Salt and Bland Religion

I watched two episodes of a TV series yesterday that were absolutely hilarious and would be super easy for me to get addicted to. But as I watched them, the question, "Is this honoring to my king?" kept running through my mind. I tried to avoid answering the question, but I knew what it was. While funny, much of the content exonerated things that I simply can't condone. As much as I wanted to keep watching, I finally pulled myself away and pouted about how annoying my "overreactive conscience" is.  

Then I opened up the Word and my eyes landed upon Matthew 5:13 "You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?" I didn't make it any further than that because I knew this was the Holy Spirit speaking. 

So, for those of you who don't know me, I am somewhat of a health nut. Nutrition and its effects on the body fascinate me to no end. There's this little thing called salt. What most people think is that you're not supposed to get too much salt because it can cause problems such as hypertension and high blood pressure. Well, sort of. Actually, what you're not supposed to get too much of is table salt whereas mineral salt (the way God created it!) is actually a highly nutrient dense food that's important for our bodies to function properly. 

What's the difference? Mineral or sea salt is basically dried up sea water and it's chock full of all the nutrients and minerals from the sea. Table salt--what most of you are using--is salt that has been stripped of all its minerals so that all that's left is the sodium. Here's the problem: when we eat salt our bodies expect to get all the other minerals along with the sodium. But because they're not getting them, it craves more and this can lead to an imbalance in the body. What does this have to do with TV???

When we walk with the Lord and follow wholeheartedly after Him, we become like salt--full of nutrients and flavor to give to the world. But when we start to compromise our values, our standards, or our beliefs, we start losing nutrients. We may still have flavor, but it's false advertising. We're promising those around us something of great nutritional value, when really we just have a bunch of sodium which, by itself, can cause health problems. 

This is religion without Jesus.

This is the talk without the walk.

This is saying "I follow Jesus" while still living how we please. 

This is the very reason so many people are turned off to the church because we promise what we can't give; we say one thing then do another. We've lost our saltiness and who wants to eat a plate of unsalted food?

Psalm 34:8 says, "Taste and see that the Lord is good." But how will people believe that God's the real deal if His followers are bland and boring and don't really look different than anyone else?

Now here's the clincher. If we ourselves haven't actually "tasted and seen," then how can anyone around us? Only when we truly know God and seek Him with our whole hearts, can we live in such a way to make a difference. In other words, if we want to be salty we have to drench ourselves in the se

Beauty in Chaos

When you look at this picture what do I see? I see something very poignant in the tangled mess of barbed wire and bright red poppies. They're trying so desperately to break through and live how they were created to live but it's incredibly difficult. Sometimes I so relate to the struggle of the poppies, trying so hard to still be beautiful when their lives are a chaotic mess. 

The parable of the sower in Matthew 13 comes to mind. The sower sowed seed which fell on all different types of soil, rocky, thorny, and ready. Verse 7 speaks of  the seeds that "fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them." In verse 23 Jesus explains that "what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word and it proves unfruitful." 

How often has that been me? The Holy Spirit will speak something or I'll read something and instead of allowing it to change me, I get so caught up in worry or stress or busyness or idleness or who-knows-what that I miss what the Lord was trying to teach me. I let the Word of God get choked out by nothing, really. 

I like to think of myself as that perfectly good soil all the time. But, in all honesty, I'm not. Sometimes there are lot of rocks and a lot of thorns. And you know how the good soil gets to be ready soil? It's tilled and plowed and worked until the rocks and the the thorns are taken out. I think if we take an honest look at our lives we'll see that we have more rocks and thorns than we'd like to admit. But instead of despairing, we can allow the Holy Spirit to pull out the thorns and get rid of the rocks. 

And while we're in the process, don't lose heart. There may be seed that's started to grow and feels choked, but God is a master at doing the impossible with those that will let Him and He's patient enough to work the land. As this picture shows, God can create beauty in the midst of chaos. And he can heal even the thorniest of hearts. 

Even in the Little Things

Can I just start off by saying this last week sucked and get it over with? 

Now that that's established, can I just interject that God is really, really, really faithful? 

This was a hard week for a lot of reasons: a painful death of a dream combined with a lesson learned the hard way; the Boston bombing plus the explosion in Texas; a bout of homesickness mixed in with some bodily sickness and a fair bit of lonesomeness all made for a serious case of the blues. Yes, my friends, this was an all around down and out week. 

But thankfully, down and out weeks don't have to end as down and out weeks. I have said before that God always surprises me about how He meets my needs. Just when I feel like I'm at my rope's end, He gives me a brief respite. These have come in the forms of a last minute prayer and worship session with two friends, a Thanksgiving dinner with a group of Americans, a trip to Albania with Nesha, coffee with Linda or Soni, an unexpected note from a friend, and a Skype call with someone from home. 

Last night--after I spent the day moping around in a sinus-pressured cloud--He surprised me again. Saturday nights we have our weekly Real Change youth group meeting and this Saturday we had a group from Pristina, a nearby city, coming to join us. Mixed in with this group of Albanians were two American guys. Now, this may seem super insignificant to those of you in the States as you are surrounded by English speaking Americans 24-7, but to me this was gargantuan. Currently, whenever I encounter an unknown American I feel kind of like I'm encountering a celebrity. Pathetic, I know, but honest. 

After youth group was over, their group and a portion of ours went out for coffee. And it was just fun. Really, there was absolutely nothing significant about it except that it was exactly what my heart was needing: social interaction with like-minded people who speak my language--literally, culturally, and spiritually. 

So today I'm thankful for a God who knows me and loves me and cares for me, even in the little things.  

Disillusionment and Jesus

I confess, I am currently feeling this little thing called "disillusionment." It's what happens when life looks messier and harder and grittier than you expect. It's what happens when really bad things happen to really good people or when those you trusted make terrible choices or when you see another picture of a child starving in Africa or see that a bombing's happened somewhere new or hear on the news about a mother killing her kids or ______________. You fill in the blank.

I received some hard news this week. And my initial reaction was to throw up my hands and say, "God, why?" This morning, I found myself at the foot of the cross, a place that I haven't really been in a while. I came before the Lord in honesty, in humility, and in hurt. No facades, no pretentions, just me and Jesus. During that time of worship, I rememberd why it is that I follow Jesus--the cross, the sacrifice, the sweet taste of forgiveness. I found myself caught up in His mercy and forgiveness and healing. While the world is tumultuous and unstable, He is faithful and His love never fails. And no matter what I feel, no matter what life looks like, no matter what happens, my God is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. When we come to Him, exactly as we are, exactly where we are, He gives us exactly what we need for the moment we're in.

Disillusionment happens when we put our hope in people, things, or circumstances. But all of those are subject to change. The only cure for disillusionment is to put our complete hope in God, for He will never lead us astray or disappoint. I leave you with the words of a beautiful, poignant song:

Turn your eyes upon Jesus
Look full in His wonderful face
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of His glory and grace

That's advice I'm choosing to take.

The Continuum of Katelyn's Comedic Kosovo Crises

My mother posed a question to me not long ago. It was this: "At whose expense will your landlord amuse himself when you're gone?" Now this came after a rather eventful, eh, event. You see I had done laundry on this fateful Saturday, which I do on random occasions when I realize that I'm running out of clothes. Well, on this particular day my washing machine (an ancient German thing) was filled with heavy towels. When wet, these towels are heavy--so heavy that my washing machine had a serious case of indigestion.

. 

Now, I don't know about you, but when my stomach's upset, I want to lie down. Not so with my washing machine. He (it's a he) started shaking. Actually, it was more like convulsing. And groaning--he has the most terrible groans when his stomach's upset. I rather thought that he was going to explode, but he didn't. He simply didn't stay in one place.

Earlier, I had asked my landlord to replace a light in my bathroom about half an hour before I had to leave for worship practice. Yes, I know how to change a light bulb. Just not this lightbulb. Nor did I have any idea where to buy the kind of lightbulb that is in my bathroom. Besides, I asked in Albanian (go me!), so I should get points for multi-lingual communication, right? I was about to leave for worship when I ran to grab something from the bathroom. Only one problem, the door refused to open. My roommate wasn't home, why on earth was it closed? After a moment, I realized--"Holy crap, the washing machine is in front of the door." His tummy was apparently very upset.

"Well," I thought, "I don't have time to deal with this now. I have to go!" Not gonna lie, in the back of my mind I thought, "And Ramiz will probably come up and discover the problem and fix it for me." Terrible, right? That's exactly what happened. In the middle of worship practice, Ramiz burst into the room a blend of frantic and confused "Do you realize what has happened in your bathroom? How did that happen?" And then he gave me the look. Not the "how can I possibly put up with your mishaps" look, but an incredulous "how do you get into these mishaps?" look.

And that, my friend, is a question I'm still trying to answer.