whats REALLY going on....

every morning, my team and i spend a few minutes together doing a “devotional” [dear god, i despise that term. amen.] my nature tells conflicts with my desire to be cooperative and i spend of the time fighting off Defiance. BUT, today was my day to lead devos and devos remind me of CAMP. and i love camp. so this morning, i shared my crazy, half-baked ideas with my team. they probably thought i was nuts, especially with the Lord of the Rings references….. i’ve been listening to this song [that reminds me of my buddy Travis, from home] called “Come On Up to the House” by Tom Waits. its a great song. i recommend it. but in the song, he says “this world is not my home. i’m just passing through.” and it got me thinking about the way that things REALLY ARE. not the way that we perceive them but the way that things are. this world is not our home. its just a tiny portion of the great reality. then i got to thinking about bible studies at the Grove. at the Grove [the church i go to in New Orleans] we have been talking about David and the first kings of Israel. saul was annointed to become King and started off with good intentions. but he was corrupted and then David became King. i feel like i am a lot like david. why? when samuel comes to Jesse’s house to anoint the future king, david wasn’t in there with his brothers, trying to become king. he was out, in the field, hanging out with the sheep. and when david shows up at the Valley of Elah, he hasn’t shown up to show how awesome God is. he, again, was out in the field with the sheep, bebopping around. David didn’t seem to me to have a high personal agenda and he had amazing faith. that’s awesome. last wednesday, we talked about David taking a census and why that was a sin [1 chronicles 21 and 2 samuel 24] having said all of that, i think the Kings of Israel were a lot more like the Stewards of Gondor. The Stewards of Gondor [naturally, this is a Lord of the Rings reference] were a set of wise men that were in charge of the land of gondor until the time that the true king returned to the throne. the kingdom was not THEIRS. they were just taking care of it for a while. in Tolkien’s books, the last Steward of Gondor, lord denethor, goes off the deep end and gets it in his head that his sons were going to take the throne and forgets that his job was just to take of the kingdom and it was in no way “his”. if he had been thinking about the way things REALLY were, it wouldn’t have been a problem. lord denethor needed to remember that this world was not his home and he was just passing through. i think we all need to remember that. This World is Not My Home. i am JUST PASSING THROUGH. the trials and tiny details that we allow to consume our lives and and the ideas we let dictate our actions are not the big picture. they are just the world. they are not our home. we are just passing through until we “come on up to the house”.