Pain

Why does pain come? Why do our bodies literally shake when we wracked with grief? Why do we have to endure this? I don’t know. Sometimes I just don’t know. But in hard times there is only one person to truly put your trust in, and that’s Jesus. Jesus went through it. He knows what he’s inflicting on us when we go through these things. He feels it to, and he’s walking us through it. 

“Life is just pain without death.” I don’t know where I heard that, or if I really did come up with it myself, I can’t trust myself when I come up with something, it’s usually borrowed from something. But I think in a lot of senses it’s true. Life is pain, unless there is death. Is death an escape? Death is the passing into greater light. Into greater happiness, and out of this pain. Life in this world is pain, sometimes more often for some, but everyone experiences it. And the only way out of this world is death. We’re here for a moment, and with our Savior for eternity. We leave this life of pain through death and into a far far better place than we have ever known. To borrow a little from Dickins.

To love is to hurt. I don’t why I don’t just shut myself up from everyone else. Stop making relationships with people, because one day, they will die. Things will happen to them, and when it hurts those around me, it hurts me. We love by opening up our hearts to them, and when pain comes it cuts deep. Am I just a fool giving my heart away? It is better to have loved and hurt, than to never love and never feel the pain. So if that’s a fool, I’d rather be a fool. 

English Vintner

Where I'm At

I’m outside the box. So when someone tries to put me in a box, it is irritating and I will change so as not to get put in that box. I don’t like doing the conventional. I think differently than a lot of people I know in many aspects. I’m different, and I have to be okay with that. I’m an artist.

I was offered a job earlier that would allow me to be making almost double what the standard public school teacher makes, which would be a good job and everything, but I hesitated. Why? Because money just isn’t that important to me, and I want to make sure I have my priorities right before I start getting a lot of money. I want my life to be centered on ministry for Jesus first, and then a job. I am paranoid of job security and lots of money right now, I don’t want that for me right now. I read so many times of missionaries and others who live on just enough so that it is obvious that God is granting them their daily bread, and, I want to strengthen my faith in the God of the universe, and I want to make sure I am not living the American Dream. 

To be honest for a long time a life in the country away from everyone farming away was my ideal, and in some ways I still think about that. I’d love to go to college, but I can’t justify $40,000 a year to get a really good christian education and dorm life experience, and so I wait. 

I want to tithe several of my years to the Lord. I don’t know if he has me in missions over seas all my life, but I want to spend at least a few years in service to the Lord overseas, giving me a bigger picture of the Church, and seeing God first hand in third world countries. It will change your perspective, you will pray more, you will think differently. 

So what am I doing now? Limbo? I’m working 25 hours or so a week doing what I love, my favorite art, cooking. Making a little above minimum wage and putting every penny towards my next mission trip three months in Uganda, March through June. I am depending on God to bring in the other funds, as I’m not really asking people publicly for money. I am depending on God to come through and provide all the money I need to go.

Why don’t I settle down, get a good job, a wife and stay put? I don’t know, if I knew God was calling me to that, I would submit, but he’s put other things on my heart. I read and see daily people hurting, all around me, so I try to get involved with the poor. I am so concerned about making sure my priorities are right before getting any job that makes a lot of money, that I don’t have a ‘job’ yet. 

God has called me to this path, and, it’s not about me, it’s about Him! If he wanted me to study at college that he would show me that path, if he wanted me to settle down he would lead me there, instead, he has other plans for my life! So I’m excited to watch what God will do with my life! 

English Vintner