Unraveled . . . .

Today as I drove to work, I couldn't help a bit of melancholy.

The weather was cool, traffic was light, John Denver was breezy (yes, John Denver!), the mountains were august, the sun brilliant, . . .

and I was melancholy.

As I drove I began to think of Abraham, Moses, and Isaiah for some reason. Each of these individuals had an amazing encounter with God. Abraham (while still "Abram") encountered the God of covenants. During a dream at night terrors seized Abram as he saw the torch of God move between the divided carcasses of the animal sacrifices. Abram was undone.

Moses encountered God first as an enigma. Moses saw a bush that was on fire and yet not burning. He went closer, he heard God, he took off his shoes. He was undone, his life would never be the same.

Isaiah lost a friend and a hero. When King Uzziah died, Isaiah wept and went into deep mourning. During his depression, Isaiah had a vision. Angels flew about, the holiness and awesomeness of God shook the foundation and pillars of the Temple.

God spoke, Isaiah trembled.

When Isaiah dared to speak in this holy company, the words out of his mouth were "Woe is me, I am undone!"

As I understand it, the Hebrew here has the meaning of being unzipped from the belly to the neck so that your insides spill out.

Okay, maybe I'm stretching it a bit, but it was not a happy thought for Isaiah. He felt unraveled in the presence of God.

That kind of describes my melancholy today . . . I feel unraveled. Like a ball of yarn that has lost its consistency, I am loose and dangly.

Like a sweater pulled apart thread-by-thread, I am undone.

I look at the majesty around me, the beauty and holiness and awe-fulness of it all, and I find myself undone.

It is not a bad feeling necessarily, but it is a bit unnerving.

I feel unraveled.

Like a joke with no punch line, or a sitcom with no laugh track, or a book with no thesis or direction, or a story with no meaning . . .

I feel undone.

How do I explain what is happening in my heart when words seem hard to find?

Life is good, things are fine, but I feel . . . well, what?

I think that this is a normal human emotion, and it is one I've encountered before. I'm not depressed; in fact, I'm not really sad at all! I'm actually smiling as I type these words!

I sit here in the midst of an august band of people, activities, and stuff, and I feel a bit unraveled.

Maybe I'm just relaxing . . . loosening things a bit in preparation for the next battle or the next activity or the next thing.

Maybe it is a "Selah," a sort of pause of spirit that causes me to reflect a bit.

It is a good thing, I think, to be unraveled before God and his wonderful creation.

So, like Paul, I will relish in my unraveling, in my undoing, in my weakness . . . for when I am weak, God is strong. When I am undone, God still does. When I am unraveled, Jesus holds all things together.

I smile, I sigh. I listen to U2 and Larry Norman and Bob Dylan (John Denver was making me too melancholy, I think).

I will go find some Jonny Lang. I will relish in the tones, in the thoughts, in the music. I will unravel before God and just be. I will let myself be undone so that he can renew me.

What a wonderful life!

Thanks for reading!

How the media covers female VP candidates . . .

Another interesting note from National Review (this time the September 29 edition). This note is about Sarah Palin and compares media coverage of her run for VP with similar coverage of a certain Geraldine Ferraro.

After Sarah Palin was nominated for vice president, and mauled by the establishment press, conservatives had the bright idea of seeing what the New York Times had written about Geraldine Ferraro, when she was nominated about 25 years ago. This is what the paper had to say on July 3, 1984: “Where is it written that only senators are qualified to become President? . . . Or where is it written that mere representatives aren’t qualified, like Geraldine Ferraro of Queens? . . . Where is it written that governors and mayors, like Dianne Feinstein of San Francisco, are too local, too provincial? . . . Presidential candidates have always chosen their running mates for reasons of practical demography, not idealized democracy. . . . What a splendid system, we say to ourselves, that takes little-known men, tests them in high office and permits them to grow into statesmen. . . . Why shouldn’t a little-known woman have the same opportunity to grow?” The New York Times takes its opportunity every election.

Thanks for reading!

Obama and Bill Ayers: A Radical Connection?

Here is an article from the September 15, 2008 edition of National Review that I thought some of you would like:

"Bill Ayers is an unrepentant terrorist responsible for various bombings. He is also a friend of Barack Obama, who now dismisses Ayers as just “some guy who lives in my neighborhood” — albeit a guy who, along with his wife and fellow Weather Underground terrorist Bernardine Dohrn, hosted Obama’s political coming-out party at their home in 1995. In fact, Obama and Ayers had a close working relationship. They sat together on the board of the Woods Fund, a left-wing charity, and collaborated on an education “reform” project called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, begun in 1995 when an Ayers proposal won a huge foundation grant. Ayers ran the CAC’s operational arm; Obama chaired the board. Together, they were responsible for distributing over $100 million — with no discernible improvement in Chicago’s schools but great advantage for their ideological allies. This summer, after being assured of access, frequent National Review contributor Stanley Kurtz was barred from reviewing the CAC records housed at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where Ayers is a professor of education. As we went to press, the ban had been lifted after considerable public pressure. But the attempts to suppress this story continue. After a conservative group ran an ad attacking Obama’s association with Ayers, Obama asked the feds to investigate the group. And he says that Bush is trampling our civil liberties?"

That's right, a vote for Obama is a vote for people like Ayers.

I just thought you might like to know.

Thanks for reading!