Feels Like "Orange"

There has been a considerable drought on the blog stage by the college students, so thus I must give props to good ol' Danny B for stepping up and giving 'er. Great guy that Danny B, great guy. His muscles are huge.

We had a small apple tree in our backyard when we were growing up. It was planted quite a bit later than our cherry trees, which were huge and pumping out cherries by the bucket-fulls which usually ended us going on a cherry binge, followed by a visit to the bathroom due to all the cellulose ingested. But this apple tree never really grew, unfortunately. I'm pretty sure that soon after it was planted it started to produce fruit. This was exciting for me. To be able to see fruit growing at eye level was great. But this tree was always a lot smaller than I thought apple trees should be, though it was producing an unholy amount of fruit. So much fruit that it weighed down the branches, stressing them in a way that probably wasn't good for the tree. We eventually dug up the tree, and now we plant flowers there.

Sometimes I wonder how far you can take the metaphors of the Bible. "Be rooted in love." Ok, so we're some sort of horticultural specimen. I can handle that. "Don't let your shoots outgrow you roots or you'll topple over." There's some deductive reasoning based on the derivative of plant growth. Take that derivative again, and you'll get "Trying to produce a lot of fruit when you're not ready for it isn't good for you." Can we say that? Does God want us to be able to produce a lot of fruit when we're unsure of our relationship with him, or we feel like we stumble and fall day in an day out, screaming out for one day where we feel like we got a "check +" on the ol' report card for the day?

We had a speaker at our monthly campus "church" service last night. Don't get me wrong, it's a good service and I enjoy it, it's just not a "church," that's all. Anyways, this speaker got up and preached a message I was used to hearing due to my years at Victory. There was even a pseudo-alter call at the end of it. I was a tad cynical, I'll admit, though not as much as I usually would have been with this type of message. One thing that stuck out about what he said was that missions can't be something you do for your ego, but rather somthing you do because you love Jesus. Check-mate.

Would you let me take a third derivative? x'''(f)?

Apparently "guilted" isn't a real word. I'm using it anyways. Sometimes we're guilted into this thing called missions. It happens easy. Sometimes there's a need in a ministry, and the pastor calls everyone to help serve, with a convincing message which leaves you feeling inadequate unless you do something about it. That falls under the equation of "faith = works" or something like that. Yes, faith is dead without works, but not vice versa. So, we're guilted into doing some sort of service, and we produce it, but we burn out. Burning out happens. Constantly burning out shouldn't, however. I find in the past when I've been burned out, it's because of a selfish reason in the first place; my ego, my hand giving my shoulder a pat on the back. It's like I've grafted a branch full of apples onto my tree of faith that can't handle it.

One could counter argue that when you get into this type of ministry/mission/ service, that you'll grow a lot as well as produce fruit. A possibility, and usually true. Is there a balance we can muster?