meant to be broken, perhaps (part one)

there is a door at my work that per the rules i am not supposed to use, save for an emergency.

my shift started at 6am this morning, so naturally theres the tendency to be tired... at 845am this morning i decided to take a walk to wake myself up.

the door i am not supposed to use is much more convienent to go out of from where i am at then the main door which i should use. i decided this morning to take my chances and depart from the former door since i didnt feel like using the latter. assuming my role as a modern workforce ninja, i scoped out the area and stealthily slipped out the door i am not supposed to use. quietly doing my best to avoid two managers on their smoke break; i headed for the freedom of the parking lots.

seconds later i ran into a disabled co-worker trying to get our of her car as the handicap spots had been taken up. i was more than happy to assist. and i got to wondering- if i hadn't broken the rules she would have been late to work and not had the help she needed. so we arrive at today's thought: are some rules actually meant to be broken?

to this is i answer: yes. if you're a police officer reading this- this does not mean i drive over the speed (all the time)...

one of my greatest heros is brother andrew (read his book God's Smuggler if you have the chance) who drove a vw beetle across the iron curtain into the territories of the USSR during the post WWII era through the cold war days to smuggle countless numbers of bibles to the underground churches there. the communist powers that be had one big glaring "rule": no bibles.
brother andrew recognized that the christians caught behind the iron curtain had one need: bibles.
his prayer at the border crossings? "Lord you made blind eyes to see, now make seeing eyes blind." a wonderfully short and to the point prayer of faith. and God listens. many times soldiers would tear apart his car to no avail but the bibles clearly sitting in the trunk on on the back seat would make it through and on to the home churches that needed the written word of God.

some rules are meant to be broken. its a gray line and more will need to be discussed. stay tuned for part 2!

sparks

this was a handheld 30 second exposure taken on thursday night during the 5 hour lighting show over the indian river... (picture copyright 2008 joshua conti / conti photography)

there's no time like no time

as i was punching my way through morning rush hour traffic, i passed by a man with several signs spray-painted with "wake up america" and other types of slogans. here was somebody who had the time on a friday morning at 8:53 am to make a stand for his cause. wake up america? i didn't have time to wake up. let alone do anything for a cause... i was just trying to make it work on time.
eveyone has a cause; something they want to bring to the forefront of the world's attention. i have several but i dont have the time to sit by the highway and hold spray painted signs proclaiming how i feel.
we have as many hours in the day as anyone ever had at any time in history and somehow we never have time to do anything. yet we have so much to do. and what we have to do is something that we dont want to do- like work or driving or paying bills, etc.
last night there was an amazing lighting storm going on over the river near my house (pictures will be posted soon). instead of most nights where i would admire it for second then go back to the computer or tv, i actually went outside and took in the show. wait- i had time to do something i love to do? yep. the time was there all along, i just had to adjust my priorities.
where is all this going you might ask? keep up with me here for one second =)
our no time for our cause or the things we want to do is due to our priority system. luke 16:3 says "You cannot be the slave of two masters! You will like one more than the other or be more loyal to one than the other. You cannot serve both God and money (CEV)." i think i might be prioritizing the wrong master.
let's pull this all together...
today i passed by a guy who was making his voice and ideas known while i was rushing on my way to almost being late to work. i wished i had the time to do the same (maybe not in the same way). i realized that we all have the same time in the day to do the things we want or need to do and that what we do is based on our priorities. no time? we have all the time we need. we might just be serving the wrong master.

without love: asperity

asperity \as-PAIR-uh-tee\, noun:
1. Roughness of surface; unevenness.2. Roughness or harshness of sound; a quality that grates upon the ear.3. Roughness of manner; severity; harshness.

i'm leaving a reminder to myself today to silence my asperity. even if i don't have all i want and today isn't the best day i could have dreamed up, there is no reason to turn rough around the edges and wear everyone else down. today i will silence any asperity that threatens to leak from me.

एलेमेंतल राव रेपुब्लिशेद or elemental raw: republished

इ ऍम रेपुब्लिशिंग थिस एंट्री फ्रॉम वे बेक इन थे डे अस अ लिटिल इन्सिघ्त इन्तो माय थौघ्त process =) oops, im writing in hindi... what i was trying to say is this was a blog entry from awhile back which i am republishing as alittle insight into my thought process... enjoy!



standing on the edge of hiding, looking out into acknowledging, i am almost to where i want to be. they say that the first step to recovering is admitting and the words are balancing on the tip of my tongue. to be free is to have no shadows cast by my definition as i walk through life. nothing is everything when you aren't attached to cares and possesions. and this is where i hope to be one day. but for today i'll just be staring out the window of this place called comfort. someday... someday... i will walk out the door and never look back.

a dark reality

having just watched The Dark Knight i am frought with thoughts about my spiritual realities.
first, though, i would like to welcome myself back to my blog after a departure of several months. its been awahile so im plunging right back into the writing game thanks to the encouragement of my good friend Pas Ken of discoverlifechurch.tv.
i have found myself intrigued by heath ledger's joker in a way that no other villian has intrigued me. the movie continually stressed the point that the joker was not a normal "bad guy" as his madness had no concrete explanation. even he (the joker) had but dead end alibis for his victims as to why he was doing what he was doing. his tag line "why so serious?" served only to bely the sheer maniacal force of his will to do whatever he wished without having a purpose.
this morning in the shower i had a thought experiment (just as albert einstein was prone to have - more of this in another blog entry) and i wondered if the joker's character is a glimpse into the mind of the devil. it is my job after all to question everything we think we know and read it through the glasses of skepticism.
have we as modern day christians attempted to ingrain reason into the devil's inconsiderate pandering into our lives? in the dark knight christian bale's bruce wayne struggles with confronting the truth that the joker is not a purposed man but a freak driven by some force unknown. i wonder if its time for us to do the same.
the opening scene sees the joker eliminate even his own henchmen whilst in the process of robbing a bank but leaving one man alive with fake grenade in his mouth who believes he is about to die also. this is the introduction we have to the mind of the joker. he makes a pencil "dissappear" and burns a mountain of money. did he carve those scars into his face or did his father? we'll never know. we watch as he leaves the power of life and death in the hands of a barge of prisoners and a boat of blue collar families. bruce wayne's batman is almost lured into the joker's black hole as he smashes him into the walls and windows of an interrogation room trying to knock reason or information out of the joker. the joker only laughs louder and louder as the blows fall harder. this, ladies and gentleman, is a mad man.
who is the devil then? is he some man who tempts and lures each one of us in the purity of reason and logic? i propose he is not.
he is after all an "... adversary... prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for ANYONE he can devour. " (1 peter 5:8 HCSB)
like the joker he'll toy with anyone's mind. anyone at all. look at the all the ceo's and wall street bigshots that are biting the dirt right now. then look at the druggie or prostitute you walk past today. there is no reason or ryhme to what he does. no one is special to him. like the joker in a very twisted way he is just having fun..."why so serious?". he'll put a smile on your face. this is a scary proposition. am i proposing satan is ludicriously insane? a mad man? a villian without a heart? yes.
issac newton discovered that for every action there is an opposed and equal reaction. satan is a fallen angel who once was heaven's worship leader. when he tried to oppose God, God threw him into hell and all the angels who cared to side with him. let's apply newton's law here. by opposing God he was thrown to hell- God (who by very nature is love) was opposed. the reaction? the making of the antagonist in the story of salvation. what is the opposite of God? the devil. the opposite of Love? chaos.
at the rising of gotham city's protagonist- the Batman- we see the joker arrive: ready to oppose him. why? for no other reason than to introduce chaos and to oppose the batman.
the devil, satan, is not in the same mind frame as our Glorious and Wonderful Creator. he is the opposing antagonist to our protagonist: Jesus. he is chaos and hate where God is Love and Purpose.
for too long, i believe, we have tried to make head and tail (and im not about to introduce two face here!) out of the devil and explain him. to try to make him a reasonable enemy and an annoying pest.
the truth is- satan doesnt care about you at all. he is trapped in his own world that he is king of and burning it to the ground- free of purpose and intent. he'll take anyone with him alive or dead and (as we see in C.S. Lewis' the Screwtape Letters) even run down his own accomplices.
the Bible says that we can overcome him by by the word of our testimony. why is this such an effective antidote to his poison? it reminds him of all the times he's failed at turning our life upside down.
there is a scene where batman and joker are in a struggle stories above a river in gotham city as joker eagerly awaits for one of two barges to explode. he -the joker- has left remotes on each barge to detonate the other barge and left it to the people on board to destroy the other barge to live. when the deadline to do so ends, we watch as complete disblief washes over his face when there is no explosion. the "little experiment" he was conducting ends with no one destroying either boat because he could not account for the compassion and conscience of the people on the boats.
i believe this is the reaction of the devil when we're saved. he knows and understands evil and deception; but when all of his experiments fail - he cannot understand it- because he cannot understand all that is his opposite.
to know our enemy we must understand that he is toying with us for his own enjoyment and satisfaction. when we confront his chaos with the truth of who we are in Jesus, we leave him in a confused daze.
sun tzu says this in his ubiquitous book "the art of war": "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."
in the dark knight batman almost loses his battle with the joker because he initially failed to understand his enemy. lets not make the same mistake.