Poetry

This is some stuff I wrote over the past year or so.

The American Dream
Climb higher, climb higher, climb ever so higher,
Until you reside at the top of the spire.
Get a wife, kids, house and a dog,
Live away from the city, it's pollution and smog.
Awake you dreamer, arise from your sleep,
The beggars are here at your door to weep.
Money cannot buy what the soul has lost,
Except in America where air has a cost.
Idols are crafted not of silver and gold,
But by the images and ideas that Hollywood's sold.
Wake up America, see what you have become,
A vast land of riches now covered in slums.
You work hard toward your goals but forget what you own,
Your future now lies in a valley of bones.
Animals and trees are more valuable than lives,
While babies are born to girls not wives.
O America, what have you done?
Your children will never see the light of the sun.

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When darkness closes in,
When you feel there is no way out.
When you cannot be from sin.
It is those times when you doubt.
But in those days He will set you free,
Breaking the chains on hand and feet.
Through his death he gained the key,
And through his death he took his seat.
So do not fear, do not despair,
When the world comes crashing down.
For our hopes lies in the heir,
Because he conquered death and received His crown.

Undeserving
How undeserving am I, oh my God?
To have my feet washed by my Savior.
To have my wounds healed by my Maker.
How undeserving am I, oh my Rock?
To be protected from my foes.
To be set aside for my creator.
How undeserving am I, oh my Sustainer?
That my needs are taken care of.
That when my life falls apart, you are there.
How undeserving am I, oh my Redeemer?
That your son should pay the price for my sins.
That my transgressions are washed as white as snow.
Oh my God, how undeserving am I?
To have my feet washed by my Savior.
To have my wounds healed by my Maker.

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Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil because I feel your breath.
Even though I'm lost in the wilderness with nights so cold,
Stories of you will be the only things told.
Stories of your salvation and grace,
Some of old where you showed your face.
But your face shows now, it's painted in the clouds.
It's shown in the storms that thunder so loud.
It's written in the stars, on the darkest night.
Your face is on the sun, which shines so bright.
Your face is on the Lamb, who once was slain.
And in the presence of your face the Lamb shall reign.

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Let the rain keep pouring it's sorrowful beat,
And the thunder roll its antagonizing drone.
So the Son can take His seat,
high upon that beautiful throne.
For the rain will turn the ground to mud.
and the thunder's clap will flee away.
Forgiveness will then be sealed by blood,
and soon will come that glorious day.
As for today when the rain falls in dreadful song,
we await for that day, but oh not for long.

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I wonder if you remember, the days long ago.
When love first whispered like a gentle snow.
I proceeded with caution, for far too long.
By the time I was ready you were far too gone.
I think about it, now and again.
Those memories are still strong from way back then.
I wish there were some way that it would work out.
But everyday I continue to doubt.
I would take you in, with arms open wide.
Your past, your present, your mistakes and pride.
But I'm afraid it will not come to pass,
My hopes turned wishes now shattered like glass.
Will I see you again? Only the Lord knows.
But I will wait here still, waiting again for that snow.

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Living in a world not my home,
Forever standing in a crowd but feeling alone.
They will tell you to follow those in front,
But were it not them that set the trend?
The world, oh how full of hypocrites, tells you what you want.
They tell you who to be or you won't be loved.
The world will say they're right, without giving ear to the other side.
And they will not let you fit in, no matter how hard you try.
They made you believe them, but oh what a lie.
They led you into a trap, and now, now you're left to die.

Prayer

At youth group tonight my pastor talked about prayer. Which I absolutely love, talking about and doing. Plus I think our church doesn't put that much of an emphasis on it but recently we have been and it's awesome. And I am eager to make it more a part of my life. But anyways, I write about this because I want to talk about how we should approach the answer to the prayers.

I want to start out by stating that all prayers are answered. Yes, all of them. But here's the catch. God answers the prayers, but it is not always the way we think it would be. For example, we may ask for deliverance from lust. He will not just take it away immediately. This is coming from my experiences, but I believe that God will often choose the answer to our prayer that will teach us something and make us better because of it. Because God wants to see us changed so that it will not happen again, and also that we develop patience.

Patience is key in prayer because after you pray, God might take days or minutes to answer you, or he might take years. But who are we to complain?

I feel like the toughest answer though, is when God tells you to wait and be patient. Because that's when you are still facing your problem and it isn't getting better, but it is in that moment that we either trust God or turn from God. And sadly many turn from God to try to do it on their own.

I know this is short but I feel like prayer is such a key component in a Christians life because it gives us a direct communication to our savior and creator. Plus it teaches us to be less self reliant and more trusting in God to act for us instead of us as humans taking things into our sinning hands.
So that's all I had for tonight but I just wanted to talk about prayer a little bit. And we can never pray too much.

Daydreaming

It's been awhile, but I finally have a night to write and something to actually talk about. I have really been struggling lately with reading my Bible and having a good attitude about God in general. And I also have a tendency to become complacent with being good and not saying certain things. But as I've come to grow further away from God, I have come to realize the importance of being close to God and how much my life needs my Savior in it. That doesn't make things easy though. Old habits aren't easily broken. But sometimes God adds the little extra push needed. 

That sometime came tonight when I went to Cru for the first time in a while. It was kind of a spontaneous decision to go, and I had fun and saw friends which is always good. But the message the speaker had spoke to me, maybe not in the way one would think because I have an odd tendency to take something and understand it completely different. Tonight the speaker was talking about how Christ values us and is waiting for us to go, to make that decision to fully trust him, or at least that's the gist of it. He mentioned having a Ready. Set. Go. Attitude. What hit me was how I think I have the "go" down, but I really don't, at least for the present.

I have spent my whole high school career waiting to be senior to have a big impact on my school, but now that it is here, I haven't lived up to my own expectations and I have just been lazy and making excuses to not having an effect. You see, I have wanted to be a pastor for sometime, and I have that set as my goal and all  I can think about is what things like when I will be a pastor. Yet I am missing the point. I am daydreaming. I am wasting such good opportunities to have an impact now. Every Christian, whether or not you are a pastor, should be trying to influence this world. I just think sometimes that I will do it later. I guess that is just my procrastination coming into play. Once God has brought this up to me tonight, I have sort of been ticked at myself for wasting such good chances to spread the word of God and better the world. I need to work in the here and the now. And I also want to stop daydreaming. It's ruining any sort of productivity I have and it makes me take things for granted that God has not even given me yet. One Christian cliche is that God will use you where you are right now, and it's a cliche for a reason, because it's true. 

Now coming from experience, be an impact where you are right now. You do not want to miss the chances God is giving to you to advance the kingdom of heaven. You may take this to heart, and I pray that you do, but may also overlook all of this and think me crazy, which would be true. But one day you will look back and wish you had acted now. So Ready. Set. Go.

Absolute Truth

First, I want to get one thing off my chest, I believe that Christianity is the only way to God. Therefore I believe in absolute truth. But there is one thing I cannot stomach about this phrase. Too often do people believe in absolute truth, and degrade other religions by following what they think to be their way. I am not saying the other religions are right, but I do believe that most religions have ounces of truth in each of them, or at least a common goal behind them.

            Almost all religions agree that something has gone wrong in humanity, that there is suffering, and that there is some sort of hope. Therefore there is something driving everyone to believe in something, whether it is Islam, Buddhism, or you name it. But I only believe that there is one religion, one way that holds the full truth, the absolute truth, in their teachings and beliefs. That is Christianity. Not the fanatical and stereotypical “I hate everyone who is not Christian” type of Christianity, but the kind that the Bible portrays, and the type that Jesus lived.

            Now I do not believe that Christians have it all together, and that we are all perfect. No, that is not even close. Because the truth is, and the Bible recognizes this, is that we are all sinners. Not one is perfect. And we Christians, despite all our aspirations, come not even close. But only to God are we made perfect through the blood of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. I do not want to stray away though, from the fact that Christianity does indeed offer answers to the questions that so haunt our daily lives. “Why am I here? What purpose do I serve? What is the meaning of life?” The answer that God offers though is not well received well by the world because the world cannot know it. Darkness cannot know light. The answer is that we are here to serve God and to give Him praise because he created us. Now one might argue that God may be a tad bit selfish for creating us to please him. To which my answer would be, “If you made a meal with beef, you would not want the beef to sit up and say “I think it’s very selfish of you that you made this entire meal and wanted it all for yourself. Why don’t I have the right to not be eaten?” The point is that that beef was made for a purpose, to be eaten and to satisfy your hunger. So as humans, our purpose is to please God and serve Him because that is why we were created.

            My next point is that Christianity does indeed offer the answers to how we got on this Earth, all without requiring as much faith as Darwinism or the big bang theory.

You would expect me to believe that the started with a huge explosion and somehow, for we do not how, there was matter that just appeared and created the earth and the stars and the universe, and that once the particles matured enough, they developed into some sort of monkeys that turned into humans? I thought I was crazy until I heard that myth. I wonder, if the scientist that created that myth, ever thought about how complex and intelligently this world was created with all of the humans, animals, food chains and natural beauty before they said that it started with a few particles. I don’t know about anyone reading this, but I have never seen two dust particles or something just come up and make some sort of living being. Christianity offers up the truth that this world was thought up by a God who is and who always was. That is the only explanation for how we came to be so complex, and different…yet so intriguingly similar.

            Have you ever noticed that most people all have similar things driving us? We all desire to be loved. We all have a moral code so that we know what is right and wrong. We all worship something, whether it is some sort of god or material possession or even ourselves. I could go on about what we all have in common. The direction I am going with this, is that how could we all be so similar without having the same God creating us?

And have you ever noticed how the things that make who we are, are never truly our own. Our thoughts are usually driven by society, our art is inspired by nature and our lives our shaped by what others tell us to do and not do. You see? Nothing is ever truly original, nothing that we say, do, wear, or think is truly our own. We as humans are impacted by outside things like nature, media, and especially other people. This leads me to my conclusion. We are in this thing together. You don’t change the world by yourself. An individual trying to change the world will only be another sound until someone takes time to hear them. All the time, we reflect back into history and look at Gandhi or Martin Luther King Junior, and even though they are individuals, the only reason they made any sort of impact was because they have a following who reveres them.

            Back to absolute truth. Absolute truth is something that is consistently looked down upon in the world, because it is responded to by “stop being so closed minded” or other similar things. But the ironic thing is that the more open minded you are, the more you lose track of who you are and what makes an individual independent. But if you believe in absolute truth, it is much easier to know who you are and what you believe in because you are grounded in something.

            I want to mention again how absolute truth is not all that it seems. Just because a person believes in absolute truth, it does not mean that he should look down upon other religions just because they know that their religion is the only way. Instead, that person should approach the other understanding that their motives are the same, but only the other has been misled by the schemes of the devil.

            What I have come to realize is that this world has been defiled by sin, but there is hope. Hope in the cross. Hope in the Christ. Hope in the church. There is always hope.