Tuesday, August 9, 2011
What do you think?
By Lindsey Knapp
It was 120 degrees here in Oklahoma last week, and I was at church camp with 30 other youth that I’ve known as long as I can remember. We laughed and sang and screamed and danced, and I did my share of crying and learning and feeling.
Do you ever have conversations you come out of feeling very much enlightened, and yet not quite able to say what it was you learned? I had at least three of those last week with a wonderful person named Sarah. And while we were both exhausted from the heat and a great lack of sleep, God did something in those conversations that I hope I’m still thinking about months from now.
What does it mean to be me? What does it mean to honor God in situations that do not have clear right or wrong answers? What does it mean to wait, and grow, and be open, and be honest?
Honesty, transparency, and truthfulness are things I value so very highly in others, and yet I’m not sure how much of them I possess. I’m realizing for perhaps the first time that being hard on yourself and being honest with yourself are two very different things.
I live in two very different places. Sometimes, when I am in New York, I’m tempted to not think about the issues I face when I’m in Oklahoma, not to investigate my feelings and desires about the issues, and I certainly would not call that being honest with myself. And in Oklahoma, I wonder, how does everything I’m learning in New York apply? If I were ever to move back, what would I bring back with me? How would I be able to say I had changed?
Well, I don’t have answers. But thanks to the very wise Sarah, and the infinitely wise God working through her words and into my life, I’m thinking about it.
Oh, it all looks different
But that doesn’t mean anything has changed
Still I reach for You
When I am afraid
And this breath that comes from You
Helps me say Your name
- song Say Your Name, by Bethany Dillon
Friday, May 13, 2011
The City That Never Rests
By Tim Knapp
As I walked the streets last night from 7:30 to 10pm, it seemed the longer I was out the busier the streets became. How is it that on a Monday evening the activity seemed to pick up the later it got? It’s nothing new, here. It is not unusual to walk past hundreds--no, thousands--of people dining along the streets on mild evenings at tables outside the myriads of cafes and restaurants, past 10pm. Not here, anyway. After all, this is the city that never sleeps.
A fair portion of those you will see out and about after 10pm on a week night in New York City are tourists. Wild-eyed, excited, exuberant tourists who have come here to take in all they can. Sleeping is something they’re not here to do. But most of these people are not tourists. They’re New Yorkers. And they’ll be up again in the morning and off to work by 7 or 8 am. Back to work. Back to the grind. So what gives?
It’s not that they don’t sleep. They sleep, but not much. There’s simply not enough time for it. Not here, anyway. So many have come to make a name for themselves, to break into their field, to get ahead. Others have come because their high-profile, high-demand position required it. And it comes at a price.
Putting in ten to twelve hours of work per day is not the only requirement for getting ahead. There’s much shoulder-rubbing and networking to be done. One must spend a certain amount of time in the right places with the right people, doing the right things. And even though some have families, it is still what must be done. Or is it?
One might argue that as long as you’re young, why not go for it? Or, it is simply the sacrifice required to be here, make the big bucks, get the big break. Is sleep really that important? Well, yes and no. Some who sleep plenty, never seem to rest. And others who don’t get enough sleep, tend to rest well. So what’s up with that?
It could be that something is going on beneath it all. That perhaps underlying our desire for accomplishment, there’s a deep-seated need to be seen, recognized, or heard. Something that shouts for approval, even disrupting our sleep. How will we ever rest from this continual, nonstop quest for notoriety? Perhaps by realizing our rest is found not by sleeping, not in less work, and not in vacations; it is found in a person. One who said, “Come to me, all you who are weary...and I will give you rest.”
As I walked the streets last night from 7:30 to 10pm, it seemed the longer I was out the busier the streets became. How is it that on a Monday evening the activity seemed to pick up the later it got? It’s nothing new, here. It is not unusual to walk past hundreds--no, thousands--of people dining along the streets on mild evenings at tables outside the myriads of cafes and restaurants, past 10pm. Not here, anyway. After all, this is the city that never sleeps.
A fair portion of those you will see out and about after 10pm on a week night in New York City are tourists. Wild-eyed, excited, exuberant tourists who have come here to take in all they can. Sleeping is something they’re not here to do. But most of these people are not tourists. They’re New Yorkers. And they’ll be up again in the morning and off to work by 7 or 8 am. Back to work. Back to the grind. So what gives?
It’s not that they don’t sleep. They sleep, but not much. There’s simply not enough time for it. Not here, anyway. So many have come to make a name for themselves, to break into their field, to get ahead. Others have come because their high-profile, high-demand position required it. And it comes at a price.
Putting in ten to twelve hours of work per day is not the only requirement for getting ahead. There’s much shoulder-rubbing and networking to be done. One must spend a certain amount of time in the right places with the right people, doing the right things. And even though some have families, it is still what must be done. Or is it?
One might argue that as long as you’re young, why not go for it? Or, it is simply the sacrifice required to be here, make the big bucks, get the big break. Is sleep really that important? Well, yes and no. Some who sleep plenty, never seem to rest. And others who don’t get enough sleep, tend to rest well. So what’s up with that?
It could be that something is going on beneath it all. That perhaps underlying our desire for accomplishment, there’s a deep-seated need to be seen, recognized, or heard. Something that shouts for approval, even disrupting our sleep. How will we ever rest from this continual, nonstop quest for notoriety? Perhaps by realizing our rest is found not by sleeping, not in less work, and not in vacations; it is found in a person. One who said, “Come to me, all you who are weary...and I will give you rest.”
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Fourteen Months
By Lindsey Knapp
After fourteen months in this city, what amazes me is no longer simply that I’m here; it’s that I belong here. Sometimes it just amazes me to come home. To turn off Broadway, walk up the tree-lined street, cross West End Avenue, in the front doors, through the lobby, up the stairs, and in our red door. It’s our door now! Our building! Our street! I didn’t have neighbors for the first thirteen years of my life; now, there’s the Jewish family down the hall, the French foreign exchange students who once borrowed a casserole dish, the little girls above us who sometimes sound like they’re studying to become clog dancers. I know my way around the Upper West Side now; Bethany and I have scouted out the best pizza places and we know where the ice cream trucks hang out. Taking the subway, the bus, a taxi, or walking somewhere does not require a map. We have our weekly schedules--I have chorus twice a week, Beth has co-op classes Wednesday mornings, Mom hosts a prayer group once a month, Dad has a mens’ breakfast every so often.
Life certainly looks different here. Homeschooling and working from home means that all four of us are in this apartment for a good bit of every day. That’s mostly a good thing. Sometimes this place feels so small, particularly in spring days when it doesn’t feel like spring. On the other hand, the times that we all go somewhere together aren’t as often; oftentimes, we converge at church from four different places. And each of us having our different activities means that we have less mutual friends. Before telling my Mom a story about what happened today with so-and-so, I first have to explain who so-and-so is and how she might know them. And, to all you friends of my parents’ who have invested in me and loved me during my short life: thank you. I never realized until moving to New York how much the influence and interest of adults has encouraged and grown me. I don’t know all my parents’ friends now, and sometimes it bothers me!
Since coming to this place, I feel a bit like I’ve discovered, or more fully realized, the beauty and the grittiness of life. There is so much beauty in people; you discover this when you live on the same square mile as 60,000 others. People encourage me without even saying a thing; the woman walking past wearing an awesome melon pink coat, the girl crossing the street who looks contently happy about something, the children playing in a sprinkler below my windows, the baby who looks like a small dumpling. And the grittiness. Living on the same square mile as 60,000 others also means you have to deal with their humanness. Our kitchen ceiling is much worse for wear because of a running--and running, and running--faucet in the kitchen above us. And people are ugly. Walking past two grown men yelling at each other on the street is not particularly pleasant.
So. Life is good. Life is very busy. Mostly I feel very thankful for where God has put me; for the passions he’s given me. There is much to muse about on a Sunday evening.
After fourteen months in this city, what amazes me is no longer simply that I’m here; it’s that I belong here. Sometimes it just amazes me to come home. To turn off Broadway, walk up the tree-lined street, cross West End Avenue, in the front doors, through the lobby, up the stairs, and in our red door. It’s our door now! Our building! Our street! I didn’t have neighbors for the first thirteen years of my life; now, there’s the Jewish family down the hall, the French foreign exchange students who once borrowed a casserole dish, the little girls above us who sometimes sound like they’re studying to become clog dancers. I know my way around the Upper West Side now; Bethany and I have scouted out the best pizza places and we know where the ice cream trucks hang out. Taking the subway, the bus, a taxi, or walking somewhere does not require a map. We have our weekly schedules--I have chorus twice a week, Beth has co-op classes Wednesday mornings, Mom hosts a prayer group once a month, Dad has a mens’ breakfast every so often.
Life certainly looks different here. Homeschooling and working from home means that all four of us are in this apartment for a good bit of every day. That’s mostly a good thing. Sometimes this place feels so small, particularly in spring days when it doesn’t feel like spring. On the other hand, the times that we all go somewhere together aren’t as often; oftentimes, we converge at church from four different places. And each of us having our different activities means that we have less mutual friends. Before telling my Mom a story about what happened today with so-and-so, I first have to explain who so-and-so is and how she might know them. And, to all you friends of my parents’ who have invested in me and loved me during my short life: thank you. I never realized until moving to New York how much the influence and interest of adults has encouraged and grown me. I don’t know all my parents’ friends now, and sometimes it bothers me!
Since coming to this place, I feel a bit like I’ve discovered, or more fully realized, the beauty and the grittiness of life. There is so much beauty in people; you discover this when you live on the same square mile as 60,000 others. People encourage me without even saying a thing; the woman walking past wearing an awesome melon pink coat, the girl crossing the street who looks contently happy about something, the children playing in a sprinkler below my windows, the baby who looks like a small dumpling. And the grittiness. Living on the same square mile as 60,000 others also means you have to deal with their humanness. Our kitchen ceiling is much worse for wear because of a running--and running, and running--faucet in the kitchen above us. And people are ugly. Walking past two grown men yelling at each other on the street is not particularly pleasant.
So. Life is good. Life is very busy. Mostly I feel very thankful for where God has put me; for the passions he’s given me. There is much to muse about on a Sunday evening.
Monday, March 21, 2011
A Year in Manhattan
By Tim Knapp
This month marks a full year for us in the city. Wow. We've been here for that long? In some ways it seemed to have gone by quickly. In other ways, though, it hasn't. We've had to make an amazing amount of adjustments, from the cramped living space, to the incessant noise, to the constant challenge of interaction on all sides. The cost of living is another issue altogether. Just after we moved I saw an article on the cost of living across the US. The lowest cost of living for US cities was none other than Ft. Smith, AR, where we did all our major shopping while in SE Oklahoma. The highest and most expensive city in the US? You guessed it, New York City. Specifically, Manhattan.
I just this month signed on for another year of rent at our upper west side apartment. Huge by NY standards, yet half the size of our average-sized home in Oklahoma. And the cost of groceries. Good grief! Sticker shock still grips us as we search weekly "specials" for relatively decent prices. And yet, we're still glad to be here. God knows we didn't come to NYC to save money. But why did we come here? We still get that question a lot.
In the beginning, that question mainly came from our friends and family back in Oklahoma. It continues here, especially when New Yorkers discover we didn't come as a result of a job transfer. Most people come because they have to, or because they're looking to make a name for themselves as an artist of some kind: actors, writers, painters, etc. We came because God stirred our hearts for change. We didn't want to move, we felt compelled to move. There's a difference. Yet it's often hard to verbalize.
I recently listened to another of Dr. Tim Keller's lessons where, in speaking to church planters, he described how when one encounters God personally, the result is you go. Throughout scripture we see that when a person meets God--when one gets a new glimpse into the reality and person of God--the result is you can't just return to life as you know it. Some how, some way, you simply have to go and live out this new life, this new realization, you’ve received. For some it’s a new endeavor or a new job or ministry, but for others, it means you go. It’s hard to explain why at times. But you just have to go. And you hope they’ll understand, even support your going.
It’s at times like these that one’s life takes on a whole new meaning, and it’s exciting. It’s never easy to leave, not knowing what’s ahead or how you’ll go about things. I’m the kind of guy who never leaves home without a map. But for this sort of journey, one rarely is supplied an atlas or GPS. Now please don’t mistake me; I’m no Abraham or Moses, LOL. I’m just a guy who has been completely overwhelmed with a new realization of what Jesus’ work on the cross was all about, and it has completely overpowered my personal sense of reason. We left not really knowing what it was all about, except that we should go.
And go we did. We didn’t expect everyone to understand, and they haven’t. In fact, most still don’t. But it has been nice that along the way, every now and then, God has supplied us with just enough encouragement to keep us going. In fact, I just received one such bit of encouragement from a guy I didn’t even know, until now. I’ve pasted a part of his message below:
...As he told me about the drastic move your family had made there were some things that sounded a bit familiar to me. I decided to google your name and came across your blog...
Anyway, I just wanted to connect with you as a former SE OK guy who "gets" what you are doing. I am sure the decision was incredibly difficult for you and your family. And I'd also guess that folks didn't quite understand! All that to say, there is someone out there from your neck of the woods who is inspired and understands why. When we really grasp what God has done for us in Christ, it usually leads to these sorts of life-altering moves.
I hope you and your family are growing through this process.
Take care.
Take care.
I must say, I am only beginning to grasp what God has done for us in Christ. But I do know it has resulted in a much-altered life... and a life-altering move. And I know my family is growing through the process.
Thanks be to God, and to you, Greg, for getting it.
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