seanlunsford.com2023-12-31T11:50:00Zhttps://seanlunsford.comSean Lunsfordsean@seanlunsford.comThree Sixty-Five2023-12-31T11:50:00Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2023/365/<p>When I wrote <a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2023/2023-in-focus/">back in January</a> I was just embarking on a 365. I planned to take a photo a day for the duration of the year, publishing them to <a href="https://glass.photo/seanlunsford">Glass</a> as I went. Somehow, the year is already drawing to a close—and as I write I have one photo left to take.</p>
<p>I’m glad I decided to take the plunge, and I’m glad it’s over. This was a drastic shift from only posting photos from time to time, and only sharing the ones I was reasonably proud of. It felt like a tilt towards quantity over quality. I remember approaching 100 days and wondering how I was going to keep it up for another 265. After the novelty of the first couple weeks had worn off, the next couple months were the drought. I regularly found myself camera in hand after 11pm, trying to find a photo of <em>something</em> around the house so I could just go to bed. The real low point was a couple sad slices of Domino’s pizza.</p>
<p>As I pushed through, though, things improved. I got more diligent about taking photos earlier in the day. Even when I <em>did</em> end up shooting things around the house in the evening, once I got past the obvious stuff, I started finding more interesting subjects, lighting, and camera angles. Or sometimes I just went for a late-night walk around the neighborhood.</p>
<p>When possible, I found inspiration in Glass’s monthly categories. In lieu of hashtags, there is a list of available categories, up to three of which can be added to each photo. Each month the Glass team adds and highlights a new one, which becomes a fun focal point for the community. Given the abundance of street cats here, I expected to take more cat photos than I did when they made April the month of the cat—but <a href="https://glass.photo/highlights/cat-favorites">I did get featured among the staff favorites</a> at the end of the month, and I’ve continued to add to the ranks of the cats of Glass as the year has gone on.</p>
<p>Overall, I think my average quality towards the end of the year was markedly better than the first part. The practice of carrying a camera almost everywhere and looking for photos in the everyday began to reinforce itself. Getting a <a href="https://fujifilm-x.com/en-us/products/lenses/xf27mmf28-r-wr/">lightweight, weather-resistant pancake lens</a> made a huge difference to the ease of keeping a camera on hand. This past month I’ve also been using my new iPhone camera a lot, which has paired well with Glass’s new <a href="https://glass.photo/categories/everyday">Everyday</a> category for December.</p>
<p>I’m looking forward to putting this project behind me while taking some of the gains with me. I’m looking forward to feeling the freedom to be more selective in what I post, and to publishing photos from the archives—especially finding good ones when new monthly categories are added. On the other hand, I hope to settle into more frequent sharing and more everyday/street photography than my pre-2023 average. In short, I hope the stretching I have felt through this project is at least somewhat inelastic.</p>
Diapers & Coffee2023-02-19T21:33:26Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2023/diapers-and-coffee/<p>I’ve started what I guess could be described as <a href="https://diapers.coffee">a parenting blog</a>. This idea came up sometime toward the end of last year, when Megan commented on my habit of reasoning very matter-of-factly with our daughter about the kind of ridiculous things that come up in parenting a toddler. She thought it would be entertaining to save some of these situations, exchanges, and one-liners for…posterity?</p>
<p>As recounted in <a href="https://diapers.coffee/2023/02/19/diapers-and-coffee">my opening post</a>, the name came from an exchange in probably the spring or fall, when we were still eating brunch on our terrace in pleasant weather. The phrase “diapers and coffee” came back to me when I started kicking around the idea for this blog, and then I had the inspiration for the domain, <a href="https://diapers.coffee"><code>diapers.coffee</code></a>, which was too perfect.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2023/diapers-and-coffee/" id="fnref1">[1]</a></sup></p>
<p>I expressly wanted to keep this a very lightweight, short-form blog to which I could post quickly and often—but I couldn’t help but spin my tires for two months trying to put together the perfect system to allow me to do that. I let that be the enemy of the good until this weekend, when I realized I needed to cut loose the distraction that was all the custom code, and focus on launching with something simple.</p>
<p>So that’s what I’ve done.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2023/diapers-and-coffee/" id="fnref2">[2]</a></sup> Enjoy.</p>
<hr class="footnotes-sep">
<section class="footnotes">
<ol class="footnotes-list">
<li id="fn1" class="footnote-item"><p>I just looked and saw that I registered <code>diapers.coffee</code> two months ago to the day. <a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2023/diapers-and-coffee/" class="footnote-backref">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn2" class="footnote-item"><p>For those interested, <s>I’m using <a href="https://blot.im/">Blot</a>, a static site generator that automatically turns a folder of Markdown files into a website. I stuck with the default blog template instead of rolling my own, at least for now.</s> (<strong>Update 2023-03-19:</strong> I'm now using <a href="https://www.11ty.dev/">Eleventy</a>—a more configurable, open-source static site generator—deployed on <s><a href="https://pages.github.com/">GitHub Pages</a></s> (<strong>Update 2024-01-11:</strong> <a href="https://pages.cloudflare.com/">Cloudflare Pages</a>).) <a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2023/diapers-and-coffee/" class="footnote-backref">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</section>
2023 in Focus2023-01-02T14:59:55Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2023/2023-in-focus/<p>It’s been a couple years since <a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2020/regeneration/">I’ve written about a yearly theme</a>, but I wanted to post something about this year’s. I think it is helpful to put a public stake in the ground, and since I don’t have a podcast to talk about these on anymore, here we are.</p>
<p>The word that kept coming to mind towards the end of last year was <em>focus</em>. It initially felt a bit on the nose, but what made me come around on it was thinking of focus as a photography term. I picture spinning a focus ring to isolate one thing at a time, or adjusting the aperture to bring more things into focus at once if I want the bigger picture. It’s a useful lens<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2023/2023-in-focus/" id="fnref1">[1]</a></sup> to approach the year with.</p>
<p>The impetus for this theme came from two observations. The glaring one is that I’ve been trying to do way too many things in life lately. Secondarily, I’ve had a hard time doing any one thing for long without getting sidetracked. Sure, these are nothing new—but I hit a breaking point with them in the last third or so of 2022.</p>
<p>A large part of what I need to do this year is is to make the hard calls about what is important for me to give my time and focus to, and to pare back everything else. The important things include being a husband to my wife and a dad to our one-and-a-half-year-old daughter. They include my work—not just because it pays the bills, but because going into this year I have an exciting new role that I want to have the headspace to do well. That means making the space to focus on things that will contribute to my mental and emotional wellbeing—particularly creative outlets like photography, writing, and perhaps filmmaking. It also means taking intentional steps to ensure that when I’m doing any one of these things, it is the one thing in focus and everything else fades into a nice background blur.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2023/2023-in-focus/" id="fnref2">[2]</a></sup></p>
<p>One creative outlet I want to pay attention to is photography. The launch of <a href="https://glass.photo/">Glass</a> in late 2021 and my purchase of a new camera this past spring together spurred a renewed interest in this creative hobby for me. I’ve been inspired to branch out from the travel and landscape photos I take on trips and hikes and to start carrying my camera around town to take photos of the everyday. This year I want to foster that artistic expression by embarking on a 365: inspired by <a href="https://glass.photo/tmn">another photographer on Glass</a>, I plan to post a photo each day that was taken that day. <a href="https://glass.photo/seanlunsford/1vYCJupB6YycALlQvqDmIM">The first one</a> is up; the rest will be published to <a href="https://glass.photo/seanlunsford">my profile</a> each day. This is the most resolution-y (no pun intended) part of this theme, but it is a daily habit I’d like to cultivate, and it dovetails well with the idea of Focus.</p>
<p>As usual, <a href="https://youtu.be/NVGuFdX5guE">a yearly theme</a> is meant to be a North Star in making decisions throughout the year, not a specific set of pass/fail objectives.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2023/2023-in-focus/" id="fnref3">[3]</a></sup> All of this is just a snapshot of some of my thoughts going into this year.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2023/2023-in-focus/" id="fnref4">[4]</a></sup></p>
<p>So begins the Year of Focus.</p>
<hr class="footnotes-sep">
<section class="footnotes">
<ol class="footnotes-list">
<li id="fn1" class="footnote-item"><p>See what I did there? <a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2023/2023-in-focus/" class="footnote-backref">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn2" class="footnote-item"><p>A couple paragraphs into this, I pulled out a notebook and pen to write the rest of it; doing so made a night-and-day difference to being able to tune everything else out and let the words flow onto the page. <a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2023/2023-in-focus/" class="footnote-backref">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn3" class="footnote-item"><p>Basically the opposite of those SMART goals they used to make us write in school. <a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2023/2023-in-focus/" class="footnote-backref">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn4" class="footnote-item"><p>I also need to go in for another vision checkup and probably get a new pair of glasses. <a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2023/2023-in-focus/" class="footnote-backref">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</section>
Thing Builder2021-03-07T15:17:58Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2021/thing-builder/<p>Today I’m taking the wraps off a side project I started almost three years ago. It started with me wishing for project templates in my task manager, <a href="https://culturedcode.com/things/">Things</a>. At the time, I was using <a href="https://getdrafts.com/">Drafts</a> a lot for text automation, and I found a couple different user-created text parsers for Things in the <a href="https://actions.getdrafts.com/">Action Directory</a>. Inspired by these, I wanted something more Markdown-like, and as I thought about it, something in Shortcuts and not tied to a single third-party app.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2021/thing-builder/" id="fnref1">[1]</a></sup></p>
<p>I created the <a href="https://gist.github.com/slunsford/d19956fc8fbbbd9a9959b30275d1ef9e">Thing Builder</a>, a <a href="https://f001.backblazeb2.com/file/seanlunsford/thing-builder.png">250-action</a> shortcut that accepts text using a particular markup, which can be used to define and create a new Things project with all its associated tasks and dates, or to batch-add tasks to existing projects or areas. In addition to using the Markdown syntax for headings and bullets, I chose a handful of symbols, which can prefix a string of text to mark it as a list, date, tag, or note.</p>
<p>I did this in July 2019, but I decided to sit on it for a while before sharing it—mainly to actually put the tool through its paces and iron out any wrinkles. I’d also run into a bug with one of Shortcuts’ actions while initially working on this. (I was running an iOS beta, after all.) I found a workaround for the time being, but I did want to come back and use the more elegant solution whenever that got taken care of.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2021/thing-builder/" id="fnref2">[2]</a></sup></p>
<p>This has been longer of “a while” than I expected—but in the meantime, I’ve used it a lot, made a few tweaks, and built several other shortcuts that themselves call the Thing Builder to generate a project. I have several templates for work that I use on a regular basis. This outlasted another fling with the <a href="https://bulletjournal.com/">Bullet Journal</a> and was waiting for me when I came back to the warm embrace of Things in January. At some point I’d seen that that buggy action was working again, so I’d had swapping those actions out on my to-do list for some time, along with writing documentation and sharing the shortcut (all in a Things project, of course). Yesterday that caught my eye, I made the updates, and then I went ahead with writing docs. And here we are.</p>
<p>If you’re looking for a way to create reusable project templates for Things—or just add a bunch of tasks from a text editor—you can find a link to download the shortcut and an explanation of the syntax <a href="https://gist.github.com/slunsford/d19956fc8fbbbd9a9959b30275d1ef9e">in the documentation</a>.</p>
<hr class="footnotes-sep">
<section class="footnotes">
<ol class="footnotes-list">
<li id="fn1" class="footnote-item"><p>Though there were plenty of times during development where I would’ve rather been working with code in a text editor for something of this scale, using Shortcuts turned out to be a good move: I’ve long since moved on from Drafts, but the shortcut I built is alive and well, and accessible anywhere through the iOS share sheet. <a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2021/thing-builder/" class="footnote-backref">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn2" class="footnote-item"><p>It was the “Get Group from Matched Text” action, for extracting sub-patterns from text matched with a regular expression. In those cases, I ended up using the “Match Pattern” action again to match within the match. <a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2021/thing-builder/" class="footnote-backref">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</section>
Regeneration2020-02-24T15:12:41Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2020/regeneration/<p>For the last few years on <a href="https://breadcrumbsfm.com">our podcast</a>, my friend Elias and I have chosen and discussed <a href="https://youtu.be/NVGuFdX5guE">yearly themes</a>, inspired by <a href="https://www.relay.fm/cortex/95">another podcast</a>. An alternative to New Year’s resolutions, they’re basically an idea—typically phrased as “The Year of ______”—intended to be a guiding principle for decisions throughout the year.</p>
<p>I went a bit nerdy with mine <a href="https://castro.fm/episode/D5fYbA#39:18">this year</a>, landing on <em>The Year of Regeneration</em>—a very intentional <a href="https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Regeneration">Doctor Who reference</a>. The word came to me while watching the first episode of the current season,<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2020/regeneration/" id="fnref1">[1]</a></sup> but it fit very well with the areas and hopes that had been coming to mind while mulling over this year’s theme. In a nutshell, I was looking to:</p>
<ul>
<li>find a healthier work-rest balance; to stay on top of work but avoid crashing into recharge mode so often.</li>
<li>maintain and build on the spiritual disciplines that I had started picking up again towards the end of last year—and, having started to sense the beginnings of some spiritual renewal, to do so expectantly.</li>
</ul>
<p>But in the weeks since picking this word, I’ve come to realize that, as only God can pull off, it’s shaping up to have far more meaning than I was even anticipating.</p>
<p>My church itself seems to also be in the early stages of some sort of renewal. Many in the leadership and the congregation have roles to play in that, but in the last couple months two of mine have solidified. One is taking a seat on the church council, at the request of multiple people, who said they would appreciate my perspective in the council’s discussions and decisions. The other is helping to spearhead the launch of a young adults’ ministry of sorts, building on the organic group that has taken shape since August or so. With these two things—on top of the fruit I’ve seen in my other roles at this church<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2020/regeneration/" id="fnref2">[2]</a></sup>—I had a real sense of calling wash over me during a conversation about all this with my girlfriend a few weeks ago. In a moment, I felt very clearly that I’m <em>meant</em> to be here, <em>right now</em>, for <em>these</em> purposes. And I believe that the regeneration of this church and my own are bound up together. I have this part to play in the church’s, and that in turn will contribute to mine.</p>
<p>There’s another aspect of this that came into focus in that same conversation: regeneration means <em>dying first</em>. It even makes sense in the context of the show that inspired me: the Doctor regenerates because of some would-be-fatal injury. As the old body dies, a new one regenerates from it. This new iteration of the Doctor is very much the same person as all the previous ones, but is also unique in his or her own way. Change comes, but something of the Doctor has to die. It hadn’t occurred to me when I first landed on this theme, but I now fully expect that this year, regeneration will mean the things in me that need to die dying, <em>so that</em> new life can come. Which is not exactly a pleasant thought, but it’ll be worth it in the end.</p>
<p>I don’t know what all this year will hold, but it’s looking to be a trying and rewarding one. Of the themes I’ve set for myself, this is probably my most significant yet. The trick, of course, is following through.</p>
<p>Last year, that afore-mentioned podcast started printing notebooks built around what they’re calling <a href="https://www.thethemesystem.com/"><em>The Theme System</em></a>. Based on what’s worked well for them, it builds on the concept of the yearly theme, adding ideal outcomes, journaling, and daily themes—basically a checklist of the things by which you want to assess each day. I ordered one when they came back in stock at the beginning of the year, and it just arrived a few days ago. Starting that journal gave me a chance to process through this theme as it stands now, with the extra meaning it has taken on in recent weeks. And a habit of sitting down with a pen, notebook, and this structure will help to keep this more front-of-mind than previous themes were most of the time. I’ve also documented the theme—along with the ideal outcomes, journal prompts, and daily themes I came up with—on <a href="https://seanlunsford.com/yearly-themes/">a new page of this site</a>, with the intent of keeping this more prominent and hence, more front-of-mind.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2020/regeneration/" id="fnref3">[3]</a></sup></p>
<p>But, even more than for those previous themes, I’m approaching the Year of Regeneration prayerfully and expectantly. Because I need to be intentional about it as I make decisions, but ultimately—as with the fruit I’ve already seen—that new life will only come from God.</p>
<hr class="footnotes-sep">
<section class="footnotes">
<ol class="footnotes-list">
<li id="fn1" class="footnote-item"><p>For the pedants, as British TV, it’s actually the first episode of the <em>series</em>. <a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2020/regeneration/" class="footnote-backref">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn2" class="footnote-item"><p>I’ve been running sound for the Sunday services since my second week here, including working with the building manager to update almost the entire sound system of the center where we and a couple other churches meet. In the second half of last year I finally saw a sound <em>team</em> come together for our church, with four of us on a rotation from week to week. I’ve also been helping with a new website, which went live just last week. <a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2020/regeneration/" class="footnote-backref">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn3" class="footnote-item"><p>I plan on this being a living document that I can keep updated throughout the year, as this theme continues to evolve, and with future themes. <a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2020/regeneration/" class="footnote-backref">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</section>
seanlunsford.com Has Moved (and so Have I)2018-06-12T08:17:58Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2018/seanlunsford-com-has-moved/<p>I’ve just finished <a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2018/eleven-days/">the move I wrote about</a>,<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2018/seanlunsford-com-has-moved/" id="fnref1">[1]</a></sup> so it seems appropriate to officially announce the move of my blog as well, though this new site has been live for a while now.</p>
<p>I’ve been using WordPress since my first post went up on this blog in 2012, but when I launched <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190122211614/https://thedarkroast.com/">my other site</a> in 2014 it was using a blogging platform called <a href="https://ghost.org">Ghost</a> and hosted on a server I rent and manage. Pretty much since then I’ve wanted to migrate this blog to Ghost and consolidate both on that same server. But in the past several months I’ve finally made the transition piecemeal, as I’ve had a moment here or there: migrating the old posts and images to a new instance of Ghost, pointing the seanlunsford.com domain name at the new site (and reverting WordPress to the wordpress.com subdomain), and coding a new theme.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2018/seanlunsford-com-has-moved/" id="fnref2">[2]</a></sup></p>
<p>The final piece was setting up email subscriptions with Ghost’s subscribers functionality and <a href="https://mailchimp.com">MailChimp</a>. I didn’t have this last piece in place when I published my last post, so I pushed it live to both sites at the same time. Sometime last week I took a break from moving to get the email piece up and running and migrate email subscribers from the old site,<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2018/seanlunsford-com-has-moved/" id="fnref3">[3]</a></sup> so I can now say that the move is complete.</p>
<p>I do have aspirations of starting to write more often again.<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2018/seanlunsford-com-has-moved/" id="fnref4">[4]</a></sup> So if you want to know when there’s something new, you can get it in your <a href="https://seanlunsford.com/subscribe/">inbox</a> or <a href="https://seanlunsford.com/feed.xml">RSS reader</a>.</p>
<hr class="footnotes-sep">
<section class="footnotes">
<ol class="footnotes-list">
<li id="fn1" class="footnote-item"><p>Except for those couple pieces of luggage the airline should be bringing by sometime today. <a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2018/seanlunsford-com-has-moved/" class="footnote-backref">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn2" class="footnote-item"><p>I have to say I really like the way it turned out. I used <a href="https://github.com/slunsford/arabica">the theme</a> I created and maintain for The Dark Roast as a foundation, but made some visual changes and took cues from what I liked best in my customized WordPress theme. <a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2018/seanlunsford-com-has-moved/" class="footnote-backref">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn3" class="footnote-item"><p>Tinkering with servers and RSS feeds is a nice change from putting stuff into suitcases, boxes, and trash bags. <a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2018/seanlunsford-com-has-moved/" class="footnote-backref">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn4" class="footnote-item"><p>Though they may be <a href="https://breadcrumbs.fm/89/">no more than aspirations</a>. <a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2018/seanlunsford-com-has-moved/" class="footnote-backref">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</section>
Eleven Days2018-05-31T03:05:04Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2018/eleven-days/<p>Eleven days.</p>
<p>I’m sitting here on top of the chapel, back to one of the pylons, looking out over the drillfield. I can barely see this page to write, let alone legibly.</p>
<p>How many times have I wandered around this drillfield, this campus, at night like this? Seen Burruss Hall all lit up like that, those lamps lining the asphalt footpaths that crisscross the grass, that semicircle of 32 lights on 32 memorial stones? I remember walking around here freshman year, almost eight years ago, missing my home, lamenting on the phone or in my own head, wanting nothing more than to be back overseas.</p>
<p>And now I’m eleven days away from that flight I pined for, that flight leaving America behind for a new life elsewhere in the world. I never imagined then that I would be this torn up about it.</p>
<p>I’m really excited that within two weeks I’ll be on a terrace within sight of at least a small patch of the Mediterranean, with a fresh start and opportunities stretching out before me. Most of what I’m feeling this week—and will be for the next week and a half—is overwhelmed and terrified, as I sprint to the finish line of moving out of my apartment and <em>to another continent</em>. But an undercurrent I’ve been feeling for weeks, for months, ever since I started planning to move somewhere almost a year ago, is sadness. I’ve felt it as I’ve done a lot of things for the last time with friends and with my church. I felt it when I gave my cat away on Saturday, and as my apartment has felt a lot emptier without him. And I’m feeling it now, as I look out over this campus that became home after all. I’m glad I took this moment to walk over here and sit for a while.</p>
<p>I’ve left a lot of pieces of my heart in a lot of homes over the years. And now I’m burying yet another piece in this field. And when the plane lifts off the runway in eleven days, and when I’m sitting on that terrace or walking along the Mediterranean, I’m going to miss the piece of my heart that I left in Blacksburg, Virginia.</p>
Fifteen Years2016-09-19T21:26:18Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2016/fifteen-years/<p><em>I wrote the first draft of this on Sunday, September 11. Normally I write, edit, and publish in the space of a few hours at most, but I decided to hold off on posting this that day. I wanted to give myself time to reflect, and to let a few others read it and give me their thoughts. I really wanted to make sure I was communicating clearly, and that the message that is most important is the thing that’s getting through. I’ve really questioned whether I should publish it at all, but I—and those I shared it with—think it is an important perspective to share. I hope I am able to effectively communicate the way I see these things.</em></p>
<p>So you’re probably aware it’s September 11. Fifteen years on, it seems like much of the internet is paying tribute in some way. Honestly, I’m pretty tired this weekend and don’t really feel like writing right now, but as we were praying for the families of the victims both before church as the worship/production team, and again at the end of the service with the entire congregation, I found myself thinking about it and feeling like maybe I should chime in with my perspective, which—as with most things—is a bit different from the average American’s.</p>
<p>As I said, many, many people today have already called that day a tragedy, and prayed for the families of victims, first responders, and others affected. I agree with all of them, but I’m not writing to say what has been said a lot today already. What struck me today is what’s happened in the fifteen years since. How the world has changed. The loss of thousands of lives that day was tragic, but that tragedy has rippled across the years, in many more thousands of lives lost, in the way people think, and in the way people treat those around them. And frankly I think that is just as tragic if not more so.</p>
<p>You may be aware I grew up in the Muslim part of the world, but we happened to be back in the States in September 2001. By the time we went back a year later, air travel and airport security had tightened up like never before. The US had sent troops into Afghanistan, which affected that entire region, including where we lived. And Americans had become far more suspicious and fearful of the rest of the world, particularly Muslims—a trend that has only continued in the decade and a half since.</p>
<p>Since that day my family and I have been torn between two worlds—the country my passport says I’m from and where I’ve found myself living for the past six years now, and the country that at least a part of me still calls home all these years later, even though most Americans seem to think we’re crazy to have lived there. And I’ve seen a lot of misunderstanding, distrust, even hatred from both sides towards the other. Many Americans now equate Islam with small, right-wing, militant groups of Muslims, assuming all Muslims are out to kill them. And many Muslims see America as the country that has deployed troops and drone strikes against much of the Muslim world—killing their friends and loved ones, civilians who happen to be near the militants.</p>
<p>But the stark, night and day difference is that the Muslims who we lived among never once directed their anger at America towards us, but instead welcomed us into their homes, fed us, called us guests in their country. How many Americans who claim to follow Jesus have done the same for the Muslims who live among us and feel more isolated and vulnerable than ever right now?</p>
<p>In the fifteen years since 9/11, I’ve seen the world rally around not only New York, but Paris, Haiti, Japan, and other places where tragedy has struck in the form of either violence or natural disasters. And yet when disasters or extremists strike the Muslim world,<sup class="footnote-ref"><a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2016/fifteen-years/" id="fnref1">[1]</a></sup> the rest of the world either (a) doesn’t notice, or (b) shrugs and says “They’re all terrorists anyways.”</p>
<p>Or worse, expresses the sentiment that this is somehow God’s judgment on the unbelievers.</p>
<p>I can’t really think of anything that makes me more angry than reading that. (Though maybe it was my fault for being in the YouTube comments.)</p>
<p>When we say that, <em>how are we any better than the fundamentalists we fear</em>, yelling “God is great; death to the infidel”?</p>
<p>And now, to top it all off, we have running for president a man who is not only praised for his blatant racism, but has built a platform that takes this fear of the outsider to its natural conclusion—throwing out foreigners, building a wall, separating ourselves from the rest of the scary, scary world, and punishing people for things they had nothing to do with, things done by others who claim to follow the same beliefs. What’s shocking is not that such a person exists. What’s frightening and disturbing is that enough of the country agrees with him that he is one of two people with a shot at the White House in two months. I hope to God this country is not so hateful and fearful as to let him get there. I hope we all realize the danger of electing such a person and vote for someone else.</p>
<p>I’m realizing now this has become way more politically charged than I first intended when I sat down to write what was meant to be a tribute—not just to the violence of fifteen years ago, but to the war-torn and distrustful world that has resulted from that in the years since. I meant this to be more wholesome, more contemplative. But I guess as I got writing, a lot has come out that I’ve felt the need to say for a long time now. I hope what I’ve said isn’t too distasteful on this day, though it almost certainly will offend or even anger some people.</p>
<p>But for those of you still reading, join me in praying—yes, for those affected by the attack of fifteen years ago, and for the people who continue to be misled to think these things are right, but also for those who face persecution simply because they are Muslim or appear to be. And ultimately, for peace, for God’s kingdom to come, his will to be done. For love and reconciliation to win out over fear and hatred.</p>
<p><em>Come, Lord Jesus.</em></p>
<hr class="footnotes-sep">
<section class="footnotes">
<ol class="footnotes-list">
<li id="fn1" class="footnote-item"><p>I feel the need to point out that terrorists have killed far more Muslims than non-Muslims worldwide. At the same time, most mass shootings within the US—all of which are acts of terror—have been at the hands of non-immigrant Americans. Though the media seems to reserve the label of terrorism for violence committed by Muslims. <a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2016/fifteen-years/" class="footnote-backref">↩︎</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</section>
Where Is Your Sting?2016-03-28T22:56:12Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2016/where-is-your-sting/<p>You may have heard of the explosion that rocked Lahore, Pakistan, yesterday. Having grown up in that part of the world, it hits pretty close to home for me.</p>
<p>The sad thing is that it isn’t even an unusual occurrence. The sad thing is how—well, mundane—these blasts have become in the region. How often I feel a buzz and look down at my wrist to see yet another news alert with yet another body count. And I have to wonder at just how detached I’ve become. I look down and all I see are numbers. Maybe it’s a defense mechanism. If every one took an emotional toll it’d be too much. But then once in a while, something makes me take a step back and feel that emotional reaction to the evil and tragedy of it all. And it breaks my heart.</p>
<p>And yesterday it hit harder than it has in a while. Because yesterday those buzzes on my wrist came literally as we were singing that Christ has risen, that he is victorious over death. That he brings light to the darkness. While out there in the world it’s as dark as ever, and death is still very, very real.</p>
<p>I feel like there should be some takeaway or something, but I got nothing. The thing is, this is where we are right now. On the one hand we proclaim Jesus’ resurrection and victory over the evil one and death itself, and on the other we’re still waiting for the final, utter vanquishing of evil, and for the restoration of creation to be completed. And until then we live in a world where a bomb will kill dozens even as we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection.</p>
<p>So as I stood in that auditorium yesterday, as the alerts came in with the climbing death toll, I sang through the tears that were welling up, <em>“You give life, you are love, you bring light to the darkness.”</em> And I sang it praying that his light would pierce through the darkness hanging over Lahore right now.</p>
<p>Because as dark as it seems right now, the darkest day in history was that Saturday two thousand years ago. But when all hope seemed lost, Jesus came back. And the very thing that seemed to have beaten him is what clinched his victory. So we celebrate that victory, we proclaim it and live in it, even in the face of unspeakable evil. God’s light is breaking through the darkness, and we are carrying it, knowing victory is ours.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Death is swallowed up in victory.<br>
O death, where is your victory?<br>
O death, where is your sting?</p>
<p><cite>1 Corinthians 15:54-55</cite></p>
</blockquote>
<blog>2014-09-06T20:31:44Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2014/new-blog/<p>I’ve started a new blog. I’m starting to get serious about software and web development as a hobby and potential side business, and I wanted a place to discuss that—both the technical stuff, and the more macro narrative of starting into this new venture, and lessons learned. I thought a lot about whether I should continue to use this blog for that, but I’ve realized that in spite of what I said at the very beginning of this blog—more than two years ago—that I wanted to be use this blog to discuss any topic that interested me, the reality is that this blog has, for the most part, focused around matters of faith and personal thoughts and struggles and such. The people who read it have, I assume (pretty safely), come to read that content. Not about apps and code and servers. These are two very different topics with two pretty different audiences—though there may be some overlap. And this was even before I started putting “seanlunsford.com” on my ministry materials, effectively cementing the focus of this site.</p>
<p>So from now on, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190122211614/https://thedarkroast.com/">thedarkroast.com</a> is my home for discussing the world of tech, development, and Apple. I may occasionally link to some of those posts here, if it’s something more along the lines of social issues around technology (like I’ve shared a few times before), which I think would be interesting or beneficial to readers of this blog. If you want to see all the technical stuff, follow me there.</p>
We’re in This Together2014-08-09T21:02:50Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2014/were-in-this-together/<p>You may or may not have heard of the controversy that’s erupted around Michael and Lisa Gungor, the Christian musicians who’ve caused an uproar by saying that they don’t believe in a six-day creation or a literal Adam and Eve. I’m not about to wade into the creation-evolution debate, and I know Christians are increasingly on both sides of the fence on the topic, but I have a few thoughts about how I’ve seen this news about Gungor unfold and the reactions of many Christians to it. Actually, these are all things that bother me in general, and this specific episode has just been the latest example of how these play out every time this kind of thing happens.</p>
<p>First, it really frustrates me that a lot of people seem to be all worked up over this <em>without even having read the original post itself,</em> except as quoted by those criticizing it. Now, I don’t know for sure that people aren’t reading it, but from what I can tell, and from what I know of human behavior, many or most haven’t.</p>
<p>The original blog post, <a href="http://gungormusic.com/2014/02/what-do-we-believe/">What Do We Believe?</a>, was actually written back in February. I don’t remember hearing anything about this back then. It’s only in the last week or so, after some Christian site picked this up and wrote about it, that it’s suddenly become a huge deal. Ironically, the whole point of Gungor’s post was that we shouldn’t be so quick to pass judgment on each other for our differences in belief.</p>
<p>In the last couple days, Michael Gungor has written two follow up posts, <a href="http://gungormusic.com/2014/08/im-with-you/">I’m With You</a> and <a href="http://gungormusic.com/2014/08/im-with-you-part-2/">Part 2</a>.</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone should be commenting on the issue without reading all three of these in their entirety. This is really just a general principle, as far as I’m concerned. It’s a bad idea to jump to conclusions about anything, let alone voice them, based solely on second-hand information. It’s irresponsible and can really end up making you look foolish.</p>
<p>Today Ken Ham’s response to “I’m With You” showed up in my Facebook news feed. Until this morning, I’d heard bits and pieces of this whole controversy, but hadn’t really paid much attention or looked into it myself. But today it was all over Facebook, so I started reading up. The first link I saw happened to be Ken Ham’s, so I started there.</p>
<p>He takes all the quotes out of context, making them seem far more unreasonable, aggressive, or even crazy. But when I clicked through to the full post, I took those same words in a completely different light in context. People have way too much power when quoting to cast the quote in almost any light they want for readers to rely on the quotes as an accurate representation of the original.</p>
<p>Another thing that bothers me is how a lot of Christians react when another believer, especially a well-known one, even begins to ask questions about things we believe or consider other interpretations of Scripture than the traditionally held one. Especially about certain topics—this being one of them. People get not only defensive, but aggressive. Again, I’m addressing a number of times this has happened fairly recently. Several months back, Dan Haseltine, the frontman for Jars of Clay, started asking questions about the Bible and homosexuality on Twitter, just looking for open and honest discussion. The response was venomous. This has happened again and again. I mean, is it wrong to ask questions? Look at the Psalms. How often do David and the other psalmists question things, even God himself? But what we see is that through that, they and their faith come out the other end stronger.</p>
<p>Another article I read this morning was on Relevant, titled <a href="http://www.relevantmagazine.com/current/why-are-people-so-upset-about-what-gungor-said">Why Are People So Upset About What Gungor Said?</a> The whole thing is a really good read, and makes a lot of good points that I won’t repeat here. But one passage in there says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I use this analogy often, as Christians we tend to act like we have a belief system that is like a bubble: It is fragile and easily popped if anything even touches any part of it. We think we have to protect our bubble.</p>
<p>But when did the Christian faith become so fragile? It is OK to ask the tough questions, to question our beliefs to find them to be true (and if not true to find the truth God is revealing to us).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I mean, really, if we believe what we believe is true, why should we be afraid to question or discuss it? Aren’t we confident that it will hold up to scrutiny? And if it doesn’t, should we be believing it at all? I know a lot of people in the church will disagree with me here, but in one point at least I agree with Gungor: our faith should be intellectual. If the Scriptures are true, the evidence will back them up. If the evidence doesn’t support our particular interpretation of Scripture, maybe we need to think about another interpretaton that makes more sense. This has happened time and time again over the centuries. And it was not popular in the church when that paradigm shift began, but over time, it became taken for granted. When was the last time you heard someone arguing for a literal intepretation of the Bible’s references to the corners of the earth or the sun going around the earth?</p>
<p><em>Now, please, before you jump on me, I am <strong>not</strong> agreeing (or disagreeing) with Gungor’s stance on creation.</em> I am intentionally trying to steer clear of that debate, because it is beyond the scope of this blog and frankly I just don’t feel equipped to tackle that issue in such a public venue. But my point is that, in this area and others, I don’t think we should be afraid to look at the evidence and let it inform our faith, so that our faith can grow and become stronger. I know a lot of people will think that’s counterintuitive. But I know when I look at the sciences and the way the world works—from the way these mathematical equations and constants keep showing up again and again in nature, keeping the world spinning and functioning, to the miracle of our bodies, how they are constructed and how they work all the way down to the most microscopic of details, to the vast cosmos full of stars and galaxies more massive than we can possibly comprehend, and nebulae, pulsars, black holes—my mind is blown again and again, and I can’t help but stand in awe of the God who made it all, and set it up to work the way it does. (Especially in light of how hard it can be for me to make a few lines of code work the way I want them to.) And maybe I’m skating dangerously close to the edge here, but honestly, if it turned out that he chose to use the mechanics of evolution to create it all, that wouldn’t hurt my faith a bit.</p>
<p>Now, all that said, the Gungors aren’t just asking questions, but openly already believe something other than the traditional six-day, young earth creationism of orthodox Christianity. But that brings me to my next, and most important, point: <em>How much does that matter, really, to the rest of us?</em> More importantly, <em>does this trump the unity we should have with them as the body of Christ?</em> They still believe and follow Jesus, and all the essentials held up for two thousand years as the core beliefs of Christianity. I would hope everyone reading this would agree that there’s no reason this disqualifies them from being followers of Jesus. Because it doesn’t. And if they’re followers of Jesus, and we’re followers of Jesus, we are one. Whether we like it or not. Jesus said we would be known as his disciples by our love for each other (John 13:35). When I look at the perception of the church—especially in the West—by most of the outside world, that doesn’t make the top of the list. I don’t think that even makes the cut. Not only that, he prayed that we would live in such unity that the world would know he was sent by God (John 17:21). All of our disputes and venomous attacks and hatred for each other over these issues fly in the face of these verses.</p>
<p>If you take nothing else away from this post, take this: we are following Jesus. Jesus, who came to earth and turned the world on its head. He turned the Pharisees’ worldview on its head by challenging the centuries of pointless moral code they had built up that was only making themselves feel good and oppressing everyone around them; by telling them that more important than any of that, we are to love God and love those around us. And then he lived that out by hanging out with everyone from the Pharisees to the most despised people in society. He turned the world’s social order on its head by choosing fishermen, tax collectors, and revolutionaries as his disciples, and teaching them to love each other and to live by serving others. And then he sent them out to change the world. He turned justice on its head by suffering and dying with our sin on his shoulders, and then conquering death, so that we could join him in this new way of living. We need to live by keeping our eyes on him, and by helping the guy next to us who’s also trying to follow him, regardless of our differences. We’re in this together, and Jesus is our guide, leading by example.</p>
Missing Out: a response to “Look Up” and the argument that my iPhone is evil2014-05-04T18:02:35Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2014/missing-out/<p>So this post is a bit different from what I usually write here, but I’m feeling the need to get on a soapbox about something I’m seeing a lot of these days. It’s probably not what you might think. It’s about attitudes about our use of technology, and people’s fear of it turning us all into zombies at worst, or poor wretched souls with no life who will one day die alone, at best.</p>
<p>(Disclaimer: I’m feeling more sarcastic than usual.)</p>
<p>There’s a video called <a href="http://youtu.be/Z7dLU6fk9QY">“Look Up”</a> going around. Its point is that we’re too absorbed in our screens and we’re missing out on life going on around us. That “social media” is making us antisocial. Sound familiar? The more ubiquitous Facebook and smartphones become, the more I keep seeing videos, tweets, and blog posts telling us to sign out of Facebook and Twitter, turn off our phones, and live life. (Also a little ironic.) But the more I hear this message, the less I agree with it.</p>
<p>The sentiment is valid. It’s entirely true that we can spend too much time looking at our screens. There’s the classic scenario of a group of people sitting around a dinner table, all looking at their phones and not talking to each other. And yes, this happens—probably more often than it should. But I don’t think that makes our phones bad. Or social media. Or the internet. I think it’s healthy to keep our use of these things in check. I’ve taken steps to do that myself. But I think these videos, and this one in particular, can take the message too far.</p>
<p>The fact is, you can have too much of anything good. The fact that gluttony and the obesity caused by it are rampant, especially in the developed world, doesn’t make food evil. It’s entirely necessary to life itself. The other half of the world is suffering and dying from a lack of it. (Another huge issue that I’m not about to tackle in this post.)</p>
<p>Now, I can’t make the case that technology is necessary to life. It’s not on the same level as food, anyways. But technology is enabling so much life. It’s bordering miraculous what we are able to do these days because of technology and the internet. If we traveled to a couple decades ago with an iPad, it would blow people’s minds. (The time traveling probably would, too.) If people from a few hundred years ago saw us with our iPhones, they would think we were sorcerers. And lives are being saved every day by technology.</p>
<p>The human race, contrary to what these videos are saying, is more connected than ever. And the entire sum of mankind’s knowledge is available to us literally at our fingertips, almost anywhere on the planet—even to people orbiting it. And startups from Silicon Valley to Germany to India are coming up with apps and devices every day to solve problems and make life better for lots of people.</p>
<p>My friends and family are scattered across the globe. But because of Facebook, Skype, FaceTime, and iMessage, I can stay in touch with them in a way no generation has been able to, ever. Gone are the days where you send a letter to another continent by ship and get a reply months later. Now, if we coordinate time zones (technology hasn’t quite fixed everything yet) I can see a friend in the mountains of Asia face to face, and talk to them in real time.</p>
<p>The video goes on to make a distinction between being alone reading a book, painting, or doing something else “productive”, and being alone on the internet. Saying that reading a book is enriching and constructive and surfing the web is not. Because there’s nothing at all worth reading on the internet (including this post), and no mindless trash has ever been published in the form of a book, ever. (That was sarcasm, by the way.) And how are kids learning to code at a young age, learning the critical thinking and problem solving skills needed for it, and creating their own apps, not being constructive? Or children with autism who, given iPads, are able to express themselves and show creativity in a way they never could before? (True examples. Google them. The information’s at your fingertips, remember?)</p>
<p>The second half of that video tells the story of a chance encounter, where a guy asks a girl for directions, and they end up going on a date, and then getting married, and all about them becoming parents and then grandparents, and blah blah blah. But the guy would’ve missed all that if he’d been using his iPhone for directions. <em>Come on, really?</em> Keep that in mind next time you ask someone for directions. You might end up marrying them.</p>
<p>I’m tired of being told that all this technology is making me more disconnected from the people I care about, when I know for a fact that the opposite is true. I’m tired of being told I’m going to miss out on life because I have an iPhone and use it. Not only have I made lots of memories hanging out with friends, but technology has made it easier than ever to plan those times, coordinate meeting up, and capture those moments to remember them. I’m tired of being told that technology is bad when the world is so much better off because of it. Going back to the developing world—if the right technology could be made accessible and affordable in developing nations it could have a huge impact. I’m not talking about everyone being able to watch cat videos. I’m talking about being able to solve real problems.</p>
<p>So yes, don’t be a jerk to your friends and spend the whole evening playing with your phone. But if you do, that’s your problem, not your phone’s. What I don’t want us to miss out on or take for granted is the huge potential in those phones, and the way they—and all the technology we have available to us—are making the world a better place.</p>
Checkmate2014-04-03T10:45:56Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2014/checkmate/<p>Tuesday is my fullest day of the week this semester, followed closely by Thursday. Both days I have back-to-back classes from 8 to 4:45, except for a break between 10:45 and 12:30. On Tuesdays I go straight to work at 5, and don’t get off until after 9.</p>
<p>At the beginning of the semester, I decided that break between classes would be a good time to read the Bible and pray. For the most part, that has worked out well. But in recent weeks, I’ve been finding myself using that time for homework more and more.</p>
<p>This Tuesday started the same way. My 9:30 class got out at 10, so I had extra time. I started out by making my equation sheet for my steel test the next day. I was going to get started on one of my two assignments due today, but for both of them I needed books I’d left at home. So then I started to work on the recording from the message on Sunday. Most of the time I can do all the processing, editing, and exporting on my iPad. But some weeks, like this week, there is a lot of noise in the recording. To clean that up, I would need my laptop, which I didn’t have with me.</p>
<p>It was as if God had cornered me. So I prayed, “Alright, God, checkmate…what do you want to say to me?”</p>
<p>I was fully expecting something about my lack of discipline, about how I needed to be better about spending time with him, about how much I’ve been drifting away and not really living for him most of the time. Or something along those lines.</p>
<p>Instead, he said, “I love you.”</p>
<p>That was it.</p>
<p>It started to sink in. On the one hand, I’ve been more and more distracted lately by so many things, and I haven’t been focused on God much at all. In some things, I feel like I’ve just been going through the motions, and in others, I’ve been letting them slide almost completely. On the other hand, as I’ve been realizing this recently, I’ve been beating myself up over it, and telling myself I need to do better. To the point where that’s what I expected God to say to me when I took the time to listen.</p>
<p>But he didn’t. He just said, “I love you.”</p>
<p>I realized in that moment that I’d reduced him to a religion – one that I couldn’t even keep.</p>
<p>He doesn’t care about how much I’m following the rules if it’s just for the sake of following the rules. He doesn’t want me to begrudgingly give him time out of my day just to check it off my list. He doesn’t want me to serve at church and be a leader and all that if it’s not an outpouring of love for him. And he doesn’t want me to strive to do better in all those areas if I’m doing it on my own strength and because it’s what I “should” do. He loves me, and he just wants me to choose to love him. Everything else flows out of that.</p>
<p>It’s so simple, but so easy to forget. But in spite of that, he relentlessly pursues me. Until I finally listen.</p>
<p>In my mind I heard the lyrics from “One Thing Remains”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Your love never fails<br>
It never gives up<br>
It never runs out on me<br>
Your love</p>
<p>And it’s higher than the mountains that I face<br>
And it’s stronger than the power of the grave<br>
And constant in the trial and the change<br>
This one thing remains</p>
<p>And on and on and on and on it goes<br>
Yes, it overwhelms and satisfies my soul<br>
And I never, ever have to be afraid<br>
This one thing remains</p>
<p>In death, in life<br>
I’m confident and covered by the power of your great love<br>
My debt is paid<br>
There’s nothing that can separate my heart from your great love</p>
</blockquote>
<p>No matter what I’m going through, no matter what I do, no matter what happens, he will never stop loving me. And he just asks me to love him back. And sometimes he needs to break through all my distractions and checkmate me to remind me of that.</p>
Two Months2014-03-18T15:12:30Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2014/two-months/<p>Remember how I wrote that I was going to blog every week…almost two weeks ago? Oops.</p>
<p>Last week was spring break, and I spent most of it writing—working on my staff application for <a href="http://nlcf.net">NLCF</a>. And now I’m back, for the final stretch.</p>
<p>It’s ridiculous how close I am to the end of school. My graduation is May 16 and 17. So two months from now I will have graduated and will probably be on my way out of town. As I was driving back to Blacksburg on Sunday, I was remembering the last time I was riding up a winding mountain road at the end of my final spring break, with my impending graduation two months away. That was four years ago, and I was on the other side of the world then, still not even sure what the four years after that graduation would hold. I didn’t know what school I would be going to, or what it would be like when I got there. I knew I had nine short weeks left at the boarding school that had been my home for the past four and a half years. And I thought time was flying <em>then</em>.</p>
<p>At the beginning of the break my family and I had spent a few days at a retreat with a bunch of other families who were going to be leaving the country. I remember one session where we talked about transition. Then we all went off by ourselves and asked ourselves questions about the upcoming transition, and thought about what we hoped to see in the years following it. Like I said, I had no idea what to expect. I didn’t even know where I would be going to school yet. I just wanted God to use me, wherever I was, to make a difference in the lives of those around me.</p>
<p>The rest of that break I’d been at home, and I’d spent a lot of it thinking about the youth group back at school, that I was a leader of (one of maybe a dozen or so), and small groups in particular (which we led in pairs.) I had been feeling like the way small groups were being handled wasn’t as effective as it could be. I wanted them to be more closely-knit and consistent from year to year, and also to be more autonomous and less one-size-fits-all. I spent a good bit of time thinking and praying about it and drew up a rough plan for how I thought we should reorganize youth group to meet these goals. When I pitched it to the other youth group leaders after break, they didn’t really jump on it. My co-leader was completely on board, as he’d had the same concerns as me. A couple others liked the idea. But most didn’t see anything wrong with the way small groups were going. To be fair, our group was pretty different from the others just because of how the two of us led and who was in it. That’s part of why I was pushing for more autonomy, so we could have more freedom to lead our group better. The other groups didn’t really need this as much. The other leaders agreed to give it a shot though, for a few weeks, and see how it went. Unfortunately, it was so close to the end of the year, and so much was going on, that we only had youth group a few times before grad, and my plan never really got off the ground. I don’t know what happened to it after I left, but my guess is when they came back the next fall to start again, with me gone, they defaulted to the way things had always been done. Interestingly though, the Engage Groups we have at NLCF are similar in a lot of ways to my vision of small groups in high school.</p>
<p>Fast forward to this break. It’s been a lot of looking back and looking forward. I spent the first couple days backpacking with a group from NLCF. It was cold, but fun. Last time I was on a backpacking trip was in high school, so doing it again brought back those memories. We shared testimonies around the campfire, and I talked about my boarding school and my spiritual growth there. Of course it came up that I’d lived overseas, so then I went through that whole explanation to everyone who didn’t already know that. And looking ahead, another guy who was on the trip is applying to go on staff, so the two of us talked a lot about the application and about training and support raising, which are just around the corner after grad.</p>
<p>The rest of break I was with my parents, and I spent most of my free time working on the application. Parts of it were writing about my past—my journey to faith, experiences and individuals that influenced my life and spiritual growth, my calling to ministry. Most of these answers were from my boarding school years, at least in part. The other side of it was a lot of looking forward, thinking a lot about support raising and finances, and beyond that, to my expectations of my role as staff.</p>
<p>So all of this was swirling around in my head as I drove back to Blacksburg, Unlike four years ago, I was the one driving, and I was alone with my thoughts for a good seven hours. And my thoughts turned a lot to the nine weeks I have left. I still remember when I first noticed this phenomenon of each year going faster than the one before it. That was back in seventh grade. Since I’ve been in college, I’ve discovered that it isn’t a linear increase. The <em>rate of acceleration</em> is actually increasing. By the time I got to my senior year…man. I don’t even know what happened to the first half of this semester. The second half will be over in the blink of an eye. In the fall, all I could think about was graduating. But now it’s a little overwhelming how fast it’s coming, and maybe I’m not quite ready to leave just yet. I mean, yes, I can’t wait to be out of school. And I won’t exactly miss selling pizza. And the sooner I start raising support, the sooner I can come back to Blacksburg. But the reality is sinking in that I will still have to leave for a while, even if I am coming back. I’ll have to leave my Engage Group and my NLCF family. And I have friends who will be graduating or moving and won’t be here when I get back. And I will miss the pizza. This will be more bittersweet than I thought it would be.</p>
<p>So I’m praying for these less-than-nine weeks left. Sixty days, actually. Praying that I won’t miss them. That God would give me wisdom as I choose how to spend what little time I have left. That my time left with my Engage Group is good, and that God would continue to prepare them to carry on under new leadership. And that God would be preparing me to step—more like launch—into the next chapter of my life.</p>
<p>(I was going to make this short. I couldn’t do it.)</p>
Of Blogs and Lent2014-03-05T21:38:24Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2014/of-blogs-and-lent/<p>So Lent began today. I knew I’d neglected this blog a lot recently, but I just discovered that I’ve only posted twice since last Lent. What happened to the past year?</p>
<p>Anyways, for the past week, I’ve been thinking about what to do this year. This is only the second year that I’m actually observing Lent. It wasn’t until I came to <a href="http://nlcf.net/">NLCF</a> that I knew much about it or realized that it was commonly observed outside of Catholic circles. I think it’s really valuable though. Actually, I read a <a href="http://eugenecho.com/2011/03/09/lent-giving-up-coffee-or-my-life/">really good blog post by Eugene Cho</a> today that explains that value really well, and also voices something that’s been on my mind this past week – that doing it just for the sake of doing it is worthless and empty. The value comes from wanting to intentionally seek God in it and let him transform you through it. From surrendering your life to him. I haven’t watched the video yet (<em>yet</em> – I want to in the next couple days, when I get a chance.) But it’s really worth a read. Seriously, go read it and then come back.</p>
<p>I read <a href="http://www.catholicallyear.com/2014/02/outside-box-66-things-to-give-up-or.html">another blog post</a> last week about ways to think outside the box about fasting for Lent. This one is from a Catholic perspective, so some of the ideas aren’t as applicable to non-Catholics, but most of it is. I like to think outside the box, so this article helped get the wheels turning for me some. I think the key takeaway that shaped my thinking about Lent this year is that it doesn’t necessarily have to be giving something up, the way Lent is traditionally. It could also be taking something up – choosing to intentionally do something for Lent.</p>
<p>So what I’ve come up with this year is two-part. The first part is based on a couple of the suggestions in that second article I mentioned. I’m going to stop watching movies or TV shows on my own, except on Sundays. This semester I’ve been watching a lot of movies and TV in the evenings (not actually on TV, but on my iPad.) I want to spend that time reading – and at least some of that reading material to be spiritual content. To explain those two qualifiers – I think watching things with others is different. It’s about spending time with other people, not just how I choose to spend my own time.</p>
<p>As for Sundays, it turns out they’re not actually part of Lent at all. I discovered the other day that there are actually 46 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter (I hadn’t actually counted them before.) At first, I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t adding up to 40. After doing a little research, I was reassured that I really can count (at least to 46) and discovered that it’s actually supposed to be like that. There are six Sundays between Ash Wednesday and Easter. Excluding these leaves 40 days. Apparently when Lent was extended to 40 days a few hundred years after Christ, they decided Sunday wouldn’t count because it was a feast day, to celebrate the Resurrection. So fasting (remember when fasting was about food?) was kept to the other six days, and the season of Lent actually ended up being 46 days long. (This is probably all explained in that video that I haven’t watched yet. And some of you probably knew this already. It was news to me.) I’d heard that sometimes people (in the present day) don’t count Sundays, but I didn’t know that this is why. Anyways, so when I was thinking about my own fast, I decided to follow this too. Not because it’s “right” or “more traditional”, but because I feel like in my case one day a week is a healthy limit, and this isn’t something I feel the need to go cold turkey on.</p>
<p>The second part is to revive this blog some. I’m going to commit to posting weekly through the period of Lent about something God has been showing me. My hope is that this will make me slow down and actually pay attention to things God might be trying to teach me, that I miss when I’m caught up in life most of the time. And hopefully the extra reading I’m doing will contribute to this. They probably won’t be long posts. Part of what keeps me from blogging so much of the time is that my posts tend to be upwards of 1000 or even 1500 words and take me hours to write and edit before finally publishing them. So to start a post is to commit a significant chunk of my time to it. I think keeping them to 300–500 words will make them a little more manageable.</p>
<p>I’ll kick off those posts with one either Friday or early next week. We’ll see how God works in me over the next forty-<em>six</em> days.</p>
Prayer2013-10-19T20:01:09Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2013/prayer/<p>A couple weeks ago we started a series at <a href="http://nlcf.net">NLCF</a> on Galatians. For this series, during the last worship set of each service, there’s an opportunity for people to have someone pray for them. The first Sunday of the series, my <a href="http://nlcf.net/get-involved/engage-groups/">Engage Group</a> was one of the groups on the so-called HUG (hospitality/ushers/greeters) team, who folds bulletins before the service, greets people as they arrive, and takes up offering. Before the service, the HUG leader asked if anyone on the HUG team would be willing to join some of the staff at the back of the auditorium during the last set, to be available to pray for people.</p>
<p>Maybe it was because over the past two years, I’ve conditioned myself to volunteer to help out at NLCF however I can. Maybe it was because the Holy Spirit decided to override my decision-making at that moment. Probably a combination of both. Either way, I volunteered without even thinking about it. It was actually a few moments later that I even realized what had just happened. As if, for those few moments, something external actually had stepped in and made the decision for me. I’m glad though. Otherwise, I inevitably would have wavered and and maybe chickened out.</p>
<p>I got to pray for two people, neither of whom I’d ever met before. I stumbled through both prayers, grasping for words. But both of them appreciated it. And I was really glad for the opportunity to be able to pray for them.</p>
<p>It reminded me of high school, especially junior and senior year, when prayer was so much more a part of my life than it has been recently. Especially prayer for other people. I had close friends who came to me in their darkest moments, because they knew they could trust me to stand by them and fight for them in prayer, with faith and with power. God gave me that faith and that warrior’s spirit to be that person for those who needed it. (In fact, one of the people I prayed for Sunday reminded me a lot of a good friend in high school who was going through something very similar. They even said a lot of the same things.)</p>
<p>But that part of me was one of the casualties of my own dark night of the soul, during my first year of college. And though, more than two years later, I’ve largely recovered from that time, this is one area that still needs to be resurrected. But since that Sunday, I’ve been getting the sense that this is what God wants to resurrect next. In fact, I’ve been realizing that prayer is central to the growth I’ve been wanting to see in myself in many different areas. Just today I realized just how central, and how it ties all these areas together. But to explain that, let me back up again.</p>
<p>This semester I’ve started discipling two other guys in NLCF, a junior who is also an Engage Group leader, and a sophomore who is also very involved in NLCF. Our first discipleship meeting, maybe four weeks ago, we shared our backgrounds and then each shared about how we sensed God wanted us to grow, and what we could each do to move in that direction. We each shared different things, but over the next couple weeks, as we continued to reflect on what God was doing and what our next steps were, all three of us began to converge on prayer. We all came to the conclusions that the way forward in each of our situations was through praying more.</p>
<p>It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see that we should take some time to focus on prayer—digging more into what it means to pray, how we can be more effective or diligent in it, and so on. So this past Monday, we studied a hexagon.</p>
<p>Allow me to explain. NLCF uses shapes a lot as a tool to help convey and understand Biblical truths in an understandable and memorable way. These shapes are actually developed by a ministry called 3DM, where NLCF gets a lot of ministry concepts and resources, especially for discipleship. There are eight shapes—a circle, semicircle, triangle, square…all the way up to an octagon. The hexagon looks at the Lord’s Prayer, as given in Matthew 6:9-13. (I’m quoting from the NLT, which is why it’s a little more contemporary than what we’re used to reciting in church. Also, notice that the last line, “For yours/thine is the Kingdom…” is not actually in Scripture. That is, it was not in older, more reliable manuscripts, and so it is not included in modern translations. This was added in later manuscripts and incorporated into our church traditions through translations like the KJV. Not that there’s anything wrong with that part, but the hexagon is based on what modern translations agree on.)</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Our Father in heaven,<br>
may your name be kept holy.<br>
May your Kingdom come soon.<br>
May your will be done on earth,<br>
as it is in heaven.<br>
Give us today the food we need,<br>
and forgive us our sins,<br>
as we have forgiven those who sin against us.<br>
And don’t let us yield to temptation,<br>
but rescue us from the evil one.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is broken into six parts, represented by the six sides of the hexagon. Jesus gave this to the disciples, and to us, as a model for our prayers. So 3DM boiled it down to these six ideas, and recommend using the six ideas as a starting point for our prayers. There’s no one way to do it, although they give a couple ideas, but the idea is that the six points together make for a well-rounded approach to prayer.</p>
<p>Like I said at the beginning, I’ve been realizing that prayer is central to all the ways I’ve been feeling like I need to grow, especially in light of my decision to go on staff with NLCF. It was yesterday as I was praying that it really clicked, when I realized how the hexagon really ties together all three areas. So here are the six parts and how they relate to where I see myself right now. (The headings are the names given to each side by 3DM.)</p>
<h2>Character</h2>
<blockquote>
<p>Our Father in heaven,<br>
may your name be kept holy. (v. 9)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The first part of is really just starting by remembering who God is and what our relationship is to him. He’s our “Abba”, daddy. We can approach him as his sons and daughters. He’s in heaven, on the throne, in charge. And he’s holy—as we are trying to be, as he is transforming us to be.</p>
<p>What really jumps out at me is that, even so he is so much greater than us, and holy, and our King, we have this relationship with him. We can approach him as princes and princesses. As his children. He made a way for us to live in intimate relationship with him. And that’s what prayer is—approaching the throne, talking to him, listening to him. Hanging out with him. But how often does it feel like a chore? Something I try to work into my routine because it’s what a good Christian should do?</p>
<p>One of the things about being a college student is that any routine you get into gets reset every four months. Which for the most part I’m fine with. I’m usually not a fan of routine anyways. But sometimes there’s something to be said for routine. This is one area where the routine is really helpful to keep me in the habit. But every semester I have a different schedule and I’m back at Square One in trying to set aside time. And as it starts getting busy, between homework, tests, group projects, my job, and my responsibilities for NLCF, I have less and less control over my time, and I’m reading the Bible less and praying less.</p>
<p>What I need is more than routine. I need to desire to spend time with God. If I really want to do it, I’ll make it happen. And if it really sunk in that I have the opportunity to talk to the holy God who created the universe and who died for me—<em>anytime I want</em>—why wouldn’t I want to make time for it?</p>
<h2>Kingdom</h2>
<blockquote>
<p>May your Kingdom come soon.<br>
May your will be done on earth,<br>
as it is in heaven. (v. 10)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So God is in heaven, and he is King. In heaven his reign is absolute, and his will is always carried out. But here on earth is a different story. While he is the rightful King, “the world around us is under the control of the evil one” (1 John 5:19). And while, ultimately, God is sovereign and is in control, he has allowed evil to take control of the world. But not completely. When Jesus came to earth he announced the coming of the Kingdom of God. Not in the distant future, as foreseen by the prophets of old, but right then. It was near. It was breaking in—into the world that Satan controlled. It is still breaking in. And we are agents of this Kingdom. We are tasked with advancing it. But we aren’t alone. God’s will is for his Kingdom to be fully realized on earth, and Jesus made it clear that when we pray within God’s will, God will move. For whatever reason, he has given us this power. He wants to partner with us in bringing about the Kingdom. Although he is fully capable of bringing about his will all on his own, he has chosen to act within our prayers.</p>
<p>So prayer is talking to God as our dad, and it is also asking him as his agents to move in our actions and advance his Kingdom on earth.</p>
<p>This is a major part of what God is calling me back to—to pray for coming of the Kingdom. All aspects of it. To pray for the Gospel to be preached and for it to transform the lives of those around me, and across the world. And to pray for the renewal of all things—the healing of the brokenness in the lives around me, and the brokenness of the world. And not just to pray for these things, but to do my part to bring them about.</p>
<h2>Provision</h2>
<blockquote>
<p>Give us today the food we need, (v. 11)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Or, as many translations have it, “Give us today our daily bread.”</p>
<p>God is our Father and our King, and also our Provider. In this same chapter, Jesus goes on to give his famous passage about God’s provision for the birds and the flowers. He concludes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.</p>
<p>“So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”</p>
<p><cite>Matthew 6:31-34</cite></p>
</blockquote>
<p>We need to remember that God has our backs. We need to depend on him and trust him to provide.</p>
<p>For me, my problem isn’t worry so much as getting into the mindset that I can handle life on my own. I don’t worry enough, in that sense. Because it’s when I do start to get stressed about things that I remember that I can’t do it, but God can. This is something God’s been prodding me about recently. Especially in my leadership roles at NLCF. Too easily I start going through the motions. I forget to be leading from God’s power. There have been times this semester where I’ve been pushed out of my comfort zone a bit. Which is good, because it reminds me to rely on God, and to remember that he’s the one leading. My job is just to let him use me. This is true in my classes too. It’s when my homework and projects start piling up and push me to the point where I don’t see how I’m gonna pull it all off that I remember it’s not me who needs to pull it off.</p>
<p>So when I pray, I need to reaffirm my dependence on God. I need to give him each of the things I’m doing, and remember that my ability to do it comes from him. And when everything seems to be ready to come crashing down, I need to ask him for the strength to keep going.</p>
<h2>Forgiveness</h2>
<blockquote>
<p>and forgive us our sins,<br>
as we have forgiven those who sin against us. (v. 12)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There was a time, early in my walk with God, that I thought I had it all together, more or less. I don’t think I would have admitted this. I don’t think I even thought that I thought this. (Does that sentence even make sense?) I knew I wasn’t perfect. I knew I made mistakes, and I knew there were one or two areas that especially needed some work. But other than that, I figured I was more or less OK. But over the years, I’ve come to see more and more that I really do have a ways to go. God continues to show me just how many aspects of my life really need a lot of work. Sometimes it gets really frustrating that I still need so much work. And that, instead of improving, I just keep realizing that I’m even more messed up than I thought I was.</p>
<p>So when I read this verse, I realize that I think I have an easier time forgiving others than forgiving myself. Just as I need to live in God’s strength, I need to live in God’s grace. I need to remember that he’s my Savior, too. He paid the price 2000 years ago, knowing full well how broken and sinful I would be. This is another one of those things that I intellectually know, but it doesn’t always sink in, and I don’t always live like it. I need to keep coming back to this, and keep reminding myself of the magnitude of the grace that was shown to me.</p>
<h2>Guidance</h2>
<blockquote>
<p>And don’t let us yield to temptation, (v. 13a)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Or, “Lead us not into temptation.” This follows close on the heels of the last part—not just in the order Jesus prayed them in, but the idea itself. It balances it. Jesus didn’t stop at dying to offer us forgiveness. He rose again to offer us new life. He promises to transform us. And while the transformation won’t be complete until we die or he comes back, it started the moment we said “Yes” to him. There is a spiritual shift in our hearts, and we die to sin. (We read Romans 6 in Engage Group on Thursday. Paul lays out this whole idea in that chapter.) The Holy Spirit moves in and starts his work in us. We may not always see the transformation, but we can trust that it’s happening.</p>
<p>So just as I pray for God’s will to be done on earth, I pray for it to be done in me. For him to continue to chip away at my sin. As I draw closer to him and let him work in me, temptation will begin to lose its power. And while I can do things to facilitate God’s work in me, it is only his power that can bring about this transformation.</p>
<h2>Protection</h2>
<blockquote>
<p>but rescue us from the evil one. (v. 13b)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I’ve touched on this already here and there, but it’s time to address it directly. We have an enemy. He seeks to disrupt our relationship with God as our Father. He sabotaged it at the very beginning, when Adam and Eve walked with God in the Garden. He convinced them to rebel against a holy God, severing that relationship. And in that moment, God’s will was was no longer perfectly realized on earth. Instead, the enemy established himself as the prince of this world, in defiance of the King. And as for us—the children of God created in God’s image—Satan will stop at nothing to claim us for his own. Just as he did with Eve, he convinces us that God’s holding out on us. That we need to take matters into our own hands. Make our own bread. He leads us astray, convincing us that we can find our fulfillment in everything but God. And then he turns around and points out our guilt, accusing us to the point of despair. And sometimes, he just flat-out attacks us.</p>
<p>We need to take him seriously. <em>I</em> need to take him seriously. I talked about my time in high school, praying for friends in their darkest moments. This might sound weird or creepy, but more often than not, those prayers were desperate battles against the forces of hell (told you.) Admittedly, I might have been too obsessed with the whole spiritual warfare thing at times. And these days, I seem to have swung too far in the other direction, not giving it much thought at all. But there has to be a balance. Because when I think of those times, there’s no doubt in my mind that the enemy is real and he is powerful. There’s no other explanation for the things my friends and I experienced. Jesus dealt the decisive blow when he died and rose again, but the enemy isn’t vanquished yet.</p>
<p>I think a key difference between my high school days and now is location. His strategy in this part of the world, where people pride themselves on rationality and skepticism, seems to be one of subtlety. (This is entirely based on my own experience and observation. I have no theological or Biblical argument to back this up.) When most people don’t give much credit to the supernatural, he can be more effective by allowing them to believe he doesn’t exist. Even believers, who would agree that the supernatural is real, are influenced by the culture around them and fall into a tendency of living from day to day as if it isn’t. Since I’ve been here, I have too. I think what it really comes down to is that we believe in God and his angels, but we think of them as being up in heaven. And we believe in Satan and his demons, but assume they’re in hell. We aren’t as comfortable with the idea that angels and demons are among us, here on earth, mostly unseen, but active and powerful.</p>
<p>In other parts of the world, that’s not the case. Where I grew up, religion, culture, and everyday life are completely intertwined. The supernatural is taken for granted the way the absence of it is here. The way they think of it might be different, seeing it through the lenses of their own beliefs, but they believe it’s there and has an impact on their day-to-day lives. The veil between the spiritual and physical worlds is much thinner. The enemy’s tactics are far more overt in those parts of the world. And here we were, a Christian school in the middle of this. So believe me when I say I have felt the presence of angels and demons, and experienced clashes between them firsthand—including direct attacks on my friends and on me. And it was in this situation that God called me to be a warrior. Like I said at the beginning, my friends came to me in the midst of the onslaught because they knew that God had given me the faith to stand by them and face the enemy, trusting in God’s power, even when their attackers turned their attacks on me.</p>
<p>I know this probably sounds weird/creepy/crazy to many of you. I’ve never shared what I just shared so publicly before. I don’t think I’ve talked about it at all since coming back to the US. But I risk sounding out of my mind because I think it needs to be said. And I’ve said far more about this section than any of the others not because I think it’s more important than them. There <em>was</em> a time when my prayers were maybe too heavily weighted in this area. And like I said, I think I’ve swung too far in the other direction since coming back to the US. But remembering those times, I’m realizing that it needs to become a part of my lens again. It needs to become a part of my prayers again. With balance. I think either extreme is a bad place to be. There’s a danger of acting like he doesn’t exist, or is insignificant and powerless. But if that doesn’t work, he’s content getting us to focus way too much on him—and not on Jesus. In the model Jesus gave us, we acknowledge the evil one and pray against his attacks, with a healthy balance alongside the rest of the prayer. I’ve written far more about this side of the hexagon not because it’s more important, but because I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch for most of my readers to buy into the first five sides. This side will probably take some convincing.</p>
<p>So there it is. This ended up being a pretty good sized essay. What’s really cool is that I’d been thinking about each of these things independently of each other. They were all things that I’d been thinking about and felt like I needed to focus on. And I was starting to get the sense that they were all interconnected, and that the starting point for change in all of them was prayer—developing that connection with God and allowing my relationship with him to flourish. To let growth in all of these areas come out of that relationship. As Jesus said, “Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).</p>
<p>And then we went and studied the hexagon, and suddenly, everything clicked.</p>
What’s in Front of Me2013-09-01T22:03:01Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2013/whats-in-front-of-me/<p>So it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here. In fact, last time I posted was early in the spring semester, which turned out to be my busiest semester since starting at Virginia Tech. Thanks to God and God alone, I not only survived the semester with my sanity intact (well, mostly…) but it was academically my best semester yet. Actually, it was a really good semester across the board, busy as it was. I also got an internship in the DC area over the summer, building a database system for a residential builder to improve their workflow and the flow of data—from subcontractor bids, to analysis of the bids, to award documents, to a historical cost database, and finally to budgets for new jobs. I really enjoyed the job, and they really appreciated my work. So it was a great experience for all of us. And now I’m back in Blacksburg, and classes have started up again—and it’s the beginning of my senior year.</p>
<p>It’s hard to believe how fast my time has flown here, and how far I’ve come in three short years. Now for fourth and goal. (Excuse the analogy—after all, it’s football season again. (Go Hokies!) Anyways…) Before I know it, my last year as a Virginia Tech student will be done. And then…then what?</p>
<p>That’s actually what I’ve come back to my blog to write about. Because notice what I didn’t say. I didn’t say my last year at Virginia Tech.</p>
<p>If you’ve followed my blog much, you’ll know I’ve shared a lot about my church family here, <a href="http://nlcf.net">New Life Christian Fellowship</a>. I’ve shared about how I and a group of NLCF-ers have been building relationships with international students, helping them adjust to America and find a place here, and showing them the love of God. And I’ve shared about how God’s brought me from being a lost and lonely international student, to finding my place at Virginia Tech, and finding a family I love in NLCF.</p>
<p>So when, last fall, I and maybe a dozen other student leaders were invited to an interest meeting about going on staff with NLCF, it got me thinking. Thinking about how, of all the things that fill my schedule, the stuff I do with NLCF is the stuff I most want to be spending my time doing (and I get really frustrated with everything else for taking time away from that.) Thinking about how the stuff I and my <a href="http://nlcf.net/get-involved/engage-groups/">Engage Group</a> (that group I mentioned) are doing for international students is making such a difference in their lives, and how I’ve seen God moving in their lives through their interactions with us. Thinking about how my Engage Group, the NLCF staff, and so many others at NLCF have become my family, and how, because of them, Blacksburg has become home.</p>
<p>The point I’m getting to is this: after almost a year of thinking, talking, and praying, and listening to God and to other people, I’ve decided to apply to go on staff at NLCF.</p>
<p>The funny thing is that this is both really surprising and not at all. Not surprising because ministry of some sort has always been the direction I’ve been heading. Before I decided, almost four years ago, to get a degree in engineering, I already wanted to go into ministry. And engineering was only ever going to be a channel for that. But what blows my mind is the fact that I’m choosing to stay in Blacksburg to do it. The plan was always to go overseas somewhere—whether back to where I grew up, or elsewhere. Staying in the States was never the plan. But then, God’s never been too concerned with making sure all our petty little plans work out. Not that he doesn’t want us to be happy, or doesn’t have our best interests in mind. He absolutely has our best interests in mind. He knows better than we do how our gifts and passions can be used, and he has something so much bigger and better in mind than anything any one of us can dream up. A greater plan that we get to be a part of. An epic story that we get to play a role in. And over the past year, I’m starting to see where the next chapter is set for me.</p>
<p>So over the course of this year I’ll be going through the application process—some paperwork, a couple of (very personal) interviews, getting references. If I’m accepted, I’ll go to new staff training in June, and after that will start raising support. (Because this is a church for broke college students, all the staff raise support to be here.) When I reach 100% support, I’ll be officially released to come back to Blacksburg and start serving here full time.</p>
<p>It’s impossible to anticipate everything I’d be doing on staff. It involves wearing a lot of hats. But it will probably include the things I’ve been doing and enjoy doing—discipling, running sound for services and serving in other technical ways, and working with international students. Right now, we are just one of several Engage Groups at NLCF (10 this year.) Several of us in the group see what we’re doing as a really important part of NLCF (not that the other Engage Groups aren’t important) with the potential to expand beyond just an Engage Group and become a more full-fledged ministry of NLCF to the international community at Virginia Tech. On staff, I would be in a position to spearhead this ministry.</p>
<p>When I shared this with my Engage Group, one of them asked how long I planned to be on staff. My co-leader took the words right out of my mouth: “Until God calls him somewhere else.” I could definitely get comfortable here, and stay for many years to come. But I could just as easily start getting restless after a couple years. My biggest hangup the whole time I was weighing this decision was my desire to go overseas. Like I said, my plan had always been to go overseas again. A piece of my heart is still on the other side of the globe, and it was really, <em>really</em> hard to give that up. In the end, I had to tell myself that I wasn’t. I still have plenty of time (I think) to go back someday. And someday, maybe I will.</p>
<p>That said, the really cool thing is that I can have an impact on the nations from right here in Blacksburg. Virginia Tech draws young people from all over the world. Dozens of countries are represented at this university. From here, I can reach out to these people from across the globe. And when their time here is done, and they go back to each of their countries, they in turn can reach people there. So even if I stay here, I can still live out that calling to the nations. That’s a really cool thought.</p>
<p>Two short years ago, I never would have guessed I would be making this decision. In fact, if you had told me that I would still be living in Blacksburg after I graduate, I might have just broken down crying. Or flat-out not believed you. And yet here I am. It says a lot about this church, and my Engage Group, who are my family. I thank God so much for them. And most of all, it is a testament to God and his faithfulness.</p>
<p>I’ve quoted it before on this blog, but Third Day’s “Mountain of God” is such a great song, and has become somewhat of a theme song for me (among a few others.) The bridge gets me every time, and comes back to me now:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sometimes I think of where it is I’ve come from<br>
And the things I’ve left behind<br>
But of all I’ve had, and what I’ve possessed, nothing can quite compare<br>
With what’s in front of me</p>
</blockquote>
In Over My Head2013-02-28T14:58:03Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2013/in-over-my-head/<p>So I’ve started writing for NLCF’s website. Traditionally it’s the staff who write, but they want to get a few others writing regularly, to kind of get a broader perspective on what God’s doing in the congregation (either by writing about what God’s up to in our own lives, or by sharing stories of other people.) So I volunteered. I’m scheduled for three dates this semester, each about three weeks apart. <a href="https://www.nlcf.net/latest-news/blog/in-over-my-head/">Here’s the first one.</a></p>
Scripture on Faith, Deeds, and Love2013-02-12T13:22:41Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2013/faith-deeds-love/<p>A couple of well-known verses have been on my mind since my post, “<a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2013/setting-things-straight/">Setting things straight</a>”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What good is it, dear brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but don’t show it by your actions? Can that kind of faith save anyone? Suppose you see a brother or sister who has no food or clothing, and you say, “Good-bye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well”—but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do?</p>
<p>So you see, faith by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless.</p>
<p><cite>James 2:14-17</cite></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.</p>
<p><cite>1 Corinthians 13:1-3</cite></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Faith without deeds is dead; faith and deeds without love are nothing.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.</p>
<p><cite>1 Corinthians 13:13</cite></p>
</blockquote>
Unplugged (Sort Of)2013-02-11T00:20:59Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2013/unplugged/<p>If there’s one thing I’ve learned about God, it’s that he likes to throw monkey wrenches in our plans, and substitute his own. To disrupt us if we start to get too comfortable—not because there’s anything wrong with comfort, but because if we’re too comfortable for too long we start to get stagnant.</p>
<p><a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2013/pivot/">A week ago</a> I shared my intention of delving into technology on this blog a little more. I specifically said that I was going to start with a review of an app called Moves, and that I was going to write said review this weekend. I actually started it this afternoon, and wrote for a little while until I had to go to <a href="http://nlcf.net/about-us/spaces/">130 Jackson</a> for sound check and band practice before the service. Once we’d gone through the sound check, and I’d got the mix about where I wanted it, I pulled out my phone and picked up where I’d left off (the beauty of cloud sync) while the band practiced.</p>
<p>Then the service began. <a href="http://nlcf.net">[nlcf]</a> is doing a series on the Seven Deadly Sins, leading up to Easter. Last week we started with Pride, and this week was on Gluttony. Jim defined gluttony more broadly than it is commonly used, to mean an unhealthy over-indulgence of anything, to the point of waste, and to the point of turning our focus away from God. At the end he brought up Lent, which begins on Wednesday, and encouraged us to think about something we could give up for the forty days, that could make room in our lives to grow closer to God. He gave a few examples of common fasts, including chocolate or Facebook. Even while he was still talking, I knew. I’m going on a technology fast.</p>
<p>I mentioned in last week’s post that my biggest time waster is technology blogs. It may not have come across in what I said there, but I’ve been realizing over the past several weeks that this is a big problem. Not because there’s anything inherently wrong with them, but because they suck away so much of my life.</p>
<p>In addition to the Seven Deadly Sins series, over the first four weeks of the semester, at [nlcf] we’re focusing on listening and hearing from God, and freeing up time to do so. That is, we’re spending the four weeks looking at it in depth—particularly in our <a href="http://nlcf.net/get-involved/engage-groups/">Engage Groups</a>, but enmeshed with everything we’re doing—in order to become a congregation that practices it habitually, setting the tone for the semester and beyond. A major aspect of it that we’re taking on is time management. This is something that has plagued me…probably as long as I can remember. But God’s been turning the heat up on this issue for me recently, and now that we’re honing in on it at [nlcf], it’s something that I really want to tackle head-on this semester. Not only to free up time for God (although that’s the most important reason,) but also to stay on top of homework better, so I’m not getting it done late at night when it’s due the next morning, and to have time to do other stuff that I just can’t now. All that stuff that falls under the umbrella of “being a good steward of my time.”</p>
<p>Part of this has been looking at things we can prune back. The amount of time I spend on tech sites (or their app counterparts), YouTube, and the like, jumped quickly to my mind. So I’ve already been thinking about ideas for regulating my time spent on non-school-related or unessential surfing. But after Jim’s sermon tonight, I’ve decided that for Lent, I’m going cold turkey.</p>
<p>My plan is to only use my iPhone, iPad, or laptop to do the things I actually need to do. It’s unrealistic to unplug from email, texting, or even Facebook, because I need to be able to stay in touch with people, and all of those are necessary for that at some point or other. So I’ll launch the Facebook or Facebook Messenger apps if I get a notification, I’ll take appropriate action, and close them. (Historically, wasting time on Facebook has not been a huge issue for me like it is for a lot of friends. I have other issues.) Same goes for email—I’ll open it when I get an email, respond accordingly, and move on. (More on email below.)</p>
<p>It’s unrealistic to stop managing my schedule and to-do lists in their appropriate apps. (Well, technically this one’s probably doable, but I don’t think it’s necessary or beneficial. I’ll still be carrying around my phone, so I may as well use the calendar and task management apps. I’m not about to go out and buy a paper planner. I really think that would just make it harder to be effective with my time.)</p>
<p>It’s certainly unrealistic to stop using the apps and websites I need to do homework and stuff.</p>
<p>But other than the essentials, I’m unplugging. I’m not gonna read up on the latest iThing and everything it can do. (I think that’s gonna be the hardest part of this for me. What might Apple do between now and Easter, that I’m gonna miss? I’ve heard rumors of updated iPads sometime this quarter, and of an up-and-coming iWatch sooner or later. Of course, if they do something big, I’ll hear about it somehow or other. But I won’t get to read all the juicy details myself.) I’m not gonna browse the App Store looking for apps to experiment with. I’m not gonna play <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/letterpress-word-game/id526619424?mt=8">Letterpress</a> or <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/angry-birds-star-wars-hd/id557138109?mt=8">Angry Birds Star Wars</a>. I’m going to resist the urge to pull out my phone anytime I’m standing in line or waiting around for class to start, just to fill the time. Or to reach for it when I wake up and spend the first minutes of my day reading a review of Blackberry 10.</p>
<p>I’m going so far as to rearrange my home screens to put the apps I’ll need on the first one. And not even go to the others. (This is actually a very strategic step. As long as my home screens look like they always do, I won’t think twice about tapping open my News folder and tapping one of the icons sitting inside it, before realizing what I’ve done. But if that folder is nowhere to be found on that first screen, I’ll remember that I’m supposed to be staying away from it.)</p>
<p>I’m even going old-school and pulling my old (imitation?) leather-bound Bible off the shelf. The one with pages and stuff. (The books I’m reading are stuck in iBooks, though, and I think it’s still worth reading those.)</p>
<p>And during these forty days, I’m going to be thinking long-term—about what boundaries I can set on myself in this area for once Lent is over, and about other steps I can take to manage my time a little better.</p>
<p>I will probably still be blogging some. Maybe even a little more frequently, because with more time to hear from God I’ll probably have more stuff to share. But if you were excited about hearing about apps, sorry. I’ll leave you with a consolation mini-review. (Last chance to plug an app here for a while—and this is actually relevant.)</p>
<p>Going back to email, I actually just started using an app that I think will really help in the battle of the inbox. It’s called Mailbox, and it conveniently just launched the other day, although I’ve been waiting for it for months. The basic premise is that the only emails in your inbox are the ones you need to address at this moment. The app badge actually shows the total number of emails in your inbox, rather than the typical unread count. You can archive or delete an email, move it to a list, or snooze it. This snooze feature is where the innovation really lies. You can tell it to snooze until later today, tomorrow, next week, or even later. It will move into a Later section (where you can still go to see the emails you’ve snoozed) and will come back to your inbox whenever you told it to, so you can deal with it then. Sure, it’s a fancy way to procrastinate, but it’s a good way to handle those emails that you’re leaving in your inbox until it’s a good time to take care of them. It makes me really think about each email—whether I can respond to it now, or if there’s a better time when I actually will. In the meantime, I can get back to “Inbox Zero.” Which feels really, really good.</p>
<p>They’re launching for just iPhone and Gmail and will expand from there. (In anticipation of this app, I set up yet another personal address over break, at Gmail, and have my previous email addresses (iCloud, etc.) forwarding to it. Virginia Tech mail is conveniently Gmail-based.)</p>
<p>They’re also rolling it out first-come, first-serve, slowly at first, but speeding up exponentially. I was fortunate enough to hear about the up-and-coming app back in December, from a blogger who got let in on the private beta and said it was the best thing since sliced bread. I got on the waiting list way back then, so I was only #18,728, and I got access to the app only a couple days after it launched last week. People getting in line now could be waiting a month. (While you’re waiting, the app shows the number of people in line in front of you and behind you. Last I saw, there were more than 600,000 behind me.) But I think the app is worth the wait.</p>
<p>If you’re an iPhone/Gmail user, you can read more about Mailbox at <a href="http://www.mailboxapp.com">mailboxapp.com</a>, and get it on the App Store <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mailbox/id576502633?mt=8">here</a>.</p>
<p>Back to Lent. Seeing as it starts Wednesday, I have a couple days to think about this some more, and see if there are any other ways I can unplug. (If you have ideas, drop them in the comments below.) In the meantime, I’ll probably start easing into the ideas I have so far, before going all-in on Wednesday. So there you have it. This could be an interesting six weeks. But I think it’ll be good. Really good.</p>
<p>(Also, in case you were wondering—my iPad and keyboard only stayed in the trash can long enough to take the picture. I actually wrote this on that iPad, with that keyboard.)</p>
Setting Things Straight2013-02-09T08:46:35Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2013/setting-things-straight/<p>On Wednesday night, right before going to bed, I posted a link to an article titled “<a href="http://deeperstory.com/there_i_said_it/">There. I said it. I don’t want my kids to be Evangelicals.</a>” In my (very) brief commentary I quoted the following from it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I want my kids to think set apart means that they will love so radically and freely that whatever moral choices their making, through all their years of figuring it out, won’t be what people are even able to focus on.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A couple hours later, I was still trying to fall asleep when my phone beeped and lit up. I could tell from the first few words of the email, staring at me from my lock screen, that I had made a huge mistake. It was my dad, pointing out how badly it could be misunderstood, and that it would probably offend a lot of people we know who follow my blog.</p>
<p>Being two-something in the morning, I responded by writing a short post that included an apology, my concerns about being misunderstood, and a promise to write a longer clarification of my intent later. Until then, I took the link down. (I’ve included the link here for context and because this time I am including a lot more qualifying statements to (hopefully) make myself clear.)</p>
<p>I want to make a couple things clear, before getting to the point I was trying to make in linking to that post.</p>
<p>First, I apparently didn’t make it clear enough that I was linking to a full article. I should have kept a format that made that obvious. The quote was what I wanted to highlight, but it only made sense in the context of the whole article. In retrospect, I can see how the quote on its own would be very easy to misunderstand. I think the article put at least some of those misunderstandings to rest. As it was, it looked like an isolated quote that I hadn’t even bothered to cite, and an inflammatory title that I had come up with myself. Which leads me to my next point.</p>
<p>I was not intending to attack or offend Evangelicals. Now, I won’t shy away from challenging people and stepping on toes if I think they need to hear it—even if they don’t want to. But this was not at all meant to be that kind of post. It is unfortunate that the writer set up the article as an attack on Evangelicals, because in doing so she alienated a lot of people, and the most valuable truths in the post, truths that should cross denominational boundaries, were lost. When I read it I was thinking about my own tendencies, and when I linked to it, I was posting it as a challenge (in a more positive sense) to all Christians equally. Honestly, I wasn’t even thinking about the use of the word “Evangelicals.”</p>
<p>What I resonated with in the article was the idea that we should be set apart by our love. As was pointed out, we generally think of being “set apart” as meaning morally. You know, don’t swear, don’t have sex before marriage, don’t cheat on your tests. Be good. And the idea is that people will notice and wonder why we’re so different. The problem is, in the West in this day and age, I don’t know that it’s always seen that positively by those outside the church.</p>
<p>(Because I’m already treading on thin ice after that last post, I’m going to say, please, <em>please</em> hear me out through this next argument here. Don’t jump to conclusions about where I’m going with this. While I’m giving disclaimers, let me reiterate that, though the article was specifically targeting Evangelicals, I was and am applying it equally to all Christians, myself included.)</p>
<p>Sure, some of them probably notice and respect it, but it seems a lot of people outside the church see us as holier-than-thou, and judgmental of everyone who doesn’t live up to our standards. And hypocritical, because we often fall short of those standards ourselves. (And if we’re really honest, a lot of times they’re right.) So it could be argued that aiming to be set apart morally just plays into this view of Christians.</p>
<p>Now, before I get eaten alive or walked away from, I am <strong>not</strong> saying that we should throw morals out the window, and go get drunk and sleep around so that we’ll be accepted by our culture. God has made it very clear that we are to live holy lives. I could list off the top of my head verse after verse from the New Testament calling followers of Jesus to be holy, and not to conform to the ways of the world. Jesus also made it clear that we would be misunderstood and even hated by the rest of the world.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first. The world would love you as one of its own if you belonged to it, but you are no longer part of the world. I chose you to come out of the world, so it hates you.”</p>
<p><cite>John 15:18-19</cite></p>
</blockquote>
<p>But what will amaze them, what will really make them wonder, is <em>love</em>. Especially when they hate us. It will blow them away. It does blow them away. When Christians step up and choose to love instead of preaching at people about what’s right and what’s wrong, they can’t figure it out. I’ve seen the stories and the photos going viral on the internet. (That said, a large part of people’s amazement is that Christians have come to be some of the last people they expect to see it from—which is really sad, and infuriating. Because we have no one to blame for that but ourselves.)</p>
<p>Again, as the article pointed out, even though Jesus lived the only perfectly moral life of every human that’s ever lived, it was his love that was so compelling—both for the crowds and notorious sinners that gravitated to it, and for the Pharisees who couldn’t stand it and decided to kill him.</p>
<p>Now, I realize when reading over what I’ve just written that it could sound like I’m saying our number one priority should be PR. That’s not what I’m getting at. Jesus wasn’t worried about his PR—I mean, he provoked his opponents to the point of being killed—and he sure isn’t worried about ours. We shouldn’t love—or live morally, for that matter—in order to make people like us. We do it because it’s the right thing to do. And because God is transforming us into people for whom it is the most natural thing to do. Even so, Jesus said, “Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.” (John 13:35) So let’s live in such a way that we are known by our love.</p>
<p>One last thought: our mission is to “make disciples of all the nations” (Matthew 28:19). We aren’t doing that if we become just like them. We have to live the way Jesus taught us to, and teach new disciples to. (He says so in the same breath—verse 20.) But we can’t do that by pushing people away, either. We have to engage with the world. And love it.</p>
Oops.2013-02-07T02:43:38Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2013/oops/<p>Right before going to bed I posted a link to an article I had just read after a friend posted it on Facebook. I am quick to find truth in things I read, which sometimes means I gloss over the rest and highlight the truth. The problem is that when I share these things, it can appear that I agree with everything that was said. In the case of this article, it was just brought to my attention that a lot of people could be offended by it, and the truth in it could be lost in a lot of misunderstanding. This was not at all my intent.</p>
<p>It is really late, and I’m supposed to be asleep, but I wanted to act right away to take care of the situation. So my short term solution is to take down the post and write this brief apology. I also will make it a priority in the next couple days to write a more lengthy clarification of what I meant to say by linking to the article, and clear up the major issues people will probably have taken with it.</p>
<p>I’m really sorry to anyone I have offended.</p>
Pivot2013-02-03T17:13:12Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2013/pivot/<p>When I started this blog I said I wasn’t going to limit it to any specific topic, but that anything I think is worth sharing is fair game. So far, I’ve mostly written about matters of faith. Actually, that’s all I’ve written about, save the first paragraph of <a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2012/good-books/">one post</a> in which I got into a bit of a technology tangent. You probably didn’t notice, but I added a <a href="https://seanlunsford.com/tag/technology/">Technology</a> category that I used on that post alongside my standard <a href="https://seanlunsford.com/tag/christianity/">Christianity</a> one. As I was writing that post, I had the thought that I just might get into that area a little more in the future. Now I’ve decided that I will.</p>
<p>Anyone who knows me well knows that I am a bit of a nut about gadgets and stuff. I keep up with happenings in the tech world (lowercase t, not to be confused with Tech, that is, Virginia Tech) the way normal people follow sports or politics, and with the same intensity. My biggest time waster is not Facebook but sites like <a href="http://mashable.com/">Mashable</a>, <a href="http://techcrunch.com/">TechCrunch</a>, and various individual tech bloggers. Which often include news about Facebook. So this isn’t the first time I’ve thought about doing some of my own tech blogging. I’ve never gone through with it because I didn’t really feel like I had anything to add. There are plenty of sites out there to get news. Mashable and TechCrunch are just two of them. The individual tech bloggers generally don’t break news but weigh in on it, giving their own insights, predictions, etc. But I didn’t really feel like had anything to add in that respect, either. Then the other night it hit me. Reviews. I enjoy trying out new apps, and when I can, new devices. And I can be very opinionated about what I like and what I don’t. Apple has left me with a deep appreciation for design—in aesthetics, functionality, and overall experience. As have many of the great iOS developers out there.</p>
<p>In the technology/startup world, a pivot is a company’s change in direction or focus from their original product or service. I’m blanking on an example right now. In the case of this blog, a pivot would be if I were to turn it into a technology blog. But don’t worry, that’s not what I’m going to do. What I’m doing isn’t really pivoting, in the strictest sense of the word. I will still be posting along the lines of what I’ve written on the blog before. That probably will remain my primary focus. I believe that matters of faith, of Truth, are the most important things I can discuss and share. That’s why so far that’s all I’ve written about. But I think there can be value in discussing technology as well.</p>
<p>So what you can expect in the future: as I said, I will keep writing about stuff God is showing me much, if not most, of the time. But I will also start posting reviews now and again. Unfortunately, unlike the tech blogs I read, I don’t have access to review units or the money to buy every new gadget that comes out. When I do get new hardware, I may decide to write a review. But I think the most valuable opinions I have to give in this area are on apps—specifically of the iOS variety. I’ve gotten comments about the number of apps I have on my home screens (although my brother beats me by a factor of…a lot.)<em>(Update below.)</em> Because most apps are free or cheap, I download new ones a lot to try out. Some become essential to my daily life, others find a place on my last home screen, so I can access them if I ever find a need for them. Others I get rid of. All that to say, I think it might be interesting for others out there to hear my thoughts on the apps I use, because we’ve entered an age where a significant percentage of the population of the developed world (and a growing number of people in the rest of the world) depend on pocket-sized computers that moonlight as phones, and on the apps that run on them. After all, <a href="http://mashable.com/2012/02/03/smartphone-sales-overtake-pcs/">smartphone sales have overtaken PC sales around the world</a>.</p>
<p>This tech reviews thing might expand from here. It might get to a point where I decide to spin it off into its own blog. We’ll see. This is just another step in this big experiment that is this blog.</p>
<p>To whet your appetite a little: I downloaded a new iPhone app the other day called Moves. It’s basically an app that tracks your activity—walking, running, and cycling—as you go throughout your day. I’ve been using it the past few days, and while I have some initial impressions, the nature of the app is such that I want to get a good week of use out of it before writing about it—probably until next weekend. If you want to see it for yourself in the meantime, check it out on <a href="http://moves-app.com/">moves-app.com</a>, and on the <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/moves/id509204969?mt=8">App Store</a>. Stay tuned.</p>
<p>If you’ll excuse me, I have a Super Bowl party to get to.</p>
<p><strong>Update:</strong> The results are in: my brother and I have compared numbers and it turns out I was wrong—more like using outdated information. I’m still pretty sure a couple years back he had a lot more apps than I did, but somewhere along the way the tables turned.</p>
Forth, and Fear No Darkness!2013-01-20T16:31:33Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2013/forth-and-fear-no-darkness/<p>When I last posted I was nearing the end of <em>The Two Towers</em>. I’ve finished <em>The Return of the King</em> now, and I’m working on the appendices. And yes, I’m going to write about <em>The Lord of the Rings</em> again. (Don’t be surprised if this ends up becoming a series.)</p>
<p>Something I’ve noticed this time through the books and the movies, more than before, is the theme of despair. I saw looks of despair and horror on characters’ faces time and time again, as things go from bad to worse. I saw characters lose all hope in the face of overwhelming odds—Denethor is the prime example of this. Even Sam, arguably the most courageous and hopeful character of them all, begins to doubt that, even if he and Frodo make it to Mount Doom, there will be a return journey.</p>
<p>Despair is a key weapon of the Dark Lord. His nine deadliest servants are masters of driving their enemies to fear and despair:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In vain men shook their fists at the pitiless foes that swarmed before the Gate. Curses they heeded not, nor understood the tongues of western men, crying with harsh voices like beasts and carrion-birds. But soon there were few left in Minas Tirith who had the heart to stand up and defy the hosts of Mordor. For yet another weapon, swifter than hunger, the Lord of the Dark Tower had: dread and despair.</p>
<p>The Nazgûl came again, and as their Dark Lord now grew and put forth his strength, so their voices, which uttered only his will and his malice, were filled with evil and horror. Ever they circled above the City, like vultures that expect their fill of doomed men’s flesh. Out of sight and shot they flew, and yet were ever present, and their deadly voices rent the air. More unbearable they became, not less, at each new cry. At length even the stout-hearted would fling themselves to the ground as the hidden menace passed over them, or they would stand, letting their weapons fall from nerveless hands while into their minds a blackness came, and they thought no more of war; but only of hiding and of crawling, and of death.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Or take the words of the Witch-king, the greatest of the Nine, to Gandalf, when they come face to face on the streets of Minas Tirith:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Do you not know death when you see it, old man? This is my hour. … You have failed. The world of Men will fall.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Cloaked in black, faceless, mounted on winged steeds, with piercing cries that drive man and beast to madness and despair, the Nazgûl are pure evil. I can think of no better picture of our own opponents.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.</p>
<p><cite>Ephesians 6:12</cite></p>
</blockquote>
<p>And like the Nazgûl, one of their favorite weapons is despair. Despair that the evil in the world could ever be made right. Despair that the evil in us could ever be made right.</p>
<p>Take these two songs. The first is a poem written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow during the Civil War. It has become the Christmas carol, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” (By the way, the Casting Crowns version of this is awesome.) It tells the story of the competing sounds of the church bells ringing for Christmas day, and the cannons being fired in nearby battlefields. As the cannons drown out the bells, he loses hope.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>And in despair I hung my head<br>
“There is no peace on earth,” I said<br>
“For hate is strong and mocks the song<br>
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But it doesn’t end there. Listen to the finale:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Then pealed the bells more loud and deep<br>
God is not dead, nor doth he sleep<br>
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail<br>
With peace on earth, goodwill to men</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The other is the well-known hymn, “Before the Throne of God Above.” Here is the second verse:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When Satan tempts me to despair<br>
And tells me of the guilt within<br>
Upward I look and see him there<br>
Who made an end of all my sin</p>
<p>Because the sinless Savior died<br>
My sinful soul is counted free<br>
For God the just is satisfied<br>
To look on him and pardon me</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the midst of despair, hope shines through. Indeed, we have more reason to hope than the free peoples of Middle-earth did. Because we know that God is firmly in control, and Jesus already won the decisive victory at the cross and at the tomb. And while the war rages on, we await the return of the King, when he will finish the enemy and establish his reign forever.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Then I saw heaven opened, and a white horse was standing there. Its rider was named Faithful and True, for he judges fairly and wages a righteous war. … The armies of heaven, dressed in the finest of pure white linen, followed him on white horses. …</p>
<p>Then I saw the beast and the kings of the world and their armies gathered together to fight against the one sitting on the horse and his army. And the beast was captured, and with him the false prophet who did mighty miracles on behalf of the beast. … Both the beast and his false prophet were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur. Their entire army was killed by the sharp sword that came from the mouth of the one riding the white horse.</p>
<p><cite>Revelation 19:11-21</cite></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and old earth had disappeared. And the sea was also gone. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.</p>
<p>I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.”</p>
<p>And the one sitting on the throne said, “Look, I am making everything new!”</p>
<p><cite>Revelation 21:1-5</cite></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Or, as Théoden says to his niece before leading the Rohirrim to the aid of Minas Tirith, “You shall live to see these days renewed, and no more despair.”</p>
<p>Going back to that scene where the Witch-king confronts Gandalf: Gandalf is thrown from his horse, and his staff explodes in his hands. Even as the Witch-king raises his sword to strike, a horn is heard. The horns of Rohan.</p>
<p>As the Rohirrim come over the hill, with the rising sun, and look at the vast army of Orcs before them, Théoden gives his six thousand horsemen a rousing speech, building to the most epic charge in movie history. One line sticks out to me, in the face of despair:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Forth, and fear no darkness!</p>
</blockquote>
The Great Stories2013-01-13T16:29:00Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2013/its-like-in-the-great-stories/<p>I’m listening to the soundtrack of <em>The Two Towers</em> right now. I was just reading some more of the book. Suddenly, in the past few weeks, I’m crazy about Tolkien again. I blame <em>The Hobbit</em>. Since I saw a trailer for the first installment a year ago, I couldn’t wait. To return to Middle-earth, and explore it further; to be reunited with familiar characters, and introduced to new ones. So when it finally hit theaters, right before Christmas break, I was at the midnight opening—I couldn’t wait a minute longer. (Now I can’t wait for the next one.) It had been several years since I last read <em>The Lord of the Rings</em>, and even longer since I’d read <em>The Hobbit</em>, and watching the new movie whet my appetite. So at the beginning of the break I started <em>The Hobbit</em>, and I’m almost done with <em>The Two Towers</em> now. I also watched <em>The Lord of the Rings</em> (the Extended Editions, of course) and the accompanying documentaries in the newly-added iTunes Extras. And I listened to all four soundtracks a bunch.</p>
<p>In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I love <em>The Lord of the Rings</em>. In recent years, I’m more into Christian literature than novels. I’m not a huge fan of the fantasy genre, in particular. But Tolkien is the exception. And while other movies have come along that I’ve really enjoyed and would consider among my favorites, these movies stand on their own. I’ve read the book several times (and many of his other books, which together tell the history of Middle-earth.) I’ve watched the movies again, and again, and again. There’s just something about them that captivates me. Certainly, Tolkien was a genius, creating this entire world, its history, its languages. Part of what makes Tolkien’s work stand apart from all the fantasy stories that have followed is the incredible depth. He didn’t write some stories, inventing aspects of a world as needed to fit the stories. He created an entire world, and then set his stories in it. And the stories themselves are incredible.</p>
<p>And then Peter Jackson and his team did an incredible job of bringing Tolkien’s epic novel to the screen. The movies themselves are stunning, but also impressive is the work that went into making them—from creating the illusion of the size of the hobbits and dwarves, to recreating battles on the scale of Helm’s Deep and the Pelennor Fields, to bringing Gollum to life. Just as Tolkien’s work is a literary masterpiece, Jackson’s work is a cinematic masterpiece.</p>
<p>But I think there’s a deeper reason yet. They’re so relatable, and so true—not in the sense that they actually happened. But in the sense that they offer a glimpse into reality that we miss most of the time. Even though Tolkien was adamant that <em>The Lord of the Rings</em> was not allegorical, there’s still so much truth in them. Like the hobbits of the Shire, most of the time we’re completely absorbed in what we see around us, our own day-to-day, mundane lives, which don’t seem all that glamorous or that big a deal, really. We live our lives completely unaware of the bigger picture, and we need a reminder of the truth. The truth that, like Middle-earth, our world is locked in an epic war, where the forces of good and of evil battle for its fate, where the evil one will stop at nothing to have dominion over all life on this earth, and seeks to destroy all who oppose him. And so much of the time it looks like he is winning. The world seems dark and hopelessly evil when we hear news of the senseless killing of children, or when, from half a world away, I watch the country I call home falling apart because of extremists and corrupt politicians.</p>
<p>But in the midst of this battle, we see heroism where least expected—including in ourselves. We find ourselves called to a mission of utmost importance, and even deadly peril. We find fellowships that stand with each other through thick and thin to carry that mission out. But then those fellowships are broken, as friends, though eternally bound by friendship and love, must go their separate ways. We live in a tale of friendship, and loyalty, and sacrifice. Of danger, and betrayal, and darkness. Of epic battles, and courage, and hope. Of fell deeds and heroic ones. I see myself in these characters, and the story unfolding around me in theirs. And that gives me hope, and courage, and a desire to rise up to the calling on my life. Why do I love <em>The Lord of the Rings</em>? The best answer comes from the movies themselves. When hope seems lost for Frodo and Sam, captive in Osgiliath, Sam nails it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines, it’ll shine out the clearer. Those are the stories that stayed with you, that meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding onto something.”</p>
<p>“What are we holding onto, Sam?”</p>
<p>“That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.”</p>
</blockquote>
Flashback: Purpose In Every Step2013-01-03T18:44:27Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2013/flashback-purpose-in-every-step/<p><em>I need to write a short essay for a scholarship application. They gave a few typical prompts, and the option to write about a topic of my choice, or to reuse an essay I wrote for class or for a college application. Being a junior in an engineering major, I haven’t exactly written many essays in the last few years. Several for psychology my freshman year, and one about the environment in geology. After staring at my cursor blinking for a good while, I decided to go back and dig through my old college applications for some inspiration. Not to straight-up recycle one. A lot has changed in the three years since I was writing those. But I thought I might find one that would be a good starting point. I came across a document named “Personal statement”—I apparently hadn’t bothered to specify what I was writing it for. But between the essay itself and the prompt, which I also had (but which didn’t say specifically what it was for, either) it seems that I was writing this after having been accepted to Tech, for something related to financial aid. Anyways, it really struck me. But I’ll let you read it, and then add some comments at the end (where I pick back up in italics.)</em></p>
<h2>Purpose In Every Step</h2>
<blockquote>
<p>Don’t you realize that in a race everyone runs, but only one person gets the prize? So run to win! All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize. So I run with purpose in every step. I am not just shadowboxing. I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others I myself might be disqualified.</p>
<p><cite>1 Corinthians 9:24-27</cite></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Throughout the New Testament, the Apostle Paul repeatedly compares the Christian life to running a race. As an athlete myself, the analogy has special significance to me. A lot of people talk about “chapters” of their lives. I would be more inclined to see my life as a series of races in some sort of Olympic track event, all striving for the great prize my King will award me at the end of it all. The problem with the chapters analogy is that you read a book kicking back in a hammock, flipping the pages and watching the story unfold without exerting yourself in any way. The life of faith, though, is a serious business. It is not something you live out in a hammock. It requires all the devotion, discipline, and focus of training for and running a marathon. So “I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us” (Philippians 3:14). The finish line of high school is rapidly approaching, and before I know it I will hear the gunshot telling me to lunge across the line into yet another race—college. I am somewhat unsure about it, not really knowing what is in store around that curve in the track up ahead, but I have motivation to keep running no matter what.</p>
<p>I have come to see myself in my proper place—part of the grand, epic story starting with the narrative in Genesis and that will eventually finish as foretold in Revelation. In this story every one of us has a role to play. Living just for my story only motivates me so far, but to be caught up in a story that transcends my life gives me a cause worthy of every moment of my life. I have a reason to get out of bed every morning. In Hebrews 11, Paul lists many people in Scripture and the legacies they left behind. Each of them has played out their role and left their mark on history. Then he brings it back to us, saying, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race that God has set before us” (Hebrews 12:1). This verse has been recited so many times it has lost a lot of meaning, but just the other day it clicked. It makes a world of difference to read it in the context of the preceding chapter, instead of reading the verse in isolation as is so often done. Paul is saying, “Look at the people I’ve just listed. Look at all God accomplished through them because of their faith. They are your heritage, they’ve handed off the baton to you, and now they are sitting in the stands cheering you on as you run your leg of the race. You’re one of them; their God is yours. You will see God work powerfully in your life if you let yourself be caught up into the epic that they were living in—His story.”</p>
<p>So with that mindset, I keep running no matter what is ahead and I trust God to be faithful, as He has been faithful so far. This track has had plenty of uphills and downhills, but God’s hand has been in it all, and in retrospect I wouldn’t change a thing if I could. He has been with me through countless transitions, upheavals, and storms, and He has blessed me beyond measure. As the prophet Isaiah said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Even youths will become weak and tired,<br>
And young men will fall in exhaustion.<br>
But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength.<br>
They will soar high on wings like eagles.<br>
They will run and not grow weary.<br>
They will walk and not grow faint.</p>
<p><cite>Isaiah 40:30-31</cite></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Through everything, God has continued to give me new strength for each step, for each new difficulty. When the deteriorating situation in the country we live in brought my family’s annual trips to the mountains to an end and later made us move from our home of twelve years to another city, God was still there. When my heart was broken in ninth grade and I was left devastated, God took my by the hand and helped me back up, and gave me strength to keep running. Time and time again, God has carried me over each hurdle that crosses my path.</p>
<p>So as I once again face an uncertain future, it is God whom I will continue to trust my life to. He is the One laying out the path before my feet. He has given me the passions and characteristics that have led me to choose a career in engineering—a love and gift for physics and math, an instinct for problem solving, an fascination from a young age with designing and building bridges and buildings out of Legos, playing cards, and anything else I could find that would do the trick—and has opened the door for it to happen. As I hear about Virginia Tech’s reputation and look at the Blacksburg area, all of which is very appealing, I believe that if Virginia Tech is where he wants me he will open the door financially. The race is in His capable hands.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>The first thing to hit me was how little has changed after all, in terms of the themes I was writing about. If you read my blog regularly, a lot of what I wrote in this essay should sound familiar. I’ve come back to this analogy time and time again over the years. I gave a talk in my <a href="http://nlcf.net/get-involved/engage-groups/">Engage Group</a> towards the end of this past semester about this. While some of these concepts have developed further in my mind since writing this, I used a lot of the same points and these same verses in that talk as I did in this essay. Reading it in an essay I wrote three years ago was kind of crazy.</em></p>
<p><em>The second thing to hit me was what wasn’t in that list of difficulties, because it hadn’t happened yet. I knew I was facing a huge transition and an uncertain future, but I don’t think I really knew just how tough it would end up being. Since writing those words, I went through what is to date my greatest trial yet. And yet again, God proved that he is worthy of my trust.</em></p>
Going To Hell with Ted Haggard2012-12-05T15:50:48Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2012/going-to-hell-with-ted-haggard/<p><a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2012/december-online-only/going-to-hell-with-ted-haggard.html">This is grace</a>. Beautiful, scandalous grace. The grace we should be living out.</p>
Letting Go2012-11-26T23:46:27Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2012/letting-go/<p>Several weeks back I wrote a post titled, <a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2012/ive-got-this/">“I’ve got this.”</a> I almost called it “Letting go,” but I felt like I needed to save that title. I got this sense that that post was more of a prequel. The part where God says, “I’ve got this.” And while there was some letting go on my part then, I had a feeling a post would follow, at some point, that would really be the point of letting go. Well, here it is.</p>
<p>I hit a breaking point tonight. All this stuff that’s been been popping up here and there, elusively, finally came rushing to the surface. I hadn’t realized how much all these different things had just been adding up, building up pressure, until the dam broke.</p>
<p>This past week was Thanksgiving break, and a lot of these things came to a head over break.</p>
<p>I went into break with a lot of somewhat lofty expectations of what I wanted to get done with all my free time. I had some homework to work on that’s due later this week. I could always get it done closer to the due date, but with a whole week off, I could spare some time to knock it out so I wouldn’t have to later. I wanted to get my desk under control, and my inbox. I wanted to work on scholarship applications. Most of all, I wanted to spend a lot of time seeking God—reading, praying, whatever. I especially wanted to focus that time on praying about some major life decisions and stuff. I knew, from experience, that it was crazy to expect to get everything done that I was hoping to. But I thought it was realistic to think I’d get <em>some</em> of it done.</p>
<p>Zip. Zilch. Zero.</p>
<p>I might have set a personal record for how little I did this break. I mean, I did a few things with people. But outside of that, when I was just chilling in my room…I played games on my iPad. I read up on technology blogs. I watched Quantum of Solace so I could see it again before watching Skyfall (I watched Casino Royale a couple weeks back.) The most productive thing I did was to go through my 170 photos from my weekend in DC and throw out more than two thirds of them, and do some editing on the ones that passed.</p>
<p>But the break just went by so fast. I spent the first weekend in DC with some friends. I got back late Sunday night. So I slept half of Monday away, and then bummed around for what was left. On Tuesday I went to a “Pie Day” at the international center—basically, a potluck lunch, all pies (both sweet and things like pot pie and quiche)—and again, did nothing for the rest of the day. (One of those two nights was the night I watched Quantum of Solace.) At this point, I thought I still had the rest of the week to get those things done. On Wednesday I started physical therapy on my knee. Thursday, being Thanksgiving, I wasn’t about to get into homework or cleaning or anything. I had Thanksgiving dinner with a bunch of the international students our <a href="http://nlcf.net/get-involved/engage-groups/">Engage Group</a> has connected with. On Friday I went to physical therapy again, and that evening I watched Skyfall with a friend. On Saturday I watched us beat UVA for the ninth straight time. And then Sunday was back to normal. Sleeping in, and then going to <a href="http://nlcf.net/about-us/spaces/">130 Jackson</a> at 5 for sound check before the 707. OK, so maybe I didn’t set any records after all. At least not the one I thought I did. On second thought, I think I did more this break than any week-long break since coming here. But it was all hanging out with people (and physical therapy.) I didn’t do any of the things I had in mind that I was gonna do. So when the end of the break came, and I realized I wasn’t able to check a single thing off that list, I got really frustrated with myself. And discouraged. And tonight, with classes back underway, that homework still hanging over me, my room still a disaster zone, my iPad telling me that I have 272 unread messages, of 1031 total (They’ve been piling up a while. The unread ones are messages that I judged by the subject line that I didn’t really need to read—and never came back to)…I just felt really overwhelmed. And in that moment, all kinds of things that have been weighing on me came to the surface.</p>
<p>It was at this point that I decided I needed to drop what I was doing, and let God speak to me. He was using this stress to bring all this stuff forward that I’d been bent over double over, without even realizing it. I knew it wouldn’t do any good to try to keep pushing forward with homework. I needed to step away, and try to process all this stuff. I felt like the best first step was to start by just writing out everything. All of those things that were overwhelming me, frustrating me, filling me with guilt or shame, everything that God was bringing out in me right now. I didn’t really know where to go from there. I started praying, and God brought the chorus of a Third Day song to mind:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Take it all, cause I can’t take it any longer<br>
All I have, I can’t make it on my own<br>
Take the first, take the last<br>
Take the good and take the bad<br>
Here I am, all I have, take it all</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I cued the song, to listen to the whole thing. As it played, I thought of the series that we just finished at <a href="http://nlcf.net">[nlcf]</a>, about freedom. One of the things that was discussed a lot was things that stand in the way of freedom, that we need to let go of. Things that often are even seen in secular culture as exercising freedom, but that really are obstacles to true, biblical freedom. I also remembered something I noticed for the first time the other night. Hebrews 12:1-2 says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I’ve always read the part about stripping off weight with the emphasis on sin. What struck me the other night is that is says “<em>every</em> weight that slows us down, <em>especially</em> the sin…” Yes, it highlights sin. But it is clearly implying that not every weight that slows us down is sin.</p>
<p>In my case, while some of the stuff that God brought to mind tonight is sin, much of it is not. But it’s still weighing me down.</p>
<p>Then he brought a line from another song to mind. This one is Magnificent Obsession, by Steven Curtis Chapman.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Cut through these chains that tie me down to so many lesser things<br>
Let all my dreams fall to the ground, until this one remains</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Of course, I had to listen to this one in its entirety too. As the song finished, I wrote,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>God, I want to be free. I want to die to myself…I want to run the race for you. Strip me of everything weighing me down and tripping me up. I’m through trying to make this work on my own. Here I am. All I have. Take it all.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I’ve found over the years both of these songs are songs I come back to time and time again. As long as we walk on this fallen earth, we will need to keep coming back to this. Keep putting our old selves to death, surrendering to Jesus, letting him take our burdens. Tonight I needed that again.</p>
Receiving the Baton2012-11-14T12:59:31Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2012/receiving-the-baton/<p>“Reblogging” is something that I haven’t done here yet, that I’ve decided to experiment with—linking on my blog to other great blog posts I read around the web. There’s so much great stuff out there that gets me thinking or impacts me, and rather than reinventing the wheel, it makes sense to just point you to what they’ve already said, better than I can, and add a few comments of my own.</p>
<p>Since <a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2012/good-books/">I’ve been reading</a> <em>Confessions of a Caffeinated Christian</em> again this past week (by the way, I said I was on track to finish it in a week, and sure enough, I read the last two chapters today) I discovered that John Fischer also has a WordPress blog. I’ve appreciated the things I’ve read there these past several days as I’ve been following it. This one got me really excited, because I agree wholeheartedly. Hebrews 11, up through the first several verses of chapter 12, is among my favorite passages of the Bible. The idea that is painted of a relay race is one that I can relate to from my days on the track team, and one that I have pointed to a lot in discussing our piece of the bigger picture. <a href="https://catchjohnfischer.wordpress.com/2012/11/14/receiving-the-baton/">Here are Fischer’s thoughts on it.</a> Enjoy.</p>
Good Books2012-11-12T00:15:08Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2012/good-books/<p>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 <em>Waking the Dead</em>, 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.</p>
<p>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 <em>bookmark</em>. 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The book is <em>Confessions of a Caffeinated Christian</em>, 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>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 <em>The Lord of the Rings</em>. 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.</p>
<p>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 <em>took the time to braid a whip</em> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Who <em>is</em> this guy?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>I think I’ve rambled enough. What’s the takeaway point here? I think there are a couple.</p>
<p>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” (<em>Waking the Dead</em>). 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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Like I said, read the story of David’s life like you would a novel. It’s pretty intense.</p>
“I’ve Got This.”2012-10-27T19:26:58Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2012/ive-got-this/<p>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.</p>
<p>I’m at <a href="http://nlcf.net">[nlcf]</a> 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.</p>
<p>“Let go. I’ve got this.”</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2012/of-ibuprofen-and-ice-packs/">posted</a> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Look up into the heavens.<br>
Who created all the stars?<br>
He brings them out like an army, one after another,<br>
calling each by its name.<br>
Because of his great power and incomparable strength,<br>
not a single one is missing.<br>
O Jacob, how can you say the Lord does not see your troubles?<br>
O Israel, how can you say God ignores your rights?<br>
Have you never heard?<br>
Have you never understood?<br>
The Lord is the everlasting God,<br>
the Creator of all the earth.<br>
He never grows weak or weary.<br>
No one can measure the depths of his understanding.<br>
He gives power to the weak<br>
and strength to the powerless.<br>
Even youths will become weak and tired,<br>
and young men will fall in exhaustion.<br>
But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength.<br>
They will soar high on wings like eagles.<br>
They will run and not grow weary.<br>
They will walk and not faint.</p>
<p><cite>Isaiah 40:26-31</cite></p>
</blockquote>
<p>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 <em>can’t</em> run right now.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a href="http://nlcf.net/about-us/spaces/">130 Jackson</a> 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.</p>
What If?2012-10-21T00:50:53Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2012/what-if/<p>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 <a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2012/of-ibuprofen-and-ice-packs/">knee injury</a>, 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>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 <em>recognized by,</em> these same principles that mark the Hokie Nation—but <em>more so?</em> 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?</p>
<p>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 <em>will</em> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://youtu.be/cFEarBzelBs">“Think Different”</a> commercial,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”</p>
</blockquote>
Of Ibuprofen and Ice Packs2012-10-15T00:11:18Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2012/of-ibuprofen-and-ice-packs/<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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. <a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2012/taking-a-step/">I wrote</a> 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. <a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2012/losing-all-control/">The post</a> 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.</p>
<p>In a very ironic twist, I’ve realized that abiding has become that thing that I’m trying to pull off on my own.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Or not.</p>
<p>A wise man once said, “When our depravity meets his divinity, it is a beautiful collision.”</p>
<p>(For those of you who are wondering, that man is none other than David Crowder.)</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p><cite>1 Corinthians 1:27-31 (NLT)</cite></p>
</blockquote>
Through the Valley2012-09-02T15:55:39Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2012/through-the-valley/<p>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.)</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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: <em>“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.”</em> (Philippians 1:6)</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Thought that I was all alone<br>
Broken and afraid<br>
But you were there with me<br>
Yes, you were there with me…<br>
Even though the journey’s long<br>
And I know the road is hard<br>
You’re the one who’s gone before me<br>
You will help me carry on<br>
And after all that I’ve been through<br>
Now I realize the truth<br>
That I must go through the valley<br>
To stand upon the mountain of God</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This song, and the album as a whole—<em>Wherever You Are</em>—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:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sometimes I think of where it is I’ve come from<br>
And the things I’ve left behind<br>
But of all I’ve had and what I’ve possessed<br>
Nothing can quite compare<br>
With what’s in front of me</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I couldn’t even imagine life here even being <em>close</em> to what I left behind, much less <em>better</em>. 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.</p>
Homesick2012-06-22T00:06:42Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2012/homesick/<p>Today finds me thinking about home. Those of you who know me and some of my life story may be wondering, “Which place, exactly, are you referring to as home at the moment?” Exactly. My point exactly.</p>
<p>I was looking through some old pictures and stuff from a CD that I got at the end of my ninth grade year. It was a CD that the two guys who had been helping out that year in junior high boys’ boarding (9th grade is junior high at that school) gave each of us, with pictures, movies, and such from over the course of the year. The CD had been buried in various desk drawers for five years now, and I just finally copied everything off of it and started looking through it again, for the first time since I first got it. Man, I’d forgotten some of the things we did that year. I laughed at one ridiculous picture after another. Completely unrelated except by coincidence, I also spent a good chunk of time yesterday reading through a couple Word documents full of jokes that I’d gotten from one of those two guys that year. Talk about a trip down memory lane.</p>
<p>At the same time, I’ve noticed that the very house I’m sitting in right now, in Chiang Mai, Thailand, has come to feel like home for me, between the month I spent here over Christmas and this past month here so far. I’ve noticed that, even though in many ways I have adjusted to life in the US, I still feel more at home in the Third World, even in a country that’s relatively new to me. I could get used to living here. Of course, it helps that this is where my family is. Which brings up another point. Even when, my freshman year, I was having a difficult time adjusting to Virginia Tech and America in general, Waxhaw, North Carolina, was a welcome escape, if only because there I was with my parents and my brother Jordan. When I’m with them, I’m home.</p>
<p>But one more is most surprising of all. I’ve discussed this in a previous post, but it still catches me off guard. Like most third-culture kids, I’ve often wondered just how to pin down what home is. (Thus, this post.) But one, perhaps somewhat cynical, definition that came to me once was: home is any place you feel homesick for. I’ve left behind many such places. There can only be one conclusion, then, when I realize that I miss the church community I am part of back in Blacksburg, <a href="https://www.nlcf.net/">New Life Christian Fellowship</a>. I see posts and photos on Facebook. I watch a video by one of the staff, sent out to new leaders to prep for the fall. I talk on the phone with one of our pastors, who recently took a new job in Orlando. We sing a song at church here that we do a lot at [nlcf], and I catch myself wishing I was worshiping alongside my brothers and sisters in Blacksburg. Last week I volunteered to help with sound while I’m here because the church is short-staffed during the summer. Sitting behind that console on Sunday took me back to that little building on Jackson Street, where I’ve mixed more than a few church services (not to mention a couple concerts that were…a little different from those church services.) It was also telling to discover that half of the t-shirts I brought with me this summer are sporting maroon and/or orange, with the VT logo. Little reminders, here and there, that [nlcf], and Virginia Tech as a whole, have become (yet another) home.</p>
<p>How do I reconcile all these? Every one of them (and this is by no means a comprehensive list) has some claim to being home, to some degree or other. This is the reason for that age-old question that every TCK is faced with: Just where is home? Because in truth, all of them are.</p>
<p>But the deeper answer I have come to is that there is one home that eclipses them all.</p>
<p>One of my favorite passages of the Bible is Hebrews 11 (which I firmly believe should include the first several verses of chapter 12—but don’t get me started on that.) In there is a set of verses that was somewhat of an anchor for me my freshman year.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It was by faith that Abraham obeyed when God called him to leave home and go to another land that God would give him as his inheritance. He went without knowing where he was going. And even when he reached the land God promised him, he lived there by faith—for he was like a foreigner, living in tents. And so did Isaac and Jacob, who inherited the same promise.</p>
<p>Abraham was confidently looking forward to a city with eternal foundations, a city designed and built by God…</p>
<p>All these people died still believing what God had promised them. They did not receive what was promised, but they saw it all from a distance and welcomed it. They agreed that they were foreigners and nomads here on earth. Obviously people who say such things are looking forward to a country they can call their own. If they had longed for the country they came from, they could have gone back. But they were looking for a better place, a heavenly homeland. That is why God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.</p>
<p><cite>Hebrews 11:8-10, 13-16 (NLT)</cite></p>
</blockquote>
<p>We are foreigners here on earth. Now, I know a thing or two about being a foreigner. I was a foreigner where I grew up, I’m a foreigner here, and I may as well be a foreigner back in America. During that year, this passage became very real to me. But even when I do feel at home down here, I think it’s just as important to remember where my true home is.</p>
<p>To bring it back to that definition of mine—I think, whether we are aware of it or not, heaven is the place we are most homesick for. I say heaven, but what I really mean is the new creation at the end of time, the new heaven and new earth, when everything is the way it should be again. Ever since our first parents left Eden, we have been homesick for Paradise. And we get glimpses, now and again, even in the things on this fallen earth.</p>
<p>A quote has stuck with me ever since I read it—not in its context in C.S. Lewis’s <em>The Last Battle</em> (which I did many, many years ago, and had long since forgotten) but since I read it in John Eldredge’s <em>Epic</em> a couple years ago. In this last installment of the Narnia series, as Narnia falls into chaos, the characters escape into a new world. Paradise. The unicorn blurts out,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The reason we love Blacksburg or Chiang Mai, the Grand Canyon or the Himalayas, is that they sometimes look a little like our real home. Maybe I was onto something after all. Everything we love about a place, everything we miss when we leave it, is homesickness.</p>
Some More Food for Thought2012-05-31T06:02:24Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2012/some-more-food-for-thought/<p>Over the last many months I’ve been looking a lot into the subject I just wrote about. I’ve read a lot of what other people had to say. Some of them had some of the same ideas I do, but said them a lot better than I could. I thought it would be helpful to compile a short list of articles and blog posts that I’ve read and found thought-provoking. <strong>This is not a 100% endorsement of everything on these pages,</strong> but I think some good points were made, and I hope they, along with my post, can give you some food for thought.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://rachelheldevans.com/win-culture-war-lose-generation-amendment-one-north-carolina">How to win a culture war and lose a generation</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.danoah.com/2011/11/im-christian-unless-youre-gay.html">I’m Christian, unless you’re gay</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.danoah.com/2012/04/a-teens-brave-response-to-im-christian-unless-youre-gay.html">A Teen’s Brave Response to “I’m Christian, Unless You’re Gay”</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/church/features/22976-christian-a-gay">Christian & Gay?</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.relevantmagazine.com/life/relationship/blog/28785-confessions-of-a-gay-christian">Confessions of a Gay Christian</a></li>
</ul>
Priorities2012-05-31T01:10:09Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2012/priorities/<p><strong>[Disclaimer: if you’re looking for something clean and family-friendly, this is not it. I’m dealing with a tough and messy topic that needs to be addressed]</strong></p>
<p>This post is a long time in coming. Both in that, yeah, it’s been a few weeks since I’ve written anything here, and in that what I’m about to write has been formulating in my mind for just as long if not longer.</p>
<p>Since the last time I blogged, I’ve finished classes, taken finals, packed up everything I own, and put all but a couple suitcases in a storage unit. I’ve spent a week and a half with my grandparents in eastern North Carolina, flown halfway around the world, and have now been with my family in Chiang Mai, Thailand for about a week.</p>
<p>My first Sunday in North Carolina, at church, the associate pastor stood up to give the message. (The church is currently without a senior pastor.) He brought up the constitutional amendment that the state had passed the previous Tuesday, to applause and amens. The one that constitutionally banned same-sex marriage, even though a state law is already in place to the same effect. I felt sick.</p>
<p>That was not the only time it came up. I heard it praised multiple times that Sunday, and it came up later in the week as well—every time accompanied by something to the effect of <em>Praise God</em>. And why not? After all, this is what traditional, conservative, American Christianity advocates—taking back the nation from an increasingly Godless government, reversing America’s spiral into immorality by winning over the legislature. They’re championing God’s cause…aren’t they?</p>
<p>I am not so sure God is as excited about it as they are. Had Jesus been one of those who cast a vote in North Carolina that Tuesday, I’m not convinced he would have supported this amendment.</p>
<p>Now, don’t get me wrong. These are great people, great followers of Jesus. But in this issue they, and many others, are unfortunately missing the point.</p>
<p>Now, there was a time—not all that long ago, to be honest—when I would’ve backed a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. But living in a Christian bubble half a world away from America, it was easy to feel far removed from the issue and pass judgment based on the traditional, conservative Christian view.</p>
<p>But the debate is no longer about a hot topic for me. It’s about people. There is now a face on the issue. The face of a good friend—an awesome man of God, who I recently learned has same-sex attractions. He recognizes that the Bible defines marriage to be between a man and a woman. And so he must live on his guard, shutting down anything sexual that arouses in him. He is denied that intimacy, as long as he has this curse, because to satisfy that desire is biblically wrong. And it is incredibly isolating—made worse by the utter hatred of homosexuals by so many in the church.</p>
<p>Shortly after learning this about my friend, I read <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-shore/the-best-case-for-the-bible-not-condemning-homosexuality_b_1396345.html">a blog</a> making the argument that homosexuality is not, in fact, condemned by the Bible. In short, I wasn’t convinced. My first idea for this post was as a response to that. I would start by pointing out why his argument didn’t hold water, but then I would bring it around to make the more important point. But now, some time having passed, and now that this whole thing in North Carolina has given me a lot more to talk about, I’ll just leave it at: I’m still convinced that the Bible does indeed state that sex between people of the same gender is wrong. But my more important point was this: The guy writing this article, and the people on the other side of the spectrum who treat people with this issue like garbage because “the Bible tells us to” are both making the same fundamental error. They make the mistake of thinking of homosexuality as an identity, inseparable from the person. The very term “homosexuals” defines people by it. We need to get past thinking of it as <em>who they are.</em> Acknowledging homosexuality is a sin does not have to entail hating people who practice it (or struggle with it, even if they don’t practice it, for that matter.) And loving them does not have to mean condoning what they do.</p>
<p>I can relate to my friend’s struggle in one respect. My sexuality is broken too. Just because I am attracted to women doesn’t mean I have it all together in that area. For that matter, every single person who’s ever lived (save one) has had to deal with a broken and sinful sexuality. (And actually, even Jesus faced sexual temptations, I’m sure. Thankfully, he didn’t fall for them.) We all face this stuff, in one form or another. Same-sex attractions, or lusting after that hot chick. Homosexuality, or adultery. What makes the husband who has an affair, the man who is addicted to porn, or the unmarried couple who live together, better (or worse) than the two men who live together? If there’s grace for the first group, why not the last couple? On what basis does the church withhold love from people who deal with homosexuality just because their sexual sin is different from ours? And remember, Jesus hung out with the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the people who, in first century Judea, were considered worse sinners than everyone else. (Also remember: he was hated by the religious establishment.)</p>
<p>We need to start seeing these people as…people. And loving them. Like Jesus does. And stop making them hate us by legislating that they live exactly the way we want them to.</p>
<p>If the amendment that passed in North Carolina a couple weeks ago was intended to make a statement, it succeeded. If it was intended to get a whole lot of people ticked off, it worked like a charm. If it was intended to bring God back into America, to advance the Kingdom…it failed. Horribly. The most ridiculous part is that it didn’t actually even change anything in law. State law already restricts marriage to a man and a woman. The constitutional amendment just made sure it stuck that way. And rubbed it in the faces of everyone that wishes it were otherwise. And got them really mad. At the church.</p>
<p>But we need to ask—is this really our job? To force our morals on everyone else by voting them into law? After all, some of Jesus’ last words on earth were something along the lines of:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Go into politics and make laws of all the commands I have given you, forcing everyone to obey them, whether they like it or not. And be sure the nation and the government are never lost to unbelievers.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Wait…that doesn’t sound right. Try:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”</p>
<p><cite>Matthew 28:19-20 (NLT)</cite></p>
</blockquote>
<p>A few years ago I read a couple books by Philip Yancey. One was <em>What’s So Amazing About Grace?</em>, and the other was <em>The Jesus I Never Knew</em>. I loved them so much that I have read a lot more Yancey since then. But in one of those first two (I really don’t remember which one—it easily could have been in either) he pointed out that the early church didn’t enjoy what we take for granted and are now up in arms to keep—a Christian government. They were a small minority under a pagan empire. The idea of winning over the majority of government and establishing Jesus’ morals as law would have been laughable. But look at the growth. In Acts, thousands upon thousands of people flocked into the Kingdom. And over the course of history—well, look where we are now. Millions upon millions consider themselves Christians. Nations have been established by followers of Christ, founded on his principles. But remember: one of those principles was freedom to choose. America’s founding fathers understood the importance of not coercing anyone in their beliefs. History had already demonstrated the result when the church and politics get too wrapped up in each other. And we still live in that religious freedom. And if you even think about arguing that we’re losing our freedom—go read about Christians in North Korea or any other number of countries out there. Look up Voice of the Martyrs and read what they have to say. Then tell me we in America are losing our religious freedom.</p>
<p>Ironically, this push to establish Christian principles as law…sounds an awful lot like a Christian version of sharia law to me. Which any Bible-thumping Christian (and all those Islamophobic email chains that make me sick to read) will tell you, is a move <em>away from</em> religious freedom. There’s some perspective for you.</p>
<p>But I digress. As Philip Yancey pointed out, the more he looks at the environment of the early church, the less concerned he is about the top-down secularization of America. Our approach should be bottom-up.</p>
<p>If all the energy the church spent retaking politics and legislating against sin was spent reaching out to those around them, loving people and making disciples, imagine what our evangelistic efforts would look like. Imagine the effect on the Kingdom. Imagine the effect on the world.</p>
<p>We need to get our priorities straight. We need to care about people, not beat them over the head with laws. To repeat myself, to make sure I’m clear: this does not mean we say it’s OK that they’re living the way they are. It means we worry about getting them into the Kingdom first. Then we come alongside them as the Holy Spirit cleans up their lives. And like my friend, they will need us. Once that lifestyle no longer is OK, once it becomes a burden to bear, and a monster to fight, they will need all the love and support they can get. Just as each of us do, in our struggles with our own burdens and monsters. This is the church, the Kingdom of God. A band of once-misfits, forever changed by the grace of God, extending that grace outward. Walking through life together, fighting alongside each other, as we walk the journey from our old lives towards our future. Bringing everyone we can in, because we don’t want anyone to miss it. None of us are perfect, but washed in blood, we are. Our mission is to save the world. Not by taking over the government. By making disciples. Therefore go…</p>
Different2012-04-24T01:23:43Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2012/different/<p>A pretty awesome thought hit me tonight.</p>
<p>There is now just over a week left of classes here at VT. After which is a week of finals, and then summer. It’s ridiculous how fast time has gone this year, and it sure ain’t slowing down now. Pretty much everyone is in the mindset of so much to do, so little time. These last days are going to fly faster than I can believe. But that’s not the thought; that’s just the context of the thought.</p>
<p>Tonight the thought of leaving for the summer crossed my mind. Not the thought of going to Thailand to stay with my family and intern for the summer, which has been on my mind for a while now. The thought of leaving Virginia Tech for the summer. (To clarify—that’s not the thought either. I’m getting to it.)</p>
<p>Now, just about this time last year, the imminence of leaving for the summer was also on my mind (for obvious reasons.) Last year, as you may know or have read, was not an easy one. I was transitioning from life overseas, at a small, Christian, international boarding school, immersed in an Asian culture, in a country that I had grown up in and considered home almost all my life, to the massive secular school of Virginia Tech, to America and American culture. I had left behind friends who were family to me, many of whom had graduated with me and were now also scattering across the globe, returning to the countries their parents were from. I was a stranger in a foreign land, isolated, and all my attempts to relate to the people around me fell flat. And in response, being the reclusive introvert that I am, I withdrew from the world around me. And as all this dragged on, I found myself drifting even away from God. Not intentionally—by no means. I was really doing everything I could to fight it, to rekindle the flame. I prayed, I cried, I struggled to keep myself afloat, and cried out to God to save me. But I found myself sinking nonetheless.</p>
<p>In the middle of all this, I started going to <a href="https://www.nlcf.net">New Life Christian Fellowship</a>—or [nlcf]—in January, because the church I had been going to discontinued their evening service, and that bus route didn’t run Sunday mornings. But [nlcf] conveniently meets on campus. (Yes, God works in mysterious ways.) For the rest of the year, I went to church there on Sundays, but that was pretty much it. I signed up for their summer program in Virginia Beach, because I knew God was telling me to go, and out of sheer desperation for God to show up.</p>
<p>When the end of the year came around, and as I thought about leaving for the summer, I realized that I wouldn’t even care if I never came back.</p>
<p>To cut a long story short, while Leadership Training, as the summer program is called, was an awesome spiritual experience for most everyone who went, I can’t say it was for me, at least at the time. God was definitely working in me over those ten weeks, but he didn’t show up in some awesome way and get my faith back on track, save from the depression, all that. But he was laying groundwork. Because when I started my sophomore year a few weeks after LT ended, suddenly he flipped the switch. And over the next six weeks, I woke up. No, I came back to life. Through those relationships that began at LT, I started to plug into [nlcf]. For the first time since graduating from high school, I found a community that I could become a part of, and I’ve thrown myself into it wholeheartedly. And it has been awesome. And through that, God fanned my faith back into flame.</p>
<p>And here I am again, facing the end of another year. But this time it’s different. Because the thought hit me tonight (yes, this is the thought that all this has been building up to)—I’m actually gonna miss this place over the summer. I’m gonna miss these people, who have come to mean so much to me. Especially the people who won’t be here when I come back. Of course, I’m definitely excited about going to Thailand and all, and I fully intend to enjoy every minute on non-American soil. (Yes, right about now you Americans are calling me weird. And you fellow TCKs know exactly what I’m talking about.) But for the first time, I will be anticipating the beginning of a new year at VT. I will be excited to be reunited with people here. I will feel like I’m coming home. (Well, from one home to another. Again, you TCKs know what I mean.)</p>
<p>This is not the first time it’s hit me that in many ways I have come to feel at home at [nlcf]. There have been several times over the course of the year that something or other has stopped me short and made me realize just that. But this is very much a milestone, because I can look back at a year ago, when I was in the same position—but this time it’s different. Because a year ago I would not have believed what I’m writing now. It’s a milestone because I can look back and see what God has done over the past year. How far he’s brought me. And it is so awesome to see.</p>
The Time Is Now2012-04-18T18:35:00Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2012/the-time-is-now/<p>When I posted on Saturday I said I had a couple ideas in mind for new posts. This was not one of them. But the events since then have thrust this into my mind.</p>
<p>On Monday night I stood on the drillfield alongside thousands of other Hokies as 32 names were read aloud, each followed by a few lines about the person behind that name, and as 32 candles were lit and held in front of the 32 stones that stand on the beautiful campus of Virginia Tech as a reminder of the morning, five years ago, that tragedy struck our campus, and senseless violence claimed those 32 lives. To the somber singing of a choir, those 32 flames were then passed from one candle to another, until every one of us was holding a flame aloft, shielding it with one hand from the Blacksburg wind.</p>
<p>Last night I was on FaceTime with my dad. Just before we hung up, he said there was one more thing he wanted to tell me. A coworker of my parents and good friend of the family had been killed in a head-on collision in Colorado on the way home from speaking at a church Sunday.</p>
<p>Suddenly I find myself face to face with the frailty of the human life.</p>
<p>In the midst of such situations, often the first question that comes to mind is “Why?” But I am not writing this to answer that question, other than to point out that in these times more than ever, we are still feeling echoes of Genesis 3.</p>
<p>But I believe there is a more important question to ask.</p>
<p>I remember a conversation from <em>The Fellowship of the Ring</em>, one that has stuck with me over the years. Frodo says to Gandalf, “I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.”</p>
<p>To which the wizard replies, “So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”</p>
<p>Tragedies like this are reminders that death could come to any one of us, at any moment. Which should drive us to ask, “What am I doing with the time that I have been given?” Are we living with that in mind? How would we live differently if we knew our time was near?</p>
<p>But for those of us who have put our faith in Christ, what matters even more is that any one of those around us could die at any moment. And if they have not chosen Jesus, at that moment all hope for them is lost. It is a tragic, awful reality, that most of us would feel more comfortable putting out of our minds. But then tragedy strikes again, and we are once more faced with the urgency of our mission. We cannot afford to procrastinate. The world cannot afford for us to procrastinate. As Paul said,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”</p>
<p>But how can they call on him to save them unless they believe in him? And how can they believe in him if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them?</p>
<p><cite>Romans 10:14-15</cite></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Brothers and sisters, the time is now. The world is perishing. And we are content to go to church on Sunday or a Bible study on a Wednesday night, utter an Amen! at a passage like the one above, and hope and even pray that somebody tells them. We need to <em>get in the game.</em> I say this to myself as much as anyone else. Our comfort zones are no excuse. Our busyness is no excuse. <em>We have no excuse.</em> How much death will it take to wake us up?</p>
<p>I know from experience that it is not enough to just agree to this and say I need to work on it. It’s not enough to tell myself I need to be more missions-minded towards those all around me at Virginia Tech. I need to actually do something. I need to take concrete steps in this direction. Because as April 16 and our friend’s car crash remind us, life can be cut short at any moment. The time is now.</p>
The Race2012-04-14T14:12:07Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2012/flashback-the-race/<p><em>In my first post I mentioned a couple things that had come to me that would’ve made good blog posts—the problem being I didn’t have a blog. This is one of them. It has been a Facebook note since its conception in October 2010, and seeing as I haven’t posted here in a while, I decided it was time to promote it to a real blog post. I’ve resisted the urge to make any changes, so here it is in its original, unaltered, state. I also will take this chance to say I have a couple ideas bouncing around in my head for new posts. Maybe once they’ve developed further I’ll get something original up here again.</em></p>
<p>First, I’ll start with a disclaimer: this analogy, like any analogy, is not perfect. If you take it too far it’ll break down before long. It is probably riddled with even more discrepancies than I’m aware of. It is meant only to help illustrate one facet of the truth, not cover all the bases. With that said, here goes:</p>
<p>I love track and field. Especially victory (who doesn’t?) This morning I was remembering one of the awesomest races I ever ran: Spring 2010, the 800m. (Before I go any farther, another disclaimer. I don’t mean to brag—in fact, this probably was the only race I ever got first place in, relays aside. I’m just using the story to make my point.) The whistle blew and we all launched across the line. Immediately everyone began to merge into the inside lane. I found a comfortable pace close behind the guy in the lead—from ISOI or LAS, I don’t remember which—where I could wait for an opportunity to overtake him. Early in the second lap my chance came, when he started to run out of steam. I started slowly picking up my pace, and passed him at 600m with a little burst of speed, just as we were coming onto that last bend. I kept increasing speed on that curve (something I don’t normally do) and when I hit that last 100m stretch I kicked into a dead sprint for the finish line.</p>
<p>I still remember, even though I was flying down this track, there was a moment where I felt almost frozen in time. At that point I knew I was on my way to victory. There was no way the other guy was catching up to me now. And so I could close my eyes, throw my head back, and smile, and savor the moment—enjoy the wind on my face, the 90-degree sun beating down on me, the cheering, the announcer saying something about MCS and a strong finish, the adrenaline pumping through me, but most of all just running for the pure enjoyment of running the race, sprinting like my life depended on it, fixing my gaze on the finish line and pouring everything I had left in me into reaching it, knowing that in moments it would be over and I would be celebrating victory on the other side of the finish line, and even though I was more cramped than I had ever been before or have been since, it would be totally worth it.</p>
<p>And that image is exactly what it’s like to run the Christian life.</p>
<p>I’m certainly not the first to compare life to a race. Paul did a lot. Countless times he explicitly calls it a race; other times he alludes to it, for instance, in talking about a “victor’s crown”—the laurel wreath the champion of a race would receive in Paul’s day (a tradition revived at the 2004 Olympics in Athens.) As a runner myself, I’ve long thought of life as a race. So this analogy is more a matter of thinking about just what that race looks like.</p>
<p>Say you’re really out of shape. And massively obese. Like, 800 pounds and you’ve never run more than 10 yards in your life. And you suddenly find yourself in this race—not cause you signed up for it but because everyone who’s ever lived has to run this race. And it’s not a sprint either—it’s more like a marathon. And just to make things worse you’re weighed down by all kinds of crap that you just don’t want to get rid of even though it’s three times as heavy as you are and it keeps getting under your feet and wrapped around your legs and in your face. But you think you like all this stuff so you’re trying to run the race with it. Needless to say, you’re miles behind everyone else.</p>
<p>Then this dude comes up on your side (and you’re thinking, “What, there’s actually someone still behind me?!”) He offers to carry your stuff. You suddenly realize this lugging-all-your-junk-along thing isn’t working, so you begin to hand it all over. He takes all your stuff on his own back, and then he surprises you even more—he offers to give you a piggyback. (“Is that even allowed?” you wonder.) With great difficulty you try to climb onto his back. He reaches over his shoulder with a free hand and pulls you aboard. You notice his hand—both hands actually—is scarred. He tells you, “I had a brush with a tree earlier, in coming to help you.”</p>
<p>No sooner are you on his back, he takes off down the road, overtaking everyone, who you now notice are all carrying baggage of their own. When he is safely in the lead he puts you back down. You realize that suddenly you aren’t overweight anymore. Your legs are stronger. Your flip-flops have been replaced with the best running shoes you’ve ever seen. The guy then says to you, “You can see the finish line from here. I’ve given you everything you need to win this race. I’m going there now, and I’ll be waiting for you there. Give it your all.”</p>
<p>In a flash he takes off, and you’re left jogging along. You glance over your shoulder, see the others slowly closing the gap. As you look ahead to the finish line, you notice there’s a massive crowd on the sidelines, cheering your name. The dude’s standing there at the finish line, also cheering you on. He yells, “Come on man! I authored and perfected this race, and now I’ve run it. I’ve taken the hits for you. Now run this race; your life depends on it!” You’re approaching the last stretch of the race, and suddenly it all clicks. You kick into a dead sprint for that finish line.</p>
<p>This is where we are right now. We’re in the lead, approaching that finish line faster than ever. Even though the race isn’t over yet, we know victory is ours, thanks to Jesus. So we let out a smile and run, enjoying the moment and running with purpose in every step, towards that goal. Jesus is waiting at the finish line, calling our name and cheering us on, and we fix our eyes on Him and give everything in the last stretch of this race. We’re cramping up like never before, but we’re determined to reach the end and we’re pouring every last drop of energy into reaching that end, and we know that in moments we will be celebrating victory on the other side of the finish line, and unlike a physical race, the cramps and pain and gasping for air will be over forever. So let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.</p>
If Necessary, Use Words2012-03-20T13:25:10Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2012/if-necessary-use-words/<p>Today I’m thinking about the prophets. For the last several days I’ve been working on a study on the Old Testament prophets for my small group. And something that has really stuck out to me is how their lives are so wrapped up in their message. The classic example is Hosea, who God called to marry a prostitute and was doomed to a life of buying back and forgiving an unfaithful wife, to be a living allegory of Israel’s unfaithfulness to God—and God’s relentless love.</p>
<p>Yesterday, I was starting my personal time with God. I asked God to speak to me, to show me whatever it is I needed to hear as I read. I launched my Bible app, which opened to Ezekiel 24. I had turned here when I was working on the small group study, to read the first half of the chapter, when Ezekiel hears that Babylon has besieged Jerusalem. But what my eyes fell on this time was the second half, which opens with these verses:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Then this message came to me from the Lord: “Son of man, with one blow I will take away your dearest treasure. Yet you must not show any sorrow at her death. Do not weep; let there be no tears. Groan silently, but let there be no wailing at her grave. Do not uncover your head or take off your sandals. Do not perform the usual rituals of mourning or accept any food brought to you by consoling friends.”</p>
<p>So I proclaimed this to the people the next morning, and in the evening my wife died. The next morning I did everything I had been told to do.</p>
<p><cite>Ezekiel 24:15-18 (NLT)</cite></p>
</blockquote>
<p>I don’t think I could give any adequate commentary on those words, other than to let them speak for themselves. So stop, read that again, and let it sink in.</p>
<p>Um…wow.</p>
<p>I’m reminded of St. Francis of Assisi, who said, “Preach the gospel at all times; if necessary, use words.” If anyone lived that out, the prophets did. (OK, depending on how you define “gospel,” it’s up for debate as to whether their message was part of the gospel, or was just fulfilled in the gospel, or whatever. That’s a whole nother discussion that I’m not going to address, in this post anyways. It’s more the concept that I’m trying to get at.) Sure, they had a lot to say, but often their most powerful messages were not what they said but what they did. And sometimes what God called them to do to make those points was…well, yeah. Along the lines of what Hosea and Ezekiel had to live through.</p>
<p>If you’ve read my last couple posts, are you starting to pick up on a theme here? Yeah, this is what I meant when I said it’s been a recurring theme in my life for the past many months.</p>
<p>But seeing it in the lives of the prophets hits a particular nerve in me. And, now that I think about it, brings a new sense of clarity. You see, <em>my</em> gift is prophecy. I hesitate to say that here. I don’t generally like to “flaunt” it, or tell people that’s the case. I let God speak through me, but I feel no need to make a point of calling myself a prophet or anything. I never would have dreamed of claiming it on a public web page. But I feel like you need that context to really get where I’m coming from.</p>
<p>Because now I think I begin to understand just why God has been driving at surrender so much. It seems he calls his prophets to an even more demanding level of surrender. I remember Jim, one of the pastors of my campus church, saying a couple weeks ago to a few of us that we all need to be ready to obey God when he calls us to do some pretty radical things—and then he added that that is especially true for those with the prophetic gifting. (Man, this is literally <em>everywhere</em>.)</p>
<p>Why? I think these stories, and others like them about these and other Old Testament prophets, shed some light on that: so that our lives are consistent with our message. At the very least. Better yet, so that our lives <em>are</em> the message. And only minimal explanation is needed. “Preach the gospel…if necessary, use words.”</p>
<p>And suddenly it clicks why that quote had such an impact on me when I first heard it. And really, that mindset is more natural to me. Those of you who know me personally know that, for the most part, I only use words when necessary. Or, to borrow a line from a favorite of mine, “It takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish, and we Ents never say anything unless it is worth taking…a very…long…time…to say” (<em>The Two Towers</em>). But living it out—now that I can do. It comes more easily to me, at least.</p>
<p>Why am I saying all this? Honestly, I’m just speaking my thoughts aloud. Well, in writing. At the least, I hope the quote from Ezekiel is as impactful to you as it was to me. Or the quote by St. Francis, for that matter. And maybe some of my thoughts about their application to my own life will be helpful in processing yours.</p>
Taking a Step2012-03-10T22:53:09Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2012/taking-a-step/<p><a href="https://seanlunsford.com/2012/losing-all-control/">Earlier this week</a> I wrote about two themes in my life right now—surrender and abiding. Since then they’ve been on my mind a good deal and God has been developing those thoughts further. For a couple weeks now, God’s been pushing me to be more intentional about spending time with him. I try to do it before class in mornings, amid getting breakfast and getting ready for class and all. But I’m usually still asleep while I’m eating breakfast, and don’t really wake up until the last moment when I throw some clothes on and shove my iPad into my bag as I take off for class. And so I’m just not spending the time with God that I should be. And the last couple weeks, as God has been telling me to be intentional about my time with him, I’ve responded by doubling up my efforts to wake up during that hour or so before class. But as Jesus pointed out about this very issue, the spirit is willing, but the body is weak. And, being Jesus, he knew what he was talking about. These past few days, I started realizing that (1) spending time with God is not something I should be doing; it’s something I <em>need</em> to be doing. The way I need to eat and sleep and breath. It’s essential to my survival. (I would have intellectually agreed to this before, but it was in writing that last blog post and thinking more about it afterwards that I began to really get it.) And (2) God’s been calling me to surrender, and the most valuable thing I can surrender to God these days is my time. And so I decided I needed to take clear, concrete steps to make it a major discipline in my life again. I decided I needed to rethink the idea that this had to be the first thing I do in the morning, because that just wasn’t working. I still want to try to at least start the day with a prayer, or sleepy effort at one, to get off on the right foot. But I would get far more out of my time in the Word and in prayer if I was awake for it (for obvious reasons.) So I sat down with a week view of my calendar and blocked out time each day that I could do it. My time with God is now on my calendar alongside classes, church activities, and shifts at the dining hall.</p>
<p>Related to that, God’s also been putting intercession on my heart again. It was a major part of my walk with God in 12th grade, and it needs to be again. Fighting for people in prayer is a core part of who God’s made me, but that part of me has been dormant since my “dark night of the soul” last year. It’s time it was resurrected. So I wrote down a list of people and things I want to pray for regularly, and broke it down into days of the week. I set each as a weekly reminder, to go off during the time I’m spending with God that day.</p>
<p>Now let me point out that this is not in my nature to do. I have resisted adding any kind of structure to my time with God, because for one, I am not that kind of person (if you’re familiar with the Myers-Briggs test, I am a P) and because I want to be open to the Spirit’s leading, rather than stuck in a rut and missing what God’s trying to do. I thrive on that flexibility. But there’s something to be said for having some basic structure to work from. In this case it was the only solution. And by no means does this mean I’m not open to God leading differently on any given day. It just gives me a new default to vary from. And I realized as I was writing this that, ironically, by implementing this structure, I am being flexible by giving up the way I’ve been doing things and moving with what God is doing.</p>
<p>I say all this not to brag about this great thing I’m doing or anything, but to give an example of taking definite, concrete steps towards this goal. I’m willing to bet I’m not the only one out of seven billion people on the planet who’s struggling with devoting time to God. But like I said, it really isn’t an option. I say that not from a legalistic standpoint. From the standpoint that, as I said in my last post, we can’t do this life thing on our own. We cannot hope to figure it out apart from God. Our only hope is to walk in step with him. Every day. Every minute. What did Jesus say, after 40 days without food, was more necessary for life than <em>bread</em>? And so I encourage you—I <em>beg</em> you—to do whatever you need to do to find that time. It may look a lot like what I described above. It might look nothing like it. It’s OK, God can probably handle it. He wants <em>you</em>. And he wants you to do whatever you have to do to be with him.</p>
<p>Maybe you’re doing well in this area. Well, then, is there some other area that God is challenging you in? That you’ve tried your best in but are getting nowhere? Something that you can sit down and come up with a definite roadmap for? Or at the very least, just a small but concrete step? I get the feeling that what I’m doing is only the first step towards something much bigger. But it’s a step. It’s the step that God’s showing me right now. He’ll light up the next one when he’s ready. Walking with God, remember? This is what that looks like. So ask God, <em>What’s the first step?</em> And take it.</p>
Losing All Control2012-03-05T19:31:19Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2012/losing-all-control/<blockquote>
<p>Just how close can I get, Lord, to my surrender<br>
Without losing all control?<br>
Fearless warriors in a picket fence<br>
Reckless abandon wrapped in common sense<br>
Deep-water faith in the shallow end<br>
And we are caught in the middle<br>
With eyes wide open to the differences<br>
The God we want and the God who is<br>
But will we trade our dreams for his<br>
Or are we caught in the middle?</p>
<p><cite>–Casting Crowns, “Somewhere in the Middle”</cite></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yesterday the sermon was on Jesus’ call to his followers to “take up your cross.” The pastor told the story of Arthur Blessitt, who on Christmas Day, 1969, began carrying a 12-foot cross he had made across the United States, from his home in Los Angeles to New York and finally to DC. In 1971, he embarked on a journey across the world, beginning in Northern Ireland, where he shared his faith with soldiers in the IRA. Four years ago, he completed his mission, having walked almost 40,000 miles through every country on the planet, dragging his cross. Because God told him to. He met people from all walks of life, saw for himself the conditions that people were living in, prayed for peace as he walked through dozens of war-torn countries. He said that in all of those experiences, sometimes the cross on his shoulder seemed like the lightest burden he was carrying.</p>
<p>Now, God’s probably not going to ask most of us to literally carry a cross the equivalent of one and a half times around the circumference of the equator. (Probably not—but who knows? If he does, will you?) But Jesus made it very clear that being his disciple would be comparable to having to drag an instrument of torture and execution through the streets of Jerusalem and up a hill, where you would be nailed to it and left till dead. Are you living out your faith in a way that reflects that? I can’t say I am.</p>
<p>This sermon struck a chord with me. Because it was not an isolated incident of God speaking to me about this subject. If I had to pick the single biggest theme that God has been putting on my heart this school year—starting over the summer, really—it would be <em>surrender</em>. He is coming back to this again and again, calling me to let go of everything in complete abandonment to him. And I feel like my efforts to do so are pretty well summed up in the lyrics I opened with. How close can I get to surrender, without losing all control?</p>
<p>And this semester, God’s stepped it up a notch. Over Christmas break, the books I read were pointing to surrender. But in a different way. It seemed not so much like a general call, but more like preparing me for something specific. I got the sense that this semester, at some point, I would be faced with a very specific decision about a very specific matter. One road would be to continue in the status quo, comfortable in the way things are. The other: to give up all control. And carry my cross. And since then God has kept bringing me back to it. I still don’t know how that will manifest itself, or when. Given the whole taking up my cross thing, I suspect it will not be a pleasant choice to make. In the meantime I need to be listening and watching for it. And preparing myself. So that when it comes, I will recognize it, and have the courage to take the leap of faith.</p>
<p>I mentioned preparing. How am I supposed to prepare for something like that? I get the sense that a major part of it is <em>abiding</em>. Which, now that I think about it, is the other major theme that God has been talking to me about. And it just now clicked, that these are not isolated from each other. I’ve learned all too well that we cannot do this life thing on sheer will. All of us who have accepted Jesus know that no one is capable of living a life without sin, and that we are dependent on his grace. But sometimes we get the idea that once we become Christians, our sins are accounted for, but now we start trying to clean up our lives on our own power. And that just doesn’t work. In John 15, Jesus says to abide in him. He’s the vine, we’re the branches, all that. Apart from him, we don’t stand a chance of producing fruit. But if we’re connected to him, through us he produces fruit. Think about that analogy. What does a branch do? All it does is hang off the trunk. And the fruit comes. When we try to fix up our own lives, and try to live out the fruit of the Spirit and all, it’s still us trying to exercise our control. Just in a different way. But that’s missing the point. We’re supposed to lose control, remember? That means we have no control over the good things, either. If we stay plugged into Jesus, and let the Holy Spirit work in our lives, the good things come.</p>
<p>To bring it back to my impending fork in the road—maybe the key is just to make sure, above all, I am plugged into Jesus. And let him transform my life. And when I am faced with that choice, the Holy Spirit, who has been working in me, will lead me down the road less traveled. The road to Calvary. And I will follow. And looking back, it will be totally worth it.</p>
<p>What about you? What control do you need to let go of? What is holding you back from reckless abandonment to God? What is he asking you to do about it?</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will save it. And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?”</p>
<p><cite>–Jesus (Mark 8:34-36, NLT)</cite></p>
</blockquote>
Because the Internet Isn’t Crowded Enough as It Is2012-03-03T18:33:29Zhttps://seanlunsford.com/2012/because-the-internet-isnt-crowded-enough-as-it-is/<p>The first thought of starting a blog came to me over a year ago. God spoke to me a couple different times, within a few weeks of each other, specifically showing me things that were meant to be shared. They ended up as notes on Facebook. But it got me thinking. What I really wanted to do was code the site from the ground up myself, as well as write the posts. It was a cool way to bring together two interests of mine. But being an engineering major, I just don’t have the time to do both. And so the idea ended up on a back burner for well over a year, coming to mind once in a while, but as something that I would just have to do one day when I have time to do it.</p>
<p>Then yesterday, a friend suggested I start a blog—as far as I know, having no idea that it was something I’d wanted to do for a while. The heavens opened, a shaft of light came down, angelic choir and all. Not really…but that comment was enough to make me decide to finally do this. I realized that not having time to build my own website for this didn’t have to mean I don’t do the writing part. WordPress was a good compromise. This way I can use an existing framework, and do as much or as little coding as I want or have time for on top of said existing framework. I may as well use the services that plenty of other people use so that what time I have (or make) can be focused on actually writing stuff.</p>
<p>Which brought up a question. <em>Does this universe really need one more blog?</em> It’s so easy to start a blog. Anyone can do it. The blogosphere is the place to be these days. And I’ve never been one to follow the crowd. And I don’t really want to be one more voice on the already bloated Internet. Which is why I’m going to try not to post just for the sake of posting. I have no idea how regularly I’m going to post here, but I’d rather write far less frequently, and only write things that people actually think are worth reading. (And hopefully I’ll be a good judge of that.)</p>
<p>Finally, there was the issue of a title. Or lack thereof. I spent a good deal of time trying to come up with some creative name for the blog. Something that would convey what this blog is going to be about. The problem with that is, <em>I’m</em> not entirely sure what all this blog will be about at this point. Certainly—primarily, I should say—thoughts about my faith and things God is showing me. But being a TCK (third culture kid) whose family is still living overseas, traversing the globe has been a huge part of my past, and is definitely in my future, and is bound to present plenty of things to share here. Not to mention anything else that comes up that I think the world needs to hear. Almost any name I choose could prove to be limiting in the future, as this blog progresses and evolves. And what names I could come up with that seemed to do the trick were already taken. Besides, I learned years ago in the realm of email addresses that what sounds really cool one year may not seem quite so cool a few years down the road. But you can’t go wrong with your own name.</p>
<p>So there you have it. I have officially entered the blogosphere. Hopefully I’m not just adding to the noise.</p>