Blue like Jazz

I have started reading a book called BLUE LIKE JAZZ by Donald Miller... which I've really enjoyed so far. There are some fantastic quotes which really spoke to me as i read them, so i highlighted them, and I'll prob be putting them up here as i find them.

"I can't explain how freeing that was, to realize that if i met Jesus, He would like me. I never felt like that about some of the Christians on the radio. I always thought if i met those people they would yell at me. But it wasn't like that with Jesus. There were people he loved and people he got really mad at, and i kept identifying with the people he loved, which was really good, because they were all the broken people, you know, the kind of people who are tired of life and want to be done with it, or they are desperate people, people who were outcasts or pagans. There were others, regular people but he didn't play favourites at all, which is miraculous in itself. That fact alone may have been the most supernatural thing he did. He didn't show partiality, which every human does." (pg 47)

This is part of Ch 9, and although its really long, it really captures what I've been feeling for a while, but have been too chicken to say out loud for myself. I mean, i haven't been teaching, but i feel like it still applies to me. So here you have it... my life in Donald Miller's words:

There is a time when every person who encounters Jesus, who believes Jesus is the Son of God, decides that they will spend their life following him. Some people, like the Apostle Paul, make this decision the minute the meet him, the minute they become a christian. Others, like the Apostle Peter endure years of half - hearted commitment and spiritual confusion before leaping in with all their passion. Still others may enjoy some benefits of God's love and grace without entering into the true joy of a marriage with their maker.
Not long after i graduated from high school, i found myself leading a college group at a large church just outside Houston. I cherished the role, at first, because it was a place of honor. I studied the Bible for hours, putting talks together that students enjoyed. It started as a substitute teaching job. The college minister couldn't be there one week, so he asked me to fill in. When i was asked to speak again, i jumped at the chance like Homer Simpson at a donut. Pretty soon i was teaching all the time. I swam in the attention and the praise, i loved it, i lusted for it, i almost drowned in it. The more attention i got, the strange i became. I was on my way to having my own religious television show. Okay, that's a bit much, but you know what i mean. I was a smiler, a hand-shaker, a baby-kisser, a speech -giver. I said things like "God be with you", and "lord bless you". I used cliches like a bad novelist.
I led the college group for a couple of years and enjoyed it at first, but it wasn't long before i felt like a phony. I got tired of myself. I didn't like to hear my own voice because i sounded like a talk-show host.
One afternoon i made an appointment with my pastor and told him i was leaving, that i was going into the world to et my thinking straight.... I've tried to put words to it, you know, but i can't. I'm just really tired. Mentally drained. I feel like i am jumping through hoops or something. I don't feel like God is teaching through me. I feel like i am a fake person, you know. I say what i need to say, do what i need to do, but i don't really mean it....
I suppose what i wanted back then is what every Christian wants, whether they understand themselves or not. What i wanted was God. I wanted tangible interaction. But even more than that, to be honest, i wanted to know who i was. I felt like a robot or an insect or a mysterious blob floating around in the universe. I believed that if i could contact God, He would be able to explain who and why i was.
The days an weeks before a true commitment to Jesus can be terrible and lonely. I think i was feeling bitter about the human experience. I never asked to be human. nobody came to the womb and explained the situation to me, asking for my permission to go into the world and live and breathe and eat and feel joy and pain. I started thinking about how odd it was to be human, how we are stuck inside this skin, forced to be attracted to the opposite sex, forced to eat food and use the rest room and then stuck to earth by gravity. I think maybe i was going crazy or something. i spent an entire week feeling bitter because i couldn't breathe underwater. I told God i wanted to be a fish. I also felt a little bitter about sleep. Why do we have to sleep? i wanted to be able to stay wake for as long as i wanted, but God had put me in this body that had to sleep. Life no longer seemed like an experience of freedom...

There is something beautiful about a billions star held steady by a God who know what he is doing. (they hang there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz.) And as i lay there, it occurred to me that God is up there somewhere. of course, i had always know he was, but this time i felt it, i realized it, the way a person realizes they are hungry or thirsty. The knowledge of God seeped out of my brain and into my heart. I imagined him looking down on this earth, half angry because his beloved mankind had cheated on him, had committed adultery, and yet hopelessly in love with her, drunk with love for her.
i know a little of why there is blood in my body, pumping life into my limbs and through into my brain. I am wanted by God. He is wanting to preserve me, to guide me through the darkness of the shadow of death, up into the highlands of his presence and afterlife. I understand that i am temporary, in this shell of a thing on this dirt of an earth. I am being tempted by Satan, we are all being tempted by Satan, but i am preserved to tell those who do now know about our saviour and our redeemer....
I lay there under the stars and thought of what great responsibility it is to be human. I am human because God made me. I experience suffering and temptation because mankind chose to follow Satan. God is reaching out to me to rescue me. i am learning to trust him, learning to live by his precepts that i might be preserved." (95 -101)