Thoughts on Irony, Love, Persepctive, and Art

Love: It’s interesting how love can make you feel so fulfilled, but it can also make you feel so empty.

Fashion: Don’t overly concern yourself with fashion. No matter how cool you think you look now, you’ll always be embarrassed by pictures of yourself thirty years from now.

Art: Who decides what art is? The artist, or the audience?

Chick-fil-A: The Lord’s chicken. Fried in anointing oil. Served with a smile. Closed on Sundays. A glimpse of Heaven. Basically the Gospel of Christ on a plate.

Government: A government that is big enough to give you everything you ever wanted is strong enough to take away everything you ever needed.

Sin: Think about what it would be like if we wore the names of our darkest, heaviest sins on our foreheads. We would look at friends and loved ones that we had once trusted in a fearful, skeptical, judgemental light. We would be tempted to pull away from them to keep ourselves safe and associate with them and their sins as little as possible. Let’s not forget though, that to Christ, our sins are written on our foreheads, and He continues to draw near to us just the same.

Art: Music is like a painting; one doesn’t sit down and paint a Mona Lisa in one sitting. A painting takes time. Learning a piece takes time. Music is like a painting in sound.

Wisdom: Are you listening to respond or listening to learn?

Irony: Christians become the strongest when they fall on their knees in devastation and cry out to the Lord for help.

PB&J: Never cut the crust off a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for your child. They do not need to know that crust is optional.

Art: Bach’s Inventions were considered beautiful in 1723. Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring was considered beautiful in 1914. How is it that the concept of beauty is so ambulatory that within less than 200 years, purely mechanical music and purely chaotic music are both considered beautiful works of art?

Words: Sometimes, a single word can trigger a thousand memories, break a friendship, bring tears to your eyes, or cause great joy.

Trials: When the student takes a test, the teacher remains silent. When the Christian goes through trials, the Savior may also remain silent. 

Cookies: Everyone likes a sugar cookie, but how many people do you know that would fight you for the oatmeal raisin cookie? When you buy an economy-sized box of cookies from Costco, the sugar cookies run out in .002 seconds and there’s like thirty oatmeal raisin cookies left that nobody wants. That’s kind of how life is. Some people are sugar cookies. They’re fun and colorful and everyone likes them. Some people are oatmeal raisin cookies. They’re quieter, more contemplative, and not in any way pretentious. You have to have special taste to truly enjoy an oatmeal cookie.

Irony: Scripted reality television shows. 

Coffee: burnt, crushed beans mixed with water, cream, and sugar used as a mild drug for a temporary caffeine high and a momentary escape from reality. “Coffee” used to be a noun; now it is a social activity. Example: “Let’s do coffee”. 

Perspective: The music that’s a total bop today will be K-Mart music in ten years or so.

Popularity: Who gets to decide who the popular people are?

Irony: Absolute freedom is not what it seems. On this earth, we will always be a slave to something. I have the freedom to eat ice cream ten times a day if I wish, but I am therefore enslaving my body to the effects of ten servings of ice cream. I am free to speak my opinion in public, but am enslaving myself to the consequences of the potential wrath of my opposer. When Paul found freedom in Christ, he said he enslaved himself to a life of service to Him. Some freedoms are a risk worth taking. Others may not be.

Hope: The sins you commit do not define who you are. Whether or not you move on from your sins does.

Love: Flowers at a graveside all too often represent all the times we should have told the deceased “I love you”, but didn’t. The flowers, in a way, are a sort of reparation to the people we did not love when we had the chance.

Perspective: All those naps I didn’t take as a kid are gone. I should have loved them when I had the chance.

Irony: It’s funny how social media was made to connect people but when I sit in a room full of people hanging out on social media, I feel quite distant from them.

Grief: I live in a time when saving the baby turtles is more important than saving the baby humans. Where has our morality gone?

Essential Oils: Essential oils weren’t essential until somebody called them essential and now we can’t live without them. 

Art: Just because you have a microphone in your hands doesn’t mean you have talent. Give credit where credit is due.

Wisdom: Hear hate. Listen to wisdom.

Love: God’s holy plan for intimacy within marriage is like a sacred gift waiting to be opened on Christmas morning. If it is opened before the time is right, the gift is spoiled, both for the giver and the receiver.

Fashion: I find it ironic that we buy exercise clothing and then wear them for the sole purpose of not exercising. They were designed for comfortable exercise and we wear them for comfortable ice cream-eating and binge-watching. Interesting how something can be twisted to accomplish its opposite purpose.

Words: The words we speak are tools of communication, and just like any tool, there is a right way and a wrong way to use them. A power drill can be very helpful when used correctly, but it can be dangerous when used foolishly. A gun can protect you from harm, but if handled carelessly, it was result in detrimental loss. The way we speak to others is the same way. If we use our words to edify, we have effectively used them as a tool. If we use them foolishly, we can hurt ourselves or others.

Darkness: It’s okay to be in a season of looming darkness. If we do not know the depths of darkness, how can we rejoice in times of purest light?

Equality: Equality and empowerment have been twisted in our society today. Women fight for equality by degrading men. Mothers celebrate empowerment by aborting their children. Political minorities fight for equality by shaming and harassing the political majority. Equality should not raise one party above the other. True equality views everyone as created and fully loved by God, and deserving of mankind’s respect. Every life is precious.

Irony: The more I know, the less I understand.

Art: Writers build palaces with delicately woven sequences of words. Musicians paint murals on canvases of silences. Both are artists who take what already exists and make something new.

The Prodigal Son: Many people tend to use the term “prodigal” to refer to someone who fell away from good but returned. The actual definition of “prodigal”, however, is “lavished”. In the parable of the prodigal son, the father welcomed his returning son with open arms, and lavished gifts and praises on him. The definition of this word might give us a different perspective of the story and the characters. Instead of the story being solely about a son who fell away, we should see it as a story of a Father Who lovingly welcomes us home.

Hate: Why is hate so hard to let go of when the person it is hurting most is ourselves?

Coffee: Contrary to popular belief, you don’t just need coffee and Jesus.

Love: Love so severe can be mistaken for hate. 

Fulfillment: Did anyone ever have enough money for what they wanted? Surely the richest man in the world wanted more than he had.

Wisdom: Sacrificing future security for immediate happiness is not a good idea.

Art: A musician’s goal should not be to merely impress their audience, but to be so in-tune with them that the music is nothing more than an extension of the artist’s respect for them, a sign of their longing to connect with and aid humanity.

Perspective: Some say makeup is used to cover ugly blemishes; others say it is to accentuate natural beauty. Some actors use the theater to escape their real life; others use it to express who they truly are. 

Irony: Søren Kierkegaard writes that “Greater than all was Abraham, great with power whose strength is powerlessness.” (Kierkegaard 16). True empowerment is being able to decipher truth from lies disguised as truth and living the truth fearlessly. And the truth is, we as mortal, sinful humans are in need of a Savior who has the power to cleanse us. To be empowered, we must admit that we are weak. Great power is powerlessness. True empowerment is somewhat of an irony.

Love: Love at first sight. Is it possible? I would say no. Love is not a feeling. It’s a commitment to constantly sacrifice yourself for another person, to put their needs before your own, to enslave yourself to their well-being, and continue to do so even when they give you nothing in return. How can you do this upon seeing someone for the first time? Infatuation pales in comparison to love.