a new revelation about friendships and God

my full flight from all that has to do with church is at a standstill.. -I knew it'd come to this! [sigh] Thing is, a couple of nights ago I lay down to sleep, turned out the lights creating one's heart's most vulnerable moment of the day. I could simply feel God! -quite literally and down-to-earth, really and I do admit that it's what I've been hoping for for quite a while. My response was: "Arh, okay okay okay, God! Steady on, eh?! I know you've got some appropriate verse for me, so just hit me. You've got a ten-second window of opportunity, so make it a good verse, huh!" I listened like I used to train myself to and instantly ps. 28:3-4 popped into m'head, and it's a quite good scripture! I realized, I don't wanna be like other people cos of something I've felt for a long time but I've been unable to identify and verbalize: selfishness! I don't want to have myself at the centre of my life (v.3), just calling other people "friends." No, I want to give myself to my friends and receive a part of them aswell! Those are the kinds of relationships that I want.. It was quite a revelation for me!

Another thing is that God kinda proved himself to me aswell. He really is real and He really can speak. Now, my moral is at a point where I'm able to follow wholeheartedly! I'm not demanding too much of myself as I was before which lead to the end of my churchly activities. For a while, it's just God and me although I do attend a youth group where I receive ethical teachings.. [smile] 'tis all good!

finding faith again - the journey begins

Probably the single quote that has stood out the most to me in the last couple of months has been, "feelings don't lie." Now, I know they don't tell the entire truth either and that one shouldn't follow one's feelings entirely, but there is still some truth to it. I don't excactly know how this relates to my relationship with God... -or maybe I do, and I'm just afraid to say it. "I don't feel God." There. I said it. I don't feel Him. I feel the effect that the moral standard of the Bible etc. has on me, a good one, but I don't feel Him. I dare you to ask me about what I do feel then!

I feel longing. In class today we read a poem by one of Denmark's greatest poets, Johannes V. Jensen, called "Paa [eng.: At] Memphis Station" He was an atheist and this only frustrated him. In this poem he expresses his fear of settling down, settling for some incomplete romance. Sure, the sweet girl he'd met in town the day before had turned his stomach, but she wasn't everything. His life amounted to a continual search for the Adventure, The Romance.. The Truth.

Again I pause here and think back at the book I've (almost.. okay, partly) read, The Sacred Romance. I've posted on here about it before and it blew me away at the time; the way it described life as one continuing tale of honour, valour and romance, but I haven't felt it. I'm still searching... -searching for contention, fulfilment and a lady to rescue and mean the world to.

Practically, I'm afraid this longing and this search has distracted me greatly from my schoolwork, and I've started smoking a bit, drinking a bit etc.. -although my ethical upbringing is still strong enough within me to have kept me away from girls at this stage.

I do truly feel like I've lost my childish, childhood faith entirely and now I have to find faith again entirely.

a horrible start to school

When I came to school this morning for the first day after hols the principal called a general assembly and told of one of the teachers who had been in Phuket. She had lost her husband and she herself was in the hospital now. Furthermore, Morten, a guy from my year and the volley team, had been skiing in Norway where he, New Years Eve, had fallen 8-9 metres to his death. We will be having a memorial service for him tomorrow; one he does deserve.

What to do with the ensuing frustration? After all, we are raised hearing daily of the terrible deaths of others and this, I venture, effects devaluation of our fellow people. Like Morten, after each volley practice I found myself wondering about him, reading his expressions and actions in vague eagerness to understand him, but I never thought much of this. I never thought to value him, because that is not what we do. We do not make ourselves too vulnerable by expressing our admiration of and love for others.

In any case, we, who are left behind taste the bitter, vast emptiness, many of us struck with the realization that each of the people who surround us matter to more to us that we dare admit. -dare we risk loving?

"Love - or not to be" as aforementioned, and o, does it ever ring true! Can one truly live if one does not truly love? Love is the flesh and skin on the bare skeleton, the colours in the cold sea and the taste in the food. Without it, the world and us would exist without all that there is to live for. Therefore, let us love and not hate, living for, because of and to love!"