A seaman.

An Excerpt from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness:

"He was a seaman, but he was a wanderer too, while most seamen lead, if one may so express it, a sedentary life. Their minds are of the stay-at-home order, and their home is always with them - the ship; and so is their country - the sea. One ship is very much like another, and the sea is always the same. In the immutability of their surroundings the foreign shores, the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life, the glide past, veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance; for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny."  

Burning

Proverbs 1:1-7

"The Proverbs of Solomon son of David, King of Israel: for attaining wisdom and discipline; for understanding words of insight; for acquiring a disciplined and prudent life, doing what is right and just and fair; for giving prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the young- let the wise listen and add to their learning, and let the discerning get guidance- for understanding proverbs and parables, the sayings and riddles of the wise. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline."

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It starts like this.


Frustrated with myself. Angry at my laziness. Angry at my indifference. I want to do so many things! I want to learn so many things! I want to be the best at so many things that there is just not enough time to do everything!!!!

I want to:

Be a national champion.
Be able to solve calculus problems in my head.
Be able to program and write code.
Be able to tell you what happened in any year of history.
I want to be a writer with an insane vocabulary.
I want to study all the elements and learn how to use them.
Learn Spanish, and Chinese and German and Russian and French and Italian and Finnish.
How to take apart an engine and rebuild it from scratch.
I want to play the Piano, and the guitar.
Be able to name of every plant and animal I see and tell you all about it.
Name every firearm I see and tell you what it is best used for.
I want to be a leader.
I want to be a Navy SEAL.
I want to be a husband and a father.
I want to be a Missionary.

I have so many things that I want to do that I'm overwhelmed and I come to the conclusion that it's not possible. So I just sit here and do nothing.

Now what the crap is that? How could I be so ambitious one day, and the next be absolutely indifferent?? It's an unending cycle. Like a Phoenix. A cycle that bursts to life, burning with extreme ambition set on conquering the world and ends in disappointing indifference.
Indifference is worse than hate. When you hate, at least you feel something. And you can then act on the emotion for better or worse. But indifference is absent, cold and dark. Cold, the absence of heat. Dark the absence of light. Indifference the absence of concern/action/thought/motivation/love.

This cycle is getting old. And I feel like i'm not getting anywhere. I'm not learning what I want to learn. I'm not achieving. I'm stagnant. Going through these stupid cycles (all this cycle talk I sound like i'm on a period) while i'm waisting precious seconds that could be used to learn something!!

So here I sit, at the end of a cycle, on my throne of ambition. Deteriorating like a leper king, my body is overcome with this voracious disease, dripping with the oil and the putrid stench of indifference, emanating from the pores of my flesh. I inhale. My lungs, being part of my infected body, inadvertently discharge a whisper of indifference. And as I exhale this volatile, indifference-laced gas into the room, my throne ignites.
So here I sit, at the end of a cycle, on my throne of ambition, wreathed in fiery flame. Every breath I take fuels the flames. They're growing hotter and hotter. Burning faster and faster. The torment is unbearable, yet i'm cooking closer and closer to death's glorious escape. Until finally we are but ashes and dust.

I burn with ambition until I burn with ambition.


It ends Like this.
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Lord, forgive me for being such a selfish person. Help me to always remember that I exist to give you glory at all times and places. Help me to truly understand that my willingness to mirror Jesus is the only source of true happiness. All else is vanity. Father, I pray for wisdom. Thank you for the relationship I have with you, made possible through Jesus' payment of my many sins on the cross. Thank you for your never-ending grace. Thank you for your redeeming love.

What is it?

αὐτο καταστροφή

It's two Greek words. The first meaning auto or self. The second meaning catastrophe or destruction. So together they read "Self Destruction." I don't claim to know how to read or write Greek. But I do know how to use google. And if i'm going to start a blog at 1:35am about how in need of grace I am, you can bet it's going to have some deep title.

So that's how the title of this blog came about.

I anticipate I will be posting on this fairly often in the wee hours of the night because thats when I get the greatest urges to write, and thats when I seem very vulnerable to give in to my many "urges."

Paul Tripp wrote a book entitled War of Words  in which he explains the nature of our urges as humans. According to Tripp, they can be traced back to Adam & Eve, specifically to when Eve decided to take a bite of some fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Tripp breaks it down into three basic steps. 1. You visually see what you want which causes you to 2. crave it with your body (covet) which leads to 3. boasting about it with your tongue. I'm not sure about the 3rd part, but based upon most of my life, I can attest to the first two being absolutely true. Whether it's the ding dongs I see walking down the isle at Walmart or the woman wearing very little clothing. I see and I must have.

So thats kind of a pretext as to what will be written around here. You're free to comment and do whatever you want with what you find here. The way I see it, it will only lead to more discussion and thus create more opportunities to use the words God has gifted to us to further His Kingdom.

Peace.