What I Write About

I write about the infinite number of intersections between every day life and the good news of the God who has come to get us.

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

A Parable at the Beach

Man, my wife was right last week when she noted that my more 'serious' posts got little love while the more trifling drew stronger response. Alas, here goes another attempt at thoughtfulness (meanwhile, thanks to Macon for allowing us all to cheer guilt-free for Team USA!).

This past Friday night the staff team arrived early to the student conference in order to prepare to host it. While the band was practicing, I took a moment to look out of the huge glass windows of our conference room that looked right onto the beach. I was in awe of the view--even Myrtle Beach doesn't look too bad when you get past all the tacky trinket stores and Hooters restaurants. The waves were crashing in, the sun had set about an hour earlier, the palm trees blew.

And then I noticed that I could see myself in the reflection of the glass. And I stopped looking out the window at the glorious view and I started to check myself out in the reflection. I'm not even sure what I was looking at--I don't have much hair, it was too dark to see if there was anything in my teeth.

At that moment the Lord broke in and made me aware of what I was doing...and how it is so much a parable of my life. He invites me into the beauty and wonder of his story and his work and I get distracted by looking at myself. "All is vanity" writes the author of Ecclesiastes. Indeed, and I need the Lord to free me to look past my own reflection in order to see something much, much greater.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

First, to somewhat explain the responses on the more trifling of posts...they're easy to respond to. The 'serious' ones require reflection, and time to sit on, and quite frankly, Alex, you express those thoughts better than I. So I let you do it :-)

Second, to offer something 'serious' (whatever that's about), I can readily agree with your moment of clarity at the beach. I see this as the ultimate human plight -- the ultimate pain of the Fall -- we see ourselves (the good, the bad, the ugly) instead of the glory of God, the glory of what could be, should be, and will be. As Lit said, "I am my own worst enemy." When we can't get past ourselves, we can't get to the fullness of the gospel, and it gets stale and shallow. Not that it ever really is, but our perception of it is. We learned this in the Scripture track and SGV track, right? God is always the hero of the story, it's never a human being. And sometimes the best application is merely our understanding of WHO GOD IS. I think that Todd is saying something similar -- that our "wow" moment of standing in front of the ocean invites us to reflect back on Jesus, how that offers us identity and purpose.

Macon said...

So while gazing at your self in the window, you were given insight into your soul. Seriously, dude, you take "personal reflection" to a whole new level!

Alex said...

Great thoughts, ya'll, I'm not sure if these are just sympathy posts, but I'll take them. I think the cool thing is that God stopped me and alerted me to what I was doing. Given the fact that I probably struggle with this a million times a day, I am grateful for a rare moment of lucidity in my battle against falling in love (or hate, as Katie inferred) with my own reflection...

Marshall said...

AK - great thoughts from the beach.
On the blog comment front, I have noticed the same thing. I wonder if there is a way for us to do "serious" posts that invite conversation, if that is what we want. I tend to just want to "teach" and that does not invite people in to comment but rather to just receive, which is cool, but I am trying to think about how dialogue might start, if that is what I am after.

Macon said...

I think that dialogue is fine, if that's what one is after. And it takes some work to craft a post which invites dialogue.

But it's also ok to write things that are just: here's what I think.

Also, in my limited experience of blogging, it seems that the more you write, the more people will respond to you. That is, just like in a face-to-face conversation, it takes people being comfortable with you before they're going to engage in any serious level.

So I think that "serious" comments will come, it just takes time for folks to become comfortable with you.

As I think about it some more: it's not just you that folks need to be comfortable with, it's also the other commenters on your blog, and what sort of tone you'll allow in the comment section. That, too, takes some time to establish. So enjoy the funny comments, and see them as the conversational bridge to comments of "substance."

(Though, imho, all of my funny comments are loaded with "substance"!)

Alex said...

macon, you're always loaded with some type of substance. i've appreciated the amount and depth of dialogue this week, it's fun to see the conversation develop and go it's own ways! mac, i think you're right about tone and comfort and all that. i definitely am not really all that upset about what gets responded to and what doesn't, it was more of a funny observation my wife made than anything else.