A Voyage

God's been changing me this summer, and I have to say, I really like His work.  :)  He's magnificent!  The more He changes me, the more I start to hear Him speak to me in some of the strangest ways...for instance, through secular movies.  This one's a little less secular than Harry Potter, but still.  (Thought for another day..."secular" versus "Christian" life...is there a difference, should there be?)  So tonight, I watched the newest Narnia movie-the Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  Now, CS Lewis was a Christian, and did try to write the Narnia series as a Christian allegory, but I feel like God taught me several things through this movie, so I'm going to share them here.  I never thought that God would speak to me through popular films, but hey, if He can use them, the least I can do is listen up.  :)

So the first quote I wrote down was "We have nothing if not belief."  Reepicheep, the cute little mouse, said this towards the beginning of the movie.  I don't remember what happened prior to this, but the point is still important.   We have NOTHING without belief.  This world is harsh and terrible and there is a lot of brokenness all around us, but if we don't have hope that there is a greater plan, a greater purpose, we have nothing.  There is a greater plan despite all the brokenness, even when it's hard to see.  "I wish I could see just three steps in front of me" as one song puts it.  Another analogy is we are standing directly against a mural, only seeing a tiny fragment of the whole bigger picture.  God sees it all...and lets us in on what we need to know, when we need to know it.  There is hope amidst the brokenness.

In the movie, Lucy desperately wants to be as beautiful as her older sister Susan...so much that she wants to be Susan.  When she comes across a spell book that has a spell for turning people into "the beauty they wish they could be," she jumps at the chance, and essentially becomes Susan.  There is a scene when she looks into a mirror and has a vision of her brothers coming up to her, telling her she is beautiful, and then saying the whole family was together-but there is no Lucy in the picture!  She wished herself away in her desire to be her sister.  After the vision, Aslan appears next to her in the mirror, and Lucy says "I didn't mean to choose all that."  Aslan tells her to not doubt her value.  There a million take away points that come to mind with this.  A few of them:  a) our choices have consequences.  There is no way around that.  I believe that God gave us free will to make choices-granted, He has desires and wishes and hopes for us-but ultimately, we have to CHOOSE that path.  Because we are made in his image, and because of what was done for us on the cross, we should live our lives as a reflection of He who made us.  However, we ultimately have to make that choice, and when we make choices that are not His will, we will have to face the things that come from those choices.  God forgives us for them, and still loves us despite/in spite of our wrongdoings, but our choices still have consequences.  b)  When we desire something so much, it gets in the way of God's vision for us.  God ultimately desires us to come to Him, beyond all other things.  But when we let earthly things get in the way of that, we miss out on living as He truly desires us to.  c)  America and the never-ending quest for beauty.  Beauty above all other things.  It's crazy how awful of self-images we all have, but part of it is due to our culture and our culture's perception of beauty.  I can go on and on about this-I have self-image issues, as everyone does, but mine stem from a little different of a source than most-and it just pains me to see how much we can't look past ourselves and see Him in us.  We are made in His image-what could be more beautiful?  d) As much as it is easy to say that we all should follow Him 100%, we are human and have other desires.  If we came across that magic spell book, what spell would we longingly search for and not hesitate to speak?  I think that those things we so long to fix in ourselves are probably the things getting in the way of our relationship with God the most.  I know what things I would look for, but how do I remove that desire from my life?  But this blog isn't about me-so what would your most desired magic spell be?

There's probably a lot more from that last point, but I'm going to move on for now.  While we were watching this part, one of the people I was watching with said, and I quote, "Wish we all had a smart lion around."  Aslan seems to appear at the times they need him most and help them to solve the things going wrong.  Well, guess what-we DO all have a smart lion around, all the time!  Granted, Aslan is a little more tangible, but at the same time, God is all around us, always there and willing to help, when we let Him.  I have to say, it kind of hurt to see one of the people I was watching with not see that.  God is a lot less tangible, He's more of the whisper in the breeze, or the gentle nagging thought in the back of our mind-but He is there nevertheless.

So not long after Lucy went through the whole vision in the mirror and realized that she had value in herself, the little girl who follower her dad onto the ship at their first stop (watch the movie, I can't explain it) looked at Lucy and told her "I want to be just like you when I grow up."  Lucy said, "When you grow up, you should be just like you."  Two things-first of all, how awesome is that.  :)  Lucy dealt with self image issues but was able to learn that she was complete in who she was.  Because this is something she had experienced herself, she understood that girl's desire.  Maybe that's the reason we are faced with some of the challenges we face in life, so that we can grow and learn and then help others?  Or maybe this is a chicken and egg situation....maybe instead we grow and learn from the things we deal with and then people are placed in our life who can grow and learn from us or who we can grow and learn from.  We face challenges and then can share what we've learned with others, which brings me to my second point-the human experience, I guess, for lack of a better term.  We all, in the midst of our troubles, ultimately just want to be comforted, reassured, and know we are not alone.  Again, because Lucy had faced the same thing, she could understand what that girl was thinking.  When we are going through a tough time, I think that's what we all want-someone who understands, or even if they haven't had the same experience, someone who will listen to us talk about our experience and try to understand us.  Ultimately, we want someone would reassure us that "it'll be all right" and that we are not alone-and most of all, that we are still loved regardless of what we've done/has happened to us/what we're going through.  Thoughts on that?

The next quote I wrote down was another one from Reepicheep (my favorite character for sure, besides Aslan, of course).  He told Eustace the dragon "Extraordinary things happen to extraordinary people."  I don't really have a huge thought on this one, but I guess there's this-Eustace was a pretty nasty kid, and still, he was used for the greater good and ended up being the hero of the story.  God works through us even in our worst times and transforms us to something new that is in His image.  He takes the ordinary and makes us extraordinary.

In the climax of the movie, Lucy prays to Aslan for help, and a bird comes out of the clouds and shows them the way out of the dark fog.  In this world, our help from God is not always so tangible or recognizable, but that doesn't mean it isn't there.  My take away point from this part I guess would be that help comes to those who ask?  If we ask God, present Him with our requests, He hears and listens.  Thoughts??

Again, in the climax, the green mist that basically represents evil pushes back when Eustace is about to save them all and end the battle of good vs. evil.  Evil strikes the hardest when good is about to prevail...and yes, this is present in our world, not just in mythical lands like Narnia.  How this relates my life, I'm not 100% sure, but evil is definitely present and at work in our world.  When something good is about to happen or someone is really working for good, a bunch of really tough stuff comes their way.  It's the balance that is our world, but it's part of what makes this life really tough.

One other quote that struck me that I'll share-"It was a good pain," said Eustace, when telling them what is was like to be transformed back from a dragon.  So often we think of pain as bad, but pain essentially just brings change.  It's a sign that something is wrong.  How can it be made right?  More to come here, I think, but for now-pain does not necessarily equal bad.  Interesting.

Reepicheep at the end asks Aslan if he can see Aslan's country with his own eyes, that he's hardly worthy but would love to go.  Thought for all of us-do we desire just to see "Aslan's country" (heaven and all the wonders that it is supposed to bring) or do we desire "Aslan" (Jesus) himself?

One more thing-there is a verse in the Gospels that talks about having faith like a child.  While I was watching the movie, that verse just popped in my head-it seems like Lucy, to me anyway, exemplifies that verse more than anyone else I can think of.  To me, Lucy's faith in Aslan is the child-like faith Jesus was talking about.  Again, I could be very wrong, but she definitely has something special, and different than the faith the others have in Aslan.  Reepicheep, for instance, bows at Aslan's feet while Lucy rushes to bury her head in his fur.

God can speak to us through anything because He is in everything-if only we let Him.  Also:  I would like to reiterate that the things I am writing in this blog generally do not come from me-they come from Him.  Granted, I could be getting a lot of it wrong, but I'm just passing on things that I think He is telling me.

I'll leave you with these two take away questions that have led me to some really interesting reflections tonight:  What is the magic spell that we would most like to possess?  Also...what has been most comforting to you in your times of trouble?  Obvious we want our trouble and our pain taken away, but what have you searched for most besides removing the source of the problem?

A Saga Ends

I saw the very last Harry Potter movie this evening-kind of a sad occasion!  I grew up with that boy...I started reading the Harry Potter books 11 years ago.  That's over half my life!  The funny thing is, I never realized how much of a parallel they have to Christianity.  This evening, while sitting in the theater, I couldn't help but notice how this well-loved series essentially tells our story.  It is (and I mean no blasphemy whatsoever by saying this) essentially...the story of the Gospel, but in much different, more modern terms.  Think about it for a second.  Harry Potter is Jesus.  (And this is where if you haven't read the book or watched the movie and don't want me to ruin it for you-you should stop reading.) Harry, in the end, has to give himself to kill off the last piece of Voldemort's soul.  He gives himself to save everyone else from the destruction.  He is the ONLY one who could do that job; no one else could take the weight of the world.  It was the job he was given and he HAD to do it.  He accepts his fate, and somehow, wins in a way that was never quite expected.  Dumbledore is God.  He sees all, essentially, knows the full story, the whole picture...and is the only one, really.  He dispenses small bits of wisdom as needed at the appropriate moment to save everything.  If he gave that wisdom at any other time, things wouldn't have worked out the same.  The stories only played out how they did, how they "should" have, because it was done according to plan and in the proper place.  I mean, sometimes, there were some surprises from the evil side, but a lot of times, things just had to happen how they did.  Hermione and Ron are the disciples-faithful followers til the end.  They are willing to drop everything and follow him.  Granted, they don't do it perfectly, Ron leaves for a time in the first part of the last book, but eventually finds his way back.  The Harry Potter series is so well loved, and I think that is for a reason.  It mirrors the Gospel!  It's what we all desire, that hero who will save us (well, a lot of times we want to be the hero, but...), that figure who will come give us that wisdom to save us, those people who will follow us until the end, and give everything they have for the "cause".  I think every single series that has been so well loved by humans is for this same reason-because it is our story.  As I was saying, so often we want to be the hero, the star of the show, but we just weren't made for that.  There is only one "Chosen One"-and that is Jesus.  We are called to be the Hermiones and Rons who listen to Harry spit out his crazy plan and say, "Okay, you know best" and follow.  The Bible is pretty radical...the last will be first, when so often we want to be first.  I look in my life and see that so much, so many times when I wanted/want to be first.  But God knows best.  He has a better plan, if only we'll listen and follow it even when it seems completely outlandish, because guess what?  We aren't seeing the whole picture.  And while that can be incredibly frustrating...it can be incredibly freeing.  When we realize we aren't in control and let Him take control?  Life will work out so much better.

Another thought from the movie...Harry and his friends always choose good.  The few times they try the Forbidden Curses just don't work out well for them.  Harry even ends up saving his enemies (sometimes risking his own life to save others), refusing to kill them himself but letting them die another way.  Relate this to sin for a second.  If there is never a right time to use a forbidden curse, even on Voldemort himself-then there is never a right time to sin.  Granted, we are human.  We mess up.  We are going to sin.  But there is never a  right time to CHOOSE sin.  We should always be looking for a different way, because I believe there is always another choice, even when we are struggling to see it.  For those out in cyberland reading this, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that one.  :)

Harry Potter can easily be debated to be one of the best book/movie series ever written and produced.  Interesting to me how it mirrors the Bible-the Greatest Story Ever Told!  Do we as humans subconsciously recognize that?  Is that why books become so well loved?  All the best books I can think of truly have this element of Christianity inside them somewhere, whether the author intended it or not.  Funny how God slips Himself into our lives like that.  :)

Namaste

Namaste-it's a greeting used in the Indian culture.  It's meaning?  Roughly translated, it means "I see the light of God in you."

This morning, I was sitting at work, pondering how pointless and out of place I felt in my job.  God is so great, He created me for a purpose, but there are days where my job just does not seem like I am fulfilling that at all.  How does the time I'm spending there have any relation to eternal glory?  I took a prospective student to his audition for music scholarships today, and talk about our music program.  The whole time I was sitting there I was questioning my purpose, my calling, and wondering if I am really in the right place.  I feel like God is changing me (still, again?) this summer, and that's a great thing!  He's making me a new creation in His image-but what does this mean for my earthly life?  Anyway, long story short, I start talking to this mom while the boy toured our theater.  She started talking about her life, and how she has this one "natural" son, but then 8 adopted kids.  EIGHT!  That's crazy-crazy in a awesome way.  She talked about some of her college experiences, about raising her kids-you could just see her love for her kids and her love and utmost respect for God as she talked.  I was seeing the light of God in her eyes well before she ever said anything about God.  She made one comment that is kind of sticking with me today-that you have to leave room for God to work.  She was talking about this in relation with an undeclared major, something that in our society just seems wrong.  To go through much of college with an undeclared major is basically saying "I have no life goals."  That's how it's viewed.  It's one of those things-the world hates it, but God has a different idea.  Her and her son were such a blessing to me this morning; God really spoke to me through them.  I LOVE those reminders from God saying, "Hey, I'm here in ANY circumstance."  God will lead.  Will we follow?  Namaste, friends.  What an awesome morning.

Coming Soon

Even in relationships with each other, if you don’t understand the hurt and pain that someone is going through, it’s really not a love relationship. This is a call of God saying to us "I need your pain and I need your hurt" and allowing us to express that to God and not just to mask it. We’re allowed to question and we’re allowed to get mad and say, "I’m really hurt right now and this is what I’m going through." When someone can then love in return, then that’s when it’s true love.


--Tenth Avenue North


Coming soon based on this-wow!  Love it!  

Noah and New Things

Today I was reading from Genesis, the story of Noah and the Ark.  Traditional, classic story that we all hear as kids in Sunday School, but it took on a whole new meaning for me today.  The story goes that God was disappointed with humanity, so He took his faithful follower Noah and told him to build this ark, taking two of each animal with him...etc.  Then God wiped out the rest of the world with a flood.  Just...pause and think about that for a second.  God puts one man and his family on a boat and wipes out the rest of the world.  That's one pretty awesome (and terrifying?) God.  What power.  Anyway, after a long time of the flood waters, the verse says "But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and livestock with him in the boat."  God remembered them, and made the whole world new.  How awesome!  God comes in with this terribly awesome display of power, wipes out the entire world-minus Noah, his family, and some animals.  I'm picturing how terrifying that would have been on either side of the boat.  Outside of the boat, facing death would be really scary, I don't think anyone would disagree with that.  Inside the boat, though, it would have been LONG days, trapped inside the boat.  I'm just picturing this and can't even imagine what it was like for Noah and his family.  So it's been long days inside this boat and God remembers Noah and the ark full of things He saved-and makes the whole world new.  That's really cool.  It's been kind of a rough time for the world-and God makes it brand new again.  Granted, it doesn't take long for Noah and his descendants to stray from God's ways again, but still-He makes all things new.  His mercies are new each morning.  This is something I'm really holding onto in my life, right now, as it seems the flood waters in my own life are rising quickly-God makes all things new.  After the bad times, He will make things right again.  And one day-He will be our ultimate redeemer as we get to join Him for an eternity in Heaven, where it will all be made right and all things will be made clear.  :)  Even here on this earth, though, as long as we are in God, there will always be good times to follow the bad-a thought to hold on to for me today.

One verse that especially jumped out to me in my reading was Gen 8:22:  "As long as the earth remains, there will be planting and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night."  Now, this is part of God's covenant to us to never wipe out the world again.  God's saying (I think, anyway...) that He will allow this things (like rain) to exist in their own time, but never so overwhelmingly again.  When I read this earlier today, however, I was filled with such hope.  This verse, to me, is such a reminder of the differences between our world and the next.  In our world, we have all these juxtapositions (look it up, great word! ;) ), these things that in our world, as we know it and understand it, could not exist without the other.  Without planting there is no harvest.  Without cold there is no heat.  In our world, this things are comparisons.  They are "truths" with a little t-they are things that are reliant upon some other standard to base them upon.  Our world is filled with things like that.  I could be totally wrong here, but in my mind, heaven will be just the opposite.  Instead of  being a place filled with truths and juxtapositions (:D), heaven will be filled with Truth.  It will be only good.  In heaven, we'll be beyond the reaches of the evil that keeps this earth (and us too!) groaning for redemption.  It will be a place that is incomprehensible to us now, here on earth, where we are surrounded by such opposites.  I can't imagine a summer without a winter (or the other way around, seeing as how I'm more of a coat-and-snowfall type of person)- and that's part of the beauty of this world.  We get to appreciate these differences because there are differences to appreciate.  This is part of what makes Heaven so incomprehensible-but makes it so spectacular.  Here on earth we have this ever-raging war between good versus evil-but God will make all things new.  He is the ultimate redeemer.  How spectacular is that?  One day, when we meet Him-these earthly burdens will be lifted from us and we will get to see Him in all His glory.  What an awesome picture that is.  :)

Question for today:  Do we lose some of the beauty when we lose these opposites?  What would a world/place without opposites be like in your mind?  

God is Absolute Truth

The theme of Spoudazo (If you don't know what this is, this has a pretty good description:  http://www.flc-ne.org/youth/Spoudazo.html) this year is "The Truth Will Set You Free."  Since I found out about this theme, it seems like several things about truth (or Truth) or fairness or equality or absolute morals have come up since then.  So I want to share a few, reflect on a few.  This blog is just as much a journal for me to look back on later down the road as it is a place to share the things I'm discovering through God with others that choose to read.  :)  This post is going to reference a few links, you don't have to follow them unless you are interested in reading further.  I'll try to explain the point each link makes as I write.

First, truth.  What is truth?  The literal definition tells us that truth is a verified or indisputable fact, proposition, or principle.  However, in our society, name one thing that is indisputable.  Beyond basic things like mathematical principles (2+2 is always 4, I'm not sure anyone would or could dispute that) and physics principles (the apple will always fall down from the tree, it doesn't hover in space or fly up in the air without some other force...) that govern how our world operates, that's about where the indisputable things of this world stop.  Outside of this, there are a lot of opinions, a lot of false truths, and a lot of gray area.

Something else that tends to come up, at least in academia, is the thought that there is no such thing as absolute truth.  While I've always disagreed with this view, it was put in a really interesting way in this post:  http://spoudazo2011.blogspot.com/2011/06/does-absolute-truth-exist-absolutely.html.  Basically, Tim (the author of this post) says that while many claim there is no such thing as absolute truth, no one actually believes that.  No one's words and actions actually reflect that.  For instance, if a person takes a stand on anything and uses the argument, "It's not fair" or "It's not right"-well, "fair" is a moral standard, an absolute truth!  But who determines what "fair" or "rightness" is?

And that brings me to my next reference.  I was reading a devotion the other day, and there was a quote that really caught my eye.  The devotion was about right and wrong and questioning how we usually go about making a decision.  It definitely caused me to re-evaluate my decision making process in life, to at least think about why or how I make decisions and how I SHOULD make decisions.  Anyway, the part of this devotion that really caught my eye was this:  "Right and wrong are determined by God, who is the original, the universal, the absolute standard for everything that is good and right.  For example, lying is wrong because God is true.  Stealing is wrong because God is just.    Hatred is wrong because God is love."  (Parts of this devotion can be found:  http://www.josh.org/site/c.ddKDIMNtEqG/b.4186681/apps/s/content.asp?ct=7792551).  How cool is that?  I've never thought about it in quite that way!  We have the commandments that show us how God wants us to live-but why does He want us to live that way?  Why are the commandments the "right" thing to follow?  They are the right thing to follow because they are the character of God!

And this brings me back to the point of Truth.  In our world, there are many things that are true.  My car is blue, I am fairly well-off financially (especially when compared to other parts of our world...), I am a fairly small person...but all of these truths come from comparisons.  They aren't Truths.  Some people could call my car gray-blue.  A child who grew up in Beverly Hills would probably consider me pretty poor.  A child in Africa who is lucky to get one meal a day would probably not consider me very small at all.  These things are my truths, but they are not Truth.  Truth with a little "t" is influenced by our lives, our cultures, our opinions, and the way we view things.  Truth (with a capital "T") is more along the lines of the dictionary definition-an indisputable fact.  It's how God see things, and it is perfect or absolute Truth because it is the ONE right way.    As I said earlier, 2+2=4 -that's pretty indisputable.  But what about big ideas, like fairness or equality or morals?  Where is the Truth in these?  It's in God!  When we find what God thinks fairness or equality is, we can truly learn about this big ideas.  Granted, we are humans, as long as we are on this Earth, we can't help but to view things through the lenses of our societies and viewpoints that result from that.  However, because He created our world-we should be reflections of Him.  We should be looking to Him for the answers to what things are fair, what our moral standards should be.  Going back to the quote from the devotion, we can find these truths within the character of God.  God is love...therefore, we should not hate.  We should strive to know God, so we can know and understand the types of things He desires for us.  We are made in God's image-and our life will be most fulfilling when we live it in the way God wants us to-as a reflection of Him.  :)

Thought for the day:  How do we learn who God is?  What are some ways we can strive towards Truth instead of the truths (that are multiple and variable) that we create in our world?

"Beeline to Jesus"

I lead a group of 7 pretty awesome high schoolers in a Bible study (we only have 2 weeks of our group left!).  Last week, this is what we discussed-so I'm going to share it here because I think this truly is the pinnacle of our faith.  :)

Charles Spurgeon was a pretty awesome guy who lived in the 1800s in England.  He was first appointed a pastor at the age of 16, and by the age of 19 he was the pastor of the largest Baptist church in London.  (1 Timothy 4:12 anyone?)  From everything I've read, he was an incredibly passionate and powerful preacher, and God was really working through him.  He was once asked about his preaching style, and answered with the following quote:  "I take my text and make a beeline for the cross."  How awesome is that?!?  Since then, I read somewhere the WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) movement that was incredibly popular for quite awhile was based upon this quote, this rationale of finding the "beeline for the cross" in everything we do.  In EVERYTHING we do, we should search for Jesus in it-how He would think or react to the things/situations around us.  While doing some reading about this quote, I found another quote that I think explained really clearly how the Bible is set up to be a "beeline to Jesus," and here it is:  "The Old Testament points forward to Jesus, the Gospels unveil Jesus, the epistles explain Him, and Revelation exalts Him."  

How awesome is that?  In everything we do, every reading from the Bible, every time we talk about God, everything we do in our "secular" lives (more on that thought later...), at work, home, school...we should find the beeline to Jesus.  

One final thought:  "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God."   1 Corinthians 10:31.  ;)  Such a hard thing to truly focus on, but one of the reason for me that I'm going to try to start this blog.  It's so important to immerse ourselves in God, to soak Him in, and live our lives as a reflection of His awesome love.  This is my goal and hope for myself as I get ready to head out on my sixth tour with a group of high schoolers that will praise His name for a week across the Midwest.  

I'm going to try to end each of my posts with one thinking point or question, so here is my question for today: How can we focus on Jesus in the mundane, everyday tasks of our lives?  How do we focus on seeing eternity in the small, mundane tasks in our lives?

Rationale

This blog is something I've been thinking of starting for awhile now, and I believe it's time.  :)  The Holy Spirit works in some crazy ways and through some pretty strange sources-including me!  The Spirit leaves bits of wisdom within each of us that could be for us way later down the road or for a friend or even someone we talk to only once.  It's hard to tell how the Spirit will move and work within us.  I've taken to calling this little pieces of wisdom "seeds" lately, because that's exactly what they are-little tidbits, that when they are deposited in the right soil (person) turn into huge, life changing things.  I've been noticing a lot of these lately in my life, and I pray that I continue to see Him in the little things in life.  A couple of notes before I dive in:  as I said, I've been noticing several of these lately.  I'll try to back up and catch up on some of the more recent things that have caught my attention when I have time.  Also, the rationale behind the seed idea can be found here:  http://www.believers.org/believe/bel133.htm.  I love the analogies this site uses.  :)  Finally, one warning label that I feel I should let my potential readers know up front:  One of my favorite Christian artists is Steven Curtis Chapman.  I was fortunate enough to see him live in only his third concert back touring after the loss of his daughter.  It was such a blessing to see him still striving for the Lord and proclaiming his name even in the midst of his own, personal great pain and loss.  He has a blog which can be found at:  http://chapmanchannel.typepad.com/scc/.  ANYWAY, the description of his blog reads:  "Okay, I'm going to say this right off the bat...I'm going to fail at this blog thing.  I'm told this is to be short-n-sweet entries that don't try to go too deep or try to communicate too much information.  To which I say, "yeah, right!"  You see, I don't do "short-n-sweet", "not too deep" is a concept I don't grasp and "too much information" is my middle name."    I LOVE this description-I'm so bad at keeping things short, sweet, and to the point, as any of my friends who text me know-I can't keep my thoughts contained within 160 characters!  The point being-these posts will probably be long and rambling-so thanks for reading them anyway, in advance.  :)

Oh!  One more thing-you might have noticed is that you can find my blog at http://1corinthians2.blogspot.com/.  Why 1 Corinthians 2?  Read it!  Check it out!  I've been praying so much for wisdom in my life in the midst of some different situations I've been dealing with, and I love the words Paul has written here.  It talks about a) primarily focusing on Jesus, knowing Him first; b) searching for wisdom, and c) wisdom only being revealed through the workings of the Spirit.  That's my hope in this-that through writing out more of these thoughts and having them to look back upon, I will be able to SEE more clearly the Spirit working within my life and the lives of those around me.  :)

Thanks for reading!