The dark side of light.

So, it occurs to me, that many people have no concept of what Christianity is.  I know the Islamic community believes we are all sinners because they hear us declare that we are a Christian nation, and then they see lady Gaga, and wonder what sort of God would support that. The Atheistic community looks at us talk about our heady theology, and our scientific quarries, watching us claim the name of Christ and then turn around and bomb a family planning clinic, or turn our backs on someone because they didn't live up to the standard. If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the light is not in us.  Are we truly so depraved that we can call ourselves Christian if we ignore the very words of Christ with our behavior yet condemn a man for his sin?
We live on the darker side of light.
I recently came to an understanding that I am not who I thought I had been for the last 20 years. In fact I wasn't even alive until roughly 10years ago. I look back into my memory and see darkness.  Not the theological sort but real relentless darkness, I can't even see myself back there.
This brings me to a place where I realize I don't know who I am.
Or rather who I've been.  I lived as a secret for years, unknowing of my words. What I liked, or wanted.. I was asleep. Literally dead without knowing it.
I was a prisoner in my mind.
Now I have grown up in the Church, and I have never known separation from God, so how can I know where my brother is if I have never seen his world?
I cannot.
I have grown afraid of the self I never met, and now am at first discovering I hadn't lived yet.
This stuck a fear of great proportion in me, if I was born somewhere in my 9th grade year, then who lived my life, what was he like, what had he done that I will have to account for?
I live with such fear or this that I surpassed it and now I have lost it.
But to my point, I have never lived away from the grace of Christ, but I have lived in secret, and I must new ask myself.. where do you go when you realize your life didn't happen?
When the walls come crashing to he floor. I know my teachers would say run to God, but how does one run to a being not physically in their world? How does one  surrender to he that cannot be seen?
This I do not know.
But faith as I am told is to believe even though there is no tangible evidence, and evidence in my experience is not so objective as it is, so evidence without imperacle process is even less so.  But my heart and soul and mind can't be manipulated like that, not that well, and that concurrently not that perfectly, so thee must be truth there.. truth even though truth cannot be seen so scientifically.  I have resolved that as I had not lived until so recently it serves to ask had I ever been saved from myself? If no, then what have I been doing? Could that exain it?
What had he done that I must account for? Is there grace for me?
Is there mercy for me?
Is there love for me?
Has he even met me?
These are the cries of a newly realized heart, cries from the darker side of light.

When Truth defies Logic

So, one day I'm sitting at Church (cliche I know), and I had been worrying about what on earth I was going to do with my life.  Work was seemingly not an option, school had become a non-reality, and life just seemed to be spiraling out of control.  Then (yes chliche, no fire or visions I promise) an Idea kind of just popped into my head. The Honor Academy.
Five years ago, back in my days as an Angel (metaphorical, so no, I'm not insane, just used to be really really saint-like), I attended a Youth Conference, Acquire the Fire.  This was the catalyst that really sparked my passion for youth, for the hurting, for God.  I worshiped there, like never before, and from there I ended up launching into a radical Christianity that infected every part of my life.  I was so not you're Sunday-Wednesday christian (little c).  God was everything.  While I was there, I took the opportunity to listen to a speaker discuss the Honor Academy, and from that moment, I've dreamed of going.  Now, for one reason or another, it just wasn't possible.  No money, or a job, or a girl friend, it just wasn't happening.  I went to work at Camp Shamineau, and that fire just grew hotter.  Until one very wonderful day (note the sarcasm) when my whole life just crashed.. and then life seems to want to see just how far down it can crash.  So like I said, I'm sitting at Upper Room,   and the idea just kind of pops into my head, so, I hop on my phone and fill out the application (not really expecting much).  In the weeks that follow I just can't seem to shake this idea.  Honor Academy... phone calls, scrounging up the initial fees, more phone calls, conversations, and interviews,  and the idea just keeps getting more rooted in my mind.  Then came the excruciating wait-week.  Waiting... just waiting to hear back, to find out if I am going to be able to go.. very painful.
It was crazy, I officially left the era of teenagedness on Tuesday the 5th of July, reaching my second decade of life (scary thought), and it was Tuesday, at 3:25pm that I got the phone call... I was accepted.
Now, I don't express a lot of emotion usually, and I'm almost never overcome by it, but I was having a tough time breathing hearing that news, I was basically in shock.
However, it seemed that my fees were not all paid. Now there was this $200 Housing deposit that needed to be paid within the first two weeks.  Scary thought for a poor ex-college kid (really college drop-out *Cringes!*) with no job, but I had to believe that if this is in fact where God wanted me this year, then He's on tap for making it happen, cuz I certainly can't.  I had no clue where I was getting this 200 bucks from, and yet another crazy moment happened... I got a check from a friend (for my birthday ): ) The check was for the whole 200!
God made it clear in my head that this is happening... and He has continued to amaze me since then.

Now for those of you who know me, you know how (obnoxiously) logical I am, you know I don't accept ANYTHING blindly, so the fact that I am a Christian probably screws with some of your heads, but I know that this God cannot be a placebo, too many coincidences and ridiculous things have happened in my life from how I am still alive, to how on earth this is a reality, theres just no way chance can make it happen its a statistical improbability bordering on impossibility.

God is moving, and I, being as screwed up and fallen as I am, should be the first to say, no fable can do what has happened in my life and no law of physics can account for it, no psychological theory, or philosophical postulation can encompass my experience, and for that I bow to truth above comfortability, and I am grateful that I have had the chance to see it happen.

Anyway, that's been my life these last months, I hope this meant something to those of you who took the time to read it all... God bless.