Living Rarefied

So I am sitting here, late Sunday night recollecting my weekend. It was an amazing weekend. Almost too much for typed words in this blog.

Jesus revealed himself to me 2 times this weekend. Once in the form of a 6 year old friend of mine, and once again in the form of a 62 year old man. It was definately not a life changing experience, well it will be life changing because it is part of my journey, but not an instant change.

He said hello by showing me how simple life needs to be lived. The 6 year old I have always loved.. Always thought he was such a stud, but honestly never thought much more than he was just a good friend and we were buddies… Last night he showed up at the Prom 2005 party my friends threw… I think the average age at the party was in the mid to high 20's. Throw a 6 year old in the mix and you would think he would be bugging his dad to leave asap. That was not the case. He was mingling, hanging with us on the dance floor, I mean he was on the verge of breaking out his own sweet dance moves.

We had a game that we were playing, I guess in the mind of my buddy, it was a game. I made a joke about him having one point for something and his dad having zero. So about 20 minutes later he just asked me what the score of the game was? Between him and his dad… I was confused but decided I was going to take the trip into the mind of a 6 year old. So I made up some points, he beat his dad in arm wrestling so he got a thousand points and his dad got -100. His dad was dancing goofy so when my buddy pointed it out, he scored some more points. There were no rules, just fun, just being in the moment.

Then this morning I went over to their house to do a little "Geek Work" and set up their wireless home network. We had breakfast and put a puzzle of Shrek, Fiona and Donkey together, he showed me his swords from Star Wars, a bunch of other random stuff.. Then it came time for me to get to work, he just followed me around, asked what I was doing and so I attempted to tell him about how the routers, network cards communicate and why they needed to. I related it somehow to baseball so he could understand. I guess it was pretty comical… I was explaining to a 6 year old, things I sometimes don't understand.

Throughout all of the time we spent together this weekend, not once did I notice him say, "oh man, I have to go to school this week" Or "I wonder where I will be in 3 months or 5 years?"… I started to realize that I envied the simplicity of a 6 year old's life. My buddy is living day by day, minute by minute… There are great times, and there are tough times, but to him it seems that each is an individual episode, completely independent of each other. In my life, it seems as I compound so many things, problems in a relationship and problems in my finances, I bundle them together and stress about when they will be done or taken care of. I make things more complicated than they are. They are all indepentent episodes of life and I need to take them one at a time.

I started to realize this early this afternoon. I was so happy, smiles, singing in my car to get coffee, on the way to Upper Room. I felt like I was glowing/beaming!

As the day was winding down, after the Dave Barnes Upper Room concert at Ikasu, I decided to say hi/bye to a friend. It ended up being a hi, here meet this person and hang out for a bit. I am very glad I did. Jesus wasn't asleep yet for the day. He said hello again.

My friend had told me about this friend of his who in his words "lives it". And I sit here now saying I have never chatted with somebody, shared our stories with each other, who "lives it" like this guy. It was like everything I have gone through leading up to today April 17th 2005, everything I have been thinking about, trying to live like was echoed in his dicsussion with me. We talked about ministries, how I am involved as a volunteer with Young Life, the camping experiences. I told him I was headed to Frontier in 2 months in Colorado, he responded back with, Oh, I was there in 1957 when I was 15. He was on staff with Young Life for awhile and echoed every question and answer I have had about my place in YL right now.

His life although difficult at times, has been led by his heart and has been in my eyes, simple. He has followed the spirit in small steps. They seemed big to me. Moving from country to country, spending 10 years in a new place and then just picking up and moving onto a new home. I struggle with leaving the comforts of the Metro area for too long. I asked him how you can be at peace with all of the change and how it doesn't seem simple to me. All the moves and new locations seems more complex to me. He said something that knocked me off my rocker, right inline about my thoughts of living like my 6 year old buddy.

In the big picture it looks like it is complex, busy, but he said he's taken it one step at a time and been in complete trust that where he is and where he will go is where the Lord wants him at that present time. Simple is the one word that comes out of my weekend. He also pinned the tail on the donkeys on some other things that have been on my heart. Dead on…

I have been trying to peel away some complexities in my life. Some are perceiving it as me avoiding them or finding new things to do. But as I am trying to find my way in my journey, the theme of simplicity has been all over, all around me. I have always felt inside, if I participate in enough things, hang out with as many people as I can, get involded as much as I can, a few of them will hit the target and I will grow from that. But that was my agenda. That is how I thought I was going to get it done. I've been following my heart and trying not to feel selfish of my time for others.

But this weekend Jesus said hello to me… He also said, life is beautiful and can be crazy, but it is much more rewarding when you keep it simple.

Ethan Living Rarefied, testing