My Testimony

So one of my friends has been going through a rough time lately. I was really worried about him until sometime last week. He begin talking about how God has been using him lately and I began to see a huge change in his demeanor as he began to get involved in ministering to his community and really listening to what God says to him. He now seems to be more empowered than ever and it all came out of a loss that left him with pretty much nothing. That brings up so many memories of people who've come out of a loss and have gone on to live their lives so much better than they had before. My story is one like that so I'm going to share it now.

My entire life I've been close friends to this guy named Joe (his name has been changed in this). I've never considered myself a "bad person" but he was the kind of guy who when you're around him you make stupid decisions. I had so much fun when I was with Joe that I would always look to him to see how I should act and talk, which led to a few problems seeing as he was definitely not a good role-model. I was so excited my freshmen year when I moved right across the street from him! I could walk over and do whatever we wanted to do whenever we wanted to do it, it was going to be awesome!

And that's where things went wrong. One night my family and I were coming back from my little brother's baseball game and my mom got a phone call. The police had come to Joe's house and arrested him for possession of drugs. When my mom told me this I was devastated. He was going to be sent to a sort of clinic in South Carolina for a couple of years. I was alone, 45 minutes away from all my other friends (when you're 14, 45 minutes might as well be 5 hours), and I had no other friends around me.

At this point, my life felt like it was coming apart. The guy who I had looked up to my entire life was a criminal and worse, he was leaving me alone. I didn't know what to do, I went to my room and sat. I tried to figure out why God did this to me, but I couldn't. My parents tried to tell me it would be ok, but how could it be ok when you're only friend has left you? I tried to just watch some T.V., but that couldn't take my mind off it, so I just sat in my room for a while, I didn't think, I just sat.

And that is when I heard it, real softly, more feeling than hearing. God was telling me it was going to be O.K. He loves both of us and this would work out for the best.

No, I didn't immediately feel better, I began to understand why God would do this for Joe, it was a way to help him get away from the people who influenced him to make bad decisions, it gave him a chance to start over, but why did God have to leave me alone? The next day I went to my 7:07 group where me and my friends would get together and be mentored by Jay Hanson. I realized then that I wasn't alone, I had a group of close friends who God put there for me, I was not alone.

Over the next year and a half, I began to hang out more with my 7:07 friends, I joined the church that Jay Hanson preached at and me and my friends got involved in its youth group. I became closer to God than I ever had been and it all started because of the loss I had to go through.

What happened to Joe? I am proud to say that he did get help and we are still close friends. However, I now try my best to look to God to see how I should act and try to be a good role model for him. Joe has joined the Marine reserves and is really excited about going out and doing good for our country and I couldn't be more proud of the man he turned out to be.

1 Kings 19:11-13

...And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind was an earthquake, but the lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of a low whisper. And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave...

In this Bible verse Elijah, who I was named after, went through something similar to what I did. Elijah was waiting in a cave to meet God. All these catastrophes happened as God came to him that literally tried to bring the mountain on top of him, but God was not in them. And after the catastrophes when Elijah was still waiting, he heard a whisper. Elijah immediately went out because he knew that God had come for him. That's how it was for me, and how it happens for so many people. Catastrophe begins to shake your mountain's foundations, you try to find God in your own thoughts, the words of others, or you just give up. God is in the silence after the catastrophe.

I encourage you, if you're going through a rough time, just go to a quiet place and sit. Don't think, don't get distracted, just sit and wait for the soft whisper of God's voice to tell you that it's going to be O.K. and the all-powerful God loves you.

Children, Comics, and Captain America

All right, you're walking by a bench, you see a kid completely engorged in a comic, probably thinking about how cool it would be to be one of the characters, to have some sort of super powers or crazy awesome gadgets so he could fight crime, ward off evil, and protect the innocent. Then, you notice something odd, this kid looks like he's about 18 years old.That would be me and a couple of friends of mine. Last year (our senior year of high school) me and some friends of mine began reading comic books, which may sound lame to you, but we didn't care, we are just a few old kids reading our comic books and having a great time.

One particular character especially caught my imagination. Captain America is by far my favorite super hero. Every now and then I'll get asked "why Captain America? He's not that great, the Hulk could rip him to shreds, Iron Man could fry him with his lasers, he's got a shield but that's not that cool." Yeah, that's a completely understandable question, Captain America is really just a regular person who was given a "super soldier serum" that gave him the greatest strength, speed, and agility that any person could possibly get. So really an olympic athlete could probably get the job done physically. No, it's not his power as much as his ideals that inspire me. Steve Rogers was an artist who desperately wanted to join the U.S. military to fight off the Nazis in World War II, but unfortunately, he was small and all skin and bones, nothing impressive and the military recruiter said that they would be unable to use him in the fight. Desperate to do anything to fight the Nazis, Rogers signed up as a test subject for the super soldier serum created. The scientist who gave him the serum was killed so Steve Rogers was the only super soldier. He donned the stars and stripes from the American flag, and used a red white and blue shield as his weapon of choice. He led a group of super heroes called the Invaders during WWII, then later became a leader of the Avengers and New Avengers.

This is where it hits me: why was just a man, granted a very strong, fast, and agile man, able to lead these super-beings with powers unimaginable? It was his ideals. Captain America believes so much in the virtues of America such as patriotism, loyalty, and truth that it inspires others for good. He wears the symbol of his ideals to show that he will not change who he is even though ideas of patriotism may be a bit outdated these days, and he uses his ideas as a weapon to show that his convictions are strong and they will fight anyone who opposes them.

This amazes me! That a man can be so morally strong that he can destroy any opposition and inspire others who are much stronger than him to fight alongside him. What if we had this sort of moral conviction. What if I was so morally strong that I could inspire and lead others into almost impossible situations? What if I used my ideals as a weapon to break through any challenges? What if I wore my ideals so as I walked by people would know what I stood for? What if you did that? So that's what I want to do, and it's what I want you to do, I want us to look inside ourselves and contemplate our morals and use them to inspire others, lead those who need a leader, and to destroy any obstacles that we face.

Introduction

All right, so this is my first blog ever, so I guess this is just going to be an introduction. The name of this site has some special significance to me. One of my favorite bands of all time is The Grateful Dead and my favorite song by them is "Scarlet Begonias." I love this song mainly because of one line: "once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right." Throughout my life I can see that this line rings true. I was able to find God from an event that hurt me pretty terribly, I was able to find love when I had all but given up on it, and I have some of the deepest thoughts in the most mundane settings. So I don't know, I guess the whole point of the name is that some of the thoughts that I share might affect you in some way, that maybe this might be one of your "strangest of places," that some of my experiences can help you learn some lessons or that maybe you can just get a good laugh from them, but whatever you get from it, I just hope that my thoughts/actions/experiences can help you in some way. I plan on posting something new at least once a week so keep on reading and as the Grateful Dead said: keep on trucking.