NBA 2k11 and Advent

I had fasted from NBA 2k11 for 40 days. I postponed Nate Lee's budding NBA career, a season with the Warriors, reliving Michael Jordan's greatest moments, and owning Sammy Lee for 40 whole days.

When my fast ended, our TV broke...

Since then, I have been doing an involuntary fast.

When the TV went out, it honestly felt like God was kicking me in the groin. Repeatedly.

Like, I did this for you God, and this is how you're gonna reward me?? By breaking my TV? I didn't know that's how you rolled, G-man. Now the TV just sits there in our living room, staring at me as if to say, "Oh hey what's up Nate. You want me? You like how I look? Do you miss the lovin I used to give you? You miss your Warriors and your Netflix? Well too bad! I'm just a useless box taking up 43 inches of your living room now! That's what you get for buying me off Craigslist!!" Sometimes, I just want to punch him in the face. I mean, if he were a person. Which he's not.

But, in my infinite patience and wisdom, I have of course extracted a valuable lesson from this unfortunate happenstance. It is especially applicable for life right now because we are in the season of Advent, and in many ways, I am learning about waiting.

Advent is about preparing for Jesus' coming. Similarly, I am waiting for the coming of a new TV (Thanks Sammy and Black Friday!). As blasphemous as that is, I am realizing how hard it is to be on the edge of the arrival of something good, but knowing that it is still a ways off. Waiting is not fun. Sometimes we lose faith that the thing we are waiting for will ever really come. And when it comes, will it even be all that it's hyped up to be? In regards to my future, am I willing to wait for God to show me where he wants me to be? I feel like I'm perpetually trapped in this waiting, in-between period of who I am now and who I want to be. I don't think this kind of waiting will ever be satisfied. For those of us going through hard times, stuck in our Exiles of joblessness, loneliness, bad grades, or just plain weariness, do we really have faith that our waiting will be rewarded, as God always promised to Israel?

My favorite blog, internetmonk.com, puts it like this:

The main cry of one who practices the form of prayer called “lament” is, “How long?”That’s how people who live perpetually in-between think and pray. We know we can’t go back to some golden age in the past. We know we have not yet arrived at the new creation promised to us. We live in-between. We long for in-between to end. Like children in the back seat, we must be a continual annoyance to our Father—“Are we there yet?”

For hundreds of years Israel waited. A lot of them died waiting. When Jesus finally came, he was not what they were waiting for. Maybe that's how God works. Perhaps my TV will not bring the fulfillment I am hoping for. Ok, I know the TV will not bring that fulfillment. But in the meantime, I must be ok with life post-TV and pre-new TV. I must also be ok with not knowing where my future is heading. I have to be ok with waiting. There is no point in making myself a nice little cocoon woven out of self-pity and anxiety; the waiting period is not a time of wallowing in worry. God wants me here, even if I know I am not currently who I want to be. I hold onto my faith and I hope that, by his good pleasure, I will safely arrive at home.

On Faith and Baseball

There was one year that I tried to play fantasy baseball. That crap is dumb. First of all, there are too many players and they play too often--you can't keep track. Second of all, you can't tell if players are doing well because their numbers are so low. A good game is like 3 hits or something. If 3 is the highest number that you get to see on a given day, then count me out. That's not exciting at all.
But I think the real reason I hated fantasy baseball is because I didn't really know much about baseball. I know some Giants players and I know that I hate the Yankees. I also know that Tim Lincecum is raw and he smokes pot and that I like him for those reasons, but that's really about it. So I updated my fantasy baseball roster for about 3 weeks until I realized that it was useless. If I really wanted to get excited about fantasy baseball the way I do about basketball, then I would have to do tons of research and study on all the baseball players so that I would know what I was doing. Needless to say, I did not put in that effort. Bottom line, fantasy baseball sucks.

And really, I sense a similar theme in my faith. It's frustrating sometimes. I look at the Scriptures and I see a very one-sided image of faith. When Jesus describes what the Kingdom is like, he is clear about how to enter: it's an all-or-nothing kind of deal. Again and again I only see that Jesus wants followers who have left everything for his sake. There is no middle ground, no indecision, no going back and forth. You cannot simply dip your toes into the water, you gotta dive into it headfirst.
And that scares the hell out of me. And maybe it's supposed to. Or maybe it's supposed to scare the heaven into me. Regardless, sometimes I wonder if my current struggles with faith are only a result of my middle-ground-ness. That as I am dipping my toes into the Living Water, I am only doing a disservice to myself. Either I dive in, or I go completely back on land. Maybe this is why Jesus gets so mad about people being lukewarm--it just doesn't do anyone any good.
I think my faith is like fantasy baseball. I simply cannot invest myself entirely into it. It is not natural for me. If I want to truly experience the real joy of fantasy baseball--the full life that Jesus promises--then I have to go all in. There is no other way.
I remind myself that it is a process. I know it is. The disciples, even after following Jesus for a couple years, were still greedy sometimes, jealous too, and a few turned their backs on Jesus at times. I find comfort in how stupid the disciples were. Yet they had one thing going for them the whole time--they had left everything behind to follow Jesus. Even if they were dumb sometimes, they had nonetheless taken that first extraordinary step of faith, leaving behind house, family, money, possessions to follow Jesus.
Sigh. Sometimes I wonder if we're doing faith all wrong. I look at the Word and see one picture of discipleship. The first step always seems to be getting rid of all or most of your possessions. That's the first step! He told his disciples to do it, he told the rich young ruler to do it, Zaccheus did it, he told the church in Laodicea to do it... sometimes I wonder if I'm only running in place because I haven't taken that first step yet. Dang that sentence was deep.
Well, I'm getting too serious now. Bottom line, fantasy baseball sucks.