Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

There’s something you should know. There are people walking around this world who just look lost. They tend to sit and stare, raise ridiculous questions, and just down-right act differently than you and me. Well, different than you; I happen to be one of them. We are those who think, like, more than normal. Who think without even thinking. Who tend to spoil the moment with their overactive realism. This is a confession of one such hyperactive cranium so that we may better understand each other as brothers and sisters in God’s family.

Those of us who tend to be on the more intellectual side seem to have very dangerous minds. If I could shrink you down Fantastic Voyage style and let you travel around in my brain, you’d see it rarely stops; I think it takes Christmas off. That’s the dangerous thing of it though, it never stops. We’re always thinking.

What are we thinking about? Everything! Have you ever thought as to why birds can fly and you cannot? Why dinosaurs are now extinct? Why God exists in three persons, one of them being 100% human, but is one god? Have you ever thought of these things all at the same time? This is the horrible life I and countless others are forced to suffer through. (Please RSVP to my pity party c/o clayton.zylstra@gbaships.org.)

One such consequence to this overactive intellect is the deprivation of hope. Given enough time to think through something, I can convince myself of anything about that something. When this happens, due to my human nature, I tend to rule out hope. Hope to me, in my most desperate hour, is a failure to see reality as it stands. If I have hope my sick grandmother will be healed, I fail to see the situation as it stands; her body is frail and she has to go sometime. If I hope that salvation will someday come to the world, I fail to see the brokenness of humanity and the sheer astronomical impossibility for everyone in the world to come to one agreement about who Jesus was and is; there are some people who love to disagree.

However, there is hope. Consider Matthew 22:37, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and all your mind.” I tend to find loving God with all my heart and soul quite simple (when you have very little of either, all of it isn’t that much). But I struggle to love God will my entire mind as evidenced with the depressing paragraph preceding this one. However, there are some of you who have no difficulty loving God with your mind (this is not to say you don’t have one as was implied by my finding simplicity in loving God with my heart and soul), but struggle with loving will all heart or soul. You can help me. You can help us. We can help you.

Luckily God made us all different; different because He put us in a community to depend on each other to lift up our weaknesses. You are to show us brainiacs how to love with our mind and we are to show you romantics how to give God your heart and we all need to show the spiritual wanderers how to love God with their souls. You are to remind us realists there is hope.

So, if you see someone sitting alone, staring off to nowhere, it might be tempting to just leave them alone, but it would be real encouraging to just walk by and say, “Don’t worry, there is hope.”

Communication Breakdown

I don’t talk to God. Well, I talk toward God I think. I tell Him what I want, where I’m struggling, but it feels like I give it to him in voicemail format.

“Hey God, it’s me Clayton. Just calling to let you know I still feel anxious about the future. I realize I’m supposed to trust you and all, but I’m finding it difficult. My mind just won’t let up on this future thing. Do you think you could get me some peace of mind? I’d appreciate it. Well, hope to talk to you soon.”

I’m fairly certain God listens to his voicemails, but it seems a pretty crappy way to communicate with a heavenly father figure.

I feel like God is at a party and he’s talking with someone else and I’m just trying to politely wait my turn to ask him a quick favor. Both parties, God and the other guy, glance over and acknowledge I’m there. They both know that what I have to say won’t take any time at all, but they keep talking anyway. Then I grow impatient and I leave. I jump on the computer after getting home and shoot God a quick email.

“Hey God,

Saw you at the party tonight and I wanted to ask you a quick question, but it seemed you were a bit occupied. I’m just feeling a little bit anxious about the future. I realize I’m supposed to trust you, but my mind won’t stop focusing on the future. I was wondering if I could get a little peace of mind? That’d be cool.

Well, thanks for reading.

Clayton”

God reads his email, but I feel my heavenly father figure should be a bit more accessible.

I think I’m struggling with communicating. How often or how many different ways can you tell someone you’d just like a little peace of mind before you actually get it? Perhaps the failure is on my end. In fact, that’s highly likely, but what do I do about it?

My mind won’t let me in to fix it so I figured I’d go to the supplier. Seems as though I’ve been on hold a while. I keep hearing that I’m a valued customer and I keep getting thanked for my patience, but I really just want to hang up. I’ll just get someone on the other end that doesn’t speak English or doesn’t have an answer so they send me to another operator. They’ll probably tell me just to read the manual. I’ve been reading the manual, that’s how I’ve discovered I have a problem, but it doesn’t offer much in the way of a solution.

Maybe I’ll try calling God again. Nuts, voicemail.

“Hey God, it’s me Clayton. Just calling to let you know I still feel anxious about the future. I realize I’m supposed to trust you and all, but I’m finding it difficult. My mind just won’t let up on this future thing. Do you think you could get me some peace of mind? I’d appreciate it. Well, hope to talk to you soon.”

Of Minor Prophets and Dreams that Coincide

Something rocketed me from my sleep this past evening. Well, maybe not rocketed; that might be an exaggeration. I woke up; that’s about it. But something woke me up and that’s the point.

I don’t think I’ve ever had God speak to me through a dream before. I thought that was reserved for Bible characters and people looking to use God to pursue their own personal agenda, but I think I had a good talking to in this past dream. It’s what woke me up in fact. I didn’t pop straight up like a jack-in-the-box or anything like in the movies and scream some nonsensical phrase, but rather my eyes open and I immediately felt convicted. Before the dream, first some background.

Lately I’ve had my desires in the wrong order. Desiring God was well behind the lead. There was a conscious decision to rectify this hierarchy of desire, but my mind would not let go of the old system. I get in these moods or stages or what-have-you’s where I know the right thing to do, but I cannot get my mind to make the switch. It takes some sort of shake up to get things straight again and this one was no exception.

The dream started out with the object of my desire ending up in someone else’s possession. The remainder of the dream was spent with me getting extremely jealous as I had to witness this person do all the things I wished I could do, but could not. Then I woke up. Not too exciting, but extremely poignant.

Immediately, at somewhere between 3 and 5 am, I was convicted of my idolatry. I knew this jealousy is what God feels when His desire, us, chooses to be with someone else, somewhere else. This jealousy, I believe, is best demonstrated in the book of Hosea.

Recently I’ve been reading through the Minor Prophets. Partly because they are short and I can get through a book in one read, but also because I have not read them very much and I was looking for some new perspective on God and His character. Hosea has to be one of my favorite books. The story goes, roughly, that God calls on Hosea to marry a prostitute to represent the relationship God, then, currently had with Israel. (Think of God asking a modern pastor to do that today; how would that go down? Something tells me this pastor would no longer be a pastor.) Throughout the book Hosea’s wife runs off and he has to buy her back. How often do we run off on God only to have Him buy us back time and time again? God’s jealousy is demonstrated with Him breaking all the things Israel would put in His place. Never has an idol of Israel outlived the wrath of God.

In my dream I felt extreme jealousy and God has this same jealousy for us when we create substitute gods. I’ve since asked for forgiveness and since struggled to change the mindset to desire God first and foremost, but it’s getting there.

5 Things (Now complete with author's commentary!)

2009 and The Clay present:

Goals (Or a List of Things to Do)

1. Want God. In this case you can always get what you want.
2. Do more math. I'm forgetting things that cost me a lot of money to get.
3. Write more blogs. Let's be honest, I suck.
4. Pursue deeper relationships. A goal with fine intentions, but difficult to measure success.
5. Open for suggestion. What do you think I should do?

The Giving of Thanks

What I’m thankful for: A list

Food – I like to eat.

Friends – I like them.

Grace – I make mistakes. Grace helps.

Creativity – Life would be quite boring without it.

Life – How else could we use our creativity without life?

Math – Whenever I need an absolute, I can always add two and two and get four.

Love – Simple enough to enjoy, complex enough to have to work at.

The ocean – It regulates our weather and has fish in it. The original multi-tasker.

Diversity – It shows how big God really is.

God – He’s all right.

Jesus – He’s all right too.

The Holy Spirit – Just because I don’t want it to feel left out. Also, it’s all right as well.

Glacial erosion – It looks really pretty.

The internet – It brings me closer to things that are far away. Also, it brings Dinosaur Comics.

The End