Friday, March 25, 2011
Perhaps it makes me a little bit of a dork, but I consider myself pretty youtube savvy. I just really like watching short videos. It's about all my attention span can handle. However, I had never seen this video until one of my friends showed it to me last night:
Seriously? This is an embarrassment to every sane person in the state of North Carolina... and the entire world. Honestly, it's hard not to laugh at some of the things these people do and say. Yet, at the same time, watching this video makes me a little angry. There are people DYING everywhere around the world! People- PEOPLE- are starving, they are being trafficked and sold into slavery (domestic labor and sexual). There are children being taken out of their homes to become soldiers. There are people in the world who experience more hurt and pain in one day than I could ever imagine experiencing in a lifetime. And these activists are screaming and wailing about cutting down trees and the life of rocks! Maybe I am just ignorant and inexperienced, but that is just ridiculous. Watching this video, though, got me thinking: what if Christians were that passionate about the things that really DO matter?
I was studying the word passion recently because it is a topic that has come up a lot this semester, and I learned that though it is defined today as "strong and barely controllable emotion," (OED) it comes from the Latin word 'pati' meaning "to suffer". It's kind of a hard concept for me to grasp, and I don't think I have a complete handle on it yet- the idea of passion and suffering going together. Yet, watching this video, it is obvious that the passion and the suffering of these activitst, ridiculous though they may be, go hand-in-hand. So, watching this video, there were two questions that came to my mind:
Question One: What if we cried out to God with the same passion? What difference would that make in how we relate to God? What if we sought Him out with such yearning and burning in our hearts? Trees don't talk back. I know that's such a silly statement, but I think that these people were crying and screaming to the trees more fervently than I sometimes do to a great, holy, yet personal, active God.
Question Two: What if we were burdened for people like they were burdened? What impact would that make on the world around us? Something that I've learned about myself is that, generally, I have a passion for people. Yet, I struggle to have a passion for persons. What if my passion was to see lives saved like these people wanted to see the trees saved? What if I acted on such a passion? Once again, you are not likely to get a response from a tree or a rock, but people are an investment. What kind of response would that bring? I guess what I'm trying to say is that I want to be consumed in passion for God and for worshipping Him through sharing with others. I don't mean that I want to walk around screaming and crying all the time, but I do want to have a sense of burden for things of eternal significance that mimics their passion for things of less importance. I want to have a yearning to know God and a passion for people.
God, Refine me of the selfish desires of my heart, and fill me with a passion for You and for Your people.
Seriously? This is an embarrassment to every sane person in the state of North Carolina... and the entire world. Honestly, it's hard not to laugh at some of the things these people do and say. Yet, at the same time, watching this video makes me a little angry. There are people DYING everywhere around the world! People- PEOPLE- are starving, they are being trafficked and sold into slavery (domestic labor and sexual). There are children being taken out of their homes to become soldiers. There are people in the world who experience more hurt and pain in one day than I could ever imagine experiencing in a lifetime. And these activists are screaming and wailing about cutting down trees and the life of rocks! Maybe I am just ignorant and inexperienced, but that is just ridiculous. Watching this video, though, got me thinking: what if Christians were that passionate about the things that really DO matter?
I was studying the word passion recently because it is a topic that has come up a lot this semester, and I learned that though it is defined today as "strong and barely controllable emotion," (OED) it comes from the Latin word 'pati' meaning "to suffer". It's kind of a hard concept for me to grasp, and I don't think I have a complete handle on it yet- the idea of passion and suffering going together. Yet, watching this video, it is obvious that the passion and the suffering of these activitst, ridiculous though they may be, go hand-in-hand. So, watching this video, there were two questions that came to my mind:
Question One: What if we cried out to God with the same passion? What difference would that make in how we relate to God? What if we sought Him out with such yearning and burning in our hearts? Trees don't talk back. I know that's such a silly statement, but I think that these people were crying and screaming to the trees more fervently than I sometimes do to a great, holy, yet personal, active God.
Question Two: What if we were burdened for people like they were burdened? What impact would that make on the world around us? Something that I've learned about myself is that, generally, I have a passion for people. Yet, I struggle to have a passion for persons. What if my passion was to see lives saved like these people wanted to see the trees saved? What if I acted on such a passion? Once again, you are not likely to get a response from a tree or a rock, but people are an investment. What kind of response would that bring? I guess what I'm trying to say is that I want to be consumed in passion for God and for worshipping Him through sharing with others. I don't mean that I want to walk around screaming and crying all the time, but I do want to have a sense of burden for things of eternal significance that mimics their passion for things of less importance. I want to have a yearning to know God and a passion for people.
God, Refine me of the selfish desires of my heart, and fill me with a passion for You and for Your people.
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