i'm finding out, rather abruptly, that leadership is lonely. I am in a new position and am now the boss of a group of people i used to be dear friends with. the friendships are still there and in some ways have deepened, however there is a distinct difference that is easting at me. People turn to you to solve issues, people turn to you to resolve conflict, they look to you to lead. There is a type of pressure on you and the tempation is to take that pressure and try to solve the problems they ask you to in my own strength. The downfall of that is that strength is found in the weak, since strength is a gift from God himself. When we ask ourselves what our greatest good is, we tend to think about helping people, but the down fall of helping people as the greatest good is when we die, our ministry dies with us. When we place Jesus as the greatest good, when we die, the part we played ends, but the ministries grows in glory through our death. I am learning that we lead best through our weakness and living in honesty through them. By openly showing my mistakes i invite people into brokenness and allow them to show my grace and also allow myself to die. Jesus has a habit of calling misfits and rebels to him for his purposes and i am learning i am a small rebel that he is redeeming to make his instrument. Moses was a murderer and had temper problems, abraham gave his wife away, jacob cheated and lied his way to power, david lusted, solomon doubted and lost faith, peter denied jesus, and paul killed the church. The beauty of this is the story is not about us. Your life is not about you and your success, rather the story of a faithful God loving his unfaithful lover. Our job is more to represent rather than to save, to exist in something instead of recreating. Death becomes another beautiful thing that just takes us one step closer to our faithful lover.

Peter and josh are laying down on the couches and i am sitting on the floor while watching ninja warrior. Peter leaves to go to the bathroom and i take his couch. Josh and i decided to make a cautionary limerick about peter loosing his seat

peeing peter lost is seat
while his bladder went to weep

use this to guide your seating decisions.

a brief picture of saint mary st:

the setting: blinds drawn, door open, five people in the living room around sun set. Music is lightly playing in the background and the room is gradually getting darker much like our eyes and everything dims out the conversation slowly stops and we all begin to doze off. Peter falls asleep holding his new thommy gun and his hood up, billy falls asleep in another car reading an article on his phone, mike and abby are asleep while cuddling on the couch, and i am asleep with my legs on top of mike. an hour later we all come to gradually with just the street light coming in through the open door. it was a beautiful moment as murmurs of conversation began to grow into loud laughs and an unspoken love floating through our houses odd relationship that is a family.

Saint mary st.

YYYEEEEHHHHAAAWWWWWW

Sorrowing I shall be in spirit,
Till released from flesh and sin,
Yet from what I do inherit,
Here Thy praises I’ll begin;
Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Here by Thy great help I’ve come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.

I'm realizing distraction is the death of belief

It is 3:35 am where i am at. The night has crept up on me in a sort of timeless floating. It is an interesting state to be simply content and without any obligations. i'm growing fond of this.

I am growing fond of wandering, geographically that is. It is only a day after christmas and i have already had an interesting break. It has been one of those interesting breaks involving answers and still yet more questions. answers typically branch out two more questions, so, that is normal. in the past few weeks, more than anything, i am seeing more and more glimpses of what eternity is. mostly in that i am actually understanding on the emotional level what heaven is. The more and more bound i am becoming in eternity, since i am completely bound, i am more and more free right now. Not just in a sense where i am experiencing a sense of brief emotional freedom, that is included, but so much more.

You know when you are a kid and you eventually realized you can play outside the fence, see the woods, conquered the hoards that roam the woods as a knight, build massive kingdoms, and conquer even more? From that moment on, you only want to jump the fence and go onto build, conquer, rescue, and fight. The mental change i have been having is somewhat along that lines. I really have no desire to start a career, buy the house, raise the suburban family. I have no doubt i could, since i have done stranger things. The day you realize you are bound up in a perfect eternity, God loves you, and God is sovereign you have so much freedom to pursue what you want to do and not be bound up in the struggle for meager amounts of success that jive with the standard way of living.

There might be a reason why so many christians are crazy. think about how many missionaries give up everything just to tell someone something? What frees them to cut ties to everything to go just tell people a simple message? in the same light, i am not bound to a career job. why not have two, three, four, and even five in a lifetime? Mostly i just have an itch to travel, live, and enjoy other cultures and countries and i am realizing all the advice i heard all the years ago to find a job and settle into it is not terribly biblical. i am not advocating bad financial decisions, since i am finding ways to earn money with traveling. Think about this though, you have been given the freedom to pursue what you want to in a glorifying manner. I have started studying men who i look up to in the historical sense. G.K. chesterton, c.s. lewis, teddy rosevelt, churchill, and i am finding in both the intellectual and physical sense the things they pursued were often times considered odd by their peers and their response when questioned why they were doing what they were doing was, " why not?" i can't give a good answer other than intense freedom is an uncomfortable thing unless you are rooted in eternity.

it is now 4:04 am