Triumph

For every child of God defeats this evil world by trusting Christ to give the victory. --1 John 5:4

I rediscovered this verse this week when I looked it up for a Bible study I am doing. Even though I have read through the Bible several times, what I love about the Good Book is that verses can still hit me as if I have never seen them before at all. The words are alive and God can make them new again to me.

This world is evil. There are no doubts about that and America is no exception. Murder, violence, robbery, sex crimes, adultery, and general sin abound. We have even nicknamed a popular US city as "Sin City" and this moniker does not seem to deter business in that area. We are not afraid of sin anymore because we no longer have the reverence for God that people once widely held. Many of us actually knowingly embrace sin as our personal rebellion. People may not like to talk about it, but God sees our sin and it hurts His heart. It also hurts His heart to see His own children giving into the evil of the world in areas of their lives.

We are all fallen creatures living in a fallen world, but God has given His children the power to overcome the world through Christ. Victory is ours--our gift from God by His grace when we accept Him into our hearts--if we believe it and accept it. By our own power, we have no victory over the evil of the world. But God is stronger than sin, no matter how widespread sin is since God has also seen fit to give us free will to rebel if we choose. If we accept who we are in Christ, sin no longer has a hold on us and no longer has to rule in our lives.

Certainly a difficult feat to put into practice if we are not constantly focused on God and constantly in His word. Since sin is all around us, we would have to walk around with bags over our heads and ear plugs in our ears to avoid temptation altogether. God's goal, however, is not to keep us isolated from temptation, but rather to test and try us so that we become stronger spiritually and can resist the temptation in front of us through God's power working in us. We are to live in the world (as fallen as it is) but we are not to become like the world. And God has given us His spirit so that we can overcome the ways of the world through His grace.

I'll say it again: victory is already ours. Christ won it for us on the cross. But if we don't accept it, we cannot harness the power to overcome the evil that surrounds us. If we don't start living like the battle is already won (which it is, both now and in the long haul, see Revelations), we will either become frustrated and despairing at our inevitable failings or we will take the approach that the rest of the world takes--give up and sin because it's just easier that way. When we accept Christ and become His children, God sets us apart from the rest of the world even as we walk around in it. Let's start living as people set apart.

A conversation on the way out of the gym today

ME: blah, blah, blah...that was our neighbor...blah, blah...I don't like him...blah, blah...insulted our dog...blah, blah...my baby...blah, blah, blah...

*Suddenly noticing the blank stare on my companion's face*

ME: Are you even listening?

JOHN: What? Huh?

ME: That's what I thought...

Childhood

Someone emailed me this image today:

This simple picture evokes all of my feelings of nostalgia for childhood. I may have never dove headfirst into a pile of leaves from so far up in the air, but what I miss about being young is being completely carefree. I miss playing. I still have fun and "play" in my grown up way, but with bills to pay and work to do, I don't think I've had the complete carefree joy that this little boy exhibits in this one simple act of childhood fun. This picture also makes me want to work in an elementary school or have some kids of my own so that I can watch as they discover life and delight in all that we adults take for granted. Raking leaves is now a chore instead of a chance for fun. Even though the fall means kids are back to school, they still play as hard as (or harder than) they work. I wish I could still say that I play as much as I work, but those days where fun mattered most and responsibility was minimal have drastically diminished as I've aged. So I fantasize about working with young children in a preschool or elementary school because I long to be surrounded by that kind of freedom again even I'm only living it vicariously.

Cult

I am beginning to suspect that my new gym is some type of cult. It has all the signs--perky people trying desperately to recruit new members, brainwashing techniques that make you feel worthless so that you become desperate for the hope they promise, and obstacles at the door if you try to leave once they've sucked you in. John and I joined this new gym because of the nice facility, state of the art equipment, and abundance of natural light (my reason more than John's, I think). On our first day, they gave us fitness assessments to scare us into spending more money to improve our body compositions and fitness levels. We, of course, fell for their ploy hook, line, and sinker, but as our first week went on, we noticed that this gym seems to have a strong focus on selling products and services that are probably unnecessary for the average Jane and Joe (like us) who doesn't plan on competing in an Olympic event. And what makes matters worse is that in spite of how unnecessary this stuff is, the staff at my gym go about selling the products by essentially saying that without the product, no one will acheive the results you want. Logically, this is not the case. People have acheived results for years before this technology was even available. To me, this pushiness with a smile reminds me of a cult, not a gym. No gym that I have gone to before has been so forceful in trying to get everyone to fit the same mold and do the same things. And while most gym staff is laid back, these people are as sickeningly perky as they are unabashedly pushy in their brainwashing tactics. And once you pay for one thing, they think you're a true sucker and they try to convince you to pay for something else. For example, John and I bought heart rate monitors, but then we were told that to most accurately determine how hard we should be working, we need to pay $90 each for another assessment. I'm quite happy with the approximation I made up in my head for free. I will have to learn to turn my headphones on as soon as I walk out of the locker room so that I can enjoy my workout in peace without being told that the only way I'll ever be good enough is to buy into a philosophy and practice that my wallet simply cannot afford.

Valentine's Day

Today is Valentine's day. A holiday that is truly a greeting card holiday, but one that John makes sure I enjoy. We said we wouldn't get each other gifts this year, but I got a delivery in my office. A box of M & M's that he had personalized to say "I love you, Kim". This gesture was a big hit in my office since many people didn't even know it was possible to get these candies personalized. John knows how to make me smile the brightest. Last night, he surprised me by taking me out to dinner. I wasn't expecting to go out at all since he has to work tonight and I have Bible study. Yet John decided not to be bound by the calendar and he took me to the Melting Pot last night for a Valentine's Day meal where we both indulged ourselves to the point of stuffed-ness. Starting a meal with hot cheese and ending it with melted chocolate is the fastest route to my heart. But the best part about being married to John cannot be summed up in his sweetness over the past two days. John is sweet all year. He's regularly surprising me and making me smile and he enjoys finding new ways to continually woo me even though I've already committed my life to him. I don't know how I got so lucky to end up with someone who is so good to me, but I'm grateful for who he is as much as what he does. His actions are simply reflections of his generous and caring heart.

Boot Camp

Our new gym, which opened on Friday, offers fitness assessments to determine how old your body feels versus hold old your body actually is. John and I took advantage of this opportunity, knowing that our results would probably not be ideal. I won't say what John's results were, but I learned that even though I just turned 28, my body age is 29. I attribute this more to my diet than to my fitness regimen. See, I know that I don't eat as well as I know I should, but I like to pretend the exercise I regularly engage in is enough to counterbalance my eating habits. I found out yesterday that it's not. Sure, my body doesn't feel that much older than it actually is, but it would appear that my 2-3 times a day chocolate indulgences are killing me slowly.

Without divluging how old John's body feels, I'll just say that John and I were both so taken aback by our results, that we signed up for the boot camp program at our gym. What this means is that we are paying our gym extra money for the privelage of waking up at 4:30am five days a week for 12 weeks in order to get to the gym by five to go through military-style training. Neither of us has the discipline to do this on our own, so hopefully the financial commitment will be what we need to get our acts together. My fitness assessment stated that I have the potential to go from body age of 29 to body age of 18 if I just take care of some problems (like body composition, VO2 max, and flexibility). This boot camp will supposedly help me on this path, even though I'm already a little nervous about how my body is going to react to having to run before the sun rises.

Kanye Needs a BIG Dose of Humility

Was it last year or the year before that Kanye West announced that he should have won every grammy he was up for because he was that good?

Well, apparently this year he thinks he should actually be in the Bible.

What a fascinating amount of arrogrance! Unfortunately for Kanye, I don't think that the Bible, a modern version or the ancient original, would ever use words that can't be played on radio. There's actually some stuff in the Good Book about not using coarse language, so putting Kanye's lyrics in there would be a bit of a contradiction.

Since it should be clear to most people that Kanye is not going to appear in the Bible unless it is as an example of what not to do, the next question for the press will be to decide if his statement is better or worse than the infamous Beatles line that they are "bigger than Jesus."

All Grown Up

My brother got married last night. The ceremony was beautiful, his new wife was beautiful, I ate too much, drank a lot of free wine, and danced the night away. I woke up this morning without a hangover but with an inexplicable feeling of emptiness in my stomach. I know that at events like weddings I am painfully cognizant of how little is left of my family. My mother and I were the only people at the wedding who bear any realtion to my brother. But I don't think it is grief at the loss of any of my relatives that left me feeling like I had a hole in my stomach this morning. I also know that I am harboring some bitterness about my exclusion from participating in the wedding as anything more than a guest, but I don't think that's the reason for my emptiness either. My brother has been with Lauren for over five years, and they've been engaged for 4 of those years. I have had plenty of time to prepare for their marriage. But today I feel like something is different. I talked to John about it, and he told me that he felt the same kind of feeling after his younger sister got married. There is something about marriage that makes everything permanently different. My brother is no longer really my "baby brother," he's now an adult with a wife. We are more separate than we were before. I am definitely happy for him and for Lauren, but I feel like a door has shut. Growing up, my brother and I were very close. We did not battle any type of sibling rivalry and we certainly did not fight the way brothers and sisters often do. As we became adults, we grew apart instead of closer together. I realize now that our relationship will never be what it was again. We have new families now and what we had cannot be restored. It is that change that I am internally mourning right now. I asked John why I didn't feel this ball in my stomach when the two of us got married. He said that it's different when it's us. It's not so different in terms of the change that marriage brings, but it is certainly different in terms of my feelings and my perception. I've been married for almost 7 months, but it took my brother's wedding for it to hit me that I'm not a little girl anymore.