Fusion

Things are changing. Finally. Within a few days, Western's campus went from a ghost town to a rat race. A lot of my friends have returned from their respective corners of the world, while others have gone on to better things. I spent last weekend at the Xperience's leadership retreat, and I'm starting to get excited about this new year. Our ministry is going to be much more active than it has in the past.

We're switching to a cell ministry. The Xperience will be composed of several Fusion cell groups that meet in various places around campus. These groups will become small house churches, where people come together and worship God in a very close-knit invironment. Once a month, these groups will meet together for a church service that will be far from traditional. It will be.....Xperiential. Essentially, we are trying to be more effective by having Christians involved in church rather than just listen to someone talk for an hour and then go about their weekly business. It's an interesting change and we'll see how it goes.

One Year

I'm a day late on this one, but my blog is one year old. I started Spiritual Reboot on August 16th of last year in order to voice some of my opinions on the church and Christianity. There were some things that I needed to discuss that I didn't feel I could seriously let out by any other means. In that way, this blog has been a path to freedom for me to be able to talk about things that would never have been brought up in every day conversations. When this blog started, it was a way for people to see a side of me that many people had never seen before, and it has spurred a change in me. Now, I feel more comfortable having deeper conversations with people. In fact, I fear that sometimes I may annoy people with my opinions and problems.

This blog has been very therapeutic in many ways too. There were some occasions when I my mind would be a jumbled confusion and by making a post to this site, I was able to straighten it all out. I never expected anyone to actually want to read my blog, and there have been times where I have been surprised that they really do. But even if no one read my blog, the shear process of getting my thoughts into an organized block of words and being able to better understand myself through those words would be reason enough to have it.

And so the Reboot continues. A year ago, I was rediscovering what it meant to be a Christian. A year later, I'm beginning to realize that what I am going through, this Spiritual Reboot, will be a continuous learning process. Once I get my mind around the message of Christ and the role of the church in this whole scheme of things, the Reboot will begin again. I will keep returning back to the beginning, back to what everything comes down to: the love of God.

Here is a link to my first post. And here's hoping that this will be another good year of growth and learning.

Campus Cable

I just moved into Western's campus apartments a few weeks ago, and I'm just starting to get used to life in a new place. Life in WMU apartments has a few differences from life in normal dwellings. One such difference is the fact that I now have different television stations from the rest of Kalamazoo. I have what they call Edu-Cable, complete with Asian, Russian, and Bollywood channels. It's not a new thing. I had Edu-Cable when I lived on campus a couple of years ago. And this will not be news to many Western students.

I no longer have the Sci Fi Channel which, quite honestly, is not much of a sacrifice. The only thing worth watching there is Battlestar Galactica, but I'll probably be too busy to watch it on TV and will probably end up downloading the episodes anyway.

But something I noticed that I found rather peculiar is the fact that they have a different Weather Channel for college students. As I was getting around for work one morning, I was expecting to find the usual pleasant colorful palette of greenish-blue that the Weather Channel normally uses to hue its local on the 8's. Instead, I found an ugly mix of blue and orange backing a very rough looking display of graphics. Why the different color scheme? Well, it's the college version of the Weather Channel, of course! I don't really get this. Isn't the weather the same for everyone? Why have a different version for WMU? Perhaps there's a really good reason for this, but I don't see it. I'm being nit-picky, but it bothers me.

That being said. I now have a channel that I didn't have before: NASA TV. That's right, baby. For the last couple of days, I've been able to monitor the progress of the International Space Station and Endeavor in orbit and fully embrace the geek side of myself. I love it because they don't dumb stuff down for you. Most of the time, you're just peeking in on NASA missions and watching their live feeds. There are some stunning visuals too. I could just sit and watch the ISS's view of Earth for hours.

I like the live WMU cam too.

Heaven

I struggle with the idea of heaven. It's not that I don't believe in heaven. I do. It's the idea of what life with be like once we get there that I have problems with.

There are many different ideas of what heaven is like. A popular one is that we'll all have wings and will spend eternity on a cloud, strumming on golden harps. Another is that we'll live in mansions on streets of gold (I think that one is from the commercialist viewpoint). Still others think of heaven as a place where we will worship, day and night, the most high God in complete bliss due to our complete and sincere love for Him.

Well, for one thing, I don't believe that we'll spend our time in heaven with God. As I stated in my post Heaven is not Our Home, I believe that Christ will come to us on Earth, and later the New earth. But that still doesn't change the whole "eternity with God is bliss" thing. I find it hard to grasp the idea that we'll just be sitting around, worshiping God or enjoying our mansions or strumming our harps till the end of eternity.

My problem with this idea lies in the fact that we are all human. And most of what makes us human is the fact that we struggle. The very essence of humanity is that we are constantly changing, constantly evolving, and constantly battling all the circumstances and issues that come at us in our lives. The very reason we live is because we choose to live. We fight to live. Why do you think we fight God's direction in our lives? We are strugglers.

So if one day we will live in peace and harmony with God in eternity, does that mean that we will cease to be human? If we are no longer struggling, what will we be doing? Did God create us to simply worship him? I believe that one of the main reasons He created us was to worship Him, but not just by crying out, "Glory to God in the Highest" a thousand times a day. God has a choir of angels that do that. No, we worship God with our lives, by living out our talents and pleasures, by enjoying God's creation. Why do think He's making a New Earth? I think it is because he wants us to not only enjoy it, but to change it and make it our own. Why would he create us to constantly evolve and discover if we are to just stand around doing nothing forever?

So this is my struggle with heaven. Will we loose what it means to be human, or will God let his creation shine brightest in an unadulterated world where there is no separation between Him and mankind? Perhaps we will become far more human when that time comes. Perhaps only then, we will truly know who we are.