A Plane Carcass, An Empty Field, and A Day Gone By.

On the way to my old school, I pass by McDonald's, Dick's Sporting Goods, and my friendly neighborhood airport. It's kind of strange to see the landing strip right from the main road, but there it is. Sometimes, when I need to go to the airport to pick up a friend or get dropped off for my own adventure, I pass by what looks like an unused portion of the airport property, which is pretty much just an empty field. However, sitting right there next to the edge of the road that borders the field is a giant metallic tube, which I'm pretty sure is the remains of an old plane, chopped in half to show it's gutted insides.

After all these years, I'm still unsure as to why it's there. It doesn't look like it serves any purpose. Because of its obscurely random placement in a field of dead grass, I doubt it's an attempt at modern art. Whatever it may be there for, I'm positive that it's served its time as a commercial airliner in its glory days. What kind of people have been aboard this bird? Where were they going? What great adventures did this aero-bus facilitate? Who was connected to their loved one because this plane got them there? Did it soar during the Golden Age of Flight?

I don't know. All I know is that this plane's flying days are over.

I recently made my way to my old school, from which I've recently graduated. Just a few short miles from this plane carcass lies the empty field that used to be home to another kind of life. In a former time, it was known as Chapel by the Lake - a place that I've written about many times before. The church that used to own the property sold it to some investors, and I imagine the spot will get used for another high-rise that'll block the view of the ocean waters, but whatever the case may be, this outdoor, open-air cathedral was once home to many of my great thoughts, stretches of worship, and moments of crying and desperation. They tore it down shortly after I graduated and now it's just an empty field surrounded by a parking lot. I can't imagine how many people had been blessed by sitting in those fluorescent-blue seats throughout the years, how many people found a best friend in Jesus there, or how many had been welcomed into the family of God through baptism there.

I don't know. All I know is that this chapel's church-ing days are over.

There was one time, shortly after I graduated, where I sat in those blue seats and thought about the journey I'd been through. College had been pretty much all I wanted it to be, and a lot I didn't expect it to be. Many friends had touched my life in a way that's unjust to put into words. I'd found gifts and talents that I didn't know I had. Nights full of fun and tear-inducing laughter with friends gave me something to miss. Spiritual encounters and a winding, broken, narrow road took me on a journey with God that I didn't think I'd experience if you'd asked high-school me.

It was during these years that my soul learned that a simple joy was not threatened by the changing of the seasons, and so I was ready now. The college years which I had pedestal-ized and longed for when I was a wee one were now over and it was time to step into life as a working man. It was time to leave those times behind and cherish the memories they left for me. I'm not sure what the future holds. I wonder what journey I'll be on a year from now.

I don't know. All I know is that this young man's college days are over.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven... (Ecclesiastes 3)

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The Speedo Priest's Freestyle Prayer

This past summer's trip to Israel left quite a few impressions on me. Something about piggybacking onto a Romanian Eastern Orthodox tour of the Holy Land as Evangelical Christians created this strange tension. And although it was something that I've never experienced, (and will probably never experience again) I'm definitely thankful for the opportunity to hang out with a group of people that had a very different perspective on faith than I did.

I should start by explaining that we had two tour guides. One of them was your typical week-long excursion-type guide that gave us historical background and other insights at each of the sites we visited. Since many of the tourists were Orthodox church members from roughly the same city, the other guide was actually the priest that presided over the congregation from that area. He was tasked with guiding everyone from a more spiritual perspective.

The first time we got on the tour bus, the priest began the trip with quite a lengthy prayer. I'll be the first to tell you that I don't agree with a lot in the Eastern Orthodox religion, but this was actually a really beautiful prayer that contained a lot of Biblical truth. My dad even mentioned to me how much he liked it, and the trip started off pretty hopeful.

However, what we discovered the next morning was that, when we got on the bus, the priest gave a pretty similar prayer. By the morning after that, we were sure that this guy was praying the same exact prayer that he had the two days prior. And so we ended up hearing this same, drawn-out prayer for a week straight.

"And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him." (Matthew 6)

On one of the last days of the trip, we were given basically half of a day to relax and unwind from the hard work that is touring the Holy Land. Considering the blistering heat, on the way back from our morning excursion, me and my brother talked about jumping in the luxurious hotel pool. So we got to the hotel, changed into our swimmies, and got to the side of the pool. And much to our ________, (I'm not really sure what word to put here) the priest arrived by the poolside.

Me and my brother, who had not seen this man outside of his priestly garments the entire trip, soon found ourselves with our feet in the pool talking to a priest wearing nothing but a pair of Speedo's. For some reason, not a single other person from our tour group decided to go swimming aside from me, my brother, and the priest.

In our lively conversation, we covered a lot of subjects ranging from religion, to government, and to culture. After getting over the strangeness of seeing a priest transition from such thick, black, body-engulfing clothing to a bright blue Speedo, I found that the conversation had some pretty interesting points.

Is it not sad that the priest could speak more freely to us than He could to the God he claimed was his Father? Is it not exponentially more sad to know that the Almighty All-Creating God of everything wanted to speak to this priest as a dad does to his son, and yet this man could not see it?

Brother or sister, God does not want your fancy words. If you want to make a beautiful prayer, go ahead. But God is more concerned with connecting with you than He is with receiving a superficial layer of words that have no relation to the status of your heart.

I will give the priest one concession: at the end of each of these lengthy prayers, the priest would suddenly relax and start praying improvisationally, so to speak. The last portion of his prayer was always freestyle.

Brothers and sisters, let you prayers be freestyle.

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Dumpster Diving for Eternity

For those of you who don't know me all that well, my father is a wood-worker.

"So he can FIX MY TABLE/CHAIR/RANDOM WOODEN OBJECT!?!?!"

No.

Or rather, he probably could fix it - it'll probably just cost a lot more than what you originally paid for the item. Y'know, overhead, operation costs, etc. Sorry!

Anyhow, in one of the previous shops that my dad was renting out, there was a dumpster. I mean, there's a dumpster where he is now, but the complex of buildings he's near at the current time doesn't have nearly the same variety of business as his old shop had. At my dad's old shop, he was near a health-minded cookie factory, baseball bat factory, assorted storage units, a dry-cleaning store, etc.

This may not sound too exciting to you, but what this meant is that there was always interesting things in the dumpster. As a child, I made a practice out of total-commitment dumpster diving, literally climbing into the rusty-green receptacle in order to rummage around in hopes of finding some item or artifact that could fascinate my ten-year-old self.

And boy, did I.

Old record players, TV's, baseball bats, massive cardboard boxes - you name it. Forget playing football, finding hidden dumpster-treasure was probably one of my favorite childhood pastimes!

Stop regarding man in whose nostrils is breath, for of what account is he? (Isaiah 2)

The other day, I was driving out of my neighborhood when I saw some boxes and assorted junk thrown out to the curb. There was a sign attached to this pile of assorted potential treasures: "FREE STUFF." For a moment I considered stopping, but for some reason, I was suddenly filled with thinking, "What if someone sees me?" So, I rolled on by, with the fear of humiliation ringing in my memory.

Friends, having a mind to consider the well-being and comfort of others is a good thing. Being afraid of getting mentally condemned by someone you don't know for an action that is good is a terrible thing.

After all, it was a certain man named Jesus of Nazareth Who decided to make a total commitment to dumpster dive into the rusty-green trash-heap that is humanity. He lowered Himself - why are we so afraid to? Oh, that we may cast off the pride that slows us from pushing the Kingdom of Heaven forward with both feet.

Maybe it's time that we dive into the brokenness and trash that is our neighbor's soul, and in so doing, provide hope for One Who can clean up the mess. Maybe it's time we forfeit the weight of pride tied to our ankles so that we might run to the slums and projects that need our humility. Maybe it's time we stick our hand in the mud and pull someone out, regardless of how dirty we'll get.

Maybe it's time.

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The Great Madness

I was trying to create an account that would allow me to use the electronic health record I needed for school. The online form was asking me to input a middle initial. Anyone who knows me even just a little better than the guy who rings up my groceries at the store knows that I do not have a middle initial. My name is Nathan Costiuc - I don't need a middle name to separate me from all of the other zero Nathan Costiuc's on the planet. So I left that portion blank, just as I always do in these types of situations (although if I had a middle name, I'd want it to be something with a 'Q'. How cool would that be?)

I got stuck. There was some sort of problem with the account. I called the company up and asked them what the beef was. The gentleman on the phone told me that I had to put in a middle initial. I was clear with the fact that I had none. He insisted. I lied on the form. Are you happy, Mr. Customer Service?

Think with me here: this little box that was asking for my middle initial was probably doing so to authenticate my individuality. Its purpose was to make sure that it was legitimately me filling out this form. The irony of this situation is that, in being forced to fill it out so I could use the software, it made me falsify information and put down something that was not accurate to the reality of who I was. The form that was asking for the real me forced me to be a fake me.

"Although I trained and strengthened their arms, yet they devise evil against me." (Hosea 7)

Sometimes, irony oversteps its bounds and becomes something else. When the reality of the ridiculousness of a situation becomes overwhelming, irony leaps over itself and becomes madness. This is easily seen in a quote from Voltaire, who said, "It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets." The reader who peruses this statement immediately becomes overwhelmed with frustration as he questions how such a thing could be true. Coupling the irony of this quote with the frustration over its truth, it gets pushed into the realm of madness.

In Hosea, God is addressing the people of Israel, who are repeatedly and consistently rejecting the covenant God made with them, choosing to worship gods made with their own hands instead of the Almighty Creator. This is where we find the quoted passage. This is where we find God saying, "You have used the very hands that I made and gave strength to build your idols."

Here we find The Great Madness: if God didn't give us the air we breathe and a mind to think, we wouldn't be able to sin against Him as we do. Rather, we use the life He keeps on giving us to show our ungratefulness for the life He keeps on giving us by sinning against Him. This is not only irony. This is Madness.

Brothers and sisters, this is God we're talking about. And we've sinned altogether too much against Him. I've sinned altogether too much against Him. We not only participate in this irony, but we rejoice to be a part of The Great Madness.

Brothers and sisters, this cannot be so.

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Falling Asleep in Church and Other Sins

As a child, I was fairly fidgety. If I was sitting somewhere I was supposed to be quiet, it's as if my body would say, "Quiet, eh? Put the hyperactivity in overdrive, captain!" Needless to say, there were many moments of discipline that had to take place when I let that energy get out of control.

The odd thing about my tendency to be energetic is that I also fall asleep very easily. One might think that people like me have trouble falling asleep. Incorrect. (Where'd you get your degree? Psh...) I can fall asleep almost anywhere. This was also true as a child, and I would often fall asleep during sermons.

Even now, though I'm shaking my legs furiously as I type away, my eyelids want to shut down and take a nap.

For whatever reason, nowadays, I don't have too much trouble staying awake during sermons, unless I've gotten very little sleep over the weekend. If that's the case, I usually sit there trying to force my eyelids open by sheer mental willpower. How often does that work? No comment. After trying to keep my eyes open fails, I sometimes do this head-bob thing where I drop in and out of consciousness. Y'know, your head falls as you fall asleep and then the feeling of your head falling alerts your brain and, in the sad irony of it all, your mind doesn't wake you up enough to keep you awake, but only enough to lift your head back up. Only to let it fall again.

The whole process is quite shameful, to say the least. The preacher is pouring out his heart about a deep spiritual matter and there you are, head-banging to the beat of your cat-nap dreams. Then, the inevitable happens:

Your friend nudges you and wakes you up.

That's the most embarrassing moment of this whole escapade! Because if your friend has noticed that you were rocking away to your own hardcore concert right there in the pew, that means everyone else saw it too! So your cheeks turn red and you get flustered with your buddy for pointing out your pagan ways. Sometimes you try to play it off like you weren't sleeping, but just agreeing ecstatically with the pastor. But let's be honest, who are you fooling?

Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. (Galatians 6)

The Bible calls us to be accountable to one another. If someone calls us out on something, we shouldn't get upset with that person for pointing out what other people were already seeing. We should rejoice in the fact that we have someone to keep us to a high standard!

So if your buddy wakes you up during church, or calls you out on your pride, or shows you the ways in which you are not being gentle to others, don't shoot the messenger - He's literally doing what the Bible is telling him to by calling you out. Use the opportunity to get angry at your sin, and if you know you struggle with something, tell your Christian brother or sister what's going on before they have to approach you about it. In other words, hate your sin enough to seek accountability for it. So the next time you want to fall asleep in church, don't be upset when the guy you talked to about your tiredness before the service tries to pinch you.

It is a pinch of love.

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A New Grading Scale

I was homeschooled for most of my life, (People tell me that explains a lot, but I'm not sure why. Huh.) but I did have a brief stint as your run-of-the-mill, uniformed, mayonnaise-skinned private-school student from kindergarten to second grade. Yes, I came complete with a mushroom-headed bowl-haircut, a gap in my two front teeth, and khaki shorts. And I probably don't even need to mention the fact that my lunchbox always dominated the other kids' - that should be obvious.

During some of those formative years, I was evaluated according to a grading scale that was different from that of the "big kids." Instead of receiving an A, B, C, D, or F, I received some sort of grade that revolved around the word "satisfactory." Either my work was "unsatisfactory," "needs improvement," "satisfactory," "good," or "excellent." Something like that.

Now, according to this scale, one is obligated to recognize that "satisfactory" is pretty much a C. Sure, it technically meets the requirements of the assignment or test, but getting this grade doesn't fill you with the joy that an "excellent" would. This is because the standard for "satisfactory" was set pretty low.

If I were to tell you that God's love was just satisfactory, you would not rejoice.

Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God, and David their king, and they shall come in fear to the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days. (Hosea 2)

If you haven't read Hosea, it is essentially God using an adulteress as a metaphor for the nation of Israel's unfaithfulness to Him. Hosea's wife, Gomer, whored herself away to the pleasures and enticements of other men. So, in order to display God's faithfulness, He tells Hosea to go and pay to get Gomer back.

Gomer's central problem was her idea that Hosea's love wasn't good enough - it may have been "satisfactory," but in no way did she see it as "excellent" as the pleasures she chased. In the same way, Israel saw God's love as only meeting the requirements but not as fulfillment for the soul.

And so do we.

But today, I make an effort to challenge the grading scale. I say that "satisfactory" and "excellent" are one and the same when it comes to the concept of our need and God's love. If the requirement for our hearts to be at rest is a never-ending, all-fulfilling, perfectly-complete kind of love, then anything that could satisfy those requirements would be automatically considered as "excellent." In this way, the "satisfactory" becomes the "excellent," over and above the devastating emptiness of the pleasures that this world offer.

This is why the people of Israel come back, as shown in Hosea 2. They are tired of the brokenness and deceit of worldly pleasure and come back "to His goodness in the latter days."

Dear child, will God's love be satisfactory for you today, or will you chase the abyss?

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I Like the Way You Pray

"I like the way you pray."

I was at a Bible study and I had just prayed (for food or in our small groups or something of that nature). That was when my buddy said that to me.

"I like the way you pray."

The main question that arises out of that kind of statement is, "How does a man pray well?" To be clear, I'm not really sure. I don't really know that there's a scoring system for that kind of thing. But I do have ideas as to some things you can recognize that will shape the way you approach prayer. By no means is this all-inclusive, but it might give you a fresh perspective on talking to God.

You're talking to God.
Think about that for a second. It is one thing to realize that God is as mind-blowingly awesome as He is as the Creator and Orchestrator of everything you can experience. This, in and of itself, is enough reason to bow down and approach Him with worship-minded prayer. It is another thing entirely to recognize the fact that we are sinners who fall completely short of God's standard of perfection - a status that ensures that we are hell-bound. This added realization makes prayer not just a humbling experience, but unequivocally audacious and improper! It's as if a convicted murderer were to eat dinner at the judge's house: totally unacceptable.

Observe what's been done for you.
The last point might not have made you feel any better about prayer, but that's because it has to be reconciled with the fact that Jesus died on the cross so that you could draw near. Because the blood of Jesus Christ covers His followers, they can now "with confidence draw near to the throne of grace." (Hebrews 4) Unbelievable. Not only do we get to draw near without getting killed, we get to do it with confidence.

See the implications.
Not only have you been made right with God, but you have been adopted as His son or daughter (Ephesians 1). Children get to ask things of their parents that no one else gets to ask them, like asking for a glass of water in the middle of the night, or asking to be given a piggy-back ride. The point? Kids aren't scared to talk to their parents. No, it is the most comfortable thing in the world for them. I believe that spirit should apply to us as we pray - not to be driven by formalities, but to pray as a son to His Dad.

I'm still not sure exactly what my buddy meant when he said he liked the way I pray, but I have a feeling that it had something to do with skipping the fancy, King-James speak and talking to God in recognition of what I was doing: approaching the God of all that exists as a sinful, but sanctified son.

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