Transparent Christian Magazine

I grew up off of a dirt road in a tiny northern Michigan town called Mio.   I was 15 in the summer of 1986 and my main mode of transportation was a Huffy 10 speed bike that I rode all over the county. That was long before Mr. Gore invented the internet, before Motorola invented the cell phone, and before pornography seemed ‘mainstream.’

If you grew up in the 90’s you don’t remember the days that you had to hide your girly magazines in the woods.  (Talk about a weird take on the whole “walking up hill both ways when I was your age” commentary.)  I was introduced to pornography in my early teens and have been haunted by it until sometime last year when I decided to rid it from my life forever.

When I was a teen, almost all of my teenage male friends had some stash of pornography.  One day my friend Darin proudly showed me his paper-bag full of magazines that he kept in his tree fort.  This collection had been cautiously and slowly lifted from his father’s even larger collection. When I was leaving his house, he gave one of the magazines to me.  I put it in my back pocket and rode home.

When I got there, I noticed my mother had stopped for lunch so I frantically hid the skin magazine in the pine tree field next to my yard.  After lunch mom left, and I went back to the woods to retrieve my bounty.  I spent the next half hour trying to locate it, and was getting increasingly frustrated at my lack of porn-organization.  I started moving every branch on the ground that could possibly be hiding my stash, and I apparently disturbed a hornets’ nest.  The bees became agitated and one of them immediately stung me in my right eyelid.  I screamed, cried and ran back to the house.

I told this story to a friend recently and he smirked and said “Jason, that was a Jesus Bee.”  We talked about the irony of being stung in the EYE as I was looking for pornography, and laughed together for 10 minutes.  It prompted me to share this embarrassing moment with you.

I didn’t know Jesus then, but now that I do, I have noticed that God allows painful things to happen. Peter said “Friends, when life gets really difficult, don’t jump to the conclusion that God isn’t on the job. Instead, be glad that you are in the very thick of what Christ experienced. This is a spiritual refining process, with glory just around the corner.” 1 Peter 4:12-13 (The Message)

Been stung in the eye lately?

Love to you all,
Jason