Psalm 8

¹ LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
above the heavens.

² Through the praise of children and infants
you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.

³ When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,

⁴ what are mere mortals that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?

⁵ You have made them  a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned them with glory and honor.

⁶ You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
you put everything under their  feet:

⁷ all flocks and herds,
and the animals of the wild,

⁸ the birds in the sky,
and the fish in the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.

⁹ LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

We are beings of great worth. Only a little lower than God. Most definitely lower, but as the word says, only “a little lower.” That to me suggests that we have such tremendous potential. It also makes sense that we are designed to love one another. God has given us himself, but he also gave us each other – these are the beings worthy of companionship, worthy of spending this one wild and precious life with. These are whom we are to experience and share great love with. All to give the more glory to God, the one who made us, and taught us to love.

Crowned with glory and honour despite being mere mortals. What a gracious God! Who do I perceive as crowed with glory… honoured by God himself? It’s nice to imagine myself in that seat, but it doesn’t really “stick” in my understanding. I don’t feel the aura of glory or feel particularly honoured… although, when I contemplate what Christ did for me, I do shut up (God has done so much for me, why me?).

Ah, my beloved, you and I were created a little lower than God. Yet sometimes I fear talking to you with complete honesty. Sometimes I do not entrust myself to you fully, I hold back, there are walls I do not even know the extent of. Sometimes I find it hard to hope for things to be glorious, knowing there are already so many things we’re dealing with, and there are more we haven’t even scratched the surface of. I want to be honoured, feel glorious with you. I want to be completely transparent, knowing where you are, having nothing to hide.

The Image of God & You

Reflect on your friends as created in God’s image. How does that perception change your attitude and behaviour toward them?

When I think of humanity as created in God’s image I imagine a great expanse of faces turned upwards reflecting individual pixels of glory. There’s not a face depicted in the reflection, instead it is a beautiful, colourful, glittering sea. Zoom in 1000x into the circle of friends I roll with, and it is still beautiful, but much messier. You see that we’ve got rough edges, we jostle one another and sometimes sparks fly.  If I were to truly keep in mind the understanding that my friends were created in God’s image, I think I would have greater patience, respect, and awe of them. God is looking out for them, his love burns brightly for them, they are his. I need to get in line with that – too often I find myself thinking I’m the only one that cares. How blasphemous.

Go through the relationships in your life. Family…created in God’s image. Or co-workers…created in God’s image. Is it true that those closest to you are the hardest to perceive as created in God’s image?

Those closest to me are the one’s that hurt me the most. In my pain it’s easy to forget about God’s role in each of our lives. It’s easy to forget that we’re both forgiven by God, easy to forget God’s claim on our lives, and that we’re his servants when we get all caught up in our selves…   it’s much easier just to hurt them back, or to withdraw and build walls.

What obstacles keep you from seeing them as a divine image-bearer?

It’s our sin. It’s when they put themselves first, or when I put myself first. When we don’t get our own way. When it’s all about us, you don’t see God, you just see the person, in all their self-serving glory. Pride. Lust. Jealousy. Unrighteous anger…

when they don’t communicate and you feel so powerless to change things

I suppose is also when you forget who we are to ultimately trust and rely on.

What Women Want

A great TIME article about the state of women now compared to forty years ago.

College campuses used to be almost 60-40 male; now the ratio has reversed, and close to half of law and medical degrees go to women, up from fewer than 10% in 1970. Half the Ivy League presidents are women, and two of the three network anchors soon will be; three of the four most recent Secretaries of State have been women. There are more than 145 foundations designed to empower women around the world, in the belief that this is the greatest possible weapon against poverty and disease; there was only one major foundation (the Ms. Foundation) for women in 1972. For the first time, five women have won Nobel Prizes in the same year (for Medicine, Chemistry, Economics and Literature). We just came through an election year in which Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Tina Fey and Katie Couric were lead players, not the supporting cast. And the President of the United States was raised by a single mother and married a lawyer who outranked and outearned him.

Pain after Massage

I had the best massage of my life yesterday. By a registered massage therapist.

But I think she dislocated my spine from the base of my skull.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW THE BASE OF MY SKUUUUULLLLL.

To live in America

I would buy a home in the States just for the benefit of having an American mailing address. I would rent it out to a family I trust and/or pay someone I knew to be the on-call landlord and look after the place. I would give the family a discount if they forwarded all mail I sent there to Canada.

I think I’d like to live somewhere completely random…like in New England, or New Mexico…but in a university town so I could connect with the local Inter-Varsity chapter and rent to Christian female students (they’d look after the place).

Passionate

I am constantly torn

between a desire to be authentic and honest with my struggles so that others might know that I am not  Christian because I’m perfect already but because I need a saviour

and a desire to keep constant guard, even at my weakest moments, of my tongue, that others might not know the depths of my hatred and consider me a hypocrite or the power of Christ ineffectual.

Spiritual Temperament Test

I took a “Spiritual Temperament Test” on a retreat recently. I’ve compiled my results here so I can throw out the paper I used. I’m not sure where you can get this test but on the bottom it says “This test has been compiled from Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul’s Path to God by Gary Thomas (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1996)”.

Here are some of my higher-ranked answers.

• I feel closest to God when I’m surrounded by what He has made – the mountains, the forests, or the sea.
• The words, lover, intimacy, and heart are very appealing to me.
• I feel close to God when I participate in several hours of uninterrupted study time, reading God’s word, some helpful Christian books and then perhaps having the opportunity to teach or participate in a small discussion with a small group.
• I feel closest to God when I am alone and there is nothing to distract me from focusing on his presence.
• The words celebration and joy are very appealing to me.
• I get frustrated if I see apathetic Christians who don’t become active. I want to drop everything else I’m doing and want to help the church overcome its apathy.
• I would enjoy attending a workshop on learning to worship through dance, or attending several worship sessions with contemporary music. I expect that God is going to move in some unexpected ways.
• I feel closest to God when I learn something new about Him that I didn’t understand before. My mind needs to be stimulated. It’s very important to me that I know exactly what I believe.
• I enjoy listening to worship CDs.
• I would enjoy developing a personal rule (or ritual) of prayer.
• I spend more money on books than music.

Here are some of my lowest ranked answers:

• The words tradition and history are very appealing to me.
• A book on church dogmatics would be very appealing to me.
• I don’t mind worshiping God in a group but I’d much prefer to be alone.
• I would enjoy reading the book Windows of the Soul: A look at Dreams and their Meanings.
• I would prefer to spend an hour beside a small brook rather than be involved in a group service.
• Confronting a social evil, attending a meeting to challenge the new curriculum before the local school board, and volunteering on a political campagin are activities that are important to me.
• I would rather nurse someone to health or help someone repair their house than teach an adult Sunday school class.

My top ranking spiritual temperaments are:

Contemplative – Contemplatives refer to God as their lover, and images of a loving Father or friend predominate their view of God. A true contemplative is not going to seek the spotlight. If you fee a kindred spirit with Mary – who sat at Jesus’ feet – you may be a contemplative.

Enthusiast – Loving God with Mystery and celebration. Enthusiasts are inspired by joyful celebration. These Christians are cheerleaders for God and the Christian life.

Intellectual – “Faith” is something to be understood as much as experienced. They are likely to be studying, and feel closest to God when they first understand something new about him.

My lowest ranking spiritual temperaments are:

Sensate – Sensate Christian want to be lost in the awe, beauty, and splendor of God. They are drawn particularly to the liturgical, the majestic, the grand. They want to be filled with sights, sounds, and smells – incense, intricate architecture, classical music, and formal language.

Ascetic – Ascetics want nothing more than to be left alone in prayer. They live a fundamentally internal existence. They are uncomfortable in any environment that keeps them from “listening to the quiet.”

I also ranked low on the Naturalist temperament (feeling close to God in nature) which doesn’t seem quite right. It tied for third-lowest with “Activist,” which is very clearly, not me. I was actually surprised Sensate rated the lowest – it’s probably because I don’t have a lot of experience in incense, high architecture and liturgy. I’ve only ever really been in those sorts of churches as a tourist.

Expired

It was one year ago, on October 24th, that I bought 10 sessions at a local tanning salon.

They were not cheap, considering what a tanning salon is…

I used 5 of them. And the rest have “expired.” I was told if I bought more sessions I could have these five reactivated.

Do I waste my money, or do I waste my money?

To me right and wrong is quite simple in this situation, but I need to figure out, for the love of money and hate of wasting it, if the wrong decision is really harmful or not.

Sensative subject matter

you’re too obtuse to realize the indiscretion of your behaviour

Halloween crafts

I intend on printing these out and having them at the party I’m co-hosting next Saturday. Everyone loves arts & crafts, right?