100

This is my 100th post, and it is certainly fitting that it is coming at the standard Thursday time-slot. I've been writing a lot more lately, for better or worse, so I'm at 100 faster than I would have been at the pace at which I was going for most of the year. I am glad then, that 100 has fallen to the normal, traditional, Thursday time.

I was monstrously productive today. There were a couple of things I had to do that I thought would take a lot longer than they did. I slept in by like, 3 hours, by complete accident, and thought I might have to stay up later than expected tonight to accomplish what I needed to accomplish. But here I am....it's all accomplished (for the most part), and it's not even 5 p.m. yet.

Accomplishment feels good.

Maybe 100 posts is an accomplishment. I don't know. I know it took me less than 1 year to accomplish...so that says something, although I'm not sure what. It should be said though, that there are a lot less "fluff" posts on this than I have had on my past two personal "blogs" (www.xanga.com/dulacian and (from the summer of my 16th year) outridestorm.livejournal.com (read at your own risk.... I was a typical teenager and I can't stand to look at that one at all anymore) ). By fluff post, I mean things that I didn't really write or create... things like song lyrics or website links and things (of course, facebook didn't exist as the outlet for those sorts of things that it is today). I abhor looking back on my old writing because it's terrible.... but I enjoy looking back on it all to see how far I've come...as a writer, but more importantly, as a human being. Looking back on posts from the summer after my senior year (which would be on the xanga site) especially, it shows how much I have grown from then to now. I don't necessarily suggest you look back (but it's all there, if you insist), but it does, at least, show, to me, the growth I've undergone in the past, well, 7 years or so. It's strange that I've so well documented the last 7 years of my life (for the most part....there are definitely lags here and there in my "blogging" and long spans of time where, even though I post, none of it is of any consequence).

So anyway... this is 100 posts old as soon as I hit the "publish post" button. Kind of cool....

I've a big advocate of revisiting the whole life of Christ during Advent and Lent. It puts everything into perspective, and it means, right now, that I'm in the midst of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). I don't know if there are 3 more hard-hitting chapters in the Bible...

Honestly, I mostly don't know what to make of the Sermon on the Mount. I know it's all true... I know it's all seemingly impracticable. And I know it's the blueprint for an upside down world, but even so, it's not just that general that we shouldn't take it to heart in the specifics.

But it's not all just moral advice.

It's really beautiful imagery for a life lived by the grace of God and under the lordship of Christ. "how great is the grass of the field adorned and yet it is thrown to the thresher? How much more will the Lord provide for you?"

I don't know. Well, I do know. I know that I worry far too much about tomorrow...mostly endless tomorrows, not just Friday the 4th.

There's an intersection between the impracticable and the charge not to worry (at the end of chapter 6) that shapes the whole sermon and ought to shape our lives. It is all about perspective and, if you will, worldview. I worry about things, largely, because I neglect to realize that God is in control...that God is my provider even when I don't see how things are going to come together. I worry about things because I am constantly looking at them through the constraints of the world I live in, the world I know, the world in the order that sets itself up according to itself. But God is outside of that order...God is, indeed, above that order. It is clear, from the seemingly illogical advice of the sermon on the mount, that God turns that order upside down. And in that upside down world, by God's reckoning (and, by Jesus' advice, what should be our reckoning too), we don't have to worry about things, because the world isn't what it seems to us or even how we interpret it through our at best impartial understanding of God's order of the world.

God decenters (or ought to) our understanding of the world, and until we fully recenter it on him and through him, we're going to be imperfect, incomplete, incapable of the fullness of life we were intended to enjoy. But thank God for redemption, thank God for the journey He's established to have even parts of our lives placed under his Lordship, placed according to his order... thank God for his provision that, even though we waste time worrying, proves the worrying to be a waste because he always provides.

-Zack

"It's the season of cold making warmth a divine intervention
You are safe here you know now"
-Vienna Teng