Yesterday, I was watching the “making of” video for “Hello Hurricane,” which is amazing, by the way (I highly recommend it to you) and he [Jon Foreman] said something and for some reason unbeknownst to me (my mind doesn’t seem to think very linearly), I went on a mental tangent about words that I like.
It’s weird, even though I’m a bio major and all the stuff I do revolves mostly around facts and numbers and concrete information, I’m still in love with words and how they can mean anything to anyone, so I started thinking about five words that mean a lot to me. If you’d care to look, here they are:
1) Remedy
I love the implications of it. It seems, at first glance, to be the same as “fix” or “repair,” but it is not. For me, remedy implies brokenness and desolation that is innate. It’s Something greater looking down at something that has completely fallen apart and not only deciding to make it right again, but to make it better and to heal it. It means that you can still see the wounds and the scars that once seemed to plague the ones who were broken, but you can now see the beauty and the hope that took what once seemed hopeless and destroyed and made it new.
2) But
A lot of pastors and Christian leaders seem to point out that two of the most wonderful words in the Bible are: “but God…” and I tend to agree with them. “But” in the Bible means hope. Usually, “but” fits into a “Biblical formula (there isn’t such thing, but for the sake of illustration, here it is) in a manner similar to this: “Here is terrible, devastating, earth shattering, soul destroying news about who you are, who you were, and who you will be, BUT here is amazing, life giving, hope restoring Truth about who you have been made to be and who you can become through God.”
3) Rescue
It could be because I was a rather nerdy child who was in love with superheroes (I think that’s pretty evident), but the word “rescue” hits me in a different way from words like “save” and “help.” I know they mean almost the same thing or even exactly the same thing, but “rescue” just seems to ring in my heart in a way that makes me feel a little bit lighter and a little more joyful. For me, rescue puts in mind an image of someone who is alone and fearful and facing some kind of threat of death. Something is sucking the life out of this person and making them realize that all of their attempts and all the things they tried to do up until that point have added up to nothing useful in terms of that moment. It happens all the time in comic books, like in Superman when Lois Lane is being hung from the top of buildings by villains, what does she do? She’s a smart and resourceful reporter, one of the first female characters to be made with her own mind and with ambition and aggressiveness, but what does she do when she’s cornered and alone? She cries for help. And it comes. And that’s what I love about the word rescue. That’s what it means for me. I was alone and helpless against myself, but I cried for help, for Someone to rescue me, and He came.
4) Wait
I used to hate this word, but lately, I’ve come to love it. I felt like I was always waiting, always having to hang back and do something else until what I REALLY wanted happened. Yesterday, I was reading Isaiah 26 and these verses struck me:
Isaiah 26: 7-9
“The path of the righteous is level; you make level the way of the righteous.In the path of your judgments,O Lord, we wait for you;your name and remembrance are the desire of our soul.My soul yearns for you in the night; my spirit within me earnestly seeks you. For when your judgments are in the earth,the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.”
See how the Psalmist is relating to God? He’s praising God for who He is and saying how much He wants to know Him better, and then it sounds sort of random halfway through the verse, He says we wait for You, Lord, and then connects it to how his soul desires to know God. Which sounds weird at first until you relate it to life. I know for me, the times I’ve known God the most intimately, the times when I’ve cried out to Him with the most desperation, are not the times when everything is all right and I’m seeing His blessings, but the times when everything is falling apart and I’m having to struggle to see His goodness. Waiting for things to happen and waiting for God to show me why things are happening or even just waiting to see what I learn from the mess I’m in shapes me and shapes my faith so that I see who God is in a deeper and clearer way.
5) Broken
This word perfectly describes who I used to be and who I am without God. It implies that He is what fixes me and that He is what makes me whole and complete. I also think it adequately depicts the desolation and “lost-ness” of my existence before Christ. =)
^___^

*edit*
I don't know if anyone else looks into this as much as I do, but when I listen to "Christian" music, I take into heavy consideration what the musician I'm listening to believes in and whether or not his or her lifestyle lines up with Christianity (if they are claiming to be Christian). I was a bit ambivalent about Switchfoot before. It used to bother me that they would say they didn't want to be labeled as "Christian" music because "Christianity" is a belief system and it needs to be lived out; it's not a type of music. I thought it was kind of a cop out and I didn't like that it felt as if they were using this as an excuse to be mainstream and sell their music outside of the Christian market. But then I read this. And I really like it:

Interviewer:In Jeffery Sheler's book Believers: A Journey into Evangelical America, he travels to Creation Fest and watches you perform. He describes you as feeling constrained to be ambiguous. Why do you think he would get that impression?

Jon Foreman: I feel like people want us to be flying their flag. People will use our words to prove them right. We are not trying to fly the flag of Christendom, and we never have attempted to lift that flag. At the end of my life, I would love to have somebody say, "He was a humble Christian." I think that would be the biggest compliment.
I've seen very few people get up on stage in rock and roll who yell and stamp their feet for the name of Christ and do it in a way that I feel like is the gospel. So when people come to us with books and microphones and cameras and they want us to cheer the cheer and chant the chant, it's something that I don't feel comfortable doing. In all honesty, I don't feel like that's the gospel. And to do so is to betray the very thing that means the most to me.
If people are going to misconstrue that as being an unbeliever, then I have to be comfortable with that outcome, because I can't be responsible for other people's opinions. Again, you can't live your life for a million people. The whole audience of One is a really liberating concept.

Interviewer: So how do you see the gospel?

Jon Foreman: I see the gospel as the antithesis of what happens on stage. We have it all wrong in a lot of respects where we interview the people who are up on stage when I truly believe that what happens off stage is more important. How we treat each other behind closed doors matters a whole more as far as infinity's concerned than whether you hit the right note on stage and you had the strobe just perfect and your guitar was in tune.
We are continually striving for excellence, and I feel like music in and of itself is a worthy endeavor. That's something we will continue to do with every piece of us. But the way we treat our families is infinitely more important. Life is too short to always be the center of your world.

Does anyone want to move with me to this? Tumblr. com
I made one a while ago, but I didn't really fix it up until today and this is my url: http://superheroesarereal.tumblr.com
I love xanga, but....tumblr is a million times better. It's also easier to use. AND if you're an artsy type of person ( I personally don't happen to be, but a few of you are...), it lets you post photos, mp3s, and videos directly onto the thing. You don't have to, but if you would like to join me...I think that's where I'm going to be from now on ^___^ (although, I'll still probably read your posts if you stay here because I like keeping up with all two of you who update haha =)

I really want to turn this into a part time food blog. Attempt one!
Sugar Free Pumpkin Bread:
Ingredients:
210 g flour
1/2 teaspoon of salt ( I think I'm going to lessen to this to 1/4)
1 cup+ 2 tablespoons splenda (this should probably be increased to 4 extra tbsp splenda)
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup FRESH pumpkin puree (not canned)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 room temperature eggs, beaten
1/4 cup cooled spicy tea (i used pumpkin ginger, but i think cinnamon or chai would work as well)
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp cloves
1 tbsp splenda brown sugar ( i think actually this should be increased to 2 tbsp)

Method:
1) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees farenheit.
2) Sift the flour, baking soda, salt, and spices together in a bowl. In a separate bowl, use a whisk to mix together the oil, eggs, tea, sugars and puree.
3) While whisking GENTLY (not furiously), add the dry ingredients to the wet in sections (I used fourths, but I think thirds would be okay too). Space out your additions so that after each addition, the flour is incorporated. Don't mix past incorporation (that just means that as soon as you don't see flour, STOP mixing).
4) Pour mixture into an oiled or buttered pan and bake for 35-40 minutes.
*notes:
the pumpkin that i used was a halloween pumpkin, which apparently isn't good for baking because it doesn't have a strong taste; i looked around and most people said to use a sugar pumpkin and some even suggested squash, so i will try that next time. Also, I have to mess around with the sugar portion and baking times a bit, but I think the way that I altered it above would fix it. The sugar content I think depends really more on you because some people like their bread really sweet and some just like a hint of sweetness. I also think it should be baked nearer to 35 because mine was just a smidge dry. Like if I did it at 38 minutes it would be fine. That's it, I think. Wheeee somebody tell me if they try this. I actually adapted it from here: http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/000842pumpkin_bread.php, so if you want to do it with normal sugar, use that one.