Luke’s Notebook

I’ve been struggling a little bit lately with trying to figure out how to articulate some frustrations that I’ve been having. I knew the thought I wanted to convey, but I just couldn’t quite envision actually spelling it out until now.

I was in the kitchen just a little bit ago, slicing up an apple. I’ll eat apples now and then, and I like to peel off the skin so I can easily chop off any rotten chunks, and then safely eat the rest.

As I was doing this, I was surprised at how many mushy rotten areas were in this one particular Golden Delicious apple. It seemed pretty healthy from the exterior, but a large portion of it was just brown and rotten.

I immediately was reminded of an old Berenstain Bears story. I believe it was entitled “Trouble With Strangers.” In that story, Sister Bear naively gets a little too friendly with strangers, and she is confused why her brother and mom are concerned about that.

Mama Bear has trouble explaining the danger to her, until she finds herself cutting apples, and has a very easy-to-grasp analogy in her hands.

In summary, she explained to Sister Bear how you can’t always judge an apple by its exterior. Some will look a little odd on the outside but be perfect on the inside. Others, she explained, will look perfect initially, but when you get inside you see it is rotting or full of worms.

Sister immediately understood, and I really think that is the perfect way for me to explain what has been on my mind.

It has been frustrating to see young women who look like “good apples” from the outside, yet once you get to know them, you find all sort of filth and decay exists just beneath the pretty surface.

It just bothers me that there is so much focus on being aesthetically pleasing — that is, physically attractive — but so few girls seem to even be trying to work on what’s inside.

I guess maybe this works in most cases. And — I’ll be honest here — I’m a sucker for a cute girl. But that’s just not enough. It’s not enough to look pretty, sweet, and innocent if on the inside you’re full of bitterness or hatred.

I think this has been especially hard on me because I have this tendency to see a girl and think, “Oh, she’s cute, and she looks sweet enough.” But over and over, once I would actually get to know a girl — even just very little — I’ll get a glance at what lies beneath the surface, and most of the time it’s very disappointing.

There’s such a focus on outward appearance these days, and I think people are missing the basics. These girls are working so hard to be physically attractive, but they don’t realize that their character is flabby, terribly out of shape, and very unappealing.

The trouble, though, is personality doesn’t always come through on a picture. When you see somebody from afar, you might not experience their character. What you do notice are the physical elements. So when I see a girl who is attractive enough — so long as she doesn’t have any glaring strikes against her at first glance — I might start to think, “Hey… she seems sweet.” But so many times, I will find myself saddened once I learn what is actually behind that pretty smile. Oftentimes there’s not nearly as much “sweetness” as I had thought.

There’s a part of me that wishes that I was blind to beauty, and would only see character and personality. I think it would make the filtering process a lot easier, because the vast, vast majority of girls could be eliminated immediately. I wouldn’t find myself falling for a girl, only to find out sometime in the future that she has a really bad personality.

I know there is a place for physical attraction. I think that’s obvious. God created us this way for a reason. But it just can be frustrating to see so many seemingly “good apples” out there, only to over and over discover that there’s just a lot of muck and nastiness on the inside.

It might seem kind of harsh to just label some people “good” and others “bad.” Well, I see it this way: There are those types of people who genuinely love Jesus and are always trying to obey Him and trying to cut off sin. There are also those types of people who — whether they say they’re a Christian or not — just live for Number One, for their pleasures, for their benefit, for their security. In short, they do what they want to do.

I’m simply not interested in the latter. They may be gorgeous physically, but that’s not enough. I would much rather find a girl who was a total knockout on the inside. That stuff doesn’t go away; it doesn’t wear off.

To the girls, I would say this: While I still think it’s plenty important to take care of yourself physically, I would beg you to spend time exercising your character. Whip that into shape. Develop a great attitude. Be joyful. Smile! Get rid of any bitterness or hatred. Never gossip. Be selfless. Think of others before yourself. Love God with everything that you have. In short — Develop the inside as much as, if not more than, the outside.

That right there is the description of a stunning woman.

I’m in Granby, Colorado, in the Rocky Mountains. I spent the last two days skiing — first at Copper Mountain, and then at Winter Park Resort.

Prior to Friday, I had never skied. The most I had done in the snow was sledding down a small hill. So I knew I had a lot to learn, and I was hoping to catch on fairly quickly, as we only had two days of skiing.

Around 8:00 or 8:30 Friday morning, we pulled in to the Copper Mountain ski area. We lugged our equipment to the main building, and then we put on our ski boots and eventually snapped the skis on.

It took me some time to simply get used to wearing the skis. Then as I was standing in the snow with them on, I was trying to figure out how to move. Using the poles, I was able to push myself a little bit. Still, I was pretty slow, and very, very awkward on the skis.

My Uncle Joe has skied many times before, and he was planning to just show me and a couple of my cousins the basics. We made our ways to a chairlift, boarded one of those for the first time, and started our ascension up Copper Mountain.

We got off at one of the green slopes, and we basically just started skiing down the hill. I was taught that a good way to slow yourself down is to spread your skis out and make sort of a “snow plow” shape, where your skis are cutting into the snow, and therefore it slows you down quite a bit.

This was working out okay, but when I would get to any kind of significant slope, I would end up wiping out, because the plow method would only slow me down so much, and I didn’t know what else to do, how else to deal with a steeper slope.

I knew that the best way to handle a slope is to ski back and forth across the mountain, making “S” shapes all over the place. This helps you control your speed. Simply going straight down, you can really pick up a lot of speed, and it’s pretty intimidating if you don’t know how to control it.

I was having a hard time making the “S” shapes. I kept crossing my skis when I would try to turn, and that would end up with me falling. I had some successful turns, but I still was not able to handle anything too steep. I wasn’t very comfortable with turning the skis to slow down or stop, and oftentimes when I would try to do that, I would end up falling.

Day One was definitely a learning experience. I must have fallen 20 or 30 times all in all. The first run or two were very discouraging. I couldn’t believe how awful I was! Not only was it embarrassing, but it just wasn’t fun to be losing your skis every few minutes and having to put them back on.

Another thing is, my skis kept on crossing in the front. As much as I would try to keep them parallel, they would end up crossing, which would make it easy to tumble. I couldn’t figure out how to get them to simply go straight, and not cross.

Towards the end of the day, I was starting to get the hang of it. I was actually skiing several different runs without any falls whatsoever, which was a big accomplishment for me. Skiing was starting to get fun, because I was actually skiing — not just tumbling onto the snow every little bit.

On Saturday morning, we drove to Winter Park Resort. I was a little bit intimidated when I saw some of the steep hills leading down to the chairlifts. I saw how skiers would come down those with ease, just cutting back and forth through the hill, and eventually coming to a stop at the bottom.

Saturday, though, I really got the hang of it! I believe I hit the snow four times in all, and two of those times one of my skis had just popped off while I was taking a turn. So I only had two “real” falls. Quite an improvement for me!

I was getting pretty confident, and was having a lot of fun. I was going down some pretty steep slopes, cutting back and forth, and staying in control. I even got pretty good at coming to an instant stop by sharply turning the skis.

We ended up going down a couple of blue slopes, which are steeper than the greens. Any time I would come upon a little hill that would intimidate me, I would just try to ski back and forth across it, and eventually I found myself becoming pretty comfortable with that.

So by the end of the second day of skiing, I was really doing well. In fact, I was even disappointed when we chose some milder green slopes over the blue ones, because I was wanting to continue to practice those and to continue to improve.

All in all, the second day was much, much more enjoyable than the first. The first day, I fell so much, and it just wasn’t fun. It seemed dangerous, that you could easily slam into a tree or something. But by the end of Day Two, I could control myself amazingly well, and I was handling fast speeds without trouble. In addition to that, my ski-crossing problem pretty much disappeared. I’m not sure why, because I didn’t consciously change anything. But at any rate, I was able to fairly easily keep my skis parallel with each other, which made things a lot easier.

There definitely is a learning curve with skiing, and it was very discouraging initially. But I’m very glad I stuck with it! It didn’t take me long at all to get confident and much more stable on the slopes. And once that happened, skiing became very fun! I’d love to do it again someday.

We all know that it’s pretty easy to be happy when things are going our way. When all is as we would like it to be, there really isn’t any reason to complain.

But what about when things aren’t going so well? What about in the storms of life? Those seem to be very telling of somebody’s character. How does somebody react when they’re wronged? When they’re tired? Frustrated? Broken-hearted?

Sadly, oftentimes when I see somebody who was happy face a bit of adversity, all of a sudden everything caves in. They get mad; they get bitter; they get resentful. Once they encounter a slight stress test, they fall apart.

I was struck recently when observing somebody who was in what would probably be considered a pretty trying situation, especially emotionally. After receiving some news that could have really been devastating — or painful, at the least — I was kind of wondering how she would respond. Would this little storm take her down? Would she fall apart? Would she turn into a totally different person once things stopped going her way?

To my surprise, she came out on the other side. I have no idea what she went through internally, obviously, but she seemed to ride out the storm, emerging just as joy-filled as she was previously.

Observing this from the outside, I was impressed. So many times before, somebody else who would go through similar trials would start to crumble. She stayed strong, though.

Then it just hit me: “Oh, yeah. That’s Biblical, isn’t it?”

I went to Matthew 7, and read:

24″Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

I had read that so many times in the past, but I really kind of experienced it firsthand, and it amazed me how true that is.

This girl is rooted in Jesus. She is firmly standing on the rock. And because of that, she was able to survive the turmoil. She wasn’t relying on any given situation to bring her stability or peace, but instead was seeking Jesus. And so when something fell through — which probably wasn’t what she would have preferred, anyway — she was still standing strong, because her feet were on the rock, and not on anything else.

It doesn’t mean that we don’t feel a little beat up or worn out after a storm, but when you are clinging to Jesus, then you know that you won’t be swept away.

So this was just kind of a telling moment of how true that promise is. When you do obey God and stay firmly planted in Him, then you will survive the storm, because you have a solid foundation. But if you rely on anything else — even if you’re trying to keep an “element” of God or Christianity — in your life, you’ll eventually get inundated because your foundation is not going to withstand the storms. It doesn’t matter how big or impressive your structure is. If it’s built on a poor foundation, it will collapse eventually.