you gotta do what you gotta do.

sometimes you've just gotta blog. and use "words" like "gotta" (and later, awesome things like "btw").
i cannot, in good faith, say that i have very much to write about at this moment, but if i don't start writing nonsense i'll probably never write any sense.

next wednesday marks two months since coming back to oregon. how do i feel about that...





dunno.

but i will say this: God is good. and not because of this or that, it's just who He is. yes He has done good things, amazingly good things, and He will continue to, i am certain of it. and, for that matter, He's doing a good thing now. i just don't see it, sort of how a plant doesn't see the goodness in the pruning.

but faith isn't faith if you can see. faith is faith precisely because you can't see, yes?

and obviously the blindness alone doesn't prove the faith, blindness+belief is what we need--what i need.

this is how we bash down the enemy and combat his lies. he says that God is not good, not faithful, not just. he tells us, just as he told eve, that God is withholding something good from us. and when we give up and agree--there is no point in persevering, God will not come through--we say that satan's rebellion against the Lord was completely justified. we say that the deceiver is telling the truth.

pfff. in the words of the great wrestler, nacho libre: get that corn outta my face! (okay so it's not totally applicable, but it's the feeling of it)

the deal is, standing strong in the face of total chaos or confusion or unknown voids or broken dreams, dead ambitions, relinquished desires: if you can stand there and declare, even in a whisper, "God is good. God is faithful. God is just." then you say to the enemy, "you are wrong." and to the world, "don't listen to him."

"curse God and die!"
shut up, woman!

the victory of Job was not that he skipped and giggled his way through his trial (which satan gave him, not God, btw) his victory was that he refused to side with satan and man (and woman) and say that God was unjust, unfaithful, inherently not good.
he was confused and hurt and his perspective shrunk as the trial went on and he asked hard questions, but he refused to stand down. refused the concede that God must really not be good.

and God refused to concede job's fruitfulness. he refused to let job's life fizzle out into oblivion.

what a beautiful partnership...

God had to remind him of a few things towards the end there ("hey dude, do you know when all the forest creatures have babies? have you counted the stars?") because job wasn't perfect, he was human, but job knew God. and he stood by God. and he knew that God was standing by him. and satan hung his head (or haughtily put up his nose) and walked away defeated.

what an honour. to be on God's team. and win. every time.

i feel like a benched player at the moment. but the team is [always] winning. and i only lose if i defect to the other side. and i will not defect. and i know i'll be back in the game when i've had enough rest, recovery and gatorade (or coconut water, google it).

but mostly i feel like i'm standing blindfolded, knowing nothing of where i'll be led or when or how or if, perhaps, i am presently on a barge floating slowly toward some magnificent unknown land. and i question it, admittedly, quite frequently: still? why? can i know where yet? here? is here okay? can we go faster? did we really have to move in the first place?
but each question has a secondary punctuation of Godisgood. Godisfaithful. Godisredeeming.

and there's the underlying certainty that God paid too high a price for me to let me stay where i am forever and slowly sink into the ground. because underneath are the everlasting arms, yes? most certainly.

does an apple tree stare in jealous longing at the winter berries? i bet so. if it had eyes. but we all know that spring will come and with it bring leaves and then fruit to the apple tree. i just need the same faith for me.

for now my perpetual cry is, "i believe! help my unbelief."

and there's a bit of staring at the sky.
and a bit of staring at the ground.

God is good. God is faithful. God is just.

take that satan.