New Year

I am sitting at a Starbucks in Davis, using my girlfriend's laptop to write this post. That statement says a lot about the course of 2009. I have had this blog for one year now. It has not taken form yet, and its nature is still full of possibilities. Some of my posts are attempts to comment on current events, others are a shot at being literary. Most are just my personal thoughts about my life, displayed for all who are interested to see.

In any case, my blog is very analogous to my life. It is still full of possibilities. I went to Mishka's yesterday with an old friend of mine and we discussed mutual friends and post-college life. Some of my friends still don't have a job, others have jobs well below their ability and potential. Still others have found jobs that suit them. Talking with my friend brought out an important aspect of human nature to which I am no exception. I like possibilities and fear finality. At some point, most of my life is going to be behind me, leaving me dealing with the consequences of my choices. Given that people are so bad at prediction (there is research that backs this up, though as my girlfriend wisely commented, there is research to back up pretty much anything), it sometimes seems like a cruel joke to give people the ability to make choices about their lives. Most of the time it is better to realize that even our best decisions have a bit of circumstance helping them out.

My point is this: I have made several decisions this year that affected my life in significant ways. I chose to participate in a short term mission trip to Kenya. I chose to defer my enrollment to grad school (and seminary). I chose apply to the PCMI program. I chose to work at Starbucks. I chose to start dating an amazing woman and friend (as of today, we have been dating for one month). Each of these decisions required (or provoked) deep thought and consideration, but I could not have predicted how they would affect me before I made them. It would be easy to say that this is where God fits in the picture. He is there because we are not omniscient. This would wrap things up well, and I would have made a nice little point to "hmm" at. Additionally, this is how I live my daily life. I pray for wisdom in the decisions that I must make. But something in me resists this explanation. It seems to reduce God to a divine janitor, cleaning up the messes of my bad decisions. Does God really shape the circumstances of my life, or does he give me the freedom to do this? The fun thing about these kinds of questions is that the answer is usually "both," and/or "you can't know." Is faith in God simply a change in your mindset? Can a change in your mindset be a simple thing?

In any case, as I go through my life, I will probably ask "where is God in all of this?" several times over. The only possible answer I can give is that I cannot find God in all of this. He is not the missing puzzle piece that causes my life to make more sense. Because life is full of mysteries whether you have faith in God or not. Before you go to thinking I have lost my faith, let me explain. I can find God when I realize that he is source from which all things grow. When you plug a light into the wall, it shines. When you pull the plug, the light goes out. When you have plugged into the source of life, circumstances become less important. I realize I sound like an odd combination of youth pastor and neo-Buddhist, but the thought helps me. And it is a thought, making it both terribly significant and insignificantly terrible. I believe that Jesus is the way to connect to life's source. Our faith in him, by some mystery, allows us to find that place where my decisions do not have to be perfect. My life can be shaped by me through Him.

As my old friend C.S. Lewis has written: Our faith gives us the ability to look back on our entire life and see that it pointed to heaven. Once disconnected from our faith, we will see that our whole life pointed to hell. This is of course a highly paraphrased version of his words, but it's all there in The Screwtape Letters. But don't take my word for it! ;-)

In the meantime, I work to keep a smile pasted on my face while I serve coffee to retired Los Altos citzens and find odd satisfaction in making a dry cappuccino just right. Living at my childhood home I grow closer to my younger brother and parents while feeling like a 12 year old again. I wonder if the gift of my girlfriend will last through my grad school and her med school, all the while sinking joyfully deeper into her beauty.

So I embrace the tension.

Happy 2010!