I’ve been reading a book this week. As in, one of those things consisting of a bunch of pages held together at one edge, that you actually have to turn as you read. It’s been a strange experience. I had to get used to holding the book in my hand in such a way as to keep it open as I read, a position that used to be very familiar to me, but one that I haven’t had much practice with recently. I do all my reading on my iPad these days. As I’ve mentioned before, that includes reading the Bible. (Side note: What has me really drooling over the iPad mini is that its size and weight (from what I’ve heard) make it pretty much the most perfect reading device ever built. Whenever it gets a Retina display, perfection has been achieved.) I have a couple dozen books on a shelf that I have from before I started phasing out books that take up space on a bookshelf and pounds in a suitcase in favor of books that take up megabytes of digital storage. I hope to replace them with their digital counterparts eventually, but until then, I’m hanging on to the paper versions. But anything new I get, I get digitally. My textbooks this year are all digital rentals. Except for Waking the Dead, one of those books I mentioned that sit on my physical shelf, my entire John Eldredge collection resides on my iBooks bookshelf. I could go on.

Reading on an iPad has literally changed the way I read. I can’t bring myself to markup pages of books. But in iBooks, with highlighting and note tools built in and a swipe or a tap away, I find myself doing it more and more. When I picked up this book this week, several times I have really wanted to reach out and slide my finger along a sentence that really struck me, before I remembered that, well, that doesn’t work on this kind of book. I also wanted to tap on a word several times to bring up a definition. But, well, that doesn’t work either. And then when it came time to stop reading, it was really a jolt to remember that I needed a bookmark. I put the book facedown on my desk, open to the page, while I started searching through my desk drawers for my collection of bookmarks from back when I was an avid reader of the kind that required such things.

I actually didn’t start writing this to discuss paper versus digital, but I couldn’t resist recounting my experiences with this ancient technology. Anyways, you may be wondering what the book is, and why I’m reading it in this form factor. And where I’m going with all this.

The book is Confessions of a Caffeinated Christian, by John Fischer. (Kind of interesting given the image I’ve been using for my blog, which I took a couple years ago and started using for this blog when I started it in the spring. I wasn’t even thinking about this book, either when I took the picture or when I set it as the header image of my blog’s first look. In a case of interesting timing, though, my second redesign places the picture prominently again.) I first read it in tenth grade. It was one of the few books I checked out of the high school library during my time there. I checked it out because, being a coffee lover, it sounded interesting. I wasn’t prepared for how much that book would speak to me. It was incredible how much I could relate to the author, and not just in his love for coffee. He is, like me, an introvert. Not just an introvert. A loner. Much of his time growing up was spent on his own, doing his own thing. At one point he describes how much he enjoys sitting in a Starbucks with a cup of coffee, just watching the world go by. Watching everyone doing their thing, and just being removed from everything, in no hurry. He could be talking about me. In fact, I felt like that in a lot of the areas he discusses. The book is pretty much a compilation of anecdotes from his life that he uses to make a point. In almost every one of them, I could very easily put myself in his shoes. I just remember being struck by that, and really challenged in a lot of the things that he talks about.

Recently I remembered this book, and wanted to get my hands on it again. On looking into it, I learned that it seems to be out of print. This means there is no ebook version of it. Not on iBooks, not on the Kindle Store, not anywhere on the web that I could find. The only way I could find to get it was in paperback, used, on the Amazon Marketplace. After a lot of deliberation, I decided I wanted this book enough to do what I thought I was done doing—buy a paperback again. I bought it “Like New” through Amazon for a penny. Plus $3.99 shipping.

It arrived on Monday, and I picked it up from the mail room on Wednesday, and over the last five days I’ve had to force myself to put it down each time after reading several chapters a day. I don’t want to read it too fast, because then it’s done, until I read it again sometime down the road. I want to try and make it last at least a little while. I’m on track to finish it within about a week of getting it. I’d be finished in a day if I let myself.

Why does this book capture me so much? Part of it is the way coffee is kind of a staging point for almost every story, and each point he makes about some profound eternal truth. There’s something about relating profound eternal truths to something so ordinary and everyday. I mean, look at what Jesus did. The difference is that Jesus compared the kingdom of God to everyday things in the lives of first-century Jews. Fischer compares it to Starbucks. Another part of why this book grabs me is the numerous ways in which I can relate to the writer. But I think a lot of it is just how down-to-earth, how real he is. There’s just something about reading about someone else going through life, and all that it brings, and finding God in it. There’s no front, no facade. He’s brutally honest about what he’s thinking and feeling in the situations he recounts. Even when it’s not pretty. But then he gets to the good part, where God teaches him a lesson through the situation, in spite of his thoughts and feelings. Lessons that most of us need to hear. And most of the stories he tells are not spectacular events or anything. They’re the mundane, the everyday scenarios and encounters. That, too, makes the stories that much more powerful, in my mind.

Something that keeps coming to mind when I can’t put this book down is: why is this rarely the case with the Bible? Why is it that, more often than not these days, when I do read the Bible, I’m happy to put it down and check it off my list for that day, so I can get on with what I’d rather be doing?

After all, the Bible is by far the most dynamic book ever written. I mean, think about it. You’ve got genres across the board, from detailed chronologies and tables of figures to intense, R-rated action scenes and murders, to poetry and shockingly explicit love songs. And everything in between. You’ve got the Psalms, which range from cries of anguish and depression to songs of praise and intimate worship to prayers of vengeance against God’s and the psalmist’s enemies. There are the prophets, who put everything on the line to carry God’s message to his people, and in one breath pointed out the rebelliousness of Israel and Judah in incredibly graphic analogies, and then professed God’s undying love and offer of mercy to them in spite of it all. Everything I’ve just described can be found in just the Old Testament. Are you seeing it yet? I mean, if Hollywood picked up the story of the life of David (and if people could get past the stigma of it being a “Bible story”) it would be an instant blockbuster. It’s got everything all the hit action movies are known for. If you don’t believe me, seriously, read 1 and 2 Samuel. Approach it from that angle, not with the mindset you typically have of the Bible, but more like when you pick up The Lord of the Rings. And David’s just one example. From cover to cover, you find stories of individuals, from shepherds to fishermen to kings, going through life, and answering God’s call. Not perfectly, by any means. The Bible is also brutally honest, refusing to sugar-coat its heroes. Their failures, some pretty big ones, are immortalized for all to see in its pages. And yet you see how God used them anyways. You can relate to them. Some more than others, and not always in their specific circumstances, but in their humanity. Their hopes and dreams, their successes, their failures, their strengths, their flaws. These are things we all have. And when you take a step back, you see how each of their lives plays into this plot of epic proportions that is woven throughout, from Genesis to Revelation.

And of course, in four books tucked in the middle somewhere is the centerpiece of it all, who is right at home in all this. Jesus is undoubtedly the most dynamic person to ever walk this earth. This rabbi from the backwater town of Nazareth, who touched lepers, hung out with notorious sinners, and picked fights with the religious leaders, was a far cry from the one-dimensional person he is mistaken for much of the time. He welcomed kids with open arms when his disciples thought he wouldn’t have time for them. He had compassion on the blind, the lame, the grieving, and set things right. He invited himself over to a tax collector’s house for lunch, and changed the guy’s life. He overturned tables in the Temple and sent merchants, money changers, and livestock scattering—not losing control in a fit of rage, but in an act of premeditated aggression, in which he took the time to braid a whip to do it more effectively. He cursed a fig tree and made it wither up because he was hungry, but figs happened to be out of season. He told his followers to eat his flesh and drink his blood. He made a name for himself with his teachings and miracles, but shunned the popularity and skipped town to go preach and heal elsewhere. The crowds were amazed by the authority with which he taught and flocked to him. The Pharisees hated him for stubbornly refusing to stoop to their petty interpretation of God’s Law. He cried out to his Father in anguish in anticipation of the torture, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, that he was about to go through. But then he quietly took the beatings, the mocking, the rigged trial and unfair death sentence. The crowd who had hailed him days before asked for his crucifixion and the release of a revolutionary instead. And with legions of angels at his command, ready to obliterate his executioners and establish his rule on earth, Jesus allowed nails to be pounded through his hands and feet into the wooden beams that he hung on until his strength gave out, and he suffocated. He allowed the weight of the sin of the world and all its consequences to be placed squarely on his shoulders. And then he willingly released his spirit.

But he wasn’t done. Not by a long shot. He wrestled the keys of death and Hades from the devil and walked out of that tomb on Sunday morning. But instead of showing up at Herod’s and Pilate’s and saying, “Nice try,” and proving to the world once and for all that he is the Messiah, he showed himself to his followers, and told them to tell the world.

Who is this guy?

And yet, for all this, so much of the time the Bible can seem dry. Too familiar. I’ve heard it all so many times that sometimes the power of it is lost on me.

I think I’ve rambled enough. What’s the takeaway point here? I think there are a couple.

One is that, as great and important as Scripture is, sometimes God speaks to us other ways. As John Eldredge said, “Truth doesn’t need a verse attached to it to be true” (Waking the Dead). The implication of this is that time spent connecting with God does not necessarily have to be time reading the Bible. For me, it’s often reading books, like the one I’ve been reading the past several days. Sometimes God seems to be speaking far louder to me through those than he is through the Bible. Other times, it’s listening to music. Other times it’s just sitting in silence and reflecting. Sometimes it’s blogging. It can look like a lot of things, and can look different for different people. We don’t have a relationship with the Bible. We have a relationship with Jesus. I think it’s more important to be open to the way God is working than to blindly read the Bible “because I should.”

The caveat to that entire paragraph is that the Bible is the only book that can claim to be God’s inspired word. Even the books I read that point to Jesus are only lenses through which to see the truth of the Bible. Of course, it also is important to make sure that they do line up with the truth of the Bible. These other things can ultimately only supplement Scripture. A Bible-free diet is not recommended. While every chunk of time we set apart to connect with God doesn’t necessarily have to be reading the Bible, we do need to be reading it.

Which brings me to my other point. As I pointed out above, the Bible is an incredible book. Unlike any other. When I get past the mindset that I’ve read it all before, and look at it with fresh eyes, I can be blown away. Sometimes I envy people who are reading the Bible for the first time. While I have an understanding of it that only a lot of experience with it can bring, I don’t always have that wide-eyed amazement at what I’m reading. Many people who start reading it for the first time just can’t get enough of it. It’s so fresh and real to them, and unlike anything they’ve ever read. I can’t remember the first time I read most parts of the Bible. I was far to young to really grasp how incredible what I was reading was. By the time I could, I’d already read it a bunch. The downside of having a lot of verses memorized from when I was young is that it’s easy to rattle them off or read over them without grasping what they’re saying. There are still definitely moments where something strikes me that I’ve never realized before. That’s the beauty of the Bible. There’s always something new to discover. A passage that you’ve read a million times can speak into your situation in a way you’ve never thought of it before. But if you’re just reading it to check it off your list, skimming because you already know what it says, you’ll miss these moments. This is why I said go into it with a different mindset, looking to read it from a new perspective. Asking God to make it come alive to you. More often than not, the times that I get the most out of my time with the Bible are the times when, before I start, I specifically ask God to speak to me through what I’m about to read. And then I go into it deliberately reading with fresh eyes.

Like I said, read the story of David’s life like you would a novel. It’s pretty intense.

I’m sitting on the back porch of a cabin at a retreat center twenty minutes outside of Blacksburg. The rain this morning has left a chill in the air, the ground wet, and a light mist hovering just above the treetops. The trees around me range from green to red to leafless, and the only sounds to be heard are the leaves rustling, the water still dripping from tree branches, and the birds. I sip coffee from a styrofoam cup and just sit, and soak it in. Everything is still, and peaceful. Right now, I could almost forget about all the projects and homework waiting for me back at Tech, the test I have coming up on Tuesday, the construction career fair on Thursday, life decisions to be made, even the anxiety of the uncertainty about my knee. Right now, it is enough to just sit in the arms of God, and let him take all the cares away.

I’m at [nlcf] Fall Retreat. It started yesterday evening, and will end this afternoon. It’s just 24 hours, to pull away from everything and refocus, reboot. Many, if not most, of us had a pretty grueling week, meaning this retreat was not a moment too soon. When the speaker got up in the opening session last night, he encouraged us at the very beginning to be looking for a single takeaway point that God is saying to us that, if nothing else sticks, we can take with us when we leave. By the time the speaker said all this, I’d already figured out what God was saying to me.

“Let go. I’ve got this.”

I feel like I’m dealing with a lot of anxiety right now. A lot of it is subtle, below the surface, and God has had to unpack a lot of it and show me. The obvious one is my knee. As I posted almost two weeks ago, I injured my knee three and a half weeks ago when I wiped out on my bike. After my first visit to the doctor it sounded like it wasn’t too serious, and it would heal within a few weeks. I just needed to take it easy, and keep it straight as much as possible—easier said than done, but I’ve managed. It seemed to be doing better, but a lot of that was ibuprofen. And it was beginning to concern me that it was still acting up. I went back on Thursday for him to look at it again, and he was surprised to see it still slightly swollen when compared to my other knee. He had me set up an appointment with their specialist, which won’t happen for another month, because he only comes in on Wednesdays and November 28 was the first day that he had an opening that I could fit into my schedule. He said that the outcome of that appointment could pretty much go one of two ways—physical therapy or surgery. There is no in-between. I walked out of the clinic with my hopes—that this was just a minor thing that would heal without any major problems—having taken a pretty good toll. My knee injury is not only a major inconvenience for the foreseeable future, but something that I am finding myself more and more nervous about in the long term.

I’m also wrestling with decisions about what I want to do with my life after graduation, just over a year and a half away now, and approaching faster than ever. While on the one hand, I still have a year and a half to figure this out, on the other, this could also have repercussions on what I do with my upcoming summer. With a career fair this week with a lot of contractors looking for interns, summer is not nearly as far away as it seems.

These are just two of the things that have been weighing on me, even more than I realized. Coupled with the week I described above, with presentations, projects, and more, when I finally got here last night, I was ready for this retreat.

In the first set of songs, we sang “Everlasting God.” I immediately thought of the passage of Scripture it comes from, one of my favorites.

Look up into the heavens.
Who created all the stars?
He brings them out like an army, one after another,
calling each by its name.
Because of his great power and incomparable strength,
not a single one is missing.
O Jacob, how can you say the Lord does not see your troubles?
O Israel, how can you say God ignores your rights?
Have you never heard?
Have you never understood?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of all the earth.
He never grows weak or weary.
No one can measure the depths of his understanding.
He gives power to the weak
and strength to the powerless.
Even youths will become weak and tired,
and young men will fall in exhaustion.
But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength.
They will soar high on wings like eagles.
They will run and not grow weary.
They will walk and not faint.

Isaiah 40:26-31

It was a moment of relief sweeping over me, as God put things back in perspective, and reminded me that he’s got my back. Verse 31 especially hit home, given the fact that I can’t run right now.

After the songs, our pastor, Jim, got up to introduce the speaker. But first he read the famous “consider the sparrows” passage from Matthew 6, where Jesus told the crowds not to worry, because God already knew what they needed, and he was looking out for them.

It was a much-needed one-two punch. It was at this point that the speaker got up and said what I echoed above, about finding one takeaway point this weekend. And I was thinking, “Yeah, I think I’ve found it.”

It follows in the new theme that I’ve started to see God threading into my life—my utter dependence on God. That is, my growing awareness of my utter helplessness on my own and need to be completely depending on him.

They gave us several questions as ideas to be thinking about when they sent us out for our hour-fifteen-minutes of solitude with God. But I just found myself sitting on this deck, soaking in the scene around me, reflecting on all this, and starting to let go, if only for this short period of time I have to sit here.

Now, as I polish this up and hit “Publish,” I am back in civilization. Those 24 hours went by really fast, as these retreats are prone to do. Tomorrow will be a typical Sunday. I’ll sleep in, get up late, and eventually go to 130 Jackson to run sound for the evening service. Then Monday morning will hit again. But hopefully, I’ll remember to keep coming back to this thought in the midst of all that, especially when things start to get overwhelming again. I don’t think God is done talking to me about it yet.

I work two shifts a week at West End, one of the dining centers on campus. The job can be frustrating, mundane, insane. It can be slow and boring one minute and hectic the next. I work register a lot, and the past few weeks, with my knee injury, that’s what I’ve been doing almost every shift. In that position, it’s an understatement to say that you interact with all kinds of people. Sometimes those interactions make me wonder about the existence of intelligent life. At all. Sometimes I begin to lose faith in humanity. But every so often, something comes along that does just the opposite. I had one of those moments today.

This weekend is family weekend at Tech, meaning there are (drumroll, please…) a lot of families visiting. Read: a lot of people without meal plans. We get a lot of parents and siblings who try to pay with cash, and we keep having to explain that we don’t take cash, but we accept credit and debit cards. One of these people was a girl, probably upper high school or college-aged, who ordered pizza, and like many others, started to give me cash. I explained that we don’t take cash, but we take plastic. She started to say that she’d have to go find her brother and borrow his Hokie Passport (the Virginia Tech ID used for just about everything, including paying for meals.) At this point, the random guy in line behind her stepped forward, held out his Hokie Passport, and said, “I got it.” The girl was just blown away. She couldn’t express her thanks enough.

One of the really cool things about Tech is the idea of the “Hokie Nation.” From the bond we have with each other, to our bleed-maroon-and-orange loyalty whether our football team is ranked or can’t move the ball forward to save their lives, to our hospitality and willingness to go out of our way for visitors to our campus and our town, this is what it means to be a Hokie. I’ve heard and read numerous testimonials about people who were astonished by the welcoming atmosphere and helpfulness of people here. I even read an article about how Georgia Tech fans who were here for the game back at the beginning of the year couldn’t believe how nice and welcoming Hokies were, even to fans of the opposing team. What I witnessed today was one more example of the Hokie Nation in action.

But in the end, it wasn’t the nebulous “Hokie Nation” who stepped forward to pay for the meal of a complete stranger. It was an individual, who is part of the Tech culture, but who ultimately made the decision personally to step up and help out. Just because. He had no idea that the cashier who took that order would go on to immortalize in writing what he did. He saw a need, and while he easily could’ve let the girl go track down her brother, and meanwhile ordered his own food—and wouldn’t have been wrong to do so—he didn’t. He offered to buy her food for her. It was such a small thing, a split-second decision, but so powerful. If there was any doubt about that, the look on that girl’s face said it all.

What if each of us stepped up like that more often? What if, when we saw a need like that, our gut reaction was to jump in and fill it? What kind of impact could we have?

I am, and hopefully each of you are, part of a bigger, more important nation than that of the Hokies. One that demands more unity, more loyalty, and more expression of love to those around us. This nation is known as the kingdom of God. What if God’s kingdom was defined by, and recognized by, these same principles that mark the Hokie Nation—but more so? What if the kingdom were made up of individuals who weren’t too busy or absorbed or downright selfish to hand their credit card to the cashier for the person in front of them?

Shortly before Jesus went to the cross, he told his disciples, “Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples” (John 13:35, NLT). Of course, it is also pretty clear in Scripture that our love should not only be for each other, but for everyone. Jesus said that love would be what defines us, what the world recognizes us by. Notice that he said this will be the case, not just the ideal scenario that he would like to be true someday. Unfortunately, the church in the media isn’t doing the greatest job of fulfilling that. But we can change that. There was a time, centuries ago, when the Christians were known as the most compassionate people in the known world. They were the ones who, when a plague struck the Roman empire, were willing to open their homes to the sick and give them the care they needed, instead of shunning them as the rest of the world did. And the world noticed. We know this from a secular historian of the time who recorded the story of the plague. I really wish I knew this story in more detail. I read it years ago, I think in one of Philip Yancey’s books.

But as I was saying, we can change what the church has come to be seen as. I believe this because, as I have discussed in previous posts, we are utterly helpless alone, but we have been and are being transformed by God into the kind of people he wants us to be. Jesus said that we would be recognized by our love. We can take his word for it. Because the Holy Spirit is in us, and has the power to make it happen.

So in this next week, as you go about your day, look for ways to impact the world around you. It doesn’t have to be anything huge. Just small things, like buying a stranger’s meal, can go a long way. And as Jesus also said, “If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones” (Luke 16:10). Let’s change the world, starting this week. To take a line from Apple’s famous “Think Different” commercial,

“Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

I write this with my legs stretched out in front of me, computer in my lap, and a cold pack on my knee, having just popped some ibuprofen. A week and a half ago, I was on my bike, my primary way of getting around campus (well…until a week and a half ago.) I was riding on the sidewalk, and getting ready to merge onto the road. A pickup was coming towards me, but still a little ways off. I was trying to decide whether to pull out into the road ahead of him, or let him pass first. Next thing I knew my front wheel went off the curb, my bike went over, and its weight combined with mine came down on my knee, which landed squarely on the curb. It was a minor scrape, through my jeans, nothing that would take too long to heal.

It wasn’t until the next day that I started to notice that my knee felt kind of stiff, and somewhat weak and unstable when climbing stairs. That night I noticed it was pretty swollen—not at the bottom of the knee where the impact was, but at the top of the kneecap. The next day I decided it would probably be a good idea to get it checked out. At best, I would be told that it was nothing serious, and what to do to speed its recovery. At worst, I was afraid that the ligament was damaged—or worse—and if so, it definitely needed immediate attention. I set up an appointment for that afternoon at the health center on campus, a “free” service that’s paid for by our bill each semester. The doctor pushed and pulled my knee in different directions, and came to the conclusion that my ligaments were fine. He said it was just the impact of my kneecap on my femur—but this could take several weeks to heal. In the meantime, I just needed to avoid bending it as much as possible. Honestly my fears (about a torn ligament) weren’t completely put to rest. Part of me wasn’t convinced without seeing an MRI. But I decided to just go with it for now, and see how things felt in a few weeks.

So I’ve been doing a lot of limping around campus in the past week and a half, taking a lot longer to get to my classes than even walking under normal circumstances, let along biking. And I’ve been coming to really appreciate the taken-for-granted ability to bend both knees, the hard way—by not having it.

As if to rub in this lack of ability, I got a package last week. It was the new armband I had ordered before my accident, for my new phone. Consistently running is a habit I’ve been trying to revive since leaving high school. Being on the track team, having a big event that I wanted to do well in (yes, our track season consisted of weeks upon weeks of training leading up to a single track meet) was the motivation I needed to get up in the mornings when everyone else was still in bed, and go for a run. Well, everyone except a friend of mine, who was more obsessed (and disciplined) with running than I was. I loved track and field, and obviously wanted to do well in it. And I didn’t always enjoy those morning runs, but I had that motivation to keep at them. But since I’ve been at college, I’ve made multiple attempts to get the habit going again, but before long, it would just get crowded out by everything else I’m juggling. And here I had just started getting back into it again, and it felt great. I even found a couple good times to do it each week, so it looked like this routine might even be sustainable for the foreseeable future. But I didn’t foresee that split-second moment that landed me here, taking ibuprofen and keeping ice packs on my knee, while that armband sits on my desk and collects dust, waiting for whenever my knee decides to feel up to the task of trying to run on it again. From what the doctor said, running is the very thing that puts the most stress on the injured part of my knee, so even when it’s otherwise healed, it might be longer yet before it’s strong enough to start running again.

I’ve written a lot already, and so far, it probably just looks like I’m venting, complaining, or looking for pity. Or all three. But believe me when I say that is not my intent at all. Because hopefully, if you read this blog much, you’ve figured out that when I start typing up something new to put up here for the world to see, it’s because something has got me thinking. And this time, this scenario has brought me face to face with my brokenness and inability. By which I mean both the literal damage to my knee and the resulting difficulty or flat-out inability to do the simplest of things, and my depravity and inability to make anything of my life on my own. That second half might sound a little extreme in response to a knee injury. Allow me to explain.

Like I said, being in a (just forming) habit of running again felt great. I always feel good about myself when I’m running regularly. And to a degree, that’s legitimate and good. A friend of mine started eating better and exercising at the beginning of the summer, and has lost a lot of weight already. And that’s awesome. His other friends and I rejoice with him in that, and it’s definitely something to feel good about. And in my case too, exercising is worthwhile, and something to feel good about. But like everything else, it’s about moderation. The problem is when it starts going to my head, and when my identity gets too wrapped up in it. I’ve realized that one of the things that I defined myself by in high school was running. I was one of the few who went above and beyond the team training, and invested a significant portion of my own time running. I was one of the fewer yet who was running throughout the year, and not just during the weeks leading up to the meet. While there was definitely a lot of good motivation behind that, there was also pride.

And then, when I came here, and failed to maintain that habit, that part of my identity suffered. It became something that I felt the need to do, to feed that defining part of me. And because most of the time I couldn’t keep up the habit, I felt bad about myself for it. And then, several weeks ago, I started running again. And I felt great about myself again. And then, just like that, I can’t. Of course, all the everyday things that I have to do while keeping that leg straight add to my frustration and feelings of inability, but the running is the cherry on top.

As he often does, God used this to start bringing all kinds of stuff to the surface. The other major area where I have been feeling frustrated and unable to perform is in my discipline in spending time in Scripture and in prayer. I wrote about my struggle with this last semester. In that post, I outlined a system I had developed to keep me on top of it. And for the most part, it worked. Until the crunch at the end of the year, when I started to let it slide, and then when summer hit and I let it go almost completely. And this semester I have yet to get back on top of it. But do you see the language here? Perform. Discipline. On top of it. Let it slide. It’s all very performance-based. Like running. This too, while I know part of me realizes my legitimate need for this, for God, and seeks him out because of that need, another part of me treats it the way that part of me treats running—something to measure myself up against. Something to make myself feel good when I’m on top of it, and that I feel bad about when I’m not. The post I wrote right before that one discussed that legitimate need. I talked about how we can’t do life on our own. We need to stay connected to Jesus. I referenced John 15, and pointed out the trap we often fall into of thinking that once we’re saved by grace, we need to start living up to God’s standard on our own power, and how Jesus specifically told us that that is hopeless. We can only produce fruit when we’re attached to the vine, abiding in Christ.

In a very ironic twist, I’ve realized that abiding has become that thing that I’m trying to pull off on my own.

So now I have this dilemma. On the one hand, I cannot bear fruit or get anywhere meaningful in life without being connected to the vine. On the other hand, the very act of staying connected to the vine is just as impossible on my own strength. So I’m stuck.

Or not.

A wise man once said, “When our depravity meets his divinity, it is a beautiful collision.”

(For those of you who are wondering, that man is none other than David Crowder.)

As it turns out, I’m exactly where I need to be. In a place of brokenness—and fully aware of it. To get back on track, I first need to throw my hands in the air, and say that I can’t get anywhere without Christ. I can’t even seek Christ out without Christ. I am totally, utterly, helpless. Just like my knee. And when I realize that—when I really, truly, come to grips with that—it means that the amount of time I spend with him is no longer a measuring stick. It can no longer feed my ego. Just like when I realize that he has given me the ability, desire, and will to run, and that can no longer feed my ego either.

Of course, this doesn’t mean I should just expect God to magically open up large chunks of my schedule and make time spent with him seem infinitely more appealing than every other alternative. Just like it doesn’t mean I expect him to magically open up even more time in my schedule and make running seem like the next best way to spend that time. My part is to trust him to help me manage my time, to help me as I make time for both of these, and to trust him for the will to choose them—first time with him, and then running—over everything else vying for my time and attention. To recognize that every time I crack open my Bible (by which I really mean tap an icon on a screen) or bow my head in prayer, every time I change into my running gear (once my knee heals, that is,) strap on my phone with that yet-to-be-used armband, hit the play button, and go, I remember that it’s only by his strength that I’m doing this. That without him, I’m doomed before I even begin.

Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important. As a result, no one can ever boast in the presence of God.

God has united you with Christ Jesus. For our benefit God made him to be wisdom itself. Christ made us right with God; he made us pure and holy, and he freed us from sin. Therefore, as the Scriptures say, “If you want to boast, boast only about the Lord.”

1 Corinthians 1:27-31 (NLT)

There is a bridge on the Virginia Tech campus. Actually there are a lot of bridges on campus. But one of them is a little concrete footbridge, tucked in between several dorms, spanning a driveway that leads to a couple parking lots. Nothing very significant, really. But it found significance for me my freshman year. It has haunted me ever since. (No, before you start freaking out, I never tried jumping off it or anything. Nothing drastic. Just hear me out.)

Last night, I was coming home from a friend’s house, where a bunch of us had watched a movie. I parked my car in “the cage,” the student parking lot on the far western end of campus, and started walking back to my dorm, on the eastern end of campus. I was crossing through another small parking lot near this bridge, and deep down I felt it calling to me. Like it has several times over the past year, when I’m walking across campus, alone, after dark, and I find myself nearby. Something draws me back, calling me to stand on that bridge again. To remember.

Freshman year I spent a lot of time walking around campus. Not just walking between classes and such; I spent many evenings, after dark, wandering around. There was a guy I discipled in 12th grade, who got to be a very good friend, whose family happened to come back to Virginia for a year the same time I graduated and came to Tech. We met up a few times that year, for a weekend or so, but because we had gotten so used to meeting every week for hours at a time, (not to mention all the time we spent together outside of those times) we decided to call each other every week to talk. Reception in my room was terrible, so every Saturday night, I would go outside, bundled up if it was winter, and call him. And while we talked, I would wander. Our calls consistently lasted a couple hours at a time. We would talk about how things were going, or just talk about whatever. Those phone calls may well have been the only thing that got me through that year.

Other times, when I was just feeling overwhelmed, homesick, depressed, I would drop what I was doing and go outside, bundled up if necessary, and wander around, just to get some fresh air, clear my mind, think, pray, vent, whatever.

I don’t remember when I first stumbled upon this bridge, and I don’t really know what about it drew me, but I soon found myself frequenting it, both during those phone calls and during my lone wanderings. Sometimes I would cross it and wander on elsewhere, maybe ending up at the duck pond or who knows where. Other times I would stop and just stand on it while I talked on the phone, or was lost in my own thoughts. I vividly remember standing on that bridge one night, all bundled up, watching the first snow of the winter float to the ground, caught in the light of the lamps lining the bridge, and the lights of the surrounding buildings. I remember another time, watching a raccoon dig through a garbage can next to the driveway below me.

And so this bridge has come to represent all those nights. That year, with all its emotions, is encapsulated in it. And now that I’ve found my place here, found a family here, there it stands, in stark contrast to where I am now, reminding me of where I was not all that long ago, and how far I’ve come. How far God has brought me. So you could say that just as it is a symbol of the valley I walked through, it has become a monument to God’s faithfulness through that valley. And a reminder that whatever valleys come my way in the future, his faithfulness will prevail through all of them.

The sermon today was about Joseph. The Old Testament, coat-of-many-colors Joseph. It is the second part of a series my church, [nlcf], is doing on Covenant and Kingdom. Jim talked about how God’s covenant that he established with Abram (last week’s sermon) applied to Joseph as Abraham’s descendant. As part of that covenant, God promised to walk with Abraham and his descendants through whatever came their way. And so when Joseph was sold into slavery, and then was wrongly accused and imprisoned—through thirteen years of slavery and imprisonment—God never left Joseph’s side. And while he did not orchestrate those circumstances, he used them to transform Joseph, from an arrogant, spoiled teenager to a man of God, who finally realized that he was not at the center of his own universe—God was.

What’s interesting is that I actually started this post last night, when I got back to my room after standing on that bridge for a while. I drafted the first few paragraphs before calling it a night. And now I’ve picked it up again, having just listened to that sermon.

Back in the spring, if you remember, God was talking to me a lot about surrender, abiding in Christ, and such. Now, this seems to be his focus.

It might be because, for all my good intentions in the spring, my discipline in abiding in him has been…lacking. It might be because things have been surfacing in my life that I realize still need a lot of work. It might be because of how great it felt to come back to Tech a week ago, after a summer away…and be excited about it. How awesome it was to walk into Squires for church last Sunday and see all the faces of my brothers and sisters here that I missed, to hear them saying how glad they were to have me back. And to respond, and really mean it, that it was good to be back. Most likely, it’s all those reasons combined. But whatever the reason, it seems that now he has me thinking a lot about this—the truth that he has stuck with me through thick and thin, and he will continue to. And whether it seems like it or not, he is continuing his transformative work in me. Just as Paul said: “And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.” (Philippians 1:6)

By the blood of Christ, we are participants in the covenant God offered to Abram all those years ago. He offers it to us. His terms of the convenant are this: no matter what we’ve done or will do, no matter what we go through, he will not walk away from us. He will walk us through it, and continue to transform us by it, until that day when we breath our last on this earth or the day Jesus comes back, and his work in us is complete. Once we accept the covenant and enter into it, whether or not we hold up our end of it fully—namely, to give him our love and worship, our lives, our everything—he will uphold his.

A parting thought. Yesterday evening, before I left for my friend’s house, I was listening to music, and a song came on—namely “Mountain of God” by Third Day. I first discovered Third Day—now one of my, if not my favorite, bands—in the summer of ’09. Fittingly, I discovered this song during our two-week family vacation that summer, among some of the tallest mountains on the face of the earth. It quickly became one of my favorites.

Thought that I was all alone
Broken and afraid
But you were there with me
Yes, you were there with me…
Even though the journey’s long
And I know the road is hard
You’re the one who’s gone before me
You will help me carry on
And after all that I’ve been through
Now I realize the truth
That I must go through the valley
To stand upon the mountain of God

This song, and the album as a whole—Wherever You Are—became a rally for me freshman year. Those songs kept me going. I still remember one night, listening to “Mountain of God,” when the bridge (no pun intended) hit me like a wall:

Sometimes I think of where it is I’ve come from
And the things I’ve left behind
But of all I’ve had and what I’ve possessed
Nothing can quite compare
With what’s in front of me

I couldn’t even imagine life here even being close to what I left behind, much less better. But it was something to cling to. It didn’t feel true, but I had to tell myself it was. And now…well, it’s not quite there yet, but it’s no longer an impossibility. I still don’t have all I had in high school—someone to pour into and disciple, a handful of close brothers I could be real with and go through life with—at least not quite to the degree I did there. But now I can be sure that God really does have greater things in store than I could imagine, here at this campus and beyond. The bittersweet side of finally feeling at home here is knowing that in a couple short years, it will be time to move on again, to say goodbye to everyone all over again, and move on to God knows what. But I know that he will continue to be faithful. He will have even better things in store for me beyond. And he will stick with me through whatever valleys I have to walk through to get there.