aarontmedeiros.wordpress.com

I know I know, with all these followers how could I ever do this?... I'm sorry for the inconvenience but I have moved this blog to wordpress and slightly shifted it's focus. I hope you all read this and follow me via email or membership over there. It's way more user friendly and offers a lot more customization. again it's at www.aarontmedeiros.wordpress.com GET THERE!

A care in the world

I’m not concerned with what could have been

I care about what will be

I’m not concerned with what I’ve done

I care about what I’m doing

I’m not concerned with who you think I am

I care about who I am

I’m not concerned with people

I care about people

I’m not concerned with our nations future

I care about the kingdom of God

I’m not concerned about falling in love

I care about loving the fallen.

24 Days Later

24 Days till departure. In truth, that marks the date of the departure that encouraged starting this blog in the first place. June 1st is the day I leave for a 7 week vagabonding adventure to South Africa. I've not been much for countdowns as I feel it spoils the excitement of the grand departure, but today I could not resist.
This day represents a spit in the face of common social belief. June 1 represents a new level of audacious decision making that my life has never known. This wonderful day represents so much more than a "trip". It is a change in who I am. It reminds me that despite familial discouragement, despite financial limitations, and despite no experience in independent travel (or any travel for that length of time), that in 25 days (one day of travel) I will be standing on the African continent with no forced agenda or objective. That, my friends, makes me smile.

What Do You Want From Me?

Time and time again I hear people reminding me that God has a plan for my life. It's true He has a plan for everyone. I think the problem for me sometimes is realizing the potential for that plan. At some point, many Christians will find themselves unworthy of God's love, and rightfully so.

I am to the point where I realize God has a great plan for my life. I have come to the acceptance of the fact that His plans for me are beyond my understanding right now. I'm OK with that. What I struggle to remember is the full extent of what God is capable of doing with me. Sometimes I think it's a nice reminder to consider what God HAS done when considering what he CAN do.

Moses wrote the Torah, lead the Israelites out of captivity to a mighty Egyptian empire and into the promised land, spoke audibly to God and saw Him face to face. This man was once a murderer and a coward.

David wrote much of the Psalms and was King of Israel. He killed a lion and bear with his bare hands. He brought down a giant with a sling and stone and saved his people. God called him a man after his own heart. This man once sent someone to his death so that he could have sex with his widowed wife

Paul wrote to and nurtured the early church after Christ's death, keeping the faith strong and insuring the spread of the gospel. Despite imprisonment and torture he carried on Christ's command with zeal. This man once called it his job to arrest or murder all followers of Christ.

Sometimes I think we can be hard on ourselves based on what we have done. But based on what I've read in scripture I think God's far less concerned with what we've done and extremely concerned with what we're going to do. To the adulterous woman in John, who by LAW deserved to die, Jesus simply said, "Go and sin no more". I truly believe God wants us to cast our discomforting pasts to Him and begin working with Him in writing a suitable future. I wonder how our expectations for ourselves would grow if we stopped dwelling on our failures and started focusing on what God's willing to do in spite of them.

Old Testament Moment!

Yesterday I was earnestly praying for some help to become more disciplined in my reading of the word and truly become a student of the scripture. I wanted to find the word of God woven into my heart. Not for the sake of recital but so that I find Him immediately when facing struggles and questions. I want to be grounded in his living word and live in faith that He has already answered my every question. Needless to say, I had developed some horrible bible reading habits.

This morning, at the disturbing hour of 6am (I'm a single 21 year old dude who works at 9, that is EARLY to me!) I heard two loud claps. I jumped up wide eyed and then went into stealth mode, creeping peering around each corner till I was sure no one was breaking into the house. After realizing I was going insane I laid back down to sleep. One more loud clap rang out which sounded like it was coming from RIGHT under my bed. Feeling childish and foolish, I was tempted to get a flash light and get to the bottom of it. I laid there for a moment, now wide awake, and began to let my mind wander.

It's amazing the lengths God will go to get our attention. The fact that I had prayed the VERY NIGHT BEFORE for energy in the morning to read his word had not even crossed my mind. I had prayed wholeheartedly for more time in the morning to read his word... LAST NIGHT! Here I was, nearing 6:30 now, finally putting the pieces together. I grabbed the day by the balls and tore into the Word.

Hey, I'm not by any means assuming that an angel of the Lord was physically clapping it's hands to awake me. I'm not elaborating on the fact that what I read happened to be exactly what I needed for this day. I'm just saying that if you give God the go, if you really give Him the reigns, He WILL do something with you. It's usually going to be uncomfortable and it's always going to be for your benefit. If you have some area in your life that you think needs some help, rest assured, He knows about it. More times than not, He's just waiting for the invite. And do not think for a minute that He's removed from His old school, shocking ways of getting your attention.

Maunday Thursday

We're getting down to it now. Inching ever closer to an Easter celebration and in doing so, we arrive at some of the darkest times of Jesus' life. We look back like this, we take communion, we do so many things to remember and reflect on the past. It is my desire that these reflections prove to be so much more than just petty memento. It was today that Jesus washed the disciples' feet. To this point in my life, I have yet to wrap my head around that act. As if God humbling himself as a human and coming to serve us wasn't great enough, He, less than one day from the time he would die, knelt down and washed his followers' feet.
Someone mentioned a rather quotable question the other day at a bible study and I think it really puts us in the right frame of mind throughout this time. The question goes, "Is the life you're living worth the death Christ died?" Ouch right? The guy who asked it then followed with a disclaimer that we shouldn't feel guilty but we should strive to pour out all that we are into a life worthy of Christ's death. Rest assured, worth and value are in the eye of the beholder. Thank God! Our pathetic offering of a tattered life is all we can give and it is all God wants! He knows how broken we are but, maybe, even more importantly he knows what we were made to be. He knows our full potential.
I look at the disciples during this horribly tasking time in Christ's life. Put yourself in Christ's shoes for a moment (I know, scary right) and imagine how frustrated and disappointed you'd be with your disciples. Peter still doesn't get it... Judas flat out sells you out to be killed for a little silver. After ALL you invested in them... Later on at what might have been your hardest time to date, they're sleeping? Are you kidding me? Ok ok take yourself out of it before you issue a Christ-like backhanding. You kind of get an idea of what kind of love we're dealing with here...
He didn't issue the well deserved beat down. He issued an unprecedented death in the most humiliating, miserable fashion in an epic beat down on death to save us for eternity.
If all He asks in return is that we devote our lives, the ones we've all but ruined, to Him, I think that's something we CAN do.

Sigh No More album by Mumford and Sons

Sigh No More album by Mumford and Sons

As if playing the EP to death wasn't enough, I cannot bring myself to pull this album out of my CD player. Melodies are like cocaine and after few listens I began to realize the gravity of what he's singing about. A deeply spiritual album lyrically with powerful music to support the expression. Nothing sissy about this guy's sensitivity. A line from the title track "Sigh No More": "Love that will not betray you, dismay or enslave you,

It will set you free
Be more like the man you were made to be"

The Book

The auto-biography has begun. I will not finish it until I am dead. It will be a constant, third person journaling of the recent past until there is nothing left to document spare death and decay and at that point I will bring myself, first person, into the story. The purpose of it is to basically document my life as if I am an onlooker and is inspired by a grand concept: "We can never be the people we were." So I will record the life of Aaron Medeiros in a fashion that never truly knows with absolute certainty who he was or exactly what thought, but merely hypothesize. It's off to a solid start like most of my new ventures... We'll see if it survives the test of time.

Thread Count

Our church is in the market for a small group system... We have had them before with limited success but, then again, I'm in no position to measure the success of a small group. I'm not sure how that's done on paper. However, we are looking into various resources and references in crafting our own style and format of small group. It's looking promising and I think it might stick. I have high hopes and expectations for what God can do in the small group setting for the church community. And God knows it needs some help. One resource I stumbled across yesterday was www.threadsmedia.com. It may be inter-web taboo to promote a blog on a blog... But I don't care. Check this website out no matter what your ministry consists of. It's got some sound advice and pretty practical suggestions in small group leading and maintaining. The neat trendy layout doesn't hurt either. Read and be merry.

Life as an Appetizer

I was talking with someone the other day and, as is often the case, I made some remark about getting myself killed sooner or later. My friend informed me that she has a great fear of death and that my comment made her uneasy. In a desperate effort to redeem the conversation and myself, I developed this perspective...

Life as an appetizer is a perspective that targets the people that overvalue life here on earth and fear what's to come, or rather what's not to come. Valuing life here on earth is not unimportant in any way, but in the same manner one would consider the main course more significant than the appetizer, how much greater is heaven than these measly 80 years.
When you sit down at a restaurant and order your appetizer and main course, your focus and primary interest should not be on the sparse, and often overpriced, starter course. It's easy to get caught up in the here and now when the dish comes out and looks great. It's not the main course. If you gorge and over eat on it, you're main course experience will be ruined.
And then if the appetizer comes out disheveled or too cold or somebody screwed up the order completely, it's frustrating. Your expectations get shot down and what you were told was going to be something great, turns out to be a huge disappointment. A lot of people here on earth want you to feel like this is all you get. They want you to get everything you can and focus on yourself in this little whirlwind called life. They pressure you to hurry up and get yours because this is all they know. They tell you that once you mess this appetizer up, you're screwed. It's INSANE!
I'm hungry, I don't know about you. In truth I love life here on earth, it tastes great! But get real! If death came early or if some horrendous disaster shattered my life all over the floor, it won't change my perfect, amazing, and eternal main course.

Sunshine

So a hypochondriac might tell me I have seasonal depression. In fact they have told me. Can you believe the technical acronym for seasonal depression is SAD? Seriously, let's make it just that much worse for the patient when he hears the doctor say, "I'm sorry to inform you that not only do you feel sad but now you have SAD." Regardless of a pretty eerie match up on the symptoms, I'm in denial. On the flip side, the last couple days of sunshine, albeit with spurts of rain, have brought me a tremendous level of happiness. I'm not talking about joy. Joy is a permanent state in my opinion. Sure you'll have ups and downs but if you have obtained joy in life you are not one bit swayed by life's obstacles. You have reached a level of peace that.... oh let's say a level of peace that surpasses understanding for reference sake. That peace will remain in spite of the weather. The more temporal happiness, the moods, the superficial crust of joy, is what I'm addressing. And that kind of mood, is pummeled, in my case, by the weather. I would be in one serious struggle if I lived permanently in a place with no sunshine. I think people who love rain are sick, SICK individuals. I know it's emo and artsy to snuggle up and be contemplative on a rainy day but for the UV worshipers, it's nothing shy of torture. Yes, yes I acknowledge it's wonderful effects on our agriculture and call that point valid. Regardless, I cannot wait for some consistent sunshine. So this summer, when the thermometer is reading well passed 100, know that I am smiling. May my conditional happiness in the midst of your misery comfort you this summer. But above all else, may your unhappiness be as temporal as the rainy season in Central California.

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Heroes

There is something about coastal towns that allows live performances to thrive. Call it the "hippie scene" or beach bum attitudes that bring about such a joyful atmosphere. Whatever it is, and regardless of how society views it, I like it. Last night I saw Edward Sharpe and Magnetic Zeros in San Luis Obispo. It could have been aided by the fact that the opening band set the stage by playing in the audience and having everyone sit down and sing along. Maybe it was the Indian (dots not feathers) style dress, Christ-like beards, dreadlocks, or trumpets... It put the crowd into a comatose. And I'm certain that process was not aided by the lingering excess of THC... But people were happy to be there and happy to be around one another. I'm talking over a hundred people in a small dark room, shoulder to shoulder, truly enjoying themselves. Some belligerent bar patron stumbled into me in search of the restroom and I could not help but smile and help steer him in the right direction. I am not personally accustomed to such grace and patience. The show went on with magnificent creativity and impromptu adjustments to the already beautiful songs. Amongst strangers we danced and screamed and clapped and cheered and hugged till the place shut down. It was truly an unforgettable evening. After the show wrapped up I could not help but catch myself thinking, "When was the last time I experienced this kind of community harmony in a Church setting?" Why are secular gatherings nailing this loving atmosphere when we're pulling teeth just to greet one another? Why did I feel more at home around a bunch of hippies than I do with my own family? As you might suspect, I didn't, and don't, have an answer.

One Good Reason

I have always been a music admirer but lately I have felt the urge, or I should say MORE of an urge, to play music. I have always kept up my writing and as a result I have occasionally composed song lyrics. I've dabbled on the guitar as well as the piano and have developed something of an ear for it. The discussion now is whether or not I should take it further. I could, perhaps, start taking private piano lessons and singing classes. The hobby, for lack of a better term, could be a great outlet for what little creativity I've been given. And yet, in the midst of making this decision, which weighs heavier than any of such insignificance ought to, I find myself requesting one thing. Give me one reason not to. Give me one good reason why it would be detrimental or harmful in any way. I find myself, in the midst of this inner discussion, realizing that a lot of decisions we struggle to make could gain from such a perspective. Should I go back to school? What's one good reason not to? Should I talk to someone about that personal issue I keep running from? (uh oh, just got deep) Find one decent reason not to and I'll find someone who hides in fear behind their excuses. So ya, in case you're wondering, I am going to start taking piano lessons... Why not?

More to come on this endeavor...

Brief Explanation

The name "The Carpool Lane" comes from an idea I had during a staff meeting at the church. I was under the impression that I had developed this great idea and, in a miserable effort to explain myself, used the carpool lane as a metaphor for whatever message I had hoped to purvey. To my horror it multiplied the confusion, and humor, and evaporated any hope of getting my point across. I can't recall the meaning of it at this point but, regardless, it represents a sad attempt at expressing myself, which leads us to this blog...

Enter the Blogger

In some way or another I have always "blogged" but I feel like I should make it official. So here I am, following suit. The extra motivation for starting this came in the forms of an annoyance with Facebook as well as some interesting ventures in the near future. I figure, when you've stumbled upon some excellent writing material, you might as well start writing. I was blessed, genetically as I see it, with the gift of exaggeration. I will do my best to write with sincerity and accuracy but never at the cost of the reader's enjoyment. Inspiration is not limited to reality. Whether it be some spiritual truth or radical story, I will do my best to promptly post these articles for the audience that has yet to exist.