Vasectomy and the Cutting of Things

I was scheduled for a vasectomy next week. I got the bulletin with the picture of the couple happily walking along the beach after the cutting of his milk maker. I was told all I need to do for this "minor" surgery and had some paperwork to fill out because I had never been to this doctor's office before. As I looked at it and started to think about the implications of what I was doing, (not to mention the fact that if anyone so much as swooshes those parts I am ready to open up a can of whoop....) I wondered if it was the right thing. I have five children and most people would say, yeah that's enough, like children are some unwanted commodity or something. I work at Wal-Mart as a cashier and clean a bank part time so to say my funds are limited is some what of an understatement. I live in a 3 bedroom house and drive a mini-van that is too small now. So, practically it seems like the right thing to do but who I am to stop God from blessing me. Why would I be so arrogant as to say God this children thing must end now. I'm not sure I'm ready for the ramifications of such a thing. Not everyone would agree and one of my dearest friends in the world got the snippy cutty good bye silly putty a few years ago. I know he knows God, in an intimate way. I am sure I know God as well, and I am sure it's not time.
Several reasons why. First I asked for a sign, yes I am wicked. I needed to know because this is usually a permanent thing and I only let a dude with a knife go there once without losing teeth. I am an idiot so I needed a "sure" sign because the guilt and doubt my wife and I felt wasn't enough. The next day the doctor's office called and said insurance wouldn't cover the surgery because it's an elective process. To do the undercarriage circumcision they needed 600 dollars upfront. My wife called the insurance company a week prior and they said it was covered. A coincidence? I don't think so.
Second I am not good with babies. Never have been, probably never will. We didn't have babies in my house growing up and I have as much patience as a bull with his *%@## in a sling and a guy on top of him pulling on it. After five it seems I would get used to it but it's almost as if it's gotten worse. Leila is like the terror of the north as far as crying and being naughty, she is hard to deal with at times. It's like she has all the stubborness of her father bottled up inside that less than 20lb body of hers. Hard to imagine but true. Today I went to WMA to run and was furious because Leila cried all morning. She wouldn't eat, she had a diaper rash so she cried and flipped and flopped when I had to change her diaper, she wouldn't stay in our self made fence in the living room and I was going crazy. Yelling at the other kids more than usual and momma said as I was leaving, and I quote, "Your kids need a break from you, go by yourself." I was mad at her, but I usually am when she is honest about who I really am. So I was thinking about the V all the way there and the way back and I as opened the door my 9 month old daughter was standing up holding on to my office chair in a dress I bought her and grinned from ear to ear at me like I was her boyfriend completely unaware of how mad I was at her. Tears welled up in my eyes and the vasectomy thought was gone.
Third, I had a vision, sort of, on the way home from WMA 2 days ago about my children and I am sure there were 6 kids in it. It wasn't ordinary, I pulled over to let it pass. I have had this happen once or twice and am not sure what they mean or if they are real, but I am sure I really had something happen that had six kids in it.
Finally, the kids called me on my way home and sang me an "I love you" song in unison. This coupled with the picture on this blog makes me the think the cutting of things is not yet on God's agenda even though it might be on my list of things to do to make my selfish life more convenient.

The Unknowable God

Adoniram Judson, father of american missions, said after loosing a third child and his wife in Burma, "God is to me the great unknown. I believe in him, but find him not." This was written under much different circumstances than my own, but I can relate. Unfortuneately, this was the sentiment of many liberal theologians of the late 1800's and early 1900's like Bultmann. Bultmann believed that God was so unknowable, and even unapproachable, that to even speak of him or discuss him was to put him on a human level and thus sinning by doing so. He acknowledged that all of his writings on such were no less than this. Is it possible to know God? Are we, mere creation, able to speak inteligibly of a God like the one (and I confess only one) written about in the Bible. Weren't the writers of the canon able to do what they did for no other reason than it was revealed to them?
I wonder how God feels/thinks when men try to speak intelligibly of him. Bultmann was on the opposite side of the fence but had such an understanding of God that he knew he was limited in his scope of description. I don't mind being limited by words, as long as I know I am limited. My confusion is I feel so limited in understanding. I want to understand God, I don't mean corner him, like a small boy trying to catch a mouse. I mean that I want to be able to look at suffering and have faith that God is sovereign. I want to be able to think about death and have faith triumph my doubt. I want to be in need and be content. I want to suffer and find no reason to complain. I just want to have a knowledge of God that compels me to trust.
I believe I have been found. A common mistake in Christianity is to say I have found God, when in reality God "finds" us. Maybe it is our goal to search after God from the moment he finds us. Maye we are to look for him with all of our might, soul, and strength and be exhausted in pursuit of who he is. Maybe, no, absolutely this is our ultimate and most difficult task. I for one get lost in conversations and writings about God . I get lost in working for him and living a "right" life. I get lost mostly in sin, and all of these make me feel like I just spun myself around a 1000 times and can't even stand let alone begin pursuing God.
A.W. Tozer has a chapter in The Pursuit of God called "Apprehending God." In it, he says that many people's belief in God is based on, "He must be, therefore we believe he is." This is based on a belief that there is substantial evidence to not believe otherwise yet in this view God remains impersonal and unknowable. He concludes by saying that obedience to God's word is what unfolds the trinity before our eyes. I wish it were that easy. I, as could so many, name 1000's who were as obedient as they come and felt as if God were too high and lofty to be personal. They, like I, feel that God is, to some degree, a mystery.
So in this, whether as conservative as Judson or as liberal as Bultmann, any honest man must confess the "musterion" of God. I have been reading books by and about Bultmann, Judson, Wright, Metzger, Bonhoffer, and the like, and all of these would confess they have no grasp on the divine as if he were such. How can a guy like me do otherwise? Is it possible to know and understand God? Is it a worthy pursuit or a fool's quest?
Mark 4:11-12 says, "And He was saying to them, "To you has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God, but those who are outside get everything in parables, 12 so that WHILE SEEING, THEY MAY SEE AND NOT PERCEIVE, AND WHILE HEARING, THEY MAY HEAR AND NOT UNDERSTAND, OTHERWISE THEY MIGHT RETURN AND BE FORGIVEN."
This was the response of Jesus when asked why he spoke in parables. Is this meant to be a blessing to the disciples? That they aren't going to be spoken to in parables. Most people think this means that those who are saved get some sort of special insight into God that the world doesn't have. It seems that the parables are somewhat easier than much of the other teachings of Jesus and Paul, most definitely of that of the Old Testament prophets.
This giving of the "musterion" to those who follow Jesus is almost a curse. It is a word that doesn't do justice by saying mystery. Unsolveable mystery is more like it because a mystery will make you pursue, it's the unsolveable part that drives man mad.
Yet madness is what God calls us to. Foolishness is what we who "pursue" God are labeled. So even though God may be unknowable to some degree and I have been cursed with the musterion, I will meddle in the affairs of God and hope to somehow find the trust that I need because I am convinced he is and am determined to find him so.

12 Days After

I told Becca that this was the only picture I cared about getting in this sweat factory otherwise known as graduation regalia. Just me and my kids.
That day was something else. It was the culmination of what I longed for. The rest of the day I just sat and did nothing at my mom and dad's house. Well, I guess I gourged myself on brats and chips and sweated but that was about it. It was a good day. My wife sat with her mom and mine, I got to spend time with my dad and his brother, the kids played on the swings and sand, it just couldn't get any better. But now its 12 days after and the sitting around is getting old. I want the job search to move along faster and I wish I was able to go back to school already, I really want to work on a PhD. I am tired of Wal-Mart and Shirkey's and I just want some change, and its only been 12 days.
So to keep me occupied I have been reading a lot of books. A biography of Bultmann and one of Bonhoffer. A book on marriage by Kostenberger. A Greek and Hebrew grammar. Mitchell and Metzger's lexical aids. I have been doing a timeline of Christianity for my own benefit. I have continued my greek studies in 1 John by doing translation and an inverse interlinear.
Even though I'm not in school, and I'm not working on a PhD yet, I just want to learn, I just want to sepnd time doing that which is worth doing. I want to spend my time learning about my savior and being equipped to do effectively what he has called me to do. Yeah, I've watched some TV, and I've even sat on the porch a few times with a stogie and an O'Douls, but mostly I've just thought about Jesus and the desire to love him like I never have. I 've spent the last 12 days establishing what I want to do for the rest of my life so that when I stand before Jesus Christ, the "pantekrator," I will have known that I did my best for him and his call on my life and that, my friend, will never come easy. Bonhoffer coined the term "cheap grace" among other things which depicted how many of his fellow statesmen sought to exhaust Christianity. The opposite is what the Cost of Discipleship is about. It is about the fact that knowing Jesus will cost you - all of your life. I know I haven't faced what he faced, but I want to get ready. I want to be so equipped to serve Christ that death won't scare me.
So the past 12 days have been spent trying to establish pattern and I plan on spending the next 12 days the same.

Philippians 3:10 "that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings,"