These past few weeks have been great. I have been able to join Huntsville Ultimate (Frisbee) Summer League, which has been a lot of fun. Every Thursday I come home with a sweat laden shirt and tired legs, these are the perks of playing ultimate. I recently decided to start back doing Crossfit, which is a workout style that is extremely effective in building muscle as well as endurance. So I decided to go ahead and buy a small bumper weight system, a kettlebell, made my own slam ball/medicine ball, constructed a pull-up bar, and will be in the process in the next week or so in building a box jump. I was able the past two weeks to get my landlord/co-worker/friend, Eric, to join me almost everyday. Which makes Crossfit much more enjoyable and endurable.
Anyways, this past weekend I went home to see my family and wish my dad a happy fathers day. Very enjoyable time to spend talking with my mom and dad and getting to see my sister and aunt, whom I had not seen for some time. But it was good to be together with all of the family. And to see Chattanooga once more, a city I hold close to my heart. That weekend I was able to see a good friend, Greg, whom I had not seen since Christmas time, we grabbed dinner and the idea of sky diving got thrown around towards the end of the conversation. In my opinion it was more of a something that sounded fun, but thought it would probably never actually go down. Well Greg did his research, and on Wednesday apparently it was going down. So yesterday we went to an airfield about 50 minutes south of Huntsville, right after work, and at 5 we were up in the plane climbing to 14,000 feet, above the clouds. It was unreal being that high up and realizing, "Ok, I'm about to jump and I will be falling really fast out of an airplane that is not on fire towards the ground, and the airplane is perfectly fine." I was pumped to say the least. I get nervous with heights, but only when I don't feel secure. If I am strapped to something or someone securely I am fine. But if I am on the edge of a cliff not attached to something that is when I get light headed and step away from the edge. But everyone went before Greg and myself jumped, and then Greg and his instructor were next and before I knew it they jumped and then me and my instructor were next. We get to edge and I look out over the horizon, and it is breathtaking. It is super beautiful, the cloud formations are massive, and it is just an unreal feeling to be on the edge of the plane like that with 14,000 ft between you and the ground. We pumped forward once, we pumped forward twice, and on the third we were out the door. Yowwwwwwww, the thought of, "I am actually falling really fast right now," ran through my mind. Then I started screaming, "This is awesome, this is awesome." Looking at the horizon you really do not get a good feel for how fast you are falling until you go through or past a cloud, and you just see it zoom by. After 60 seconds of that the shoot deploys safely and you get yanked really hard. You definitely feel secure when you feel that thing yank and compress everything on your body. So on the 5 minute ride down, my instructor pulls a hard left on the chute, and we are almost horizontal to the ground going in circles towards the earth. You definitely feel a lot of force when you do that. But I liked it. We eventually land and Greg comes right behind us, we get unattached from our instructors and we were pumped for how much fun that was. Greg made the comment, "That is the best use of $140 I've ever spent." Anyways, it was tight. It is tempting to go for your jump license once you make that first jump. But that may not happen. It was a fun activity to end the week on, and looking back now I wish I would have gotten some pictures and video, but oh well.
This week has been great as well reading through Lamentations. I had made this transition once I had moved out of the book of Jeremiah. And now I am in Ezekiel, but I just started that today. But Lamentations complimented Jeremiah very well. in the transition from Israel continually rebelling against God, and God telling Israel that he would punish their disobedience with handing them over to other nations. This is the effect of sin. Whether you believe it or not, sin affects us in ways that we selfishly either do not see or choose to ignore. What motivates you to lie, to cheat, to steal, to lust, to disobey, to be apathetic, to covet, to worship the things you own, to worship yourself, etc? The motivation if it leads to sin, is self gratification. To be satisfied in stuff, image, religion, etc. Every human, since the beginning of the fall of man has been this way, myself included. And this is how Israel was towards God, the one who redeemed them from a life of slavery and gave them a land that he had promised he would, a land that was fruitful. And even though God had done this for Israel, Israel decided to bow down to things they created with their own hands like wood, stone, and metal idols. They decided to worship gods that other nation created. But even though they had been taken care of and blessed beyond need, they still decided to rebel against the one true God. And like I said in the last post God is holy and his holiness will not be profaned by sin. So he must punish sin, and so he gives his people over to other nations to rule over them, they lose their freedom of having their own king, their own land, their own houses, their own freedoms, their own lives. They lose what God had given them, because they willfully turned against God and turned to the things they and others had created. Is it not foolish to bow down to something you created with your own hands and to say I give you power to rule my life? Or better yet to turn to wooden idol that came from a tree you cut down, that you used it's own wood to burn to create the tools to form it, and eventually carve out a shape and bow down to it and say, "I want to be satisfied in you, I want you to bring rain for my crops, I want for you to provide for my family, I want you to oust the foreign kings that have ruled our land." How foolish, yet this is how Israel acted towards God, and this is the exact same way we react as sinful human beings towards God. We don't create wooden idols anymore, but we turn to anything other than God to sustain us. This all builds towards what happens in Lamentations. Israel rebels against God, God punishes Israel by handing them over to another nation. The writer of Lamentations recounts how painful it has been to see how God punishes those who willfully rebel against him. He talks about how things use to be when they were under God and how good it use to be when they were their own nation under God. How they have pretty much starved to the point where women are boiling their own babies for food. How the enemy has prevailed over them, and taken down all their mighty men. How they use to be comforted by God. This comfort is gone, because of their rebellion against God, their protector has now turned his wrath against them, because of their sin. All of these things are happening to Israel, yet one thing this man recounts in the third chapter is this, and he says,
"so I say, “My endurance has perished;so has my hope from the Lord.”
Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall!
My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me.
But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”
The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.
It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.
It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.
Let him sit alone in silence when it is laid on him;
let him put his mouth in the dust—there may yet be hope;
let him give his cheek to the one who strikes, and let him be filled with insults.
For the Lord will not cast off forever,
but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men."
What is so great about this is that the writer knows and remembers that God is compassionate, and that he is loving. Even in his suffering for the sin of Israel he is making this known. He knows that it is the sin of Israel that has brought about this pain, death, and suffering. It is sin that brings about the justice of God. Sin doesn't prevail, God love and justice prevail. And at the end of Lamentations he makes this known:
Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may be restored!
Renew our days as of old—
unless you have utterly rejected us,
and you remain exceedingly angry with us.
The punishment of his sin does not leave him going on in utter rebellion against God, it leads him to repent and to seek restoration. This idea is foreign to the world. The question becomes, "Why would a loving God do this and allow this to happen?" "Why would a loving God give his own people Israel over to another nation?" "Why would he cause the one's he loves so much grief?" The answer is because he wants them to repent and turn to him. He wants to continually show his love to them. So I think the question should become, "Why would you want to sin against a loving God?" It should challenge both the believer and non-believer. For the believer to continually run and die to sin, and for the non-believer to understand God's holiness and love in a right way, and repent of your rebellion and your sinning against God. It is the love that Christ has shown the world by dying for the sin that separates from God. I must continually be challenged and reminded of the truth of, "Why would I want to sin against such a loving God, who laid down his life for me, and offer joy and joy abundantly?"
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