My Octagonal Idol

Sometimes I think I love stop signs more than God. "But Taylor," you may say, "how is it that you could ever love a stop sign more than the God who went so far as to give His one and only Son so that you might have life, and have it to the fullest?" To that, I would say that I don't believe I am the only one to have committed this blasphemy, in fact, some of you reading this may in fact be accompanying me in this rather strange group.

Now, please allow me to clarify something. I would not consider myself a stop sign worshiper. I do not have an idol set up to a stop sign, nor has the Lord ever sent a prophet or angel to me declaring that I need to literally tear down the stop signs in my life. In this case, I mean that I love stop signs in that I am more willing to obey a them than my God.

Obedience is an act of love which scripture specifically calls us to. Throughout the Old Testament, we see God calling Israel, the people that He had chosen out of the world, to follow the commands which He had given them. Jesus proclaims in John 14:15 that if we love Him, we will obey his commands. With these examples from scripture in mind, it can be seen that obedience is something which God sees as an incredibly loving act when it is directed towards Him, and deeply wounding when it is directed towards something of this world.

It is in this realm of obedience that my increased love for stop signs shows through. Many comments have been made about my driving, but one that generally comes up is that I will always, without fail, come to a complete stop at a stop sign if it is physically possible. I am not certain why I have picked this particular menial traffic law to follow so religiously (most likely it has something to do with the fact that I think "two car-lengths" is a silly, relative measurement and thus I take issue with it trying to tell me how much distance should be between me and other cars), but nonetheless, I see a devotion to the commandments given by stop signs that is lacking in many of the other areas of my life.

When these spiritual quandaries in our life are presented to us, the question which we inevitably end up asking is "why?" Not only does this make us sound even more spiritual and delightfully introspective, but it also hopefully brings with it an honest examination of our lives and, in this case, what authority we choose to follow and for what reasons. The answer that I keep coming back to is one which I find to be particularly troubling. I believe that the reason we follow the laws of this world more stringently than we do God's law is because we do not truly see our God as authoritative. If you wouldn't mind, I'm going to go ahead and take more ownership of that sentence for a second. I do not truly see my God as authoritative. It has become far to easy to assume that as long as we have a decent knowledge of God's character, and supposedly make an effort to carry out His will, then following the fullness of the commands which we have been given is not truly important. I see no model for this being the case in scripture. God does indeed have an infinitely loving plan for our lives, but it requires a focus on Him. If we are to enjoy all that our relationship with God has to offer, we need to be willing to look to the wisdom of Proverbs 3:5, which reminds us to lean not on our own understanding. What we think is a "good" way to live our lives means nothing. Instead, we need to look to the God who has spent thousands of years reminding us what it is to live well, and follow the commandments which He has provided for us so that we might live in a way that honors Him.

With His love, and hopefully His grace,

Taylor

Finding Inspiration in odd places...

...such as rabbits in waste coats.

I think media is something to be taken with a grain of salt most of the time. However, the Lord can indeed work all things for good, and movies and music are not an exception. For example, I recently found myself watching Alice in Wonderland (Tim Burton's recent remastering), and by the time the film was over, I found myself in a rather strange place. I had just finished watching a film which spent most of its time quoting poetry and and referencing writings that my pitiful non-english-major mind could not even begin to fathom (how does one spell Jaberwalky? Jabberwakky? Jibberwikkle?), when suddenly I found my relationship with God deepening. The line that stuck with me was this:

"My father once told me that he sometimes came up with as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

Think on that for a second or seventeen. When one first hears this, its absurdity almost masks the depth of what it claims. A human man makes the statement that he is capable of bringing to his mind six or more things which would be considered by this world to be impossible. If one thinks on this with scripture in mind, it doesn't seem that difficult. These just come off the top of my head.

1. A woman can be turned into salt.

2. A man can survive for any length of time inside of a whale.

3. Water can be turned into blood.

4. Water can be turned into wine.

5. A man can be raised from the dead.

6. A God would give up His son for a people who had turned from Him.

So, if a mere man can look to scripture and easily find six things which the world would see as impossible, how many more can the God, who crafted scripture, think up? I don't think Tim Burton would be terribly happy with me for this, but his film helped me to be convicted to the fact that I have allowed my God to become too small. We serve a God who has done an innumerable amount of things which go far beyond our realm of understanding. I see no reason why we should think that He should not continue to do so. In light of this, let us continue to believe that our God is creative enough to do things we could never imagine, and hopefully expect that He will shine His creative love upon us.

This, however, is just my experience. You'll need to find your own rabbit in a waste coat.

With His love, and hopefully His grace,

Taylor

Am I allowed to like me?

From time to time, I try not to like myself. This doesn't come from any deep self-loathing, but rather just a desire to remain humble. Humility is something which has become increasingly important to me as I have begun the process of determining who I am and what I am supposed to do. This process, though often not fun, tends to involve discovering what one is good at, which is indeed a fantastic feeling. It fills one with bubbles and sunshine to finally come to the realization that they are meant to (or at least have convince themselves that they are meant to) do something, whatever that may be. In my own journey, however, I have found that this journey can also leave one covered in the incredibly icky feeling that is pride. I would equate unhealthy pride to being covered in flan. I have just realized that two key points must be noted in order to understand my writing, which shall be interjected now.

1. I am a Christian. The primary focus of my life is to follow after Christ, doing my best to live as He lived and work with Him in bringing His Kingdom to this world. Being the primary focus of my life, my identity as a Christian has a significant impact on all that I do, including my writing.

2. Flan is gross. In light of this grossness, the idea of being covered in it is truly revolting.

Now that I have cleared that up, let us continue. Unhealthy pride is indeed gross. In my experience, it leaves me feeling as though a wrongness has invaded my very soul. In light of this aversion to pride, I must admit that I find it quite odd that I am being led towards creating a blog. Looking into a minute portion of the vast wealth of blogs available on the internet, I found that, whatever their topic or purpose (ranging from beautiful photography to moving writing to daily updates on the activity of your neighbor's cat), there tends to be an intense focus on the self. The exception to this is of course the woman who chooses to blog about her cat, but even then she constantly has to bring up the fact that it is her cat, which I feel proves my point and shows a need for that woman to let her cat shine on its own. Go, neighbor cat, go and live your life.

Despite my silliness, one can see a contradiction here. What reason does someone who makes a distinct effort to avoid pride have to create a blog, something which tends to be (based on what little research I have done) focused on the self? I think that, though a contradiction is present, there is also opportunity. Specifically, I feel that an examination of my own life will hopefully help to show what it means to try and give up control of one's future, to acknowledge the fact that this life is not truly owned by the person living it. To clarify, this is an effort for me to explain how I live to myself as much as anyone else. So, with these things in mind, I say thank you for coming, and I hope that what you find here in the future will prove both encouraging and challenging.

With His love, and hopefully His grace,

Taylor