Convince me.

Day one of my second term of my first year of college.  I walk into my first class, Biology 102, and sit down.  The professor introduces herself and wastes no time in explaining the purpose of this term's course.  "Today," she says, "we will begin our study of the process of evolution."

"Greeeaaat," I groan inwardly---but then I check myself.

If you stopped me on the street one day and asked me my beliefs about the world and how it came into being, I would describe myself as a young-earth creationist.  That said... I decided a while ago that I ought to be more "open-minded" about other views concerning the beginning of life.  One of the most prominent of these views, even among Christians? Evolution.

I know there are a lot of Christians who believe that God did indeed create the world---only they believe He used evolution as His tool.  I can see the draw to this belief; there seems to be a lot of evidence for evolution.  I think our responsibility is to determine (by our own study and research) whether or not that "evidence" is accurate and true---be it evidence for evolution and an old earth, or evidence for creation and a young earth.  To quote Albert Einstein, "The important thing is to not stop questioning."

If there is any particle of matter in "the process of evolution" that really truly seems to make sense, I hereby solemnly swear to consider it.  And if it does not contradict what I believe to be true in the Bible (i.e. cavemen evolving into people, which contradicts the Bible's record of Adam and Eve), well then---by all means---hit me!  Show me what you've got!  I'm listening.

This morning when I walked into Biology class I was ready to listen with an open, considerate mind.  If something didn't make sense to me, I raised my hand and asked about it.  Honestly... I raised my hand a lot.  The professor probably hates me already.

"A fossil is an impression or remnant of a living organism that lived in the past.  An impression of a fish in a rock is a fossil; a piece of petrified wood is a fossil; a dinosaur bone is a fossil.  Keep in mind that a remnant does not have to be petrified to be a fossil---shark teeth found on the beach, for example, are also fossils."

I raised my hand. "How old does an impression or remnant have to be before it's considered a fossil?"  She didn't answer, so I went on, "... because, well, if any remnant of a living organism from the past is considered a fossil, would then, so to speak, my great-grandfather's body buried in a cemetery five years ago be a fossil?"

Silence from the front of the room.  Then, "That's a good question..."

"Oh."  I was a little confused.  "Well, how do scientists determine the age of a fossil in the first place?"

She clicked to another power point slide.  "All creatures---people included---consume carbon from the environment and incorporate it into their bodies," she explained.  Then she continued, "There is a form of carbon called Carbon 14 that decays naturally over time, and because we know how many years it takes for Carbon 14 to decay from a dead body (5,600 years), we are able to determine how old a fossil is by assessing how long the Carbon 14 has been decaying from it."

"Ooh," I said.  Then I asked the next logical question (or one of them): "People can't live as long as 5,600 years; I mean, somebody couldn't sit over a dead body for 5,600 years and asses its Carbon 14 until it completely decayed, right...?  Heh-heh," I laughed at myself.  She looked at me with a straight face.  I cleared my throat a little, "My point is... how do scientists know how long Carbon 14 takes to decay?"

"Because," she gave a slightly exasperated sigh, "they've measured how long it has taken the Carbon 14 to decay in fossils they've already found."

She went on to the next power point slide, and I sat in my chair and thought.  According to this professor, scientists determine the age of fossils by measuring how long their Carbon 14 has been decaying... and they know how long it takes for Carbon 14 to decay (several thousand years) because they've measured how long it takes to decay in fossils...

Maybe I'm confused---but isn't that circular reasoning?

Evolution, so far I'm not convinced.

I've made some resolutions for myself, this new and untouched year of 2011.  Few, actually.  But honest.  And I'm gonna keep 'em, by jove, I'm gonna keep 'em! 

Dear Lord, help me to keep them.

It's a wonderful life, alright.

Our tree this year makes me think of
Charlie Brown.  It's a good 'un. :)

Christmas... was three days ago.  Like the kid that I am, I've been pretending in my head that it hasn't gone yet.  The tree is still up, the wreaths are still hanging, the lights are still glowing!  There's leftover pumpkin pie and honeyed ham and pretzel jello salad in the refrigerator, but I shrug to myself happily and make-believe that those things are normal refrigerator inhabitants.  Heck, we eat pumpkin pie all the time!  Psch, of course we do.  Year-round, in fact...

What if Christmas was year-round?  Maybe it should be.  I've heard all the sappy poems, all the feel-good proverbs about Christmas being a state of mind or spirit instead of a holiday or a season.  "Yeah, sure... that's nice and fluffy," says my own personal Mr. Scrooge, who has, annoyingly so, made himself quite comfortable inside the space in my heart where my Christmas Spirit should be residing. 

The truth is, I haven't felt "Christmasy" all Winter long.  Not even Christmas morning, amidst stockings and oranges and dad's homemade Danish donuts for breakfast.  Maybe that's why I don't want Christmas to be gone: because, even though it's done and over with, I still don't feel it.  I never felt it.  In desperate hope of finding "the feeling", my heart wants to fool itself into thinking Christmas is still here.

Trying to wake up that Christmas Spirit inside myself, I figured I'd do what every Christmas-Spirit-seeking person would do: I watched It's a Wonderful Life.  Gosh!---that movie.  Kirsten, Jordan and I watched it a couple of nights ago, and I remembered again that I think it's the best movie in the whole wide world.  Funny, because every year I watch it, I relate to it differently, and every year I watch it, I cry a little.  George Bailey: good ole' small town George Bailey with big dreams and a big heart; who has enough morals and character to save the small town and community he wants nothing more than to leave from; who gives up his life's savings so his little brother can go to college in his place; who marries a wonderful girl and has four wonderful children he can barely support with his dad's old Building and Loan business that he's bored-to-death from running.  Everything he does is for somebody else---everything.  Are there really people like that in the world?  Maybe there used to be, but there aren't anymore.  Why not?  What's changed?  Priorities?  Values?  Focus?

Eh.  No matter.  I wanna be a person like that in the world.  Like a fictional character in an old classic movie?  Well... yeah.  I do.  The thing about It's a Wonderful Life is that in the end, if you'll notice, George Bailey's problems don't disappear.  He doesn't go to jail, sure, but he's still stuck in Bedford Falls.  He's still stuck in his little office running The Building and Loan.  He's still---from the rest of the world's perspective---a "nobody".  But that last part is the lie that Clarence the angel helped him to distinguish: he's not a nobody; the world would be a different place if he hadn't been born!

It roles off the tongue rather nicely, doesn't it?  "The world would be a different place if I hadn't been born..."  It sounds nice.  It's a nice thought.  Is it true?  Yes... yes I think it is true.

I've been mixed up about Christmas.  About a lot of things.  I've been thinking that---with this year's Christmas as proof---the older I get, the less I feel it, and therefore the less I understand it.  But my idea of the "feeling" of Christmas is not the truth of Christmas.  Christmas is about God coming to earth in the form of a baby and being born into the life of a human---for our sake.  It's about Him living a human life among us in our world so that we might learn and see what real Love looks like---for our sake.  It's about Him dying, giving His life, so that we could live---the ultimate sacrifice and the ultimate gift---for our sake.  Whether I feel warm and fuzzy on Christmas morning or not, the purpose of our celebrating it remains.  God gave His life for our lives, and you know what...?  I shouldn't feel warm and fuzzy about the truth of my Savior.  I should feel passionate, yes.  I should feel thankful---definitely yes.  But artificial feelings and shallow emotions have no place in my realm---in God's realm---of the real Christmas.  Artificial feelings and shallow emotions should have no place in my life.  And that is what I want Christmas to remind me of: life.  Life, and why it matters.

So amen to the squashing of warm-fuzzy-feelings where they don't belong, and to the remembering of life and the One of who gave me life.  No, I shouldn't aspire to be like George Bailey after all, a man who never lived.  I should aspire for the rest of my life to be like my Savior---a man and a God who lived and is living, and who made it possible for me to live.  Because, you see---George Bailey, movie plot and title aside---it truly is a wonderful life.  It's a life given to me by a God who loves me, and there's so much more to it than what my meager mortal mind can comprehend here on earth.  It's only gonna get better, folks... it's only gonna get better.  One day, the entirety of Christmas will be forever and eternity.

Simple Prayer

But You desire honesty from the heart,
so You can teach me to be wise in my inmost being...

Create in me a clean heart, O God.
Renew a right spirit within me.

Psalm 51:6,10

Wishing Weed

The Summer I was fifteen-years-old, I did yard work for an elderly lady who went to my church.  I was weeding her flower bed one hot mid-afternoon, tired and sweaty, and she came outside and sat down on a rock next to me.  She didn't offer me a glass of lemonade; she didn't make me a plate of cookies; she didn't bring me a sandwich or a drink of water.  She sat on her rock, and she said,

"How are ya doin', Hannah?"

"Oh, I'm doing pretty good.  How are you?"  I had been preoccupied with the digging-up of a weed; a puny, tiny little weed that looked about as harmful as a dandelion.  Oooh, hah, but I knew the deception of harmless, pitiful dandelion-look-alike weeds such as this one: today a weed... tomorrow a forest.  I jabbed further into the dirt around its base with my hand shovel.

"So, what plans do ya have for your life?" she asked, rather bluntly, and ignoring my question completely.

"Oh, uh, well..."

She chuckled.  "Start with your plans for this Summer."

I paused a moment from my weed extermination, and then I didn't stop talking to take a breath for at least ten minutes.  I told her about the Summer league soccer team I was playing on, about Fir Point Bible camp and how much I loved it there; about how, recently, I had been learning to play the guitar.  And then I gave a self-pitying sigh.

"If only I had my driver's license," I sighed again.  "I wish I was sixteen.  If I was sixteen, I could do so much more.  I could drive, I could..."

"You could what?"

"Well, I'd be older and I could do more," I said adamantly.  I reached down and pulled on a stem from the dandelion-look-alike weed, but it broke off and I fell backwards when it snapped.  Frustrated, I went at it again with the shovel.

"That's a tough one, isn't it?" she said wisely. 

"Yeah... sure is.  It's stubborn."

She smiled.  "I think you're stubborn."

"Yeah?" I looked up at her and half smirked.  I hadn't heard that yet---today.  "Maybe I wouldn't be as stubborn if I was sixteen," I joked.  It wasn't a very good joke.

She looked at me for a little while, and then she said something that has come back to my memory this morning and got me thinking.  "Don't wish your life away, Hannah..." her tone became serious.  "Do what you can do, with what you have, with where you are.  Too much wishing makes for too little doing, and the doing is what counts." 

She looked at me closer.  I was still standing on my knees, shovel in hand.  I wiped some dirt off my cheek self-consciously.

"It's not wrong to dream---but don't be satisfied with your dreaming.  God's plans are bigger than your biggest dreams,"  she paused.  "Wake up to the life you're in, dear," she said, and then she got up off the rock she was sitting on and walked back into the house.

I watched her close the screen door behind her, and then I looked down at the weed rooted into the ground at my knees.  It appeared to me to be looking back, now, mockingly.  Darn ole', stubborn ole', miserable old weed...

Too much wishing makes for too little doing, and the doing is what counts.  The older woman's words floated around in my head for the rest of that Summer day.

This day, three years later in Winter, I've decided that there is a wishing weed growing somewhere inside of me (where do weeds like that grow?  The brain?  The heart?)  I've also decided that it needs to be uprooted.  I find myself constantly wishing for things---wishing for things that could come true, if I'd stop wishing so much and start doing.  I wish I was going to college somewhere else, I wish I was more physically fit, I wish I could play the guitar better...

When I sat down to register for Winter term at OIT this morning, I wished I had the peace-of-mind that comes with knowing and having a plan.  Do what you can do, with what you have, with where you are... God's plans are bigger than your biggest dreams.  The advice of that woman on that Summer day, when I was fifteen-years-old, came to my mind out of the depths of my subconscious, I guess.  I thought about her words---as I drove in my car; eighteen-years-old; driver's license in pocket---the whole way home.  I wish I would remember simple wisdom like those words more often.  But, then, I've forgotten already:

Don't wish your life away, Hannah.
Don't be satisfied with your dreaming.  
God's plans are bigger...


Wake up to the life you're in.

It's been snowing all day! Time for some Winter music.

Catherine Feeny - The Christmas Song


Sarah Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson - Winter Song

Priscilla Ahn - Silent Night