Faith

I need to remember what faith is. I really struggle with feeling like I have to fully understand everything and needing concrete evidence for things, especially when it comes to God. I read Jesus’ encounters with the Pharisees and think how ignorant they were to have Jesus standing right in front of them, living among them, and still not believing in Him. And really, when I think about it, I’m doing pretty much the same thing. I say “God, I know you’re here, I can see what you have done in my life and feel your presence inside of me, and you even make sense to my skeptical mind, but I still need just a bit more proof from you, and then I’ll truly believe in you.” And what I’ve just now realized is that this is me leaving out one of the most crucial components of believing in God, which is faith. I may not have Jesus standing in front of me telling me He’s my savior, but I have the Bible telling me that, and I have Him living inside of my heart and showing me that in my life daily. And I still doubt Him. So until I can say “I believe because I have faith,” I’m no better than those Pharisees.

Whispers

“How faint the whisper we hear of Him! Who then can understand the thunder of His power?” 

(Job 26:14)

How exciting is that! I read that, and then I look around me, and all I can think is, whoa. We think that we see Him in the sunset, and that we feel Him when we experience love, and that we commune with Him when we pray, and here we learn that all of that is but a shadow of His true self. How can that be? How could anything be more beautiful or powerful or awe-inspiring than this Creation? I guess it only makes sense that its Creator is exactly that—more beautiful, more powerful, more perfect in every way. But here’s the crazy thing, the fact that because we hear only a faint whisper of Him, we can’t even understand the thunder of His power! It’s no wonder men have spent centuries writing about it, singing about it, fighting about it, agonizing over it. God obviously made us with an innate desire to know and understand things, and we have come a long way in the realms of science, and mathematics, and medicine, and even the study of our own minds and understanding. And yet try as we may, we just can’t seem to wrap our heads around God. Unfortunately for many, this inability will be their downfall. It was nearly mine. But luckily for us, God gave us not only our heads, but our hearts as well. And boy does He know how to speak to our hearts. We could argue until our faces turned blue about the attributes of God and whether His existence makes logical sense and whether all of the facts in the Bible line up, but it’s pretty hard to argue with people whose souls have searched the world for rest and found it nowhere but in God’s loving arms. I know one thing I can’t deny is the whispers I hear from God daily and the power He has exhibited in my own life. I have seen firsthand how He can transform a life, and I don’t understand it, but I can’t help but believe it, because the evidence is inside of me. How precious are those whispers I hear of God. I don’t know that I could handle anything louder.

Jesus' question

“Do you want to get well?” – Jesus 

(John 5:6)

Seems like a pretty easy question to answer, right? If we’re sick, if something is wrong with us, if we are hurting, of course we want to get well. But if you know anything about Jesus, you’ll know that He doesn’t just arbitrarily say things that we are meant to gloss over. So in revisiting this question, which Jesus asks to a man who has been paralyzed for thirty-eight years, I have to wonder if we as humans really and truly want to get well. I know when I re-dedicated my life to Christ a little over a year ago, I needed to get well. And thankfully, enough of me wanted to get well to allow God to come into my life and begin the healing process. Words cannot adequately express how grateful I am for His rescue. But goodness, is He relentless in His pursuit of every part of me that needs healing. Frankly, if Jesus were to stop me at every crossroad and ask me if I wanted to get well, the answer would probably be “no” more often than I would like to admit. I want to be healthy, I want to be happy, I want to grow in my relationship with Christ, but does every little broken part of me need to be fixed? Can’t I keep this one vice or this one idol or hold on to this one grudge, just for a little familiarity? God’s answer – no. I have died to myself and been reborn to a new life, and I must crucify my brokenness if I am to truly live as one who has been reborn in Christ. God never starts anything He doesn’t intend to finish, and we are no one to tell Him otherwise. So maybe that’s why Jesus asks a man who has spent thirty-eight years of his life waiting to be healed if he wants to get well. Because getting well is hard, and it’s unfamiliar, and it requires action on our part, and God has a lot greater expectations for us than we ever had for ourselves. Jesus asked this man if he wanted to get well because Jesus knows that in many ways getting well is harder than staying sick, even if we have Jesus helping us. I think when Jesus reaches His hand out to us to offer us salvation, the question He is asking each and every one of us is just what He asked the paralytic: “Do you want to get well?” And it’s up to us to decide if we do want to get well, if we want to be healed from everything inside of us and saved from everything surrounding us that keeps us sick and keeps us from living the full lives that God intended for us. So God, here’s where I need Your help – I need You to help me to say “yes” to You every time You ask me, even when my first inclination is to say no. Because it’s really easy for me in my short-sightedness to try to keep You from healing certain parts of me, and I don’t want myself to get in the way of Your sanctification. Make me want to get well. 

How easily we forget things

Isn't it funny how easily we forget things? Even things I tell myself, or resolve to do, I forget them at the drop of a hat. Think how much progress we could make in our lives if everything we learned, every experience we had, everything we decided to change about ourselves we could remember and put into practice. On the contrary, I forget my thoughts sometimes before I even complete them. It makes it really hard to make any changes in my life. Especially since I have a whole lot of thoughts. If I didn't have a journal to write in and God to pray to, I'd be pretty miserable to be around because I'd probably never stop talking about all of my thoughts. If only I could remember God's promises more, I know that would drastically change the way I lived my life, and maybe even calm some of the thoughts running rampant through my head. I wish I didn't have to read the Bible every day to be reminded of how great God is and how present He is in my life. Maybe as I get older it will be a bit easier for me to remember His word, after hopefully having read and studied it for years. But I presume I'll be needing to go back to the Source daily for the rest of my life in order to remind my forgetful, distracted self that I'm in the loving arms of the Creator of the universe. And you know what, that's probably a good thing, because God doesn't just want us to remember everything He tells us in the Bible and try to live by some set of rules He's given us. He wants our time, and our hearts, and He wants our lives to be dedicated to Him. So maybe that forgetfulness and that need to keep coming back to Him to be reminded of His promises is there to keep me from thinking that as long as I know about Him I don't need Him.

Off the Pedestal

I wonder what my life would look like if I acted on everything I said I wanted to act on. I have all of these lofty, righteous thoughts in my head of how awful all of the injustice in the world is and how I'm going to change the world someday, and I just let them come into my head, hang out long enough for me to voice them and feel better about myself, and then I go back to drinking my five dollar latte. It's pretty sad, really, how easily I can convince myself that I'm so much better than all of those selfish people who never even think about all of the poverty and suffering in the world. When honestly, who's worse, the one who doesn't think about it, or the one who thinks about it and doesn't do anything about it? And my inclination, even as I write, is to think "oh, but I can't do anything now about it, because of where I am in life right now. But as soon as I am in the position to take action, you bet I'll do something!" And that's just crap. Thoughts are just thoughts and nothing more until they are turned into action. The thoughts dancing around inside of my head should never make me feel more righteous than anyone else. I hope and pray that someday I won't be such a coward and God will break through my wall of comfortable living and intellectual "holiness" and show me what it is like to truly live the gospel. I guess one place to start is by taking myself off of the pedestal I've placed myself on and look around me at the world I live in, which I have not only the opportunity but the calling and the responsibility to impact in a real way. I can't reach anyone from a pedestal. And no one can reach me on my pedestal either. Because the reality of the situation is that I need salvation just as much as the people I so righteously want to save.

They don't know my name here

They don't know my name here.
They know my face, they know my voice, my smile.
They know how I walk, how I laugh.
But they don't know my name here.
They know who I'm supposed to be, who I mean to be, who I think I am
But they don't know my name here.
I forget it so often myself.
I know who I'm supposed to be, who I mean to be, who I think I am
But they don't know my name here.
I wonder do they want to know me by name,
Or do I want them to.
There's a certain comfort in the thought --
They don't know my name here.
But then if they don't, who does?
And where does the comfort go then

Thursday

Life is a little bit like a perpetual Thursday, isn't it.

Balancing Act

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA_uwWPE6lQ&p=B85E5184E351D698&index=3&playnext=1

I know I spend a lot of time hugging my balance beam. I think we could all use a nudge to stand up and start learning to walk. This is part of a much longer sermon, so it's not all he has to say (for instance, he isn't saying that what you do on the balance beam is the only thing that matters, and works don't grant you salvation), but even taken out of context, I think this is a pretty good reminder of how easy it is to let our love for God sit stagnant and remain safe and contained and in the end fairly fruitless. Just saying "I love You" isn't enough. God calls us to do much more.

Sunshine

Today I will not let negativity cloud my vision or color my day. I will rise above the rainy day attitude that so easily creeps into my life, and I will look for the Sun shining above every step I take. The Sun never stops shining, things just get in the way of it, and all I have to do is make my way past the darkness and the clutter that shadows my day until a tiny beam of light peeks through.

Grandparents

What is it about grandparents that makes them so great? I wonder, is it life that has made them this way? Should we all expect to love the way they do when we've lived as long as they have? Perhaps they have had so many opportunities to love and be loved, and they have sifted through all of the things in life that are unfulfilling and meaningless, and they know so much more deeply than we do the incredible importance of love. Because that certainly is all I ever got from my grandparents. I often wonder if everyone's grandparents were as amazing as mine were. And obviously not all grandparents are saints (I strongly believe that most if not all of mine were), but I'd have to say that the general consensus is, at least in the eyes of the grandchildren, that most are indeed saints. I believe if you asked any parent, they would say that children are the greatest blessing they have ever received. And I can only imagine what it would be like to see your blessings get little blessings of their own. Surely it reminds the grandparents of the time that their children were born, and it must be a bit of a chance to relive their parenthood, only with a lot fewer sleepless nights. And maybe it gives them a chance to love in the way that they might not have gotten to love their children when they were younger and less mature and not quite as well rested. I hope and pray that my future children are able to feel the love of a grandparent, because it could quite possibly be the earthly love that most closely resembles God's love for us. I recently read a passage by Charles Spurgeon about the blessing of old age, and how "At evening time it shall be light" (Zech. 14:7). The older we get, the closer we are to our homes, and the more settled our hearts surely become, because with each passing day we inch closer to God. Maybe that proximity is what accounts for the love that grandparents pour out unto their grandchildren to no end. Or maybe it's God's way of helping them leave their legacy of love as they draw nearer to the end of life. Or maybe it's a realization of how precious life is, how precious love is, how precious we are. I don't know what it is, but I know I am better for having received it, and I hope some day to be able to pass it on to my grandchildren.

Song

I wonder what inspired the first song. I take for granted the fact that music is everywhere in our lives these days-- home, cars, restaurants, work, even if you don't listen to music yourself it's hard to make it through an entire day without encountering music of some sort. But I have to remind myself that sometime, perhaps even before language existed, some person was too happy, or too sad, or too full of inexpressible emotions to simply speak them to another human. I doubt it was pretty. It was probably out of tune and confusing, just a random progression of notes one after the other. But it must have sounded in at least some way beautiful to whoever heard it. Think what it would be like to experience something like that for the first time, whether you were the singer or the audience. I imagine it was quite freeing as well. There's something about stepping out of your normal speaking habit, even these days, that is liberating and emotive. The act of discovering the possibility of song must have been nearly life changing. I wonder what it is inside of us that brings us to the point where regular words just won't do it, and we simply must create art to satisfy our need to express emotion. I wonder if it has any connection to the desire for the divine in us. Have you ever heard a song that sounds like the singer needs even more than the song to express himself? Like there's just too much to be said and even the most emotional notes don't hold enough weight for what the artist is going through? I think that could be where we reach the next step, the step toward the divine. Regardless, I think that first song must have been something unlike any of us have ever heard in our lives.

International Justice Missions

www.ijm.org

Check them out. And don't just glaze over it, let it sink in. This stuff is real, and it's evil, and it's preventable. Don't ever think that you can't do anything about things like this. We ALWAYS have enough to give, even if we're the widow giving her last penny.  I wish my heart were bigger than it is, and to think of how selfish and greedy I am makes me sick to my stomach. But at least that sick feeling doesn't have to be the end of it. Even if my righteous works are but filthy rags, I know there is always something for me to do in His name and for His glory.

Post #2

A few months ago I was sitting on the beach watching my dad and sister play bocce ball down the shoreline from me, and as close as they were to me, they still looked like ants beside the ocean. Even buildings looked small.

To think we are the highest it gets, the pinnacle of existence, seems almost psychotic at times like these. We think, act, live as though we own the earth, control it, have conquered it, when even our own inventions threaten our lives daily. We are so naive, humans. We run our rat race, under the guise of control, safety, wisdom, power, when none of these exist in us alone. We are but slaves to almost everything that surrounds us. The society we have created makes slaves out of us, and we know not how to escape it. We scarcely desire to escape it. We know deep down how hopeless, how powerless we are. And so we strive and we grasp for strength, hope, power. We think the most immediate and tangible things will bring us what we need most, because often we see what seem like immediate results. Other people, even, we put our hopes and dreams into those of us who seemingly exude the most strength or potential. And when they fail us we rage against them, cursing them for their wrongdoings.  And we move on to the next one.

Often we realize "I" is the only one we can truly rely on, the only one who will not or cannot let us down, because we are one, and we will not let ourself down or fail ourself. How foolish we are when we come to this. We knew this at the very first. It was what caused us to seek strength in others. And yet, somehow, we come back to ourselves when the others fall short.

How long will it take us to see the fault here? When will we open our eyes to the reality that they did not fail us because they were less than we are, they failed us because they are us. We are all humans, groping for meaning, and something, anything, above us to pull us out of ourselves. When will we learn? When will we see that the road we have travelled so long is but a hamster wheel, beaten down every time we come to the beginning again and repeat the journey, never a new step, never a new direction.



(more uplifting posts to follow)

Hello no one!

Hello no one!

In honor of Donald Miller, I have chosen the URL wesleyhughesis.blogspot.com. If you haven't read any of Donald Miller's books, do. If you're more of a blog reader, read his blog: http://donmilleris.com


The name is inspired by my new way of looking at life as the way home. How infinitely comforting it is to think of this broken, miserable life as just an extended car ride home to our maker. It brings me back to 15-hour long car rides home from vacation when I was little that lasted forever, were never as fun as I thought they would be, and always made someone cry. But somehow, despite all of the turmoil and strife and heartache, we always made it home in our minivan in one piece. I tend to think about life as if it's an endless mountain climb, each step taking me closer to some unknown peak, no end in sight, and no certainty as to where I am going or what will happen along the way. And yeah, if there's no life after this, that's pretty much what life is. But not if there's something after this. If the end of this life is the beginning of real life, then we're all just on a long, hard journey home. Nothing about the uncertainty of the "along the way" part changes, but at least we know where we're going to end up. I don't know, that just calms my soul.


Forgive my lack of bells and whistles, I'm more of a writer than a web designer. I hope to change that soon. And frankly I'm more of a journaler (word?) than a writer, so forgive my casualness. So welcome to my blog, come and walk with me!