2013.

When I look back on this year, I am in complete awe of God and am blown away by his grace and movement towards me. He took me from a place of deep pain and slowly touched my heart and began to stitch me back up in Kona. He began teaching me about sitting before him and simply enjoying his presence. And even though I can't spend hours in the prayer room at school, I've been able to still experience and enjoy his presence throughout the day. The presence of God. It fills me, and satisfies the emptiness I find inside myself at times. This semester. I am so incredibly thankful for relationships with professors, friends and peers. My Christian Thought class with Dr. Burge, my time with Dr. Vlachos, times of prayer with Ingrid & tuesday night prayer group, being a part of the OCO/being on YHM cabinet, my friendships with Steph & Kathryn, laughter and joy and feeling alive and young again, making thankful lists. All of it. 

Home - there is a shift and I am better able to see how God has changed me. I am overwhelmed by his grace and love for my family. More than ever before, I was hit with new revelations and a deeper awareness of the meaning behind Jesus's birth. On Christmas Eve, I laid in bed beside my sister with thoughts of my deep brokenness and the brokenness of my family. Ah, so this is why Jesus came to us. He knew the depth of this brokenness and came to restore, to heal. 

God is at work. I've been praying for my sister for almost 10 years and I feel like I have to rub my eyes because I'm beginning to see a little bit of what he is doing. I'm still thrown off by how God is working in my sister's heart and what she is learning these days. I don't think I ever doubted God's faithfulness, but it's like you pray for so long and expect to see answered prayers in the distant future.  He is at work right now, and I am reminded that his timing is good. She's 28 and starting classes at the U of U this monday. My mom graduated this past May and received her Masters of Divinity after years and years of sweat & blood. I guess I'm the boring one. ha ha. Anyways, I see my sister at a crossroads right now. The choice of change is there on one side and the temptations of an old life are on the other side. She talks to me about how God must be angry at her for all the decisions and choices she's made in the past decade or so. I've even more at awe that she even talks about God and acknowledges him. I'm also reminded that every single person is at a different stage in life and in a different place in their relationship with God. I see God's grace displayed so profoundly in my sister's life and I know that He will never let her go. 

My prayer for you is that you would experience the depth of God's love -it will come, because God never leaves us as we are. 

I am so incredibly thankful and I pray that 2014 would be a year where I'm able to swim in deeper waters. I want to experience more of God's love and more of his presence. I want to know the ins and outs of his heart and I definitely want him to continue changing me.

Peace out, 2013. Onto new adventures and increased delight in the Lord. God, you are good.

σώζω

SOZO: to save, to make whole

One of the biggest things I took away from my Christian Thought class this semester was a more explicit awareness of the fact that Christ's resurrection was a bodily resurrection and that he has an actual body in heaven. Sure, I had grown up on Sunday School lessons about Jesus's bodily resurrection but somehow, I failed to translate that to an actual bodily existence in heaven. I guess for most of my life, I didn't really think about whether Jesus was a spirit in heaven or if he had a body. All I knew was that he was up there. So I'm sitting there trying to wrap my head around what Dr. Burge just said, that Jesus didn't ditch what he embraced. And then I got it, and i'm pretty sure my mouth dropped open and I looked like an idiot for that entire class and even after. Even right now, I am baffled at the extent of God's love. Jesus came in the flesh and brought back to God his creatureliness. All of a sudden, Jesus as High Priest and as our representative makes sense and I feel like a pandora's box has opened except what's coming out is a new awareness of God's love for me. As I look forward to celebrating Jesus's birth, I realize that the incarnation of Christ was an act of salvation and was so integral to my own salvation. When Christ was born, something happened that would mark a shift in history. Christ came to earth so that I would be healed of my sins, of my brokenness. I have no more words but instead a lot of silences saturated with thankfulness.

Ecclesiastes 12

Don’t let the excitement of youth cause you to forget your Creator. Honor him in your youth before you grow old and say, “Life is not pleasant anymore.” Remember him before the light of the sun, moon, and stars is dim to your old eyes, and rain clouds continually darken your sky. Remember him before your legs—the guards of your house—start to tremble; and before your shoulders—the strong men—stoop. Remember him before your teeth—your few remaining servants—stop grinding; and before your eyes—the women looking through the windows—see dimly.

Remember him before the door to life’s opportunities is closed and the sound of work fades. Now you rise at the first chirping of the birds, but then all their sounds will grow faint.

Remember him before you become fearful of falling and worry about danger in the streets; before your hair turns white like an almond tree in bloom, and you drag along without energy like a dying grasshopper, and the caperberry no longer inspires sexual desire. Remember him before you near the grave, your everlasting home, when the mourners will weep at your funeral.

Yes, remember your Creator now while you are young, before the silver cord of life snaps and the golden bowl is broken. Don’t wait until the water jar is smashed at the spring and the pulley is broken at the well. For then the dust will return to the earth, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.