Sunday, February 24, 2013

The Sheer Magnitude of Eternity

God wants my time. I do my absolute best to keep Him in everything I do, and in everything I plan on doing. He doesn't need my time though. After all, I cannot possibly learn Spanish, read more, do more artwork (drawing and painting), get better at my chosen career, and work on this blog simultaneously. Funny thing is, God's creation does all of that, and so much more, at exactly the same time. So, while there's lots of things I can do, God can do all of them, and does, at the exact same time.  I know that time management experts have tips and tricks for multi-tasking, but God didn't really design the human brain to be like that.
I am currently reading about God's design of the human brain, in this book: Welcome to Your Brain. It's a bit like a neuroscience for beginners book - which is perfect for me. Something that the book has made fairly obvious - we have powerful brains. But, as I'm typing this blog, my brain is filtering out the other noises and sensations going on around me. It is not mentally, or for that matter physically, possible for me to start working on a drawing and typing at the same time. If I tried to write with one hand, and draw with my other, I'd end up drawing letters and typing words that were in a given shape. As a trifle example: erfcxs is the shape of a circle, typed counterclockwise. Some of you have seen my handwriting. Imagine how much worse it would be if I tried to write something while focusing on also typing something. Eesh.
It's possible to focus our attention in some cases on two things at once, but even that we don't do very well. I imagine that's why dietitians recommend against eating while watching television. The TV has our brain as a captive audience, so we don't really pay attention to how much we're eating, and tend to over-eat more when we do that.

Imagine a life where you could literally do everything you wanted and experience everything you wanted. That's God's eternity for us. If we want to learn more about computer science, we will have plenty of time to experiment and get better at it in eternity, so long as it supports His purpose. I wonder if God has an intranet in heaven... heh. If we want to get better at drawing or painting, we'll be able to learn from the great masters that also believed. Not that we would necessarily need to, the presence of God and His knowledge and ability would certainly be better at teaching us how to create than even the most esteemed of all human creators.

Though I imagine we could learn the history of languages easily while in Heaven, I doubt we will need to learn different languages. My imagination tells me we will all speak a new or different language in Heaven, God's language, and we will all understand each-other implicitly. Language is a barrier to understanding - one that God would have no problem destroying. The Holy Spirit communicates with us regularly in ways that we easily understand. So, once we're surrounded by it and embraced in it, I bet we all understand each other without any need for a translator.

Eternity and our eternal home, Heaven, are too big for human minds to comprehend. The God that made the universe - something so infinite we cannot possibly study all of it - also prepares our homes by His side. Some people I know consider spending time with God a waste of their time, mostly because they have a broken relationship with God. I say that spending time with God is the best use of my time, and that no matter what I'm doing, God is doing it with me too. So, it's better to do something for Him, and do so to glorify Him. I'm human, so I suck at that. But, Jesus came along to make it so that even with my inability to be a perfect saint, my Home in Eternity still waits for me.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Happy St. Valentine's Day

My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn't know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can't know him if you don't love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they've done to our relationship with God.  1 John 4:7-10 
Each holiday we celebrate, whether religious in origin or not, should serve as a reminder to us all that God wants us to remember Him, and that God loves us.  On a day intended for celebration of love, it seems fitting to turn to God first.  God gave us marriage so that we could know a fraction of His love during our mortal lives.  God gave us courtship so that we could understand what it's like to desire love. God even gave us sexual attraction so we could understand physical love (though - we have to be careful not to step into lust).

I've briefly researched the history of St. Valentine, and though it's not certain whether or not it was in fact one man - February 14 is now celebrated as St. Valentine's day.  He represented the Godly idea of supporting being in love, the act of loving, and love as a general term.  God so loved the world He gave His only Son.

Love, of all things, has significant importance in a relationship with God and Christ.  When we reach our eternal home, we will live in a spirit of undeniable and incredible love. Jesus died for us, because He loved us and wanted us by His side in eternity.  I think it's a good idea to say Happy Valentine's Day to anyone you'd like - God wants us to be His valentine - but not just on St. Valentine's day.

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Goodbye Facebook

I disabled my Facebook account.  Apparently it takes approximately two weeks for it t o go away completely, but it's already not possible to find me on Facebook, at least from what I can tell anyway.  Facebook has really done two things for me.

1) Invaded my privacy
2) Allowed me to play games with friends (and people Facebook calls friends).

In learning more about what God wants for my life, I've come to a pretty strong conclusion that Facebook actually does not fit into His plan for me.  Sure, it's supposed to be a good way to stay in touch with people.  In all reality, it's turned into more of a single sign-on platform, and less of a rich communication medium, than I would prefer.  Might I go back to Facebook some day.  Maybe - but if I do you can guess I won't be accepting friend requests from anyone other than my closest friends and family.  There's a higher chance that I won't even get back on at all.  Facebook has done a very good job of distracting me from other goals I have, most of which revolve around being a good Christian, none of which Facebook has really progressed.

There is one case where I was a little sad to turn of my Facebook account.  After many years, I reconnected with a childhood friend through Facebook.  Hopefully he'll see this - and know that I don't want our communications to stop just because I'm not on Facebook any more.  I'm not concerned about sharing my e-mail address on this page - so leave me a comment if you need it, and I'll do my best to get in touch with you.

God seems to have inspired me to leave Facebook behind.  I didn't even really hesitate when it came to hitting the deactivate button.  It's something I've been considering for a while, but haven't really followed through on until tonight.

It's going to take a bit of God's strength not to give up and turn my account back on in the next day or two.  I know that I don't need Facebook in my life, but the temptation to run right back to it because it's "easy" is pretty strong.  I guess it's kind of like the dark side of the force.  The quick and easy path... heh.

Hopefully the people I care to stay in touch with the most already know how to do that.  If not, hopefully we can find a way to connect without Facebook.  Time will tell, I suppose.