessive?  I know I have way too much stuff and yet I always keep getting more.  At one point, almost every time I went shopping, I got a book and I would finish reading it before the day was up.   Now, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing that I like to read that much but I had way too many books!  I eventually donated most of them to my church and there were almost ten boxes full that I sent there!  And that doesn’t count the books that I loved and kept!  I had way too many books and still have way too many books.  I have way too much stuff in general.  I need to go through it, again, and get rid of most of it.  I don’t use it.  I don’t need it.  Most of it is kept on the “Just in Case I want to Use it Again” basis.  Let me just tell you, I won’t be using it again. 

But, we weren’t called to be possessive of our stuff.  Remember what the Bible says?  Repeatedly it says to give to the poor.  In the New Testament, it even suggests to sell all of our stuff and give the proceeds to the poor.  When I think about it, this actually isn’t such a bad idea.  Doing that, I could get rid of all the junk that there is no point in me keeping.  My room will be actually clean for once with most of the excess junk being gone.  But am I going to do that?  I like my stuff.  I like the security that it gives me.  I like the knowledge that it is right there if I ever need it.  Why would I want to give it up?

Now, when it comes down to it, it is not that easy to sell everything we own and give to the poor.  Or maybe easy isn’t the right road.  Perhaps smart is the right word to use.  If we do that now a days, not only will be in need of something and have to depend upon someone to give it, we may lose our jobs and be one of the poor in actuality.  But, how hard is it for us to not buy that book every time that we go out?  Let’s say even that we bought the super cheap, on sale, no-one-else-wants-to-buy-it-and-it’s-been-sitting-here-for-months-if-not-years books so that we only spent a couple of dollars on the books so that it added up to just over a hundred dollars at the end of a year.  Do you know how much groceries we could buy with a hundred dollars?  I’m sure that the food pantry would be thrilled with a hundred dollars’ worth of canned goods.  And not even books could apply.  That coffee you buy from Starbucks every morning, that vending machine at work that you get a pack of skittles from every other day, the claw game that you play at least once every time that you see it, anything really that we spend money regularly on that’s more of an indulgence than a need.  While that money may not add up to much in our lives and barely make our budget list, it could mean so much more in the lives of the needy.  So why can’t we just help them?  Why is it the only time that we donate to a cause is when they come knocking on our doors?  I’ve stopped buying that book.  Can you stop buying your indulgence? 

(749 words)

The Wilderness Trip (Spiritual Journey 3.1)

The trip was with my class, deep into the wilds of Pennsylvania (aka-a state park).  It was at the beginning of my Senior year and was meant to bring our class close together so that our final year was one of unity and friendship rather than of disunity and resentment.  Fourteen of my class of sixteen went.  We spent the morning packing and making sure that we didn’t bring too much and then we drove there.  I think I can safely say that none of us expected much of the three day trip.  Some of the hurts and resentment went too deep, lasted too long.  But we went, and we hoped a bit.

The first day was not very promising, for me at least.  Let me just say that I am fine with spiders, as long as they stay in their own little corners of the world where I will never go and chance to inhabit.  So, when a large red spider with an egg sack on it decided to rest on my thigh, I did the reasonable thing and remained calm and gently brushed it off.  Not.  I screamed, interrupting our guide, and froze.  As everyone else asked where the snake in the grass was, I responded with another scream upon which they spotted the spider.  One of my friends bushed I off with a stick and I looked up in embarrassment to see one of my friends standing halfway across the clearing.  Thanks.

We were shortly afterwards given the potty sermon using Deuteronomy 23:12-14.  Though he used it to tell us how we were to go to the restroom out there, he also applied to the waste in our lives and how we are to take it away from what is clean in our lives and leave it there.  I was tired though at that point and didn’t pay much attention.  That night, when he had us sit around a fire to talk, none of us spoke much.  All he managed to drag out of us was that we did not trust each other but we wanted to.  We just knew each other too well to trust each other.

I’m not sure when it started.  Perhaps when we began to rock climb on a fifty foot cliff and were told to trust each other to be able to keep us safe if we were to fall as the bilayers.  Perhaps it was when the girls went spelunking through the various different rock formations.  Or when the boys began to work together to knock down trees or formed teams for their “shrapnel charges”.   These shrapnel charges consisted of them breaking branched against trees in such a way that the shrapnel would fly towards a boy on the other teams.  Needless to say, many of them had bruises.

That night, as we spoke, there were more results.  I can’t remember who spoke first, but it began with one person naming something that had been done to hurt them and the offender/s apologized.  Soon, a boy confessed something that he did wrong to other people in the class and apologized while we forgave him.  Soon, over half the class was crying as we confessed, apologized, and forgave.

Forgiveness.  It is amazing what that one simple word can do.  It is so hard though to live the word.  Sometimes, it is as simple as saying, “I forgive you” and then you move past it and maybe even forget it.  Other times, you have to forgive them again every time that you think of it.  As far as the east is from the west seems impossible when it hurts to just think of it.  Forgiveness seems like a nonentity when you are, once again, crying yourself to sleep, just so hurt by it that you can’t see beyond the pain.

The Senior Wilderness trip doesn’t work for every class.  I know classes who were actually worse afterwards.  But for my class, it worked.  Our class bonded and got closer.  Suddenly, the boys who regularly annoyed us to the point of fury were funny again.  The jokes that regularly went too far almost stopped altogether and when they did go too far, it was simple to convince them to stop.  But there were two girls who didn’t go.  J was simple and easily caught up to the rest of the class.  There was no problem with her being a part of the new class.  H was different though.  She had been hurt deeply by many of the actions from the entire class.  Only another boy and I hadn’t been a part of that hurt.  She accepted our apology but she didn’t really forgive.  Every attempt of the class to bring her into our newfound friendship was rebuffed and she certainly didn’t do anything to meet us halfway.  

You see, that is another funny thing about forgiveness:  it is a choice.  We chose to forgive each other.  She chose to hold her hurt as a shield between her and the rest of us.  And it worked.  By the time we graduated, most of the class had given up on her and she could barely be counted as friends with any of us.  But in the end, it was only her who was affected by her refusal to forgive.  The rest of us were disappointed but it did not matter that much in the end.  God wants us to forgive because he forgave us.  But the words alone are not enough.  There are actions that also need to go with it.

(926 words)