Desperately Trying to Live The Red Letters…
It’s been awhile since I’ve posted, school has been substantially more difficult in the fall than it was in the summer. It turns out seminary is pretty hard! My apologies to those of you hoping for more consistent updates. As you know, I tend to write when the spirit moves me, and lately it’s begun to do so again.
2 Things to talk about today!
I killed an ant today.
It happened this morning. I saw the ant crawling while I was showering. I picked it up and squashed it. After I squashed it I said:
“Sorry ant, but you’re in my territory.”
But then I realized, what does that mean?
Am I, man, the type of creature who should defend his borders by death? Perhaps the man of today is. But I am different, I am a Christian man. Am I able to define myself and my borders by killing?
I don’t know. It’s a tough question. It may sound silly to you, but if you really think about this question, it’s pretty unsettling. Christianity is a faith that requires you to approach things the same from “top to bottom”. Kings are made beggars in the eyes of God.
Now, don’t misunderstand me, I don’t think we are ants before God. God clearly states we are the apex of God’s creation. But God made many other things, and in summation of all these things God said, “it is very good.”
What does this mean? Maybe nothing…but what I think it means is that we must allow our compassion and grace to flow richly and deeply through all forms of life.
Am I going to become a vegetarian? Let’s not get crazy here! But do I strongly support free range organicly fed and raised animals? Absolutely. But this isn’t even about that subject.
It’s about life as a whole. How we approach all forms of life and all types of people is an indicator of our level of faith. If we only value people, or certain groups of people, our faith doesn’t go “all the way down”, so to speak.
It’s vitally important that we always remember this because it is the chief appeal of Christ in the first place. Christ came for sinner and “saint” alike. We should act in the same way.
Hopefully I can find a way in the future to get the ants to leave my apartment without killing them.
Otherwise, unless they’re eating nice food, or really causing trouble, I say “let ‘em roam!”
Praise God!
Amen.
HURLLLL!!!
There’s a good kind of vomit.
Every day, I wake up and go about my business. I’ll go to work, or more recently, class, and go though the motions of life. Like anyone else, I try to be the best Christian I can be. Some days I’m good, and some days I’m not so good. And at the end of the day, I go to sleep, so that I can repeat this process anew tomorrow.
Sound familiar?
Read more…
Home.
There’s just no place like it.
After about 3 months of bouncing around between Brooklyn, New Haven, Ghana and Houston, I have finally arrived. I am no longer a nomad, I have a home.
Read more…
Texas is really beautiful.
It really is.
Living there most of my life I’d been unconvinced, but I got to see it today. I got to see it today with new eyes.
Have you ever done that? Have you ever rediscovered something ordinary, and realized how amazingly extraordinary it is?
Driving down I-10 for 571 miles towards the Texas/Mexico/New-Mexico border I realized this. I looked around as I listened to my “Man In the High Castle” (REALLY GOOD) audiobook, and was taken aback at the majesty of hills as large as mountains. The broken crags of rock offered a cross-section of minerals, like a rainbow the colors dazzled. Read more…
I’ve uploaded my photos from Ghana, let me know what you think.
Chapel at Trinity Seminary, Accra, Ghana
I’ve never cared for Miracles.
They’ve always posed a problem for me. I’m a Christian and an intellectual, for better or worse.
While I’ve always believed in what C.S Lewis calls “the grand miracle”, the incarnation, that never made it any easier. I’ve even believed all of Christ’s miracles, often begrudgingly, but I’ve always had a problem with modern miracles.
Miracles present a problem for the intellectual mind because our post-modern programming tells us there’s an explanation for everything. We’re hesitant to say it’s God, because we know people like to make this stuff up sometimes.
Herein lies the tension. We want to believe, but sadly, we end up needing to prove our beliefs.
With that out of the way, here’s the story.
Welcome to Ghana.
Makola Market, Accra, Ghana
Over the next couple of days I will be posting stories from my trip to Ghana. I would have posted them while I was there, but as you can imagine, the Internet was spotty.
We arrived on the 23rd, which also happened to be my 25th birthday! Needless to say, this was going to be a pretty sweet birthday.
For those of you that don’t know why I was going, I’ll set the stage for you.
My dad is on 2 boards with Opportunity International, a Christian microfinance organization. The way Opportunity primarily works is by making small loans to, primarily, groups of women in the 3rd world. The loans can start as small as $50 and grow over time. Since the loans are often entrusted to the trust group, the repayment rate is extremely high, about 97%. The reason for this is quite simple, if someone doesn’t make payments on her loan, then the group will sell off that person’s work materials to make the loan.
Opportunity is a Christian organization. They believe that everyone that is willing to work hard should be able to get a loan. Christ called us to serve the poor, and the Bible talks about it over 2000 times.. This is our mandate. Big banks can’t service a $50 loan. How do you ask a bank employee used to $100,000 mortgages and loans to collect on a $50 loan? It’s just not the same. In Ghana, Opportunity serves about 60,000 clients each year. Worldwide, they have over 1.2 million clients. Check out their website at Opportunity International Site
The second organization that my dad works with is Living Water International. I am a huge fan of LWI. Living Water does basically only 3 things. They build wells, repair/refurbish wells, and health/hygene training. That’s it. But they do it really, really, really well. They drill and repair around 1600-1700 wells a year. Since 1990, they have built and repaired wells that serve over 6.9 million people…and that’s just up to 2008, by now, who knows? Check out their website at Living Water Website
The stage is set, on with the show!
Read more…
Thursday, March 19th, was my last full day/night in New York City, and my last day at Apple.
I awoke to the sounds of “Learning to Fly” by Tom Petty, a great song to motivate you into tackling something big.
I arrived at work, clocked in for the last time, and went upstairs to the morning huddle. The morning huddle is basically where we talk about the day ahead, and try to get psyched to do a great job.
After a few minutes, Will, one of the trainers I worked with, said “I have two things.”. I immediately thought, “uh-oh, who has two things…”. He talked about some in-store stuff and then he said, ” …and if i’m not mistaken, it’s Jonathan Sears’ last day!”
I smiled, primarily because I saw it coming, but also because I knew it was going to be a good day. They had me walk up to the front of the meeting of 20 or so people, and make a short speech on my plans, semenary, etc. As I looked out on the group and made my brief remarks, I realized that I have been lucky to be with such great people.
I finished by saying it has been such a blessing and a privelidge to work with everyone, and there was much clapping afoot (ahand?). Read more…
So, after my last post about meeting Christians in the City, I thought that was it for this subject!
I was wrong!
I work part time for Apple as a software trainer, or “Creative”, and absolutely love it. I love teaching, I always have and always will. The training program at the Apple store is called One to One, and it is BY FAR the best thing we sell in the store. For 99 bucks a year you get a 50-minute lesson up to once a week in any apple products (with the exception of Server and Coding software, nerd!). I teach a great deal of topics, and so I work with people from all walks of life. In fact, I did the math a second ago, and I’ve probably taught around 2500 sessions in my 2 years at Apple. That’s a lot, to say the least!
As any teacher will reticently admit, I have favorite students. To any of my students, sorry! But chances are, if you’re reading this blog, you’re probably one of my favorites anyway!
One of my favorite students is a guy named Kirk. Kirk is one of the nicest people you’ve ever met (though I guess YOU’VE never met him…but I have…), and I always enjoy our sessions together. He’s been coming to One To One for about a year or so, working on a variety of topics. He’s a musician so he started with Logic to work on his music. Later, he and I met, and he decided that he wanted to start working on his music video, so we started talking about Final Cut Studio. Kirk is a pretty sharp guy, and he’s pretty excited about this stuff, so he’s really easy to work with.
I always wondered what made him so enthusiastic and so excited about life. Everytime I heard his thick island accent I knew it was going to be a fun day!
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