[I’ve been meaning to post some solid stuff on here that doesn’t fall just into the categories of geekdom and Linux tweakage.  What follows, I hope, won’t be the last post in a different vein!  Have a good week, folks.]

Last Thursday, I decided it had become too pleasant an evening to spend it indoors, although I had a great deal of biology homework to do, and a number of very long chapters to read.  So I drove into my old neighborhood—less than five miles away from my apartment as the crow flies, which is one of the odd things about having lived for almost twenty-one contiguous years in the same general area—and parked just outside the locked gate of the parking lot at the neighborhood pool.  There I sat, reading and studying, until finally it was getting late and my neck had come to express its great distress at my posture.  The pain in my neck, as a I drove home, came to be a sharp pain that didn’t begin to subside until I realized I was as tense as a steel G-string and made a conscious effort to let go of the stress.

That got me to thinking about how I tended to handle my stresses in life: instead of letting God take them and handle them, I tried to shoulder all those things and be Chief Executive Officer of the microcosm that is my life.  Life’s not meant to be like that; the Lord says, “My yoke is easy; My burden is light.”  He’s for real, that’s not a joke; the only catch is, you have to have faith enough to let go of the stress you’re hanging on to.  When I, a Christian, don’t let God take it, I get all overwhelmed and stressed out and—although I jest about the words themselves quite frequently, as my friends know—I literally gnash my teeth in rage and anxiety trying to handle it all.  That is, until I realize “Oh, yeah, God’s Almighty and I’m not.  Maybe I should just let go.”  And I do.  But by that time, I might have become a nervous wreck or a raving lunatic: sometimes I don’t bow a knee to God’s sovereignty (His governance over my life) until my jaw and neck are sore from having been clenched up all day, and maybe I’ve spat words like bile at someone with whom I became impatient—often in my own family or among my closest friends.  Not cool.

THAT, in turn, got me to thinking about an [1] animé I used to watch incessantly with a very dear friend of mine back when we were both in high school.  Have you ever seen [2] Ghost in the Shell?  That’s the one.  Despite its sometimes-racy content (which seems to have been the standard for most intelligent animé, meaning, that which is not geared towards children or sexual deviants], unfortunately), it contains a valuable lesson for us in letting God take care of our “stuff.”  ”[3] Waiting on the Lord,” if you will.

Let me set the stage for you here.  “Major” Kusanagi is a woman whose body has been replaced with cybernetic parts and whose brain has been largely augmented with various interfaces for accessing all the different kinds of networks and computer systems in the world (the year is 2029, by the way), whose job is fighting high-tech crime.  Kusanagi and her partner, Bateau (who has also been bionically altered/”enhanced” in various ways), basically end up trying to infiltrate this certain place (where and why aren’t relevant at this point).  Ever impetuous, Kusanagi disconnects communications with Bateau and goes in by herself.  A large, auto-piloted, cloaked tank of sorts guards what she’s trying to get to; so, from her position on a ledge in the middle of this structure that looks like a sort of neo-Parthenon, she shoots out the glass ceiling to short out the cloaking mechanism, jumps down from her perch on the ledge and onto the top of the hulking tank.  (Remember, she’s cybernetically enhanced, so folding vectors in a single leap from a height that would shatter “normal” bone is not implausible.)  In an attempt to disable the tank, she tries to rip the cover off of the control box (think “fuse box of the future” here), but try as she might, she cannot.  Her muscles ripple and bulge; the tension builds and builds within her body until finally, she makes one last desperate pull, exerting all her enormous strength and will into bending back the box—and fails: her arm tissues rip, suddenly exposing Kusanagi’s metal endoskeleton in a rushing of blood and rending of flesh.  The Major has successfully yanked her own arms out of their sockets, both shoulder and elbow, and they fall lifeless from the tank; utterly spent, Kusanagi falls limp to the cold marble floor of this temple structure, at the foot of the tank, which has been moving up and down violently in an attempt to buck her off.  Having finally succeeded, the tank reaches for Kusanagi’s head with a clutching device not unlike what modern deep-sea divers use to nab things in geothermal vents.  Slowly, it picks the Major up, dragging her lifeless, arm-less body slowly vertical from the floor, now wet with rain and sharp with glass from the ceiling she so hastily shot out.  When it has her at knee-level, the clutching-device in which rests her expressionless head begins to turn counter-clockwise: it will snap her neck.

Just then, though, Bateau comes in with a police helicopter (I believe … it’s been a long time) and several front-mounted chain guns and utterly destroys the tank.  For Kusanagi, the threat has ended, but at the cost of her own body and energy; she cannot move, nor even blink, being so utterly shattered by the effort she exerted.

Here’s my point.  She could have waited, and called in backup, which she’s fortunate to have had anyway.

How many people try to dive into tackling their problems without a second thought to whether they’ll be able to handle them—only to find that it’s a thousandfold more stressful than they thought?  Still, many, quite including myself, have plowed into it, guns blazing, cleverness at work: I’ll shoot out the ceiling and take it on….  I’ll [do this] and it’ll be enough to work around my problems!  I’m strong enough, I’m tough enough!”  Perhaps especially Christians are ironically vulnerable to this kind of thinking: comforted by verses remembered, like Romans 8:31, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” or Psalm 31:24, “Be strong and let your heart take courage, all you who hope in the LORD,” or again, Psalm 91:10-11, “No evil will befall you, nor will any plague come near your tent. For He will give His angels charge concerning you, to guard you in all your ways,” we forget that we need God’s help in order to be thus blessed.  Those are all wonderful, encouraging verses to lovers of the Most High; but sometimes we get bold and forget that apart from Him, we’re dust.  Solomon knew he couldn’t tackle his problems when he wrote in what has become the book of Proverbs (28:25-26), “An arrogant man stirs up strife, but he who trusts in the LORD will prosper. He who trusts in his own heart is a fool, but he who walks wisely will be delivered,” or Proverbs 16:18, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before stumbling,” or again, Isaiah 5:21, “Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight!”  We forget that God has graciously placed friends and family in our lives to help us through stressful times, and has promised His very own hand in our dire situations if we just slow down long enough to ask and wait on the Lord.

How many times have I done that?  How many times this week have I charged ahead into my problems, tackling them with all my strength and force of will, and with the AK-47 of determination, only to run out of ammo and jump on the problem’s back only to find myself at its feet, spent and rent from limb to metaphorical limb and with my neck in its clutches.  About the time the motor starts whirring, I give up trying to handle it myself, realize I’m completely powerless, bewail my impatience and ingratitude, and fall facedown before the Lord in supplication for His help.  Jesus is swift with the chainguns, folks.  He can vaporize your problems quicker than thought—because He’s all-powerful, and I’m not.  (Anybody who’s known me long enough to see me a nervous wreck over a test or a paper can testify to that!)  Instead of admitting I need backup—shoot, I need God to be first in line!—I just charge in and try to hold on to my prideful way of thinking.  How many times have I been on the brink of breakdown because I tried to do it myself and balance my will, my habits, my expectations, and my stubborn beliefs with the changes God wanted to bring about in those areas?  Hmm.  No one wants to admit that, but anyone who’s experienced it can concur that the answer remains a constant.  Too many.

Kusanagi was restored.  I’m leaving out a lot of plot in saying that, and those familiar with the manga won’t want to take the metaphor too far, but still—she was repaired.  So will God lift us back up when we humble ourselves before Him after a fall.  But the memories, and the consequences of not having waited, will still remain with us, just as the memories and horror of being punished by the tank must have stuck with the Major (I say this with the understanding [hope!] that the reader suspends disbelief in the reality of the animated world).  The Lord is willing to help, but if you go it alone, He’s not going to force Himself on you.  Call on Him, though, and watch as your spirit gains the “[4] peace that passes all understanding.”

… Such were my thoughts last Thursday.  I’ve been putting off writing that for a week, but typing it tonight has the effect of taking one’s own medicine—man, I’m wigging out about this Bio test tomorrow!  But it’s all good, and [5] here’s why.

[I’ve been meaning to post some solid stuff on here that doesn’t fall just into the categories of geekdom and Linux tweakage.  What follows, I hope, won’t be the last post in a different vein!  Have a good week, folks.]

Last Thursday, I decided it had become too pleasant an evening to spend it indoors, although I had a great deal of biology homework to do, and a number of very long chapters to read.  So I drove into my old neighborhood—less than five miles away from my apartment as the crow flies, which is one of the odd things about having lived for almost twenty-one contiguous years in the same general area—and parked just outside the locked gate of the parking lot at the neighborhood pool.  There I sat, reading and studying, until finally it was getting late and my neck had come to express its great distress at my posture.  The pain in my neck, as a I drove home, came to be a sharp pain that didn’t begin to subside until I realized I was as tense as a steel G-string and made a conscious effort to let go of the stress.

That got me to thinking about how I tended to handle my stresses in life: instead of letting God take them and handle them, I tried to shoulder all those things and be Chief Executive Officer of the microcosm that is my life.  Life’s not meant to be like that; the Lord says, “My yoke is easy; My burden is light.”  He’s for real, that’s not a joke; the only catch is, you have to have faith enough to let go of the stress you’re hanging on to.  When I, a Christian, don’t let God take it, I get all overwhelmed and stressed out and—although I jest about the words themselves quite frequently, as my friends know—I literally gnash my teeth in rage and anxiety trying to handle it all.  That is, until I realize “Oh, yeah, God’s Almighty and I’m not.  Maybe I should just let go.”  And I do.  But by that time, I might have become a nervous wreck or a raving lunatic: sometimes I don’t bow a knee to God’s sovereignty (His governance over my life) until my jaw and neck are sore from having been clenched up all day, and maybe I’ve spat words like bile at someone with whom I became impatient—often in my own family or among my closest friends.  Not cool.

THAT, in turn, got me to thinking about an [6] animé I used to watch incessantly with a very dear friend of mine back when we were both in high school.  Have you ever seen [7] Ghost in the Shell?  That’s the one.  Despite its sometimes-racy content (which seems to have been the standard for most intelligent animé, meaning, that which is not geared towards children or sexual deviants], unfortunately), it contains a valuable lesson for us in letting God take care of our “stuff.”  ”[8] Waiting on the Lord,” if you will.

Let me set the stage for you here.  “Major” Kusanagi is a woman whose body has been replaced with cybernetic parts and whose brain has been largely augmented with various interfaces for accessing all the different kinds of networks and computer systems in the world (the year is 2029, by the way), whose job is fighting high-tech crime.  Kusanagi and her partner, Bateau (who has also been bionically altered/”enhanced” in various ways), basically end up trying to infiltrate this certain place (where and why aren’t relevant at this point).  Ever impetuous, Kusanagi disconnects communications with Bateau and goes in by herself.  A large, auto-piloted, cloaked tank of sorts guards what she’s trying to get to; so, from her position on a ledge in the middle of this structure that looks like a sort of neo-Parthenon, she shoots out the glass ceiling to short out the cloaking mechanism, jumps down from her perch on the ledge and onto the top of the hulking tank.  (Remember, she’s cybernetically enhanced, so folding vectors in a single leap from a height that would shatter “normal” bone is not implausible.)  In an attempt to disable the tank, she tries to rip the cover off of the control box (think “fuse box of the future” here), but try as she might, she cannot.  Her muscles ripple and bulge; the tension builds and builds within her body until finally, she makes one last desperate pull, exerting all her enormous strength and will into bending back the box—and fails: her arm tissues rip, suddenly exposing Kusanagi’s metal endoskeleton in a rushing of blood and rending of flesh.  The Major has successfully yanked her own arms out of their sockets, both shoulder and elbow, and they fall lifeless from the tank; utterly spent, Kusanagi falls limp to the cold marble floor of this temple structure, at the foot of the tank, which has been moving up and down violently in an attempt to buck her off.  Having finally succeeded, the tank reaches for Kusanagi’s head with a clutching device not unlike what modern deep-sea divers use to nab things in geothermal vents.  Slowly, it picks the Major up, dragging her lifeless, arm-less body slowly vertical from the floor, now wet with rain and sharp with glass from the ceiling she so hastily shot out.  When it has her at knee-level, the clutching-device in which rests her expressionless head begins to turn counter-clockwise: it will snap her neck.

Just then, though, Bateau comes in with a police helicopter (I believe … it’s been a long time) and several front-mounted chain guns and utterly destroys the tank.  For Kusanagi, the threat has ended, but at the cost of her own body and energy; she cannot move, nor even blink, being so utterly shattered by the effort she exerted.

Here’s my point.  She could have waited, and called in backup, which she’s fortunate to have had anyway.

How many people try to dive into tackling their problems without a second thought to whether they’ll be able to handle them—only to find that it’s a thousandfold more stressful than they thought?  Still, many, quite including myself, have plowed into it, guns blazing, cleverness at work: I’ll shoot out the ceiling and take it on….  I’ll [do this] and it’ll be enough to work around my problems!  I’m strong enough, I’m tough enough!”  Perhaps especially Christians are ironically vulnerable to this kind of thinking: comforted by verses remembered, like Romans 8:31, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” or Psalm 31:24, “Be strong and let your heart take courage, all you who hope in the LORD,” or again, Psalm 91:10-11, “No evil will befall you, nor will any plague come near your tent. For He will give His angels charge concerning you, to guard you in all your ways,” we forget that we need God’s help in order to be thus blessed.  Those are all wonderful, encouraging verses to lovers of the Most High; but sometimes we get bold and forget that apart from Him, we’re dust.  Solomon knew he couldn’t tackle his problems when he wrote in what has become the book of Proverbs (28:25-26), “An arrogant man stirs up strife, but he who trusts in the LORD will prosper. He who trusts in his own heart is a fool, but he who walks wisely will be delivered,” or Proverbs 16:18, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before stumbling,” or again, Isaiah 5:21, “Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight!”  We forget that God has graciously placed friends and family in our lives to help us through stressful times, and has promised His very own hand in our dire situations if we just slow down long enough to ask and wait on the Lord.

How many times have I done that?  How many times this week have I charged ahead into my problems, tackling them with all my strength and force of will, and with the AK-47 of determination, only to run out of ammo and jump on the problem’s back only to find myself at its feet, spent and rent from limb to metaphorical limb and with my neck in its clutches.  About the time the motor starts whirring, I give up trying to handle it myself, realize I’m completely powerless, bewail my impatience and ingratitude, and fall facedown before the Lord in supplication for His help.  Jesus is swift with the chainguns, folks.  He can vaporize your problems quicker than thought—because He’s all-powerful, and I’m not.  (Anybody who’s known me long enough to see me a nervous wreck over a test or a paper can testify to that!)  Instead of admitting I need backup—shoot, I need God to be first in line!—I just charge in and try to hold on to my prideful way of thinking.  How many times have I been on the brink of breakdown because I tried to do it myself and balance my will, my habits, my expectations, and my stubborn beliefs with the changes God wanted to bring about in those areas?  Hmm.  No one wants to admit that, but anyone who’s experienced it can concur that the answer remains a constant.  Too many.

Kusanagi was restored.  I’m leaving out a lot of plot in saying that, and those familiar with the manga won’t want to take the metaphor too far, but still—she was repaired.  So will God lift us back up when we humble ourselves before Him after a fall.  But the memories, and the consequences of not having waited, will still remain with us, just as the memories and horror of being punished by the tank must have stuck with the Major (I say this with the understanding [hope!] that the reader suspends disbelief in the reality of the animated world).  The Lord is willing to help, but if you go it alone, He’s not going to force Himself on you.  Call on Him, though, and watch as your spirit gains the “[9] peace that passes all understanding.”

… Such were my thoughts last Thursday.  I’ve been putting off writing that for a week, but typing it tonight has the effect of taking one’s own medicine—man, I’m wigging out about this Bio test tomorrow!  But it’s all good, and [10] here’s why.