The Show & Stuff

20 October 2010

Another Month!

Lots of stuff has gone down. Moving out of my asbestos-ridden home because the building complex is being bought out (really back). Only 8 weeks left of school. I’ve been around the state, even preaching for a youth rally in the NW. I’ve worked at a tween camp (but that may have been just before the last post) and had two spiritual emphasis weeks at the school. Soon I’ll be headed out to do a spiritual emphasis week for the school in the NW, followed by a youth retreat weekend while I’m up there.

Right now, the show weekend is on. The Royal Hobart Show is basically a huge state fair (here’s nostalgia for the Cocke County Fair) with horse races mixed in. Oh, and the show bags. The show bags are their way of getting heaps of money blown on…not much. Cheap toys and candy in bags—except for the really expensive ones. Gets are crazy for them. The rides and tickets are fairly expensive from my experience, too. But, everything is here.

I know you guys have been dying for anecdotes of Aussie life, so I’ll give you a couple that are fresh on my mind to day. Cotton candy is fairy floss. Community parks are called “reserves” and are all over the place—sometimes simply patches of grass with perhaps a bench, though some are fairly nice. Makes them sound so green! I’m certain many of you have already been made aware of boots and bonnets and bins, taking out the rubbish and having a go.

In a complete turn in direction and abrupt halt in flow, while at the show today, I went to the church’s health-screening station. Met the woman who brought CHIP to Australia. She’s from the mainland. After a nice long conversation with her, she wanted to give me a book (because I’d only checked interest in spiritual development—I didn’t want flyers in addition to the updates I’d already have to all the upcoming programs) which they’d run out of, so she was hoping I might return to the show this weekend. So I let her know it’s no worries, I’m with the church; I’m a volunteer from America. So she asked what part, and I told her I was from South Carolina, and (as you get used to doing) asked her if she knew where that was. Her response was surprising to me: “Of course, I’m from America!”

I was shocked. I struggled to analyze what she’d just said, disbelieving that she’d spoken with an American accent. Turns out she’s from Kansas (I hope I got that right…), and as she was telling me so, I realized she most certainly was full American. Whoa! I haven’t even been here 4 months, and I did not recognize an American when I heard one! And for intrigue’s sake, you ought to know that she had no idea I was American either. We just stop noticing! Crazy.

Oh! That’s what else has happened since the last entry: while I was away on that youth rally speaking, my bedroom window was smashed and my house was robbed. You can check out the photos of me heartbroken (insert sarcasm emoticon) on facebook. It is quite ironic though, considering my last entry. Well, they made me realize that I did own some of the stuff—like $1000 worth. Ironically, it was the things that were gifts that I was most hurt by losing. After all that blubbering. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know about it so I could tell you not to store up for yourselves treasures on Earth, where moth and rust destroy, and thieves break in and steal. Instead, store up treasure in Heaven, where moth can’t eat up, rust can’t corrode, and thieves will never break in and steal. I know my treasure; His name is Jesus. But I hope your heart can be added to the spoils.

~While we were still sinners, He endured the shame; how can I ever be ashamed?

-Colton J. Stollenmaier, M.I.A.

Birthday Thoughts & Well-wishes

29 August 2010

Happy Birthday

It’s been sparse and rare lately, and for that I apologize. There are many things I could have mused and shared—should have—but many of those lessons and struggles have come and gone, and some are still works in progress. Before long, I still plan to write a part of my story. I’ll also write the story I created for a Friday night vespers program—first-person improvisation, with just a basic idea thought up in my mind beforehand. Much came as I spoke, and I realized that God was giving me the ability to do it. I was floored. In any case, though, it was a good story, and deserves to be retold, not just created once and forgotten. I also want to write about discipline—which, incidentally, is one of my coming speaking engagements. On Fire, the title will be. It’s for a youth rally.

But for today…for today, I’m not sure. Perhaps that I have, so far, had my birthday celebrated 10 different times by individuals/groups. My small group surprised me, I was sung to at the Primary School chapel, taken out for dinner by one of the school families (their son and I share the same birthday), surprised with a special card by the 2/3/4 class, a cake by the 5/6 class, a song by one of my Friday Bible Studies (Truth and Dare), a card by one of our year 10 girls, another by two girls from 2/3/4, a cake by the group I was singing with for a church program this weekend, I shared a cake with someone else for their birthday at our church luncheon, and I’m going out for dinner with the local youth tonight.

What no one here realizes is that last year, my birthday was the first day of school, and it was full-on! I had a front desk shift that started at 6am, a full day of classes mixed with work, and finished the day off with another work shift that ended at, I think, 8 that night. First day of school and three jobs. The only birthday celebration was that my sister had me over for an early dinner (I had 1 free hour that day), and we ended up arguing through it (mostly a result of my pride). Really, if nothing at all had happened for my birthday, it would have been better than last year.

I’m not writing about this to brag or anything, it’s just that…I’ve been wondering what it is that I can learn from this. First off, I was expecting this to be a lonely year, but it hasn’t been at all! And in that, I suppose, I’m offering everyone back home, those who missed me and felt my absence on a day that they figured should have been celebrating my life a little, some comfort. I was well taken care of. They’ve treated me far better than I ever could have imagined. But the question remains: Why?

Sure, they could just be ultra-friendly people, and their kindness surpasses the hospitality of the Jews the way our righteousness is meant to surpass the righteousness of the Pharisees. Maybe they’re just that awesome. I’ll give them a little credit.

But I don’t think the back-home folk are any worse.

So, when you’re doing a science experiment, you’ve got to figure out what the variables are. Well, the other side of the planet…nah, we turn 360 every 24 hours. The opposite hemisphere—well, that just means it’s cold instead of hot here, and while I grant that many people are irritable in the heat, the States are pretty well taken care of in the A/C department. And cold weather often makes people more, yup you guessed it, cold. And no, we haven’t been snuggling ‘round the fireplace, bundled up and sipping cuppas while the Holiday music tickles our spines.

The only thing I can think of…is me. Have I become a better person? Is there less self and more selflessness? Am I a good friend now? Is pride losing the battle to humility? Could it be that my abrasiveness is being sanded smooth by the Chief Cornerstone? What’s going on?

Because when I think about it, I see plenty that I’m doing wrong. I can end the day full of regrets. But when God helps me to look past all the failures, there are things going on in my life that remind of one of those people—you know, those people that you think are how Christians maybe oughta be. The rare ones.

Bringing people to church with them ones. Simple little encouragements toward God ones. And don’t, PLEASE don’t, think I’m trying to brag about what I’ve been doing. When I stand against the mark I’ve set for myself—His name is Jesus—I’m not even sure my arrow is hitting the target, let alone nearing the bull’s eye. But I’m not really sure who this guy is…is he different than the one who left? Is it totally context? I am who I am because I am where I am? Or is it just a couple of things that happen to make me look better? No different, just a couple of nice and pretty actions?

Or is the love being shown to me suggesting that maybe I really am a more love-deserving person than I used to be? Is it that it was the rarity that I was invited to do stuff before becuase I wasn’t out there making everyone else feel loved? Am I now? Or is everyone just nice because they feel bad because I’m on the other side of the planet and I’m their charity case?

When it comes down to it, it doesn’t really matter. The end of it all is twofold: one, be happy and thankful for the incredible amount of blessings you could count in your life if you knew how to count blessings (start with your big toenail and work from there). Two, live worthy of love, but never forget that even as long as we’re growing in love, we’ll still never be worthy of Love. But that’s ok; it’s a gift anyway.

~While we were still sinners, He endured the shame; how can I ever be ashamed?

-Colton J. Stollenmaier, M.I.A.

Tonight, At Least

10 August 2010

Tonight, At Least

Lord, tonight, at least, I’ll get it right. Before I lay down to sleep, weary from another unfinished day, I’ll take just this moment to do a thing worthwhile. I come before You now, as I should ever be, with all my heart. I give You, at least, this moment. Tonight I say I love You. In this moment, I say You’re my everything. For this short time together, I commit to You everything that I am. Lord, tonight, at least, I’ll live for you—if only as I sleep. And so I’ll wake, by Your grace, and I have hope, at least, for tomorrow.

Here For...

20 July 2010

Well Done (Insert Sarcasm)

I was talking to a couple of students in my office today. One was an Adventist, the other was not even a church-goer—which is a recurring pattern I've been seeing. And it is beautiful. It's rather awesome how God has worked to merge lives together. The deep truth now, though, is that this can either be the sealing of two or the undoing of a pair. Depending upon their decisions and interactions, and how resolute the cedar of Lebanon is—how near the water, how deeply its roots dispersed through and into the earth—there could well be two souls out of the Kingdom, rather than one added. Pray, readers, that those on God's side will hear His whisperings and learn to live in His love, so that their friend will become their compatriot, and both will come Home.

The non-Adventist friend of mine was saying something to the effect of “Yeah, I don't get why you pastors do that. Why would you go so far away—from where they don't even have Vegemite—not even getting paid, to the complete other side of the world to do this?” I began to sputter some kind of answer, trying to get somewhere about how I ended up there instead of like some third world type place, and I guess I was going to go from there to how God called me, and maybe I was thinking about going on to “saving souls” or some rubbish like that, but it ended up being drowned out and skipped around, and diversion took the whole question, the whole moment away.

Peter counsels us to be ready at every moment to give a reason for the hope we have (1 Peter 3:15). This was one of those moments that people who are passionate about Jesus crave like Adventists crave haystacks. It was the perfect opportunity, THE reason I am here in Tasmania, and I had no response. I HAD NO RESPONSE?!!! This is the thing I live for! Hello, His name is JESUS!

In the end, I'm thankful I went tongue-tied and lip-flop like I'd just gotten dental work done. Why? Because the next words of that statement Peter makes go like this “with gentleness and respect.” I figure I would have done one of the following if God had let me go on:
1. Disrespected the student, making it sound like I was better than him.
2. Become another cliché and “yeah, whatever” pastor who lost any chance of touching him
3. The portrait of Jesus would have suffered another blurring—and we already do enough damage to the picture He's painting when we try to pick up the brush!

There was another one, but I forgot. But the real thing is this: what am I doing here if I don't even know how to answer that question? It really made me start thinking about where I am spiritually, and I think I'm a fish living in a centimeter of water—it's not really working. How hard is it to say “Jesus”? All I had to do was start there and the rest would have come:

“It's Jesus, man. Maybe you haven't gotten a good look at what it looks like when people really get a good look at what Jesus did for us, a good feel for what His love is like. But let me tell you, when you have felt it, and you really get an idea of who this Jesus really is, it changes you. And all you want to do is whatever He asks. And you want other people to know the love He has for them. So when He calls you to go somewhere, you go. The money doesn't matter—I was going to go to a place with no running water or electricity. I would've been drinking rain water and eating rice! But I don't care where I end up or what food I do or don't have. I just want to tell people about Jesus. And wherever He ends up thinking I should be, that's where I'm going.”

I had no idea what I was going to write there. I just started with “It's Jesus, man.” But if that had been all I said, it would have been the right answer. The example of Jesus is always the right answer.

Then I started thinking a little bit more. And I began to wonder whether the question really was so easy to answer. “Why AM I here?” What am I doing? Obviously, I have already forgotten. I have the right answer, “Jesus,” and that's the reason I'm hanging out with the kids and trying to make the spiritual components better—but is it just a cliché to me? Does it mean anything in my heart? Does it really mean anything when I wake up in the morning? When I'm playing with the kids? When I'm having a conversation with them? When I get home in the evenings and choose what to do with the hours I have left?

To be honest, where I've been lately, who I've been lately, I don't know why I'm here. With the life I've been living, the passion I haven't had, it's pretty pointless. I'm not really sure why I'm living—I don't think it's been for God.

I'm tired of random Christ encounters. I want to fall down at His feet in awe every morning. I want to hear His whispers of love and guidance every moment. I want to think with His mind, feel with His heart, and see the world through His eyes every minute. I want to keep Him on my mind, and seek to know Him in every decision. “Trust in the LORD with all your heart; lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways know Him, and He will make your paths straight.” More on that verse later.

Last Thought

In the end, I'm glad the moment came and made me think, but I shouldn't have ever needed it. I should've been ready for it. Will I get a second chance at that one? God I hope so! But if He doesn't manage to give me another shot, what can I do about it now? Live a better life now, that's what. Ask the right questions. Live with my heart wide open.

 

~While we were still sinners, He endured the shame; how can I ever be ashamed?

-Colton J. Stollenmaier, M.I.A.

Pushover

15 July 2010

Tender Heart

“Love does not rejoice in evil”

I cried today over a story of a man dying in his mid 50s. Just a little anecdote; no significance or relationship to me, no special heaviness or spiritual emphasis. It wasn't said what disease he was dying from. It didn't need to be. The unnamed and silent killer is always assumed: cancer.

The human heart holds a special hate for cancer. The reason is fairly simple: it's everything that isn't meant to be in the experience of humanity.

God never wanted us to experience evil. He wanted to keep the knowledge of good vs. evil from being a part of the world we knew. We said no. We said we'd like to be our own judge, and thus our own God, and thus our own life force. But this can only lead to mutation, degeneration, and death.

Cancer is the gravest analogy, the foulest irony, the most bitter object lesson. It reveals sin all to perfectly. In many respects, it should be considered an autoimmune disease; it is defeat by your own body. Your own cells become useless masses of tissue—not really even life; kind of what we say fetuses are when we rip them up and suck them out. And so they keep on growing and reproducing, until they interfere with your body's functioning. They're the thorns that grow up and choke out the life before it can grow to its fullness.

The worst is when it is malignant. That's when pieces break off and migrate to other places, where they can start a whole new infection. The spread of disease—the spread of sin in your life. You can see now why leukemia is such a horrific form of cancer.

Now plenty of medical professionals could come in and tell me “Well, that's not entirely true” or “There's way more kinds of cancer,” but the point is the same. And the points I've made are true to at least a layman's level.

I'm not going to explain out this analogy terribly much. Some things you won't get until way later. Some things you'll probably get that I didn't. But I leave it to you to consider how much like sin cancer is—what an analogy and irony and object lesson it is.

I heard mention of a study recently of at least a form of cancer that was contagious. I'm not sure if it was just one form or a study suggesting “turns out you CAN catch it!” And I don't care. I'm just angry. That was the only way the analogy was incomplete. That was the only need of HIV; the infection that we spread through our idolatry, which then makes us kill ourselves, or at least our every defense from even the slightest evil.

Getting Softer

“Love hopes all things”

I'd had tears in my eyes just before this story, this time for a glory moment. A little boy and girl were in a boat that flipped upstream of Niagara Falls. The little boy was saved just feet from the tumultuous cloudy mist of incredible force that pummels the rocky scape below. First thing out of her mouth to her savior—the only man who cared to take action as the rest of the world looked on at this exciting spectacle—was a question: “Where's my brother.” The man looks up and then whispers in the girl's ear, and her hands cling together over her heart. He had seen the boy being sloshed and smashed upon the rocks and through the waves. He was far from rescue and far too close to the edge.

The words the man had whispered? “You need to say a little prayer for your brother.”

And the dark cloud of death, at the last moment when all hope was lost, became the sweet caress of a soft mist, floating him down to the bottom, where he would be rescued. All of his wounds and scars came from the raging rapids before his fall. All of them came from the tumbling and turning he'd done up before the great plunge. No harm at all was done by the drop itself.

Draw your own analogies, because there are plenty. But don't miss the big idea: it was a miracle.

And it glorified God.

Oh yeah

“Love bears all things”

What I was really wanting to say this time around was simply this: I'm not claiming to be super-spiritual or have any rights to say I'm closer to God than anyone else.

But I know I hunger and thirst for righteousness. So I know I'll be filled.

Because I hunger, because I thirst—because I yearn and burn and seek and deeply desire and dig my nails in and claw—I know that God will make me a righteous man, though at present all I know is my weakness. And so I know that He is changing me.

And the evidence for me is this: in a world that tells us to grow colder and more familiar with pain and sickness and death, it grows stranger to my eyes. Though I have watched enough filthy entertainment and killed thousands in bloody games of war and violence to numb my affections, and though my heart has been turned to stone by abuse and let-down and sickening travesties, though the scar tissue has grown thick and the callous deep from the rough familiarity with sin, yet am I unfamiliar. Each new knell of the death bell hurts more than the last. Each new story of pain cuts with lighter and still lighter blows. I'm changing. I'm growing soft. And He's to blame.

~While we were still sinners, He endured the shame; how can I ever be ashamed?

-Colton J. Stollenmaier, M.I.A.

Just Plain Wrong

11 July 2010

So Wrong

I think one of the greatest things in life is not the times I've been write, but the overwhelming majority of the time that I've been wrong. I can't think of any sweeter medicine than realizing “wow, I was SO wrong” so many times. And that medicine is certain to have effect.

Really, by simply making that statement you're undoing it. But, like salvation, blazing the trail of brokenness takes more than just confession. The bush is heavy there, and the work is tough. Self-seeking is one of those things that is so innate in us that its roots are often deeper than we've ever looked before. Yet this too holds its own reward. You rarely learn so much about yourself as when you prayerfully delve into the depths of your own soul. There, where bone and marrow merge inconspicuously, God brings His light. And with the light of His presence, the scalpel of His word can be wielded. It's time for surgery.

The blade begins to slice through death and decay. Bone and marrow find their meeting place, and all the empty holes and infectious abscesses are revealed. It's amazing how much you never knew had found its way into your very identity. Your character was being altered without any consciousness on your part. You thought you were perfectly healthy. It turns out that was only because you had no idea what health really feels like.

I once had a friend who had mononucleosis for weeks without knowing it. They thought the way they were feeling was perfectly fine; they'd been sick for so long that they thought it was the norm. It wasn't until the sickness was finally alleviated that they learned how life was meant to feel.

In the same way, we all live in shadows. At worst, we are the characters of Plato's philosophy, chained to a pole in a cave, seeing only shadows of images of life. How painful it is to be drug into the sun! But what liberation can be found there! At best, we have been rescued from darkness, and are walking in His marvelous light. With myopia. And the less you think your vision is off, the more terribly you need eye surgery.

I'm stumbling through my bright new world with a pair of lenses that are probably built for someone who's in need of just the slightest aid in their vision, when images are far and small—and I'm legally blind.

So how wrong do you find yourself? How short-sighted are you? Maybe it's time for a checkup.

It's Getting Better...

The crazy thing is, your err might be in the very light of truth; you may well be drawing your conclusions from the truth of the new life in Christ you have been born into. The problem is that you have no idea how bad your eyes are. You've been living in a cave all your life, and your eyes have gone bad. And if a man's eyes are bad, his whole body is full of darkness—and how great is that darkness!

This is why, each time you read the same passage of scripture, you can find something different—something deeper and novel. It's because you've gotten a new pair of glasses since then, and taken another dose of medicine. The light is going deeper, the blade is cutting further. And as your wrongs are revealed and your health returns, you see better and still better. And life feels better and still better.

In this manner, we come to maturity in faith—a maturity that condemns our immaturity. You see, now that we can see more clearly the beauty around us, we can also see our stark contrast with it. And so, day by day, we recognize further our desperate need of God and His detergent to wash us clean. It only comes in one scent—and at first, it's never pleasant. It only comes in one color—and at first, everything looks red. But the aroma that soon fills our nostrils, and the purity that follows the cleansing, is more wondrous than anything we've ever known. Each time, we receive a deeper clean than we've ever experienced, so it never loses its excitement or novelty.

But despite the incredible new purity we receive, the very cleansing sharpens our sight, and so we see all the more our depravity. We are desperate for God and His love to cover us. So you see, the closer you draw to God, the more you recognize your desperate state, the incredible extent of your wrongness, and your total need of eye surgery.

There's something that you need to understand; all this time, we've been thinking, as far as the eyes go, that we've only got problems with short-sightedness and blurred vision (there's a whole lot of gray in our lives [that's something for another time])—just a pair of glasses can correct that! But the truth is, there's something far more grave than that going on; we've got cataracts.

The scales on our eyes threaten all hope of vision, and just living life here on earth tends to make them grow. But Jesus is the Great Physician, and time with Him makes those scales flake off, bit by bit. And when the log in our eyes begins to be chipped away, we can see clearly the reality of the speck in our neighbor's eye; it's true nature, it's true size in the grand scheme, and it's true relevance. And to think, we wanted to try to perform surgery for that! Us, with no medical license, extreme myopia, and cataracts. What a disaster that would have been! How blind we could have made them. It's a good thing no one in Christian churches tries to take out the flaws they see in others...

But as we begin to get a clearer perspective—on us, the Truth, and others—we can begin to point others to the Physician's tender care. We all need Him (although telling someone that can be the exact wrong thing to say, ladies and gentlemen), and a simple introduction is all that is necessary. In the light of His glory, they'll see their need. In the light of your glory, they'll see your need. Luckily, Jesus offers to shine through you while He's making you like Him.

The most wicked heart is mine
When drawn so close to thine

My blinded eyes have light enough to see
The chief of sinners, dining there with thee

What health, what joy, what all-surpassing peace
Is mine to find when humbled at your feet

~While we were still sinners, He endured the shame; how can I ever be ashamed?

-Colton J. Stollenmaier, M.I.A.

Emptiness Stew

6 July 2010

Loneliness

I've just finished my first cooked dinner in my new home for the next 12 months. I moved in yesterday, but I had to go grocery shopping and to a church board meeting. This is my first night truly alone.

I'm far too objective about my feelings; I try to assess how I'm feeling. I'm analyzing my loneliness and considering the implications for myself—personality and future—and how I can generalize those implications to general humanity. More than that though, I'm embracing the loneliness. Gladly.

No facebook. No television running. No texting new friends or finding something to do. This is good. Feeling that raw gnawing feeling in the gut that never really leaves.

“What about God?” is on auto-response, I know. And yes, there is an enrapture of love and peace when I'm spending time with Him here, living on my own. He is so sweet ('tis so sweet to trust in Jesus...). But my God is not a crutch. Even in His presence, even when He is my all in all, it's there. A little loneliness that just can't be kicked. And there's something beautiful about it. It's embracing the dependency of humanity. It's recognizing the brilliant blend of frailty and strength. It's sharing in the daily trod of my millions of brothers and sisters living in a full and busy world but who, inside, are filled with nothing.

It's amazing, we can do everything to ignore it, to suppress the discomfort and drown it out, but there isn't a single pain killer in the loneliness line. Praise God that we can never escape our need of others, our need of Him, and most of all our need of something more than this life; a new life to come.

~While we were still sinners, He endured the shame; how can I ever be ashamed?

-Colton J. Stollenmaier, M.I.A.