Perelandra

In the age of technology and instant gratification, more and more rare is a commercial item that lasts. Even our cars these days are throwaways. I have a gas blower and a gas weedeater in my garage that, somewhere around the expected life of the engine, it will stop working and it will be cheaper and easier for me to buy another one. Hardly anyone buys furniture for life these days. We buy precut and drilled boards of compressed sawdust and put them together ourselves, and when they cease to stand in ~5 years we replace them with the exact same thing.

In this culture my lawn mower is an anachronism. Built in 1997, my Lawnboy Silver Series lawnmower is not only a user serviceable item, but it is still cost-effective as such. It’s not just cost effectively user-serviceable, the parts are cheap and the work is personally rewarding because the model is so easy to work on. I can do most thing on it without an owner’s manual.

Since buying it used ~5 years ago, I’ve done most of the maintenance on it myself, and today, it is as strong and good a mower as the day I bought it.

It’s a wierdo, and in a strange isolated way, I love that little hunk of metal.

Paul Reiser:

You know what you get in New York that you don’t get anywhere else?  People on the bus tell you that you’re Wayne Rogers and then YELL at you for leaving M.A.S.H.

-ALS

A - Another
C - Chaotic
R - Rambling
O - Organized to
N - Numb
Y - Your
M - Mind

In Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller talks about the dangers of isolation in his chapter titled, “Alone”.

Pg 152:

When you live on your own for a long time, however, your personality changes because you go so much into yourself you lose the ability to be social, to understand what is and isn’t normal behavior. There is an entire world inside yourself, and if you let yourself, you can get so deep inside it you will forget the way to the surface. Other people keep our souls alive, just like food and water does with our body.

Pg 153:

I know about that feeling, that feeling of walking out into the darkness. When I lived alone it was very hard for me to be around people. I would leave parties early. I would leave church before worship was over so I didn’t have to stand around and talk. The presence of people would agitate me. I was so used to being able to daydream and keep myself company that other people were an intrusion. It was terribly unhealthy.

I must say, I’ve been there and done that. Donald and I just keep clicking and clicking.

Alone time is great. But being alone is not. There is an inherent selfishness and self-preservation that kicks in that forces you into an emotion relationship with yourself. Once you cross that line, there is nothing about being alone that is healthy. You have to recover fast.

I know.  I used to live “there”. Still, there isn’t a single day that I don’t fight the urge to prefer my own company to the company of those around me. I know I need to love people, and to a great extent I am much better at that than I used to be. However, I am one of those people who can sit for hours in the same room as another and never say a word. I can slip into being alone very easily.

I don’t think I’ve ever realized until right now that I am as addicted to myself alone, as I ever was to cigarrettes. More on that one later. I quit smokes cold turkey. Maybe I should quit this alone thing cold turkey too? It’s not healthy for me to be alone. At the very least, when I am by myself, I need to realize that God is still there. His Holy Spirit jealous for my attention. What kind of fool am I…

I am confused. Look at these different translations of this verse. Who is entrusting what, to whom?

2 Timothy 1:12

ESV

which is why I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me.^[a]

NIV

A couple of months ago, when I was spending too much time on airplanes, I rode a plane on a landing that involved a LOT of clouds. This happens a lot, but it doesn’t take meaning with me a lot. That day, it did.

Psalm 23:4 says:

4Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,^[a]
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.

We’re called to walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

I have a pretty severe problem with trust. Airplanes have helped me with that problem, but I like to be in control of the vehicle I am riding in. Commerical airlines don’t afford you that luxury. When coming down out of the clouds, it seemed like the clouds would go on forever. It felt like I had slipped into the twilight zone. Still, I had to trust the crew of the plane, that they were getting us where we were supposed to go. There wasn’t a lot of turbulence, I was simply being impatient.

Seemed like they were going on forever. You could feel the plane descending, and I am thinking, “eventually this jet is going to plow into the ground, we can NOT be that high up.” And the plane kept descending…

That I am writing this is a testament to our relatively safe landing and my well-being. Everything turned out ok. Those darned clouds.

The airplane eventually cleared the clouds and I felt safe in my childish insistence that if I could SEE the ground, I was at least a little in control of my destiny. Of course the truth is that even if I had the stick, I would never be ‘in control’.

Trust God through the clouds. Sometimes you have to go through the clouds to get to safety. Sometimes you have to go through the clouds to simply GO. They will persist beyond your reason.
The clouds clear; God reigns.