Not being able to think clearly seems to be a common theme for me.
It might be caused by ADHD or a time I was dropped on my head as a child but ideas swirl around in my head and I can't seem to clear them all. When I desire more than anything to stay in the moment I end up thinking about disc golf, video games, or sex.
Today I began the day determined to plan a youth event for 2 weeks from now. Instead, I read 4 or 5 blogs, listened to some new music, threw around a tennis ball, rearranged my office, and made a youtube video. Why am I cursed?
The original design for this site wasn't even to write about what I'm writing about now, but to make a Youth Group blog to post things for parents. And now, here I am, writing about how I can't stay focused.
Awesome.
Instead of addressing this problem, I'm going to write about one of the blogs I read today. That sounds productive.
Mt. St. Helens
I've always been a fan of Donald Miller. In fact, since I heard about him several years ago I can't seem to read his books/blogs/articles enough. Today, he took an excerpt from Searching for God Knows What and posted it to his blog. Which you should read here.
His blog shared a moment from his book that talks about Mt. Saint Helens and its destruction. In one of the most captivating and beautiful pieces of writing I have ever experienced Don takes people through the process of viewing the destruction caused by its destruction. The destruction of Mt St Helens left behind miles of barren wilderness that animals and trees alike refused to repopulate. As Don describes it "And then I hit the spot on the road where the trees stopped, and the landscape went dead, like the landscape after Hiroshima, as though the place had been bombed. There was no life, not a plant, not a tree, just gray ash flowing across the hills for thirty miles toward the crater."
I read those words and it seems so foreign to me. Everything I see in the world appears to be growing, appears to be developing, appears to be healthy, or at the very least I want it to be. The reality of brokenness and destruction in the world is something I don't like thinking about. It's something I avoid at all costs. Partially because it hurts to think about other peoples brokenness, but mostly because it points me towards my own brokenness. More than anything, I'm terrified of this:
"All this makes me wonder what God must have felt, arriving on the scene just after the Fall, knowing all He had made was ruined, and understanding at once the sacrifice that would be required to win the hearts of His children from the grasp of their seducer. I see Him in my mind walking the paths, calling to the couple, meeting their eyes for the first time, and Adam and Eve shaking in absolute terror, wondering what had happened, confused at the broken promise of a snake, feeling at once the trustworthiness of their first love and wondering if God would ever love them again, feeling the hot breath of His anger and emotion, hearing Him speak for the first time, not as a friend, but as One who had been betrayed. “Who told you that you were naked?”'
Oh how much that hurts! How hard it is to realize that I have broken the trust of the one who made my being. The one who loved and devoted himself to me. More than that, I continue to do so.
"Prone to wander lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love".
The destruction of Mt.St Helens was devastating. One of the worst natural disasters in America's brief history. And yet, it pales in comparison to the destruction our sin causes to the heart of God. I can't even begin to understand that. My intellect is too limited, my being too selfish to understand that idea completely.
But it hurts. So so much.
