Hinges Strain


Spud Marshall

Like hinges straining from the weight
My heart no longer can keep from singing

Again, some more lyrics have been stuck in my head lately. This time they come from MercyMe’s new album. About a month ago MercyMe came to Penn State and they sang this song and ever since then, I have found myself singing this line over and over. And I got to thinking; I wonder what is causing the weight on my hinges.

Regardless of how hard we try, the weight always manages to sneak into our lives. And I used to think that all of that weight was a bad thing. Maybe the weight is caused from a few difficult courses causing you to struggle in school. Maybe the weight is caused from the death of someone close to you. Maybe the weight is caused from the end of a relationship. Maybe the weight is caused from a health problem. Maybe the weight is caused from a few difficult neighbors that push you to your limits. But what if all of that weight is what causes us to sing.

It’s not really the natural thing to do. A lot of tough things start building up in your life, so what do you do, you turn to God and thank him for all of it.

It was thanksgiving today and what I tend to find myself doing is thanking God for all of the awesome things he has placed in my life recently. I look at all of the good things around me and am so grateful for them because they are what have caused me to get to where I am now. But what about the hard things? They have had an equal role in getting me to this point too.

Maybe this is just me being optimistic, which I’m still not convinced is a bad thing. But think about it…

Like hinges straining from the weight. We are straining to hold ourselves together, as if hanging anything else on that door will cause it to tear off and crumble to pieces. But it’s hard for me to imagine that God is a god who likes to rip doors off of their hinges. He’s not out to see how much weight it takes to rip our hinges out of the wall. But I’d be willing to bet that he also likes to see those hinges being used. Hinges with no door on them, with no weight on them, really don’t serve much of a purpose.

I think when we finally understand that we are meant to praise God for our weight, to thank him for not only the good in our lives, but the tough as well; we will finally begin to understand what it means to sing from our heart. As Rush of Fools writes:

You are infinite worth
When we’ve not the words
Our hearts will sing
We are here on the earth
And somehow we‘re heard
When our hearts sing to You

I think too often I associate blessings with good things, with comfortable things. But it’s the uncomfortable that shapes us, that teaches us.

According to my little sister, one of my annoying habits is that I sing quite poorly in the shower in the morning. Luckily for me, God doesn’t care what it sounds like. I’m not even sure he cares too much about when our voices sing at all. As long as our hearts are singing the same song, God is smiling down on us. Praise and worship take root within our hearts. It doesn’t matter if you’re raising your hands, or singing with your eyes closed. Maybe singing isn’t even your thing. I think God looks a little deeper than what we can see. He’s got a higher priority, a vested interest with our heart. He plants His seeds in our heart. It’s our turn to nurture that seed and use what it grows into for a grander purpose. We all have a different seed and a different end result. But look at nature around us.

Think of how many seeds it has taken to grow what you see around you. Sorry, just one more set of lyrics to include. Eleventyseven has a song that has the following few lines:

I wish that You would tell me how
You know me well and want to be together.
Fallin' short and faded out
but You keep making gardens in this desert.
despite the grace that I dismiss
forgiveness was the catalyst
to penetrate my heart with what is true.

Redeem the years I've thrown away
I'm ready to make good on what I've wasted.
I'm asking You to shape my heart,
I wanna be Your work of art.
'Cuz when You change me and make me more like You

It's beautiful
You can turn mistakes to miracles.
The way that you still love me after all
It's beautiful.

So help me God forbid
I never take for granted
This endless gift You give.

What are we going to do with our seed? What garden are we going to be apart of? You keep making gardens in this desert…

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One


Spud Marshall

It’s hard for me to understand why some people do the things they do. I look back on the Holocaust in Germany and wonder how so many people could have treated others like they did. I look back on Rwanda and wonder how families could turn on one another and kill their own kin. I look now at Burma and wonder how men can open fire on peaceful monks. Is it not obvious to some that we are all the same?

Most of you are probably familiar with Bono’s song ‘One.’ After watching videos about what is currently happening in Burma, I couldn’t get these lyrics out of my head.

We're one, but we're not the same.
Well, we hurt each other, then we do it again.
You say love is a temple, love a higher law

One love, one blood, one life, you got to do what you should.
One life with each other: sisters, brothers.
One life, but we're not the same.
We get to carry each other, carry each other.
One, one.

We hurt each other, then we do it again. I guess that’s the part that doesn’t sit right with me. We all mess up. We are all judgmental and we all view others through tinted lenses. But how can we continue to make these mistakes. How can a soldier in Burma burn a mother’s home, watch as she and her family retreat into the jungle, and then move on to the next home and do the same thing?

Yet it’s so easy for me to question those half-way around the world that are doing acts that deliberately destroy the notion of ‘one’, but do I take the time to analyze my own life as well? Shooting a monk in prayer or burning village after village is clear to us that something is not right. But how much time do I take to look at my life. What bridges do I burn down? It’s probably not as obvious, but they’re there.

We get to carry each other. God gives us the option of either building up those around us, or tearing them down. It seems like the option we should pick would be so clear. And talking about it is easy. But doing it is hard. You got to do what you should. We should be carrying one another. You should be loving one another. You should be living this life as one.

It seems simple, and part of me wants to look for a deeper meaning behind the song. Where’s the catch? As an engineer I’m taught to question. As a college student I’m expected to think about things on a deeper level. Never be satisfied with your initial view of something, always look from a different angle.

But the more angles I approach it from, the more I find that I’m simply thinking about it too much. ‘One’ is simple. Think of one grain of sand. Think of one blade of grass. Think of one pencil stroke. One star. One smile. One tree. One atom. One guitar. One child. One degree. One sunset. One color. Think of one…

It’s simple.

One love. One blood. One life.

There’s nothing complex about that. As humans, we feel like we need to know more, we need to dive deeper. We need to read more books explaining love before we can feel it. We need to hear more sermons about love before we can act on it. We need to hit play on the song ‘One’ just one more time before we can understand it.

But love is a higher law.

We keep looking for love within our own contexts and laws. Truly we must be able to explain it. If you look up love in the dictionary you’ll find “a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend.” This is love according to our law. But love is higher.

What good does it do to define love with words? Define love with life.

Once we understand this, then we will begin to understand ‘one.’ We seem to like making things harder than they should be. It gives us something to do with our time. But think of what we could be doing with that time? I wonder…

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Be the difference


Spud Marshall

This past weekend a good friend of mine passed away. He was a friend to many. Although his official role was to teach us about physics, he taught us so much more. Everyone has that one teacher that has shaped who they have become, has guided them to their present spot, has encouraged them through thick and thin, has loved them as their own child. You tend to put that teacher in a special spot in your past and expect that they will always be there to teach those younger than you. As if they were there when the school was built and will be there until the day it crumbles. Unfortunately that's not how life works.

My friend once wrote me a letter. In it he wrote the following:

"Life is tough. Life is good. Although these sound like contradictory statements, they are not. They are simply two aspects of life. How you decide to handle this apparent dichotomy will determine your outlook in life. In my life, I've found that if I concentrate on how tough life is, the goodness of life seems very small. But if I focus on how good life is, the tough parts of life seem much more manageable."

As a freshman in high school, those words didn't carry the same weight as they do now. Life is tough. Life is good.

When you hear of unexpected deaths, you tend to associate a lot of questioning along with the death. Why would they take them away so soon? They were so young, with so much left to do? However, I'm not asking those questions this time around. My friend had come and done what he was sent to do. God had laid some very specific goals on his heart, and I don't doubt that he didn't finish every one of them. If only I could live like that... Think, to be able to go to bed every night and be more than satisfied with what you have accomplished. To know that you had made a difference in someone's life.

I sometimes wondered how my friend could have a smile on his face every day. He wore a smile painted in sincerity. It was genuine. It was love. It was what we needed as high school freshman.

David Crowder writes in one of his songs:

And I don't know
How to be a love like that.
When all the love in the world
Is right here among us
And hatred too.
And so we must choose
What our hands will do

My friend knew how to be a love like that. It was in his smile, in his open door, in his listening ear.

Over the past few days, the amount of love and gratitude that has been expressed concerning the impact my friend has made on others has been overwhelming. How can one man accomplish so much? I think the difference was that he didn't sit around wondering what he could do in the future to make a difference. He made a difference in the here and now.

"Wherever you are and wherever you go, never forget to make a difference."

Stop planning, start acting. Do something. Be love. Look at those around you. These are the people God has entrusted you with. You are meant to impact them.

My friend knew that.

I'm not upset that God took him away from us. I am happy for him. He spent his whole life reflecting the light that Christ shines on us, and now he gets to spend his days living alongside that light. That's cool. I am so thankful that he was able to impact as many people as he did. We are always wondering how certain things can possibly be a part of God's plan. My friend was able to impact thousands of students' lives. I don't think we all realized though exactly what he was doing. He was humble and simply lived his life out to the best of his ability. Now that he is gone, we all recognize the full extent of what he did. Is it sad that it took his death for us to fully realize this? Yeah. But do you think God thinks it's sad? I don't think so. My friend's sole purpose in life was to make a change. I believe we all have this similar purpose. Sometimes that change happens during our life. Sometimes that change happens after our life. Luckily for my friend, he made a change both during and after his life. That's not something to be sad about.

I doubt my friend is sitting up in heaven and wishing he could have had one more day to finish his job. Rather, he's sitting above us with the same smile that was so familiar to all of us still on his face. Is he looking down on us and watching how the next chapter plays out? I don't think so. The bible never says that those in heaven will pay special attention to this world once they arrive. He's with his Lord and this world was simply a stepping stone to where he is now. Earth is a connection point. Not a final destination. It's like the terminal of an airport. None of us get excited to arrive in terminal C4, we are more concerned with where we are flying to. But the terminal is a necessary part of the trip. This world is a necessary part, but it is simply preparing us for the grand destination. God was ready for my friend to fly on out. I am more than happy for him.

And he did all that he could in that terminal. He made a difference.

Way to go Mr. Way.

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If faith were easy


Spud Marshall

"Mountains are moved with faith, Immaculee, but if faith were easy, all the mountains would be gone."

I just finished "Left to Tell", a book about one women's story through the Rwandan Holocaust. As she sat cramped in a small bathroom with 7 other ladies, she began to hear her killers searching the bedroom on the other side of the door. A single wardrobe was all that stood in front of the door. Any movement or breathing might alert the search party to where she was hiding. "I have killed 399 cockroaches, Immaculee will make 400. It's a good number to kill." What do you do when your enemies are surrounding you on all sides? You are trapped with your back against the wall and paralyzed from fear. You hardly want to pray in fear that they may hear your thoughts and know where you are.

As Immaculee began to pray, she envisioned Jesus standing in front of her; and that is what he had to say. "Mountains are moved with faith, Immaculee, but if faith were easy, all the mountains would be gone." Is that the response we would expect? Wouldn't we want Jesus to just look at us and say everything will be ok? Instead he tells her that this will be hard, but it had to be that way.

I haven't been able to get that line out of my head after putting that book down. What does that mean in my life? The odds that I will have to face any situation even closely related to what Immaculee experienced is extremely slim, and I thank God for that. Yet it is so inspiring and incredible to hear of stories when people literally entrusted their entire life over to Jesus, and simply waited for Him to carry them to whatever lay ahead. Whether that meant death or life.

"I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you."

I think we so often read that verse and expect that if we say we are Christians, we must be able to move mountains. And when that doesn't happen for us (which as far as I know has yet to happen) we get upset because we feel that God is backing off on his end of the deal. But where does it say that faith is easy. It doesn't say that being a Christian and having faith are the same thing. Saying you believe in Jesus doesn't mean that you fully trust in Jesus. And if we only need faith as small as a mustard seed, then we must really be confused on what this whole faith thing is all about.

I know that I sometimes get caught in the trap of thinking, "well I'm not faced with difficult situations like the millions of people in Rwanda, so how am I supposed to develop a faith like Immaculee." Although God says that our faith will be purified by fire, He never says that all fires are the same.

"Left to Tell" also showed me what true forgiveness is. After Immaculee returned home, she received the news that both of her parents and two of her three brothers were killed in the genocide. The only brother left was studying in Senegal at the time and avoided the war. When Immaculee finally comes face to face with the man responsible for the killings of her family, he is unable to lift his head and meet her eyes, ashamed of what he had done. He was being held in a prison and Immaculee had all control in her hands, able to say whatever she needed to to the man. And how does she respond, "I forgive you." I read about how we are taught to forgive both our friends and enemies in the bible. And although I would like to believe that I would be able to do that, I read Immaculee's story and can't stop thinking of how I might have reacted.

"…if faith were easy…"

And then I got thinking; well faith is easy when you can hear God talking to you and you can see Him guiding you ahead. Too much of the time I expect that when I ask God for an answer, he will respond to me. But that would make faith easy. That's not how God intended things to be. This is meant to be a struggle. Our relationship with Him is meant to be marvelous and beautiful, simplistic and pure, yet hard and trusting as well. God will always be there to pull us out of the pits we fall in, but what if we get stuck in a rut of expecting Him to always act this way. What if we are meant to lean on Jesus? What if we had to place our trust in Him, rather than wait for Him to save us from our falls? But how do we trust?

After Jesus spoke to Immaculee in the bathroom, He continued on to say this:

"Trust in me, and know that I will never leave you. Trust in me, and have no more fear. Trust in me, and I will save you. Trust in me, and you shall live."

How do we do that? It seems so easy; everything will be fine as long as we trust in You. But I think I'm learning quickly that trust is much more than I ever imagined. This semester has brought with it plenty of bumps in the road. And as each one comes, I have to constantly remember that I will not be able to scale even the smallest hill. For me that used to be scary, because I used to associate trusting in God to giving Him all control. And although I believe that God is still in control of everything happening around me, I am now recognizing that I still have to act on what God is putting around me.

It gets you thinking. Or at least it got me thinking. I would really recommend you find a copy of the book and read it. Reading has never been my biggest thing, yet I finished this book in one sitting. Every now and then God seems to make some things more clear than others, and that's how I felt with this book. I'm beginning to see that God wants to use me. I can feel Him tugging on me, opening my eyes to the world around me. There's many things in this world that I have no idea are taking place, yet God sees each and every one of them. That's why our experiences are so important, those are the moments when God takes us and shares a new realm of His kingdom to us. God is entrusting us to take this new knowledge, this new sight, and share it to those around us. When God provides us with a new set of eyes, we need to take advantage of that opportunity. This is God's kingdom, His beloved creation. We are an integral part of everything around us and God wants us to experience as much as we can.
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Peace Rains


Spud Marshall

As I woke up this morning, the trees outside my window were beginning to lose their leaves. I sat there in bed and watched as the yellow leaves slowly landed on the grass beneath them. Sometimes I forget to just sit and watch the peace around me. I sometimes feel like God has done such awesome things in this world around me, yet it's all so complex and bigger than me that I easily get caught up in this whirlwind. Why is it so hard for us to recognize and act upon the peaceful things God has placed around us? Maybe it's not so hard for others.

I think too much of the time we find ourselves trying to find answers. In Australia, I spent some time talking with a few of the elders of an aboriginal community. We sat around a fire and they explained the difference between white men and aboriginals. They told me that white men are always trying to box everything around them up in order to find answers to those things. However aboriginals believe that answers will come with time, and there is therefore no reason to ask questions. When the time is right, answers will be presented to you. When the elders said this, a few of the people around the fire acted as if this was such a pointless approach to life. The elders saw this through their facial expressions and responded by saying "If you believe, you believe; if you don't, you don't."

And I got to wondering, week after week these aboriginal men encounter new white people traveling around the continent, and I'm sure that they receive the same response from each group. Yet they never question or get defensive about their way of thought, they simply share their experiences and thoughts. They were at peace with what was around them. Be that nature or people or God.

I haven't found that kind of peace since I've been back in the US. What was it about that culture that brought along such a peace?

The next day we traveled to Jim Jim Falls, one of the largest waterfalls in Australia, and this is what I wrote in my journal:

    "Massive boulders line the rock walls. Green life arising in between the cracks. The water flows quietly underneath the rocks, as if they weren't even there. Butterflies and other insects find shade among the rocks. And in the back, the water falls. The sound of the falling water crashing into the lake blends into the background. The rock walls that the water trickles over are painted tan and black, the colors dripping into one another. The tiny pools formed around the rocks ripple toward the shore. Even the rocks themselves have a story to tell. The lines on each one are like the wrinkles on an old man's face, hiding secrets and stories within them. As I sit on these rocks, I feel like I'm waiting to hear their story. And all along man walks on by, just another place on their checklist of places to see. Yeah they see the beauty, but do they take the time to appreciate it. One day sitting near the falls or even a few pictures of the area are not enough to understand this place. There is history here, majesty and power, secrets that God has hidden among the nature. This is aboriginal."

When you sit beneath water trickling towards you from 700 feet above, it's hard not to feel small. It's hard not to sit in awe. It's hard not to feel the peace raining over you. To aboriginals, this isn't just another tourist attraction, this is home. This is where God has placed them. This is what He has entrusted them with, to look after and tell its story.

What has God entrusted with? We spend too much of our time pushing forward and seeking after the next new thing. What if we sat back in our bed, watched as the leaves fell, and listened for what God was telling us. Watched for what he was giving us. Treasure that which with we've been given. Has God buried His treasure and we are left with the task of finding it? Or is He holding it out in His hands and waiting for us to grasp hold of it? We make things too complicated most of the time. We have too many questions.

His creation is here and waiting to be experienced.

God is here and waiting to be experienced.

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...but God's purpose prevails


Spud Marshall

Proverbs 19:21

We humans keep brainstorming options and plans,
but God's purpose prevails.

This verse got passed onto me in an email recently and it’s been on mind ever since. Sometimes I feel like God has entrusted all of this stuff to me and it’s therefore my responsibility to plan out and watch over everything. And although there is some truth in that, Proverbs 19:21 opened my eyes to show me that regardless of what we scheme up and create, none of it will have any meaning unless it is a part of God’s plan. I know I get caught quite frequently brainstorming, and to be honest, that’s one of my favorite things about me. But how often do I sit back and wonder how my plans are tied into God’s plans? I think the easy answer for me sometimes is to just assume that God has this grand master plan and if it’s all laid out already, then it really doesn’t matter what I do because it’s all going to work out regardless. And that therefore leads to me forgetting to talk to God about stuff. I go along scheming and planning and every now and then, I look back and hope to see that what I’ve done is pleasing to God.

But what if I stopped looking back at what I’ve done, and rather looked ahead. And before the brainstorming begins, before my plans begin to fall together, I look to Jesus and see what He has to say about things.

As some of you know, my thesis project has been in the works for the past semester. And it seems like each day something new pops up and surprises me. And I am so quick to jump at grand ideas and projects, simply because that’s how I’ve always done things. And at first, when there was only one option presented to me, I went full steam at it. Because I assumed that this awesome thing that was in front of me must be a part of God’s plan. But as the weeks go by, more and more options continue to arise and now I’m left wondering which one is the one that God wants me to pursue. I think God has been trying to teach me to slow down, and come and get advice from Him first.

Most of my life has fallen together so easily that it’s hard not to look back on it and think that God was leading everything. And it’s not just that things have been easy, but that things have always been planned out for me. And all of the sudden, I’m left with trying to make those decisions, and it’s harder than I thought.

At what point do we know when God is giving us the go-ahead on life? When do we know that we’re on board with God?

And maybe we’re not always meant to be on board with God. Maybe those times when we stray, both accidentally and on purpose, are the times when things become clearer. When we start to understand what God has been saying.

Life would be pretty nice if everything was planned out for us and all of those decisions were already taken care of. But life would also be pretty boring. Our God is one who entrusts us to take the next move. He’s not sitting in the backseat whispering every few seconds in our ear which turn to take next. But he is there. And he’s waiting for us to turn to Him to get directions. He’s not going to get mad though if we turn down the wrong road and start heading in a different direction. He’ll just wait patiently in the back until we’re ready to get back on route. And regardless of where we go or how far away we stray, he always knows how to get back. We’re not in this alone. But we need to talk to him about stuff. We can only go so far on our own.

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Approach it with love


Spud Marshall

What does love feel like? Can you see it, does it have a voice? Do you always know it’s around you or can you sometimes miss it? I don’t think some terms have definitions. We can try and explain what love is based on our experiences and reasoning, but lately I’ve been thinking love is something more than a word in a dictionary.

I placed a sign above my door a few weeks ago that says “Approach it with love.” And ever since having that sign up, it seems that I have been more intentional with finding acts of love surrounding me. I feel like for so much of the time I miss the love around me. I catch the obvious acts, but the littler stuff is harder. I get too caught up on the latest important thing that I forget to focus on what I should really be looking for. It’s been neat to approach each day with the intention of seeing how the people around me portray and demonstrate love to others.

There are some things that seem so simple yet mean the world to people, and it’s these things that have been standing out to me the most recently. And most of these things usually arise from simply asking how others are doing. Sometimes this comes through a specific question, but more often than not it’s just sitting down beside someone and asking how their day went.

I think this is the part about people who hand out tracts or shout the Gospel to passerby’s that really annoys me. For me, a follower of Christ is meant to live a Christ-like life, which from reading through the New Testament seems to mean to live a love-filled life. How is it that a person shouting on the street corner is demonstrating God’s love to their neighbors? I don’t see how that can happen until you sit down beside someone and ask about their day.

And sometimes I forget that non-Christians aren’t the only ones we are meant to act like this towards. It’s equally as important for us to love other Christians. And yeah this seams obvious, but this week it finally became evident to me. Simply to see others pray for me and take the time out of their schedules to connect with the stuff going on in my life was the coolest thing. Personal prayer is important, but praying with other Christian friends is equally as important.

Sometimes it’s easy to get discouraged and unsure about the state of affairs around the world. A few days ago I walked through a World Vision exhibit about AIDS in Africa and what is happening around the country. Then tonight I heard a speaker talk about his background as a former terrorist who used to train radical extremists in Iran, and then his eventual encounter with Christ. And we hear about all these things happening around us that make our hearts just ache. Because deep down we know that God did not intend for the planet to be like this.

I’m working on my thesis project for the next two years and will be focusing on community development and relief work in areas such as South America and Africa. And it seems that each day, more and more people are looking for answers. Why is it so hard to turn things around? Why can’t the world just be the way that our hearts truly long for? Where do we look for a solution?

I don’t think we can find the answer to these questions anywhere on a website or in a book. Because the only solution is love. And love has no definition, it is only experienced. This is why when you go to Africa and witness the love around you, the spark of hope ignites within you that there truly is a solution. But you won’t find that in a book. You can’t even find it in an organization’s mission statement. It’s something more.

Its Christ’s love.

But we don’t really know or understand that kind of love. Its’ something that we try so hard to obtain, yet always fall short. That kind of love is so different that we don’t know how to approach it. Yet we know that it is pure and good and what this world needs.

Crowder put a new album out this week and his one song has a verse that refers to this kind of love.

“Surely We Can Change”
-David Crowder

and the problem is this
we were bought with a kiss
but the cheek still turned
even when it wasn't hit
and i don't know
what to do with a love like that
and i don't know
how to be a love like that

So how do we be that kind of love. If we want to start making a change in this world, it’s time that we start making a change in the way we love others. I don’t know what forms it will show up in, but the opportunities are there, we just need to look for them more intentionally.

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