Matt Chandler - Hebrews 1:1-3.

I’ve decided that Sunday mornings aren’t enough for me and that I need to hear more about Jesus Christ throughout the week. So I went to the web site for the church I attended last week and listened to my first podcast. Podcast being just a fancy schmancy way of saying “recordings broadcasted via iTunes.” I didn’t get to listen to Matt Chandler last Sunday, so this was my first taste. I read a little review by a listener that compared him to a Dane Cook dishing out Jesus. After the first minute, I understood why that is a somewhat true statement. Matt is a very passionate, energetic speaker. And he made me chuckle a few times too.

Up until recently, it looks like the church spent twenty weeks diving into one book, Hebrews. So I got comfortable and listened to the first sermon. Thirty minutes spent on Hebrews 1. Oh, and we didn’t even hit the whole chapter, just the first three verses. While I thought it was going to be impossible to have a meaty sermon on just three verses, of course I was wrong.

While I won’t rehash the entire sermon, I’ll hit on one thing I thought was interesting. The first three verses basically talk about communication and how it’s key to pay attention to the tenses used in these Scriptures. The first verse brings up the fact that “God spoke” (past tense) in all sorts of different ways. Not everyone listens the same, so if you read back in the Old Testament, you can see the different ways it appeals to different people. Simple stories you can tell children like Adam and Eve, to poetry in Psalms, to the beautiful passionate love story in Song of Solomon.

But everything changed when Jesus came. I always wondered why it was called the “last days” because these “last days” have turned into over two thousand years. It means this is the last part, the last means of communication. Instead of speaking to us in every which a way, God found it sufficient to simply speak through His son. So instead of being a frustrating term, “last days” actually should be a relieving term - that God spoke, Jesus spoke, and there’s no need for much more.

And one last thing about tenses, in verse three, it says that Jesus “had provided purification of sins.” HAD. There’s no need for anymore cleansing. Our sins are over and done with and no longer should we be slaves to them. I can go into Romans 6:1 and ask whether or not we should sin so that grace should increase, but I won’t today. I just like spending time meditating on what that really means, to already have been purified, to know that God loves me now - not because of what I will become or have been - He loves me in the here and now. Even when I feel in between darkness and lightness and think that “Oh, God’s love will be abundant if I can just reach that top rung of the lightness ladder,” He already loves me.

I forget that sometimes.

Last Friday.

I attended a funeral for a man I didn’t know. A man I had forgotten I had met once and only spent two minutes with. A man I didn’t hear much about and only knew my name and association. One step away from being a total stranger. But as the service went on, I felt like I knew this man intimately. And I wept. I wept not only for his mortal death, but I wept because I was joyful. And maybe a little jealous. This man, who once lived a life for Christ could now live a life with Christ. Forever. Who wouldn’t be happy for him and feel a slight bit of jealousy about that!

My heart hasn’t been the same after this weekend. My flesh hasn’t exactly mirrored what my heart started to (re)desire, but my heart desires Christ as its King. I felt a strong desire to have God know my heart and so badly to hear Him say, “Nina, you are after my heart just as much as I’ve been after you.”

Out of the many, many things I could say about last Friday, I won’t forget how the Golden Rule (”Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”) was rephrased.

Love God first.

Love others second.

And if there’s anything else left, love yourself.

Crazy like a fox!

The other day, a friend said to me, “Am I really crazy?” in response to her recent behavior. I said, “Yes, you are really crazy.” But now, I want to take that back.

I suppose crazy is a relative term like all terms are, but what is truly crazy? What makes a crazy person? Now, I guess I should help funnel your thoughts in my direction — I’m not talking about mentally, chemically disturbed people that talk to themselves and have the jitters and whatnot. I’m referring to the younger generation, the teenagers, the college students, maybe even some middle-aged people that go and live that “crazy life.” The party life.

The kind of cats that go out every night they can, even during the school/work week. The ones that pride themselves on taking that extra shot and keep that flask on them at all times, as if they cannot wait ’til the next bar. With mornings of confusion, laughing at what happened and wondering what did happen sometimes. What’s this bruise? Where’s my car? Who is this guy that keeps calling me? Oh, the party life.

The funny thing about these creatures is that most of them think they are crazy. They are so proud of themselves for getting away with some of the crazy things they have done. But really. What’s so crazy about doing something anyone can do? It really isn’t hard to go to a bar or party (even if you’re under 21), hammer down a few shots, and wake up the next morning trying to fill in all the blanks. It isn’t hard to go against your better judgement. You’re nothing new. You’re nothing radical. You’re not crazy. You’re living out the selfish desires. You’re living the easy life, fool.

Okay, okay, so what is crazy? Think about something that everyone has trouble doing. Mmm, how about being selfless. That’s kind of tough. So would I be out of line to say that taking the amputee, that beggar, that possible panhandler, and inviting him to lunch… would that be crazy? What if I spent my Fridays and Saturdays hanging out in the streets, deep in the heart of Dallas, preaching the Gospel by making and maintaining deep relationships? What if I took out a certain percentage of my earnings and instead of spending it on leisure activities, I found a single-mother family to help out?

What if I left everything in my apartment behind and moved to another country, simply to love others as Christ has loved me?

Would you call me crazy then?

That’s a thinker.

I started reading The Ragamuffin Gospel because all my friends had told me about what a good book it was a few years back. People would ask for it all the time when I worked at Family Christian. So now, years later, I decided to hop on the bandwagon and get to reading it. I’ve only read the first chapter, but I couldn’t go any further. What Brendan Manning touched upon was simply too much for my feeble mind to digest. It’s always been something my mind and heart could never fully grasp.

Grace.

Manning mentioned how we throw around the word “grace” nowadays. I can’t imagine I’d argue with that, I always talk about how the word “love” and “hate” are thrown around without people really understanding how powerful those words are. I think the word “grace” is probably just as powerful, huh? And just how powerful is grace?

As hard as I try to fight legalism, I always end up back to where I started. Making life into one big chart, the ones we had in elementary school where if you had enough checkmarks at the end of the list, you got an Atomic Fireball. Well, on my big chart, prizes include love, meaningful relationships, and eternal life. Everytime I run into a problem in my life, I can always trace it back to me just wanting to work for what I’ve got. Call it my hardworking Asian ethics, but I guess I like that extra zing I get when I reach that temporary peak of happiness, whether it be attached to a friendship, my job, or even my spirituality.

Grace renders my big chart useless. It basically renders all my hard work useless. Because it’s not because of what I do, it’s because of who I am. And I am God’s child. I’m His kiddo. He’s going to take care of me no matter what. That’s not the hard part to grasp though. I think the harder part to grasp sometimes is that He’s going to take care of everyone no matter what. The drunks, the gays, the politically corrupt, the abusers, the addicts, and even those who have hated Him… He’s going to take care of them too. One day in Heaven, I may be sitting at the Lord’s table next to some drunk dude I met at a party that I didn’t care for because he was all over my friends. Or maybe by some famous murderer, covered with tattoos of hate, who was known for raping children and killing their families. Who knows?

Sometimes thinking about this rubs me the wrong way. It depends on my mood. Sometimes I like my big chart. I like to know I’m being a good kid and that I’m better than a lot of the kids that don’t even have checkmarks. But enter grace and out goes my chart. My big question then is, “Why even bother being good?!” If no one is really keeping track and I have already accepted Christ into my heart years ago, then can’t I just be another heathen and live how I want to?

Well, I guess my big answer that I already know is, yes. Yes I could. But then the second part to my answer is a question: Did I really accept Christ into my heart years ago, and if so, do I still love Him? My personal answers to these questions are yes and yes. Oh, there’s the kicker. I love Christ. As much as I hate to admit it sometimes, it’s true. I can live in the world and love all the shiny fun things it has to offer, but everytime those shiny things fade, I go back. I go back to my First Love. I hate to admit it because I definitely don’t live like I love Him. That’s when I want to bring the chart back to show everyone I do love Him, but those marks are for show. They are all in vain. Maybe a few of those were in His name, but for a good majority of it, it wasn’t.

Yes I can live anyway I want to. But I love Him. And when you love someone, you ravish them with gifts. These don’t have to be material things, understand. You can give them your time, your thoughts, your belongings. Things that are so important to you, giving them away would be a sacrifice. And the more you love someone, the more you tend to give, right? We won’t draw a chart up for that right now, but we’ll just say I’m working on it.

I’ve still got a long way to go before my heart and mind will grasp this concept of grace. But I imagine when I finally let it begin to really soak in, I will be truly free to love.

Boy, you gotta love someone more than yourself.

I was convinced to give Yellowcard’s new album one more shot. Yes, my original complaint was that it was not pop-punk and emo enough, but once I got past the rock guitar intros, I realized it was still Yellowcard. You have to enjoy music that you can scream at the top of your lungs and feel like the song’s about you. I don’t know all the words yet, but I’ve got this one line stuck in my head.

“Boy, you gotta love someone more than yourself.”

I was running late to a job this morning because that’s how I roll. Somehow I am just always late. I was running especially late and gave the lady a heads up. She did not appreciate my tardiness and let me know using the tone of her voice. I was immediately in a bad mood. How dare this lady think the world revolves around her! I made sure she knew I was running late and offered my apologies and that was not good enough — like she had somewhere more important to be. Pfft.

Then, just five minutes later, as I was turtling my way through the parking lot, some lady decides to just walk out in front of me. No nodding of the head or waving of the hand as to say, “Thanks for letting me cross!” She just took her precious time walking in front of me like my car was invisible. Not just walking, more like a trudge. Not once did her head turn to me and I thought, “Geez lady, you think it’d hurt you to pick up the pace just a little bit? I’m running late here!”

That’s when I realized I was just as selfish as my customer had been.

Today was one of those retrospective days. I had a lot of time in the car, I had Yellowcard singing meaningful things at the right times, and I got to hear from people I don’t normally see and they said things I don’t normally hear. I wouldn’t call what I’m going through a mid-mid-life crisis by any means, but I think I have been slowly trying to stop for a second and re-examine my priorities. You know how that goes. For the most part, ever since I’ve moved to Dallas, there are clearly two roads. Good road, bad road. Both lead into that crazy land of the future, something I still hate to think about. And since I hate thinking about it, I’ve been walking that fine line between the roads. But I know they have to split somewhere.

What do I want out of my life? What kind of crazy plans do I have for myself? I still don’t have an exact answer, but the general answer, I think remains the same. I don’t want to waste what I’ve got. See, I believe that I was made exactly the way I was made for a reason and each person affects another person and we’re all just one huge Domino Rally. Sure, I’ll never make a history book, but what I say and do today will affect my family, my friends, and the everyday people I encounter whether I want to acknowledge that fact or not. And so on and so forth, and if you think in the grand scheme of things, what you’re doing today is changing what some person’s life will be like a hundred years from now. That’s a lot of responsibility.

Everybody wants to be remembered. In fact, people do the craziest things to be remembered. So how do I want to be remembered? I’d love to ask my closest friends to see what they’d say about me if I died and my funeral was today. Was I simply the funny kid? Or maybe that really talented girl who played guitar and wrote a few songs. Or the girl that fixed my computer once. Honestly, if I died today and that’s all anyone had to say about me, I would kick my own face and call myself a failure. Okay, I retract the previous statement — I don’t believe you can fail at life, but I believe you can either live or truly die to self and live.

If you pick up a Bible and read I Cor 13, it seems to give a much more in-depth definition of love than Webster could ever offer. It doesn’t matter whether you believe the whole book is true, I can’t imagine anyone arguing that love isn’t kind, love gets angry and love can be rude. I mean, we’re always apologizing when we get like that and I don’t believe love should have to apologize. And if you think about who personified love in the Bible and everything He did — again, whether you fully believe this or not — either way, I don’t think many people can argue that Jesus was a selfish guy. Point to a line in the Bible that hints He ever thought of Himself over anyone save the line, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!” I think it’s safe to say that love is synonymous with selflessness.

Now, I know I’ll never be remembered as that girl that could walk on water. Or that Asian kid that could heal the lepers. But I guess my hope is that when people look back on my life, they can see what I have learned about love. Hopefully they will know whether I loved the world or whether I loved Christ.

Right now, I know the answer is unclear. I’ve got a lot of work to do.