clearing up the glass

I used to love eating Pringles while whacking away at monsters on my computer. Something just feels right about the combination of potato chips, a lemon-lime Gatorade and video games. My parents always used to yell at me to wipe my fingers off before touching the computer, but I never listened. They also told me to stop playing video games and get off the computer, but I didn't listen to that either. Oh, and one more thing: I'd pick up my glasses and smudge the lenses with my fingers, and then my dad would yell and tell me to take better care of them.

At other times, I'd be sitting in the passenger's seat of our Hyundai Avante on my way home from school. It was normally an hour or an hour and 30 minute drive, so I'd usually fall asleep. I'd put my feet up onto the dashboard, and as I got taller, my legs' reach grew further and further until eventually I left footprints on the inside of the windshield. My mom wasn't happy.

Through these and many, many, many more experiences, I realize that I have a knack for dirtying things up.

And my windshield is indeed dirty. Everything's all fogged up.. whether with the thoughts I have, the pride I carry... and it just seems all too obvious why I am inward-focused. There's nothing I can see outside of myself.

There are often times when I long to broaden my horizons, want to look beyond my own myopic worldview. But it's tough. And when I put my hands up and slide them along the glass, all I get is smudged glass with fingerprints all over it. I try again and again, and for a moment, things seem clearer.. at least before I succeed in obscuring the view more than before.

Slowly, though, God's been defogging the window. And yes, God is doing it, not me. What a surprise.

I thought the best way to get to God was to try hard, to think, to delve deeper, to be disciplined, to serve.. and all these things. The answer was more simple than I ever could have known. Let go, don't touch the glass.

And the knowledge of knowing God is much more romantic than it is scientific:

"I do not think that Jesus 'knew he was God' in the same sense that one knows one is hungry or thirsty, tall or short. It was not a mathematical knowledge, like knowing that two and two make four; nor was it straightforwardly observational knowledge, like knowing that there is a bird on the fence outside my room because I can see and hear it. It was more like the knowledge that I have that I am loved by my family and closest friends; like the knowledge that I have that the sunrise over the sea is awesome and beautiful; like the knowledge of the musician not only of what the composer intended but of how to perform the piece in exactly that way - a knowledge most surely possessed, of course, when the performer is also the composer..."
- N.T. Wright, "The Challenge of Jesus"

I got so far not because I tried so hard, but because God had it in his plan for me to get this far. And His grace is going to lead me all the way if He will, and if not, then that isn't my prerogative. I was recently touched by this quote:

"Let us not say that grace creates debts; let us say that grace pays debts."
- John Piper

The debt has already been paid.. why do I try so hard to pay God back for everything? It's a gift.

And as I am still a sinner, still self-conscious, still proud, still unloving, I realize it's okay. Not because it's "okay" in the objective sense, but I'm covered because Jesus bore the consequences, and God is surely changing me day by day. The fog might not disappear in an instant, but as it gradually fades, I can see more and more of the open road ahead - and the light begins to dawn.

"...whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God."
- John 3:21 (NIV)