Snow drifts and boats

Does anyone else think that it is wrong to be sick when it is 92 degrees outside? It just doesn't work. I am having lots of flashbacks to winter days where colds belong. Thinking this brought my stream of consciousness to the question: Does everything seem more extreme or exagerated when one is little? The winters always seemed colder with more snow and the summer storms more violent when I was little compared to the weak weather we get now.

The storms would always wake my sister and I up with their thunder and lightning. I remember looking out the window of my 2nd story bedroom into our backyard. After a storm it would be filled with puddles and almost be an entire lake (not to mention tree branches everywhere). We had some plastic boats that my siblings and I would always take out & play with until the water dried up. Whenever my mom would call out to the rest of the family that there was a tornado warning we would all run outside and look up. There isn't anything strange in that is there? My mom would do what everyone should do and go to the basement or whatever, but my dad would stand just outside our front door watching the clouds.

And every winter we could get foot after foot of snow. Now those where what white Christmases are all about. My dad would have to shovel out our door because the snow drifts would be so high. (Since I just talked to a Texan who didn't know what a drift was, it is when thousands of ity bity cold things called snowflakes are blown about by the wind and all decide to pile up in front of your door or around the wheels of your tires so that you can't get out in the morning; thus preventing you from getting to school on time :)

My house is on a slight hill and it always would become a sheet of ice sometime after January when it had had time to thaw and then freeze solid. It was great for our runner sleds. You can get up a pretty good speed on those things. Have to watch the steering, though. One time I was riding a sled and its steering was out of wack so I had to roll off before crashing into a parked car. *Ah the good old days.

That's another thing about remembering weather patterns...I'm getting old!! Nostalgia is just another sign of age. I remember looking up at college kids and being in awe of how big they were and thinking that it would be years and years before I ever got to be that old. Well, now I'm there. And all of my friends are getting married (not to mention my siblings) and it's scary!! Alas, it also happens to be life. What can ya do?

Thank you for tuning in to "Scary Thoughts by Kat"

1Corinthians 4

"We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored! To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly. Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world."
1Corinthians 4:10-13

Man those Corinthians were a conceited bunch. Paul says that they thought they knew all about Christ and were strong in Him, even more so than Paul and all of the apostles. They honored and congratulated themselves for being so wise and knowing so much about spiritual matters. No wonder he uses sarcasm and irony to show these people how poor they really are because their “wisdom” in spiritual things could not possibly compare with the apostles’.

But wait…isn’t that what I do? I catch myself thinking “oh sure, if anything awful were to happen to me I wouldn’t doubt God’s motives. I wouldn’t fall away. I’m strong.”

Mark 14:29 “Peter declared, “Even if all fall away, I will not.”

There seem to be a lot of “I”s in these sentences. Who am I without Christ? In pRAISE tonight there were two speakers who talked about trust. The Bible tells us to put our trust in God (Proverbs 3:5; John 14:1) not in other, worldly things (Psalm 146:3; 118:8). There is nowhere to go when we trust in anything other than God; especially ourselves. For don’t we then put ourselves at the center when we say “maybe I can’t trust anyone or anything else, but I can certainly trust myself”? Well, let me tell you I have had lots of experiences that underline that there is nothing in that saying; particularly when it comes to speaking. When we depend on our own earthly knowledge instead of on God's wisdom that's when we get into trouble.

“Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s hearts.” 1Corinthians 4:5

God knows the innermost thoughts of His creations. He knows the reasons of our hearts. When we learn to put our trust in God and not in ourselves then we can be strong through Him. Even though we may be in rags, starving, homeless, persecuted, and cursed we can answer in love and be true apostles of Christ.

Thank You

You know how everyone has those bleh days where things just aren't quite right? It isn't like having an awful day where your favorite pants rip, you spill grape juice on a white shirt, and you're late for class only to find out that you failed the quiz given the day before. No, this kind of day starts the moment you wake up and the air just doesn't smell as fresh and promising as it usually does. Something is out of place but it is so tiny that you can't find out what it is. Kind of like having a sliver in your hand. It is small but it hurts big and is so hard to get out.

These kinds of days just frustrate me to no end. Mostly because I can't figure out whats different or why things just feel crooked. On a bleh day I find myself doing things wrong and being awful to the people in my life that I love the most. Then I get even madder because I do it but I don't want to apologize and that adds another level of frustration at myself that I just bottle up inside and slowly simmer.

On my most recent bleh day I happened to run across a poem that really made me stop and think about everything that I have been blessed with. Sure everyone will have bad days. They're inevitable. For me, anyway. But that doesn't mean that I should stop praising God for all that He has given and just focus on poor me. I am surrounded by beautiful people and amazing opportunities and this poem by Brod Baggart helped me remember just how blessed I am.

The Thank-you Poem

Thank you for another day,
To love
To work
To worship
And to play.
Thank you for these heartbeats,
This breath,
These precious hours.
Help me give light like your sun...
And receive it like your flowers.

1Corinthians 3

To be perfectly honest, this third chapter in Corinthians has always confused me and I don’t quite get it. However, this is a blog and a place where I can voice my thoughts, befuddled though they may be.

I was awed by plant cells when I first started to learn about them. How could a tiny, seemingly dead thing like a seed turn into a beautiful daisy or a towering redwood or a turnip? I have always been fascinated with nature and so when I read this chapter in 1Corinthians, I was struck by the planting and watering analogy. Especially where it says in verse 6, “…but God made it grow.” People speak the Word of God and nurture it, but in the end it wouldn’t go anywhere without God. He is the one who works miracles and makes it grow.

Working in my mom’s garden we planted each seed; sometimes in big bunches, sometimes carefully one by one. Then we would mulch and water where we had planted them and then all we could do was wait. Just as in the great kiddie story “Frog and Toad.” When one of them plants a garden and then attempts to sing and read and do everything to the seeds in order to get them to grow nothing happens. Then, when he has given up and fallen asleep in exhaustion he wakes up later to find tiny plants all over the ground.

As followers of Christ we are called to speak His Word to those around us who don't know him. And just as God causes a seed to grow into one of His creations His miracle can work in the heart of an unbeliever.

1Corinthians 2-speaking foolishness

One does not need wisdom to proclaim Christ’s love. Any message is best conveyed using simple, understandable language. It is the Spirit of God in those words that give them power. Power to save. Man’s wisdom is foolishness in light of God’s power. Because of this all we can do is speak the words that He gives us and trust Him to work in the hearer’s heart.

I am not an eloquent person. In fact I very often say the very thing that I was trying to avoid saying in the first place. I partly came to college because I wanted to learn what to say to someone when asked about my faith. I wanted to know the right things to say so that I wouldn’t start spouting contradictions and screwing it all up because not everything was perfectly straight in my head.

But verse 13 in 1Corinthians 2 says, “This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit....” We speak of God’s love and His Son’s sacrifice for us. This is a comfort to me that no matter how badly I screw up telling someone about Christ, His Spirit will always have the overruling power to work miracles in the heart of the person I am speaking to.

Random Freewrite on a Previous Trip

There is a castle. Not just any castle. This is a special castle. This is a castle in Denmark. Kronborg Slot in the small town of Helsingør. Now I know why they call it something’s rotten in the state of Denmark. Hamlet was set in Denmark and it is a spoof about Hamlet that is in Denmark! I get it! Denmark was once the great power in Europe. Mmm…interesting…

…so anyways this castle…this was the castle that Hamlet was supposed to be set in even though Shakespeare had never been there…the morning I was there was foggy. I couldn’t even see the castle from the main street along the bay in town. It was extremely foggy. I like fog. It is cool and damp and creates a certain misty aura about a place that makes it mysterious…I wonder if Shakespeare knew this when he wrote Hamlet. I should like to read Hamlet again after seeing this castle. Oh right…the castle. Well, the fog muffles any sound so as I approach it seems as if we are on an island far away from any real world. It is surrounded by a big stone wall that has no algae or moss growing on it. The stones to the main entrance are slippery with the fog and ocean mist this morning. The castle is right on the edge of the ocean…supposedly when the fog clears one can see the coast of Sweden.

I enter through the gates. There is a small hill in front of the gates that looks out to the ocean. Further past that is a low wall but it is partially obscured by the fog. I go into the gates to the outer court yard which is just a narrow strip of stone street basically between the outer gate wall and the inner wall of the castle proper. I enter through the second gate that has the coat of arms of Denmark above it.

There I enter the inner courtyard that is surrounded by the castle on all sides. There is a fountain in the middle but it is dry because it is winter. It is a cold morning and the voices of the few people who are here echo off the walls like empty caves deep underground.

The ticket has three sections: the chapel, the royal apartments, and the dungeons. The chapel is boring…the apartments interesting but too long…I saved the dungeons for last. The catacombs. This is my favorite part…quite the stuff of tales.

…cold air rushes at me as I open the door to a narrow, dark hall into the stone interior of the dungeon... turn right and there is a long, very low, wide hall with an arching roof. Down into the cold abyss of stone…there is a gianormous statue of an old and tales-past king who is sitting with a sword on his knees with an inscription below. It is in Danish and too dark for me to see what it says.

keep going…the only light comes from tiny kerosene lamps randomly placed here and there. There are black holes in the walls that are blocked off to keep inquisitive tourists from wandering too far and getting lost…no, one would not want to get lost in a place like this. Just imagine that these now dark, damp, and echoing halls were once filled with slaves, soldiers and prisoners who had to live down here…never seeing the light of day for months on end…

Thoughts on 1 Corinthians 1

Why am I in college? Ask any one of my older siblings and they'd tell you because it was the thing to do. It was a natural part of our household. We were going to college and that was that. So my brother and two sisters just accepted their fate, found some program they could live with and got through it.

Having to teach myself pretty much from 6th grade through highschool gave me a desire to go to college where the professors would know what they were teaching and even like it. I love to learn anything. Put any subject in front of me and I'll become engrossed. Math, Music, Physics, Astronomy, Art, Multimedia, Psychology, English. I'll even get into sports as long as I'm not the one playing.

All the learning and knowledge that I could ever have, though, wouldn't be worth anything without the grace of God.

Some say that all underdeveloped countries need to be brought up to par with the developed ones and that will solve all their problems. But this is where Christ's ministry is spreading the fastest; the rugged hills of Kenya where a stick hut with a thatched roof for a church is an extreme luxury. And where does one of the most recent missionary fields happen to be? Right here in the U.S.

"But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong." 1Corinthians 1:27

Look at us. We're so worried about our freedom and identity and everything materialistic that we fail to notice what direction our lives are taking.

What is the world without God? What is progress and advancement, and getting a good education without a saving faith in Christ? It will all just pass away in a blink and what are you left with?

No matter how advanced and "wise" the world gets it will always be foolishness without Christ Jesus. I am saved not because of my education, wisdom, income, or country I live in, but because He loved me and chose to die for me.

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"The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy."
Psalm 126:3