November 22, 2023
~11:22am
So I’m just testing something really quick here. Been doing a lot of rearranging here in the house, in the bedroom and in the office in particular. Putting stuff together, putting stuff from one place to another, designating areas and items, listing what’s needed but prioritizing what needs to be shipped out – that is, what needs to be thrown away, given away, or just put elsewhere.
In the process of all this rearranging I’ve also been moving furniture from one place to the other, and in the process I’m finding out how certain pieces can be legitimately repurposed. Say, for example, this one shelf that I have the laptop on right now. You can customize this particular shelf so you can take out some of the levels. I took the middle one out and now I’m testing if this could work as a laptop table AND a shelf for stuff at the same time… so far so good. I am typing, aren’t I?
Okay, now I put the laptop on a… what is this, a holder? Whatever you put a laptop on so that there’s ample space underneath for proper airflow. Still typing, still good.
Got a lot to do today. Thankfully it’s all listed down.
November 24, 2023
8:35am
Well, the rearranging here in the bedroom is done… Since yesterday, actually. I’ve been surfing and typing while in this setup for a good amount of iterations now and it’s been good. So good, that I’ve neglected the office for a significant amount of time now. Although it isn’t just because this new setup I have here in the bedroom is pretty sweet – it’s also because there’s just too much junk in the office that needs to be thrown out, sorted out, relocated, and/or organized. It’s probably something I’ll have energy next week to work on.
For now, typing is what I want to do. I’m aware that I haven’t been sharing as much as I want, and there’s also a lot in my head that needs to be thrown out, sorted out, relocated and/or organized. I will be forever thankful for these opportunities to sit down and type, if only to unload whatever is in this brain, to make more space to move, and to store more ideas.
In that regard, I see it all as channels. Spaces are channels – channels where you could store, move, create, recreate, procreate, destroy and rebuild. This room is a channel for restoration, and a lighter area to work. I intend for the office to be a space less for consuming, and more for creation – writing, editing, shooting, and such.
Our minds are a space, and consequently our minds are a channel on their own – personal areas where one can, as businessman and futurist Alvin Toffler quotes, ‘learn, unlearn, and relearn’. Let’s pull up the entire quote, actually:
“The illiterate of the future are not those who can’t read or write but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”
Considering our train of thought, you can also say that the illiterate are also those who cannot take advantage of the space of their mind; and those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn are mindless.
I know I’ve written about a conversation I had with my Mom a little earlier this quarter, on how in today’s world, there may as well be as much morbidly obese and malnourished people as there are malnourished people who we are used to seeing as emaciated, skeletal and skinny (I had to Google the antonym for ‘obese’). We talked about how Scripture mentions famines in the last days of this reality, and how seemingly profound it was for us to observe that famine isn’t necessarily the lack of food, but the astounding abundance of junk food. Famine is not the absence of food, but the absence of nourishment.
Keeping that in mind, we can say that the illiterate, or the mindless of the future are those who lack nourishment in the mind – not necessarily because they are starving, but because they have too much junk and little to no space to appropriate the cycle of learning, unlearning, and relearning.
It shines a greater light and gives us even more understanding to where Scripture mentions God lamenting, that (His) people perish due to lack of knowledge. Actually, let’s pull up Hosea 4:6, from eSword’s KJV:
“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.”
I’m thankful for eSword because it does provide me with some context regarding this chapter, and therefore a picture of what was going on surrounding these words when they were first mentioned and eventually recorded. According to the commentary, it was the priests that Hosea was rebuking at this time. Apparently these folks who were entrusted with the Temple ‘were drunken and sensual; they rejected the knowledge and rule of God; they promoted outward ritual in order to fatten on the offerings of the people’, and ‘as it was with them, so it became with the deluded worshipers’; ‘There was neither truth nor mercy in the land, but swearing, lying, and adultery’
If we only read through verse 6, we see just one aspect to what these priests were doing, but the context gives us these other side of the coin. See, not only were the priests rejecting knowledge… they also welcomed, or promoted corruption (‘outward ritual’). And as it was with the priests, so it was with the people, and the land. Truth and mercy were rejected, while swearing, lying and adultery were welcomed.
Last Sunday we listened to sister Winnie share on her take regarding the forgiveness we receive from God. I capped it all off by sharing to the people that forgiveness ushers in freedom, and in the freedom we receive, we are able to truly forgive. Sister Norma approached me after the service and we also came to the agreement that not only does forgiveness come with freedom and vice versa; Forgiveness also leads to healing, just as healing allows us to truly forgive.
As we continued to elaborate on just how wonderful a salvation we have through Jesus Christ, here we were also discovering that there was so much more to the forgiveness and mercy we receive from, in, and through Him. We’re graduating from understanding that salvation isn’t just us going to heaven when our earthly bodies expire, or when we’re called home ‘in a twinkling of an eye’ (funny how the world is also subtly trying to get all of us to believe in UFO’s recently) – We’ve learned in the previous weeks that Salvation is Eternal Life here and now, our existence transformed from hopeless toiling to indomitable celebration; much more than a mere learning of new theology, it’s a total and absolute re-creation of our being. Just as Christ died and rose again, so we who believe have died, and have been made new, righteous creations reconciled to our Creator.
We’re also graduating from the shallow assumption that forgiveness is saying sorry and letting go. That’s pretty simple considering now that we see it as a response more than a reaction, and not just a response, but a proactive and intentional overflow which inevitably leads to our freedom, and our healing.
When I was cleaning my room, the mindset I had was to sort things out and to keep what was essential. I think there was a sense of freedom in knowing what to keep, because if I was to focus on what not to lose, (1) I’d find myself anxious from overthinking where I’d need this one doohickey and this other piece of junk whose sentimental value was forgotten, and (2) I’d probably keep it all and end up back in (cluttered) square one.
Make no mistake. I’m no Marie Kondo. There’s still a lot of stuff here. I’ll tell you instead of taking a picture: At the top shelf are books I’m aiming to read in bed before I sleep, and allow me to fake flex some of these books: The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules of Life by Jordan Peterson, and Letters From A Stoic by Lucius Seneca.
Under that are books I’m seeing within my line of sight when I raise my head, if I’m not looking at the laptop screen – Tintin and Asterix Comics, my unopened Complete Calvin & Hobbes collection. What follows is, you guessed it, my laptop, and air purifier, my coffee mug, and the Bible given by the Gideons when they visited us at Dad’s wake more than 10 years ago. And in the second to the bottom shelf, I have the archive – Books with lower priority, and also my older brother’s comics; I’m not about to assume he forgot about them.
BUT let me go back to that second, line of sight shelf. I don’t just have comics there. I also have the books that have added value by way of sharpening my personal theology, and as such, have added actual value to my being: Secrets of a Prayer Warrior by Derek Prince, What Would Jesus Eat? by Dr. Don Colbert, The Prodigal by Brendan Manning, Perfect and Forgiven by Zach Maldonado, and, of course, God Without Religion by the good Dr. Andrew Farley.
There IS one book that stands out as one I’m definitely keeping – that is, the Picture Bible that my folks bought and intended for me and my brothers. This was waaaay back when I was a more curious 4-year old, and when my older brothers were on their way to finding out cooler things in this reality. At first I was just flipping through the pretty, 80’s style, 80’s colored illustrations and dialogue, but then I’d find myself actually reading the words, preferably in bed with me lying on my side with my hand keeping one side of the book up.
See, when you’re doing all the rearranging, decluttering, and organizing, you notice how there’s memorabilia among the to-do Post-Its, wisdom among all the fleeting facts, actual nourishment among all the junk… and Life that matters in the presence of all the death.
I remember one more argument turned to a conversation with my Mom, where I told her that while she was too fixated on ‘rescuing’ people – that is, keeping them from hell, we’d be more efficient, and hit two birds with one stone, by telling the world about heaven. And I guess that’s what I’m getting at here.
You want to declutter, focus on what to keep, and you’re able to decide more confidently on what to give away.
You want to be healed? You want to be free? Focus on what you have – Forgiveness, that leads to healing, and that leads to freedom.
You want peace of mind? Focus on the salvation that you do have in Christ, instead of fretting over what you don’t have (the more you think you don’t have peace, the more you won’t have peace).
You want peace of mind? Focus on the salvation that you do have in Christ, instead of allowing the junk of this world to take all the space.
The famine we have these days is not just physical, but mental.
The famine we have these days is not just lack of nourishment, but an abundance of junk.
By the power of the Holy Spirit, I believe we can make the right choices for ourselves, and for our communities. We NEED to, in this famine.
Let us choose to live by the Word of God, and as such, revel in the Joy of our Salvation, brought to us by no less than Christ, our Living Word.
In closing, I’d like to share some of Moses’ final words to the tribes of Israel:
“I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.”Deuteronomy 30:18-20
Let us choose Life, and everything will follow.
God bless us all.
288408/365000
#Decluttering #Cleaning #Forgiveness #Nourishment #Junk #Famine #Revelations #Reflections #Bible #Christianity #PracticalChristianity #JesusChrist #Gospel #GoodNews
JB's Personal Brain Defragmenter 
Leave a comment