Swirling in the Blue

Last night I went with some good friends of mine to see the movie Blue like Jazz, based upon Donald Miller’s famous book with the same title. We went in with a swirling of emotions. Having read the book, we knew that the movie could be faith stirring. At the same time a lot of our friends had seen it the weekend before and said that they had hated it for its secularistic focus. After sitting through the movie, I can understand why they hated it. The movie has everything college Christians are told to cringe at: profanity, sexual references, drug and alcohol abuse, and immense partying.  As I sat there I took mental notes of every time something offensive was spoken or portrayed and of how I’m sure it was one of the moments that caused my friends to dislike it so much. But can I let you in on a secret?

I loved it!

No part of me actually supports or condones the use of some of the things depicted in the movie, but at the same time I couldn’t help but admire Donald Miller for his edginess. He not only pushed the envelope but he pushed, I believe, the majority of the Christians who went to go see it out of their comfort zones. I admire Donald Miller’s decision to alter the movie from the story line of the book (the movie is far more edgy) because I understand why he did it…

He didn’t make the film so that Christians can go and see a feel good movie like Courageous; He made it so that he could depict the world like it really is.

The world is full of drugs, sex, alcohol and broken hearts trying to fit in and find their own social redemption, and his story is about his doubts and struggles with coming to terms with God in all of this, and yet somehow we’ve been spoiled by rather cheesy Christian messages that tell us that doubts, struggles, and sin somehow manage to get wrapped up nice and neat in a pretty little bow. How many of you would say your story wraps up Sunday school sweet? How many of you would honestly say that your story rather was far more full of course language, partying, and peer pressure?   

Perhaps, though, the reason that I enjoyed the movie so much is because it gave me hope; hope that people other than Christians would go see it.  Miller allowed the movie to be so, because Christians were never the target audience. He wrote it so that people that felt judged by and held hatred towards the Church can see Jesus through the myriad of negative connotations of Christians. He wrote it so that people could see that Christians don’t have everything held together. He wrote it so that they could find freedom.

After watching the movie, I couldn’t help but listen to some of the thoughts that God was echoing within the caverns of my soul…

He pushed the envelopes because he is more concerned with reaching people than appeasing people

God didn’t redeem us so that we could watch faith stirring movies; God redeemed us so that we can give faith stirring stories.

What story do you have to tell? Is it one of a holy huddle, or is it one filled with you being a light in the utter darkness of college life?

Are you friends with Lesbians, Atheist, Russian Agnostics, people who dress like the pope and Christians or are you friends only with straight-tied, slack wearing Christians?

Jesus keeps us on this earth so that we can bring freedom to the captives not so that we can hang around in the presence of “safe” friends.

We’re here to be a swirling of light in the blue that is this world.

Merely,

Chris Gerac

 “Jesus said to them, ‘It’s not the Christians that need more of me, it’s the ones who have been hurt by Christians who do.” Mark 2:17, My Modern-day Adaptation

The Ars Amatoria

Do you know that you are loved? 

I mean really loved? Do you really know, and I mean know in a way that from the very core of your soul you stand unwavering on this knowledge, that you, yes you specifically, you who are taking the time to read this, that you are loved, and I mean loved not like I love macaroni and cheese, not like I love dogs, and not like I love my friends and family, but a love so deep, so revolutionary, so complete, and so holy that it blows our love for things out of the water and leaves us breathless?

I ask again, do you know that you are loved?  Loved by someone far better than anyone else on this earth and by someone whose heart burns, yearns, and turns over and over again for you?

I ask because, simply put, I cannot go spiritually further with you until your heart, mind, body, and soul understands this Truth!

It doesn’t matter how well I can write or how much God moves me through writings and revelations, I am not able to stir up spiritual silt inside of you until you first know exactly how much you are cherished, loved, and adored by the Creator!

He loved you so much that I believe if you had been the only one in the whole world living that He would gladly have died for you.

He laid down his life for a broken world and broken people, and expected nothing more than for us to receive His love. What love can be more perfect than this?

It was exactly His art of love, His Ars Amatoria to say it in Latin, which moved me to write even though I have a full plate of essays and work to shovel through. 

I know no better love, nor any better thing that I could do for you as a writer and as an individual than hope to help articulate how beloved you are by Jesus Christ.

It is love that separates us as followers of Christ from other religions

And it is love that separates my flesh from my spirit and allows me to feel the winds of freedom.

Do you know that you are loved?

Merely,

Chris Gerac

“Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13, NIV

The Art of Worship- Life by Scott

Hey I wanted to take this time to honor and introduce to you a good friend of mine. His name is Scott Steinhouse and he is an awesome man of God and a freshman who will one day reach the world. Scott recently also poured out his heart in the form of a spoken word poem and I think the imagery and the allusions in it are incredibly witty, but more importantly Scott weaves a story of brokenness and redemption...

Like losing in roulette I would give it all, only to have it fall on nothing
Often what I run for leaves me stripped as I trip on a path breaking me in the aftermath
Trying to grasp at straws, gasping for air, sucked up into quicksand
I tell myself to “Quick stand” maybe no one saw
And as I rise looking where my feet have tread, following back the trail of bread
Crumbs to those thoughts, those lies that have bred within my heart
Like worms from a diet of engorging my flesh as the reaper stands ready for his harvest,
sickle in hand, watching my fickle flesh try to stand unshaken
He cackles watching my spirit breaking

You see I spent so long on my own strength
Fighting this disease, waving my fists about boxing with air
But what I missed is this
That I can’t buffet my body until I’m bowing to the Heir
You see it was pride that took me full stride towards brink
But when I got caught knee deep I couldn’t move and began to sink
Trying to discipline myself out of sin is like training a one man team and expecting to win
And I had a tournament of lies ahead that I had to face
Not knowing grace
Believing walking alone was commonplace

And I decided not to seek his face
cause I thought that with these marks I had no place
In his presence of the king
And this lie consumed me like a bacteriophage that begins to rage and devour any hope within its reach and you can preach and try to teach, or even bleach those stains away but good luck.
And like a leach it began to suck
The life blood from my being
The focus from my seeing
And I got stuck
And like a pig on a spit I felt trapped
Yeah I’ve been in that pit
And demons started dancing and rejoicing at the feast before them they would soon be enjoying
The lies they had been feeding me fattened me up and soon after bleeding me of any faith they would begin eating me

I got picked up in the beginning of my true life to begin walking in true light
Shaking off the miry clay, He used his words, calling me pure, talking of true life
With Him
And He opened my eyes that had been hypnotized by the disguise that cloaked the irises of the Prize
You see I saw a condemning master
One that said I had to master myself before I could matter
But what He told me was that “My embrace is all that matters,
Whatever chains held you back, Behold, I shatter!”
It was by His decree that I stand free
So when my heart turns to the petty and goes Tom Petty, “Freefalling!”
I am free to rise up and to answer my Life’s true calling

I was painted a picture that came direct out of scripture
Moreover, a story spoken by a voice of infinite glory
Its words are love from beginning to end and it picks me back up every time I descend into darkness
Into this world that is heartless
This story’s formed by a brush that has been drenched in His blood,
Flooding from a cross so I can count these as loss

I looked upon that scene, that holy bloodbath and all that I could scream was “Make me clean! I need a blood-bath!”
And He built me up despite my sin and its aftermath
Cause the One plus one is wholeness.
The One divided by whips and nails summed me up into holiness
And although I was fractioned and fractured
My savior was struck
Stuck to a tree and He endured
For my sake
He was pierced with stakes, and those He loved cried out, “This is a mistake!”
And the wall that was between us?
I saw it all break

And I got His spirit, the one of power to cry “Abba” in those times of weakness
Cause He tells me His power is made perfect in my meekness.
And He loves it when I seek this
He daces when I sing this
For my notes are no longer out of tune
He gave to me chords that are unbreakable
He gifted me with keys that unlock the locks that used to stop me dead in my tracks
And with these hit singles, He singled me out to shout and sing freedom

Now I am clean
I am free
Now with a sheen that can rightly reflect the light rays from the Son
And, yes, I know He’s not done
Oh, yes, you guessed, I know that I’m blessed but my heart is still messed
Up from those lies that have compromised my affection for the king
But I’ll still sing, cause He is holy who brings
Life.

Restful Thinking

This morning I came across in my reading, a verse that I’m sure all of us have read multiple times. If you’re anything like me then you probably have even found yourself quoting this very same passage to your stressed friends during finals’ week or to your anxious family around the time bills are due. However, this time was different (it’s amazing how God’s living Word is alive enough to reveal the complexities and facets that are present within something as simple as a verse). This time, my whole perspective and everything that for years I have been preaching to fellow students was slightly shifted. Jesus, through his grace, and luckily through my attentive ears, spoke meaning into my life that unlocked a whole new perspective on rest.

Yes rest.

The thing we all know we need, but never seem to be able to achieve. That ever allusive roadrunner that we willingly spend more energy chasing than actually capturing.

So you may be internally asking yourself, “What’s this magical revelation I have discovered that will instantly provide rest.” But before we go any further I need to clarify one point: What I learned this morning isn’t some enchanted formula that will instantly provide rest and rest to its fullest, instead it is a little extra understanding into just who Jesus is. In case you didn’t pick up on it, I discovered more about a who than a what.

Today during my time with Jesus (a future blog will be coming shortly on what I mean about this) I read, like so many other times, the passage of Matt: 11:28-30 that says…

              

             “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. ²⁹ Take My yoke   upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. ³⁰ For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

For some reason the words leapt off of the page and rearranged themselves out of my provincial perspective and into a slightly different meaning. You see, I have always been taught to think that this passage implied that we were yoked with Jesus (for those of you who don’t know what a yoke looks like Google images does wonders). I always thought that the passage above meant we shared shouldering burdens with Jesus and since He is so much bigger and stronger than us that basically He did all of the heavy lifting and we were left to enjoy the ride. Now I’m not saying that this viewpoint is wrong but I’m challenging you to open up your mind to the possibilities of another…

Jesus isn’t yoked with us; He is the Master who places us under His yoke

This may be common sense to you, but this slightly different perspective changed everything for me. To me, this means that we have no choice in the matter but to “learn from [Him],” to go where He directs us. But there’s even more, the yoke He places upon our shoulders is one that is “gentle” and easy”. And last but certainly not least, this passage, if you read it carefully, implies that rest isn’t found by the absence of work, but by the presence of Jesus in our work (notice how He said that we will find rest only once we come under His yoke!)

Jesus longs to give us rest. He longs for our hearts to let go off everything in our life that’s producing stress. But He does not want us to find rest by forsaking everything, and sitting on a couch all day.

God has bigger plans for us.

God is inviting us to be His hands and feet, and in it experience a rest like we have never known.

There’s work to do…

Merely,

Chris Gerac

“I may be weak, but Your Spirit is strong in me,

My flesh may fail, but My God, you never will.” -Elevation Worship

The Resurrection Poem

For I’ve been resurrected and now am truly alive 

Which may sound a bit strange since I’ve never died… well at least in your eyes

For you see I was so wrapped up in sin that my flesh started to decay

And I began to resemble a mummy

But now my flesh has been put to death and my spirit has been revived

Tempted and tried and made free to let go of all of my deep and weary sighs

It’s like I’ve been electrified, shocked out of the little white boy who was suburbanized, calcified to all of the world’s ravenous hunger.

I’ve been shocked by lightning… now listen to me thunder.

It’s actually a story that’s quite funny and a tad bit peculiar

So backwards in this world that you would be safe to call me Ferris Beuhler

I guess it’s fitting since it all began with a lie

A lie from a serpent who tried to disguise his motives

Of taking away sight from our innocent eyes

So by a mere lie and a blank promise of all knowing immortality

The serpent managed to make death seem alluring, and seem like true beauty

And by spelling out F-R-U-I-T

He shattered the mirror of our morality, you see..

He knocked the world off its axis and introduced brokenness

that for centuries man has been trying to fix by his praxis

fix by his practice, but yet all of our work only produces sadness and cracks that separate us even further from the life we were made to experience

and instead onward we walk as cold as an Assyrian,

pillaging the depths of our neighbors lenience’s

as we seek to engorge our lives with decadence that rivals Shakespearean scribbles

Now we step on each others' backs, trying to take back,

The glory, the riches without ever putting on our burlap sacks

Of remorse and regret, of shame and of our upset,

Instead we seek to satisfy through possessions and sex

We bend our necks, trying desperately to get back to where we began…

To get back to the apex

So we seek out Freud to tell us about our needs in the forms of a complex,

Like the one buried deep inside Oedipus Rex

We sift ritually through ritual codex, hoping that the solution to our death lies somewhere in our humanities essence,

But they offer no Kleenex

So instead, frantically we flex our minds again and search for meaning

Through one night stands and latex,

Through six figure paychecks,

Through broken hearts and shipwrecks

The accumulation of objects

Stored up inside glass jars of desperation and regret

And yet we wonder why we are so perplexed?

Confused, abused, misused, and mentally run through

We finally run out of energy

And collapse at the threshold of the boundary of our humanity

And its there we glimpse the beauty of eternity.

For there, fallen on our knees in broken pieces,

There we come face to face, eye to eye, cheek to cheek, hand to hand,  with Jesus

In the form of a Man he represents God’s golden plan,

The rock upon which we stand, and can resist the battering of our enemies,

Its through Jesus that life finally gets a true meaning

Now you may be thinking, wait just a minute,

I didn’t come here to listen to another Christian propagandistic forum or Senate

But before your thoughts run any further

I implore your mind to take a rest,

Listen to my story because I promise I’m not like the rest,

You see I admit that when life throws at me its best,

I’m the first to cave, the first to fail the test

My flesh can attest

To the battle that once raged in me like a great contest

In a personal state of civil unrest

I lifted my eyes and cried out to the heavens celest in protest

With my fist pounding against my breast

And my heart pounding against the insides of my chest

 God where are you!

Why do you leave me like this!

Destined to fail in the arms of computer images and the girl next door

I thought that you said I would be you amour

That in you lies the Golden Shores

But it’s like I’ve been stabbed by failures by some great boar

With jagged tusk of remorse

And so here’s my libation offering in which I pour

Out all of my heart to you and cry out…where are you so called Savior!

In a flash something changed after my defiance,

I suddenly found myself resistant and incompliant to the desires of my skin

To the faint calling to return to all of my sin

I can’t describe what happened by Wherefore I once squandered my life as a whore

I survived the wreckage and carnage and now am living in the postwar galore

The galore of quiet and serendipitous seas of peace

And as the waves crash over me my eyes have been opened to see that He is so much more

Than fairy tales and folklore

Folks swore up and down that He was an conjuration and thus should be ignored

But I can’t ignore that which I have heard

That which I have seen

That which I have felt

That which lives and breathes inside of me

That which calms even the stormiest seas of turmoil and despair

With the same breath of defiance that I drew he drew a breath too that showed me that he did care

And since that day I chose to pursue life instead of decay

No longer would I wait there’s no time for delay

He picked up the broken parts of me and lead me to my knees and

With the same breath that I once cursed him with, I can say finally

That I am free!

I’ve been redeemed

Merely,

Chris Gerac

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16, NIV