it's a bird, it's a plane, no, it's superman

as a young male, i simple love to watch a good super hero movie with some cool effects and stuff in it. i love the idea of a person fighting for what they believe in, the greater good, and using their super powers to do it. i am enthralled by it, it excites me. why do young people like it though? why do we like to sit and watch other "people" do amazing things when we know it can't happen and that we ourselves will never be able to do anything like it? it is, i believe, the little man syndrome but not the one that we normal think.
the normal little man syndrome is that a small person get big toys, basically. this one though is that a little person, i.e. a human, looks to "big people" i.e. super heroes, instead of the original big person. we all love to be friends with the biggest guy cuz we then have protection from everything, or at least everything that is smaller then the person. we long for this and we need it. we like to feel protected. we like to watch people with god-like powers because we like to feel protected or important or powerful.
God was, and is, and is to be the first and only big person. we are like this in our nature because God made us this way in order that we would be in awe of Him. we love to watch super powers because we love to be amazed. God has ever super power and more, He has all power, yet so few tend to look to Him. we might say because we can't see His power, but just watch a sun rise and you see His power in moving the sun into the correct position of the sky, providing light for us, and making it all beautiful to our eyes, all at the same time. He could have simple made light, like He did the first day, and not have given us all the beauty to go along with it. God is good though and He wants to do those things for us, so that we have even more reasons and reminders to praise Him for it. we are under and can be best friends with the God we created the world in a word, flooded the world with a word, clothed the lily in it's beauty, and who saved us from our depravity. we should be looking to Him all the more and forgetting about the people who have only imaginary powers. look to the one who has all power.

the mind of a child

i went to the beach today and while sitting there in the sun, i was listening to some of the kids play around me. it was interesting to me to hear the things that these kids cared about, nothing really out of the ordinary, just the basic things but things that just don't really matter. this then caused me to compare it to an old person who is on their death bed, and the only likely and probably things that they would think on would be death and what would happen after death and the things of life after death.
so, why the change? how do we go from simple having fun to thinking only of the things of the next world? while i may only be 19, it seems to me that the closer we get to death or the time that is suspected for death to come, the more we tend to think on it. no baby thinks of death, but a 110 year old person should have it constantly on their mind.
while this may be the norm, what if it wasn't? the old are always saying how they wished they would have lived while the young are always saying how they are going to live but what if the old lived how they had wished while the young would live as they plan. much more would be accomplished if the youth embraced their youth and if the old would train to youth how to do it.
i am a 19 year old who shook hands with death then turned and came back. i would say that i am one of the few youths who are living as the elder because i now feel like the elder. with this though, even though i have made mistakes that i already regret, i now can live the life that i would have wanted to live if i had lived to an old age. the youth must start to act old when they are young so that when they are old they will then have a life that they can be proud to have. we must live the lives that we plan and not just simple plan them.

blessed? or cursed?

while listening to the New Testament today at work, i heard the passage of Matthew 6:25-34 which talks about how God cares for His own. hearing this made me think back on something that i have been thinking on for the last couple of days, which is that what ever God gives to us, whether bad or good, is really for our best. even thinking of myself and my ailments, they are all perfect for me, for the have made me grow so much and have also helped me in deciding what i think God what me to do with my life. it is interesting though how if i tell a nonbeliever about my life, they instantly say, "oh, i'm sorry" while i have to quickly reply, "why? im not." the world can not make sense of people who are calm and joyful in the face of a difficult situation. it doesn't make sense to them.
also, thinking upon this more also brought to mind David in the Old Testament. in 2 Samuel 24:10-14 david got into trouble and he is faced with a choice of three punishments, one from nature, one from man, and one from God. David choose to be punished by God because he would rather put himself into the hands of a merciful God rather then into any of situation. now if david could trust God in punishment, shouldn't we also trust Him in everyday life? the answer is yes, for we do serve a merciful, loving God who wants the best for us. this does not mean that we get what we want because what we want is not generally what is best for us. we must learn to submit, wait, trust, and then to see the fruition of God's blessings, for even a "curse" can turn out to be a blessing.
a 17 year old athlete dying would seem like a curse, but a year later, no one who was effected by the boys death and resurrection would change what had happened, because we can now see that through this "curse" huge blessings came from it, whether it be learning to trust God, learning what to do with one's life, or anything else that someone else might have experience through it all. our God is good, we must learn to fully believe that, and trust that our good God will bring about good for us.

duality of man

when created and put on this earth, God put into man passions that drove men to better this life. we are people of duality, having multiply passions and interests. this is perfect, for God created us this way, but only when our supreme passion is that of Christ. all other things will fall and burn, yet Christ has defeated death already, He will not fail.
with these passions, there must be a balance, with the balance tipped towards God. how are we to accomplish this if the things of this world are ever pressing, to the point that we forget the God who is ever present. a correct view of God will help us, as well as putting things that we would trip and fall over that will remind us of our great God. the greatest help to us though it prayer, for that one thing helps to strengthen us and allows us to commune with God, with no need of a priest. this is the best of blessings, to be able to call on God.

of God's faithfulness

perhaps the most obvious example of how faithful God is shown through life in general. for if God ever were to not be faithful, even for a second, all would cease to exist for God is the one to hold it all together.
it is also shown more fully, however through His faithfulness to remember and fulfill all of His promises and prophesies. He is the only one who has never failed and will never fail because He tells us that He will never fail. all other beings and religions have fallen at some point, but God is perfectly faithful and has not lied yet.
He is faithful

make war

man's man

well, i just finished watching the disney movie "tarzan" and while this is a completely vile movie because it is laced with the evolutionary hypothesis (thanks leila) which is slowly conveyed to the children who watch the movie in a way that they love, tarzan is a man's man. he kills a leopard with a spear, which i can safely say that i will never do, and can tree surf which is pretty cool.

while watching this, i actually got sick to my stomach and had to fight tears because i wanted to be like that to my future family (if God wills). looking into tarzan's actions further though, it is not so much that he can do all that stuff that is amazing, but the fact that he is willing to try. it is not the fact that he can kill the leopard, but that he is willing to try to fight it in order to save those that he loves. while i can never even run after a guy, one thing that i am willing to do is to die for someone i care for. i know for sure that if given a choice, i would gladly give up my life for just about anyone for the simple fact that 1) i know where i am going when i die 2) that place that i am going is going to be amazing 3) i would rather leave this life then to have someone else leave it who is perhaps not ready to die or who may enjoy this life more then i would enjoy it or the fact that i could perhaps not stand to live without that person (such as my unknown future wife or current family) 4) perhaps my sacrifice could bring about the one who i saved salvation which would be worthy of dying 1000 times or more in order to save that one soul (though it is really Christ through Scripture that saves).

so, while i may not be a worldly man's man because i can do actually very little, i hope that i can say and that it can be said of me that i am a God's man, for that is all that really matters to me and all that really actually matters.

life isn't worth living if you don't have something higher to live for