When you were still wide-eyed,
and my inner child was an orphan,
our feet, without our knowledge,
were already set in motion.
Your fingers were not yet nimble,
still being knit together,
and my eyes could not squint into the light,
but this light was already guiding our steps.

Though we sit now in the last rays of the sun,
your delicate hand woven into mine,
I think about those days,
before I knew you,
when I knew you.

I can feel your mouth
underneath the waves,
you’re asking me now
how I know that I am saved
But if you could sing,
you’d have the answer

Wonder how it must feel for you
with the waves crashing against your skin
When we broke the surface the rain was in our eyes,
it’s blacker than my sin
And the water’s making threats
to extinguish the fire in my heart
and the silence in my ears tells me
it was out from the very start
But it’s too late to turn around,
we’d drown if we didn’t make it
to the other side

I can feel your mouth
underneath the waves,
you’re asking me now
how I know that I am saved
But if you could sing,
you’d have the answer

Every time you come up for a breath,
I can hear you gasp
Memories of when you weren’t so far away,
the end was in your grasp
And though I’ve got it all,
I’d throw it all away,
If only I could see you
rise above the waves
If only I could see you saved

But I’m never going to find you here,
you’re a ghost of what I’ve known
I’m never going to find you here,
you’re a ghost of what I’ve known
I’m never going to find you here,
you’re a ghost of what I’ve known
You’re never going to find me here,
you’re a ghost of who I was

Growing up in the sleepier parts of New Jersey, I knew a lot of people that wanted to be different people.  In the late 90′s, it seemed like everyone I knew wanted to be black.  Even I wanted to be black.  I began to listen to all the music I was expected to listen to, I became immersed in hip-hop, and I watched BET (Black Entertainment Television).  But no matter how much I said I was black, I was not black.

As silly as this example is, it’s the same in our faith.  We can claim that we follow Christ while not ever following Him in any sense of the word.  I remember long before I committed myself to Jesus, I would tell people I was Christian if the topic somehow came up, but I had no idea why.  If I was asked the reason I called myself a Christian, I probably would have said something like “I go to church on Sunday”.

I remember a few years ago I heard some people talking about how everyone wears a mask, especially at church.  Thinking about it now, yes, everyone seems to wear a mask.  In fact, the term persona means “mask” in ancient Latin.  What kind of personas are prevalent in today’s society, where everyone wants to appear to be someone else, someone more ideal, someone other than themselves?

Sometimes the masks we wear get us into scary situations.  Like surgery.

A few weeks ago, I was listening to a friend of mine preach.  During his sermon, he testified about the way in which God provides, and he gave the example of how someone showed up randomly at his doorstep one night and gave him an iPad, telling him that God had told him to give it to him, as it would help in his ministry.  Immediately around the room, everyone reacted in disbelief, with one listener even swearing and saying it was a lie.

Now the fact is, this was a sermon.  This was at a church.  A church is the assembly of the followers of Christ.  So why were they unable to react in anything but unbelief?

I think this is one of the masks that many so-called Christians wear; they don’t actually believe, but rather than attempting to work out this unbelief and get to the place where they can believe, they tell people around them that they are believers — they may even believe it themselves.  But if a non-believer sees this, would it not be another place where they could cry out “hypocrisy” and turn away from faith?  Even still, if they did not see this and believed that these “Christians” were truly followers of Christ, wouldn’t that cause more damage to their possible faith, as they would see and follow this example of “belief”?

Truly, if we are unable to believe that God is able to provide a $500 electronic, how can we believe that He has given us salvation and eternal life?

I’m a big fan of self-examination and I feel that it may be a good time to figure out whether or not we are who we say we are.  It could be the beginning of the greatest revelation of our lives, and it could lead to a great time of rebuilding.

I haven’t really seen him since then because I had to get ready for church and by the time I got home at around 11 P.M., he had already gone to sleep.  The next morning, I woke up first again, got ready for work and then left before he woke up.  Presumably, he woke up not long after this and got ready for work, and will be back on Saturday.

This cycle seems to repeat itself not only annually, but daily.  I hardly ever see my parents during the week, as I’m almost always out of the house, and when I get home, my mom is already in bed.  She’ll wake up for a moment to ask me why I’m home so late and I’ll invariably answer in some non-answer that doesn’t mean anything to anyone.  This will usually be enough for her and she’ll go back to sleep, and then I’ll go to sleep and I’ll see her for a few minutes in the morning before I leave for work.

I had always held to the fact that I was doing ministry or something, and that was the big green light for my being away from home all the time.  On Monday, however, I had the revelation that I was just plain selfish and not really committed to my family.  I had decided to play soccer rather than going home, and then I had decided to have dinner out instead of going home.  And then I decided to have more food instead of going home.  And then I decided to play pool instead of going home.

Pictured: Someone’s mother and father.
Not pictured:  The child, probably because he’s like me.

To be honest, I still didn’t realise anything was wrong until I had one of those “wait a minute…” moments the next day.  Yes, I love soccer and it’s good to get exercise — there’s nothing wrong with that part — but there is definitely something wrong when the only night I can feasibly spend with my mom having dinner is spent away from home until late.  Sixty years from now, I wouldn’t regret not getting to spend more time playing soccer, but I would most definitely regret not getting to spend more time with my parents.

It’s no different when I consider the time I spend (or should spend) with God.  He is my Father and I love Him, but sometimes I feel as though I don’t spend enough time with Him.  At times he becomes more of a spiritual bodyguard or something, as He kind of stands near me as I do stuff, and when I need Him for something, I call out to Him.  Surely, a thousand years from now I wouldn’t regret any time I spend with God, but I would regret the amount of time I spent watching some TV show or even staring at nothing and just daydreaming (seriously, what am I doing?).

I want to have no regrets about how I spent my time.  It feels as though the only way to do this is to spend my time worshiping, and not wasting it away idly.  To put it simply, if all that we do can be narrowed down to acts of worship or acts of rebellion, I know that I want to be a worshiper.

Surely I can start this within my own home.

Usually I write in thinly-veiled verse and stray away from stilted, shambolic reflections as I struggle to maintain focus myself while reading them (or even thinking them), but something about today made me want to just write at length and verbally smear my thoughts across my seldom-used blog.

I realised something disturbing today.  On the way in to the office, I realised that I do not bless the Lord with all of myself, nor does all of me shout out to Him.

For all of the crying out to Him that I do, for all of the time that I spend in programs or reading or whatever, I struggle to separate myself from this “microwave mentality” that my generation seems to be infected by.  I need everything to be given to me immediately, and if it doesn’t come quickly, then it’s probably not worth waiting for.  Is this what He wants from me?  Someone who is so obsessed with the here and now that he can’t see beyond the horizon?

Yes, I will spend time in prayer and I will spend time seeking His face, but I seem to struggle to do it for longer than a few minutes at a time if I’m alone.  In corporate meetings, I can stay for hours, praying and interceding, but this is oftentimes due to the encouragement of having others around me who are doing the same thing (not to say that the Spirit does not lead us).  If I am alone however, I’ll quite often pray what’s on my “list” and then kind of daydream or find myself drifting off.  Is this friendship with the Lord?  Is this intimacy?

Smith Wigglesworth said, “I rarely pray longer than a half hour at a time — but I never go a half hour without prayer.”  This is all well and good, and I tend to converse with Him in some capacity throughout the day, but I don’t believe that this excludes me from those times when I come with no agenda or time limit and just hang out with God.  Just like with my friends, sometimes God may not say something the first time I ask, or even the second or third times.  I may have to hang out with him the whole night, or two nights, or three weeks or a year before He confides something in me.  How can I pretend to even have that level of friendship with my God if I can’t sacrifice ten minutes of time to just be with Him?  

Right now, I’m going to close the book I was reading when I decided to write this, turn off the music playing in my earphones and spend some time just conversing with the Lord.  Surely hearing His voice firsthand will be worth any time “lost”.

I wondered
if the people down below looked up,
tasting the cancerous snowflakes with their tongues,
imagining a false wonderland of white that was actually grey,
just like we did.
We stood,
laughing maniacs trying not to sob,
sharing a night we swore would live forever
while not particularly wanting to live ourselves;

and now we stand,
gargoyles in a memory,
a monument to the regrets of a not too distant past.
I wonder now where you are,
whether you still stand upon balconies,
wasting the nights like you never learned,
or if you, too, look up at the snowflakes with a wan smile,
wondering about me.