The Complex Life of a Church Janitor. @churchjanitor - Tumblr Blog

Posts

I love how God's love is simultaneously comforting and challenging. When obstacles of any nature arise in my life, I am thankful for his love that fills me in my weakness and whispers in my ear, 'I AM leading you. I AM strengthening you through this season. I AM redeeming you in this moment. Hold on to me.'

Recent Thought

Events I accept unenthusiastically can create unexpected joy. The uncertainty I experience teaches me the certainty of God's presence. The unusual timing of events can actually be the exact timing I needed, but I never realized at the time.

Thoughts about the last 6 months.

Gethsemane is just as much about the action of Christ as it is about the inaction of his disciples. The prayers of Jesus remind me that he is like us in every way, while the sleeping of his disciples illustrates the unintended ignorance of God's work that afflicts any human from time to time.

Recent thought about the Garden

How I Will Remember...

It's always interesting to conduct an informal retrospective. By cataloguing my life over the past few months, I realize how much my heart is blind to blessings and the collision of God in my daily life. Equally as important, I am able to identify the moments in which God's presence was fiercely apparent. Over and over again, I find myself dumbfounded at the grace of Christ that permeates my life.

There have been challenges. I've seen loved ones slip away. I've found myself accidentally mention a name in a prayer for a person who is with the One to which I pray. I've experienced the fading of friendships as physical and emotional separations took their toll as time crushes forward. My personal strengths and weaknesses have become shockingly apparent over the past few months. When given the chance to remain silent or attempt to reach out to people, I frustrate myself with my complacency with silence. I've witnessed the rapid evolution in my understanding of responsibility and teaching. Before I started this school year, I never fully realized how true teaching involves the education of the entire person. I've wept for my students, as well as rejoiced for their successes. I once heard a professor attest to these emotions and shrugged it off as weakness. With my experiences this year, I now know these emotions are a sign of strength and commitment.

I can look back and focus on everything that went wrong or not as planned. I could shake my fist and ask the unanswerable questions that everyone always seems to ask of our infinite God.

Instead, I realize that it is in my weakness and brokenness that God is found.

He is the God who grieves with us.

He is the God who breaks the silence and whispers to our hearts, "Let me redeem your relationships."

He is the God who weeps and rejoices with us.

He is the God who revealed on a cross that apparent weakness can be ultimate strength and sacrifice.

These findings are what I chose to embrace when I look at my life. It is this history I choose to remember. While I am not one for nostalgia, I choose to see the grace of Christ at work in all my circumstances. I chose to rejoice with gratitude.

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Maybe all of the goodness we find in people, places, and events are shadows of the perfect goodness emanating from God himself. Maybe all of our best attempts at love are approximations of the pure love of God. Perhaps everything we find in this life is a subtle reminder that what God has made is good, but God himself is very good.

Thought about the Imago Dei.

Take a breath and remember the present is endlessly flowing into the future. Pause and remind yourself that what was does not not dictate what will be. Quite the chaos of your mind with the immutable truth that I AM bringing your present into the future and I AM what will be that is positively different from what was your past.

What God has been telling me every day this week.

I'm finding more and more there is a simple truth about my faith that challenges me like no sermon or quote. It is a call to trust the intersection of the extraordinary God in my ordinary life. This God whom we serve is often not evidenced in lofty declarations, major events executed flawlessly, or heavens-opening experiences; this God is found in the quiet moments of solitary prayer, the forgotten and minuscule acts of kindness and service to others, and the imperfect acts of an individual getting lost in the abyss of Christ's redemption.

Short summary of the past couple months.

You love reminds me in the struggles of daily life that you are the God who is bringing life from death and light into darkness. This redemption you began in me is one that is already here, but not yet full. It is this dichotomy in which I find your grace and I am forever thankful.

Part of a recent prayer.

I pray that I know God more in the future, but understand him less. I hope the reality of God becomes more apparent in my consciousness, while this reality continues to remind me that God is ultimately beyond anything I could ever grasp with my intellectual faculties. I want God to teach me, yet I pray that my heart learns that I'll never have him figured out. Basically, I pray my future becomes a tale of God unravelling all of my preconceived notions of his nature so that I can revel in his glory.

From a recent prayer about life.

Never stop creating. Never stop making, building, serving, changing, bringing light into the darkness, and giving life in the midst of death. Never lose the spark inside of you that whispers, "Do something." Never stop creating. Let your life be an outpouring of the Image of God within you. It's too easy to believe that God already said, "Let there be," once and for all. The person with that belief has it all wrong. The same God who created the universe is waiting for the chance to create in you and through you. God wants your life and mine to be a continuation of his creative grace that brings something from nothing. God wants your actions to be chance where he can say, "Let there be," every moment of every day.

My thoughts on creativity.

Make time to have days that are 24 hours, but you feel like you've lived 48 because they're just that good.

Part of a recent conversation.

The Four Years We Overlook.

I've been thinking a lot about Esther lately.

I read the book twice this week because I really like the story, the characters, and the entwinement of God into the events even though his name is never mentioned. It's a story you can't help liking. It has all of the qualities we want from an underdog story and the purposeful action of God we desperately want in our present lives.

I like Esther. The story reminds me that God leads us into situations and brings people into our lives so that we might serve him in each moment... but there's a detail I've overlooked every time I've read the book until this week.

When Esther was made queen of Persia, it was in the tenth month of the seventh year of King Xerxes reign.

The events we remember in the Book of Esther (the threat of genocide by Haman, the courage of Esther, the triumph of the Jews over their enemies, and Purim) did not happen until the first month of the twelfth year of Xerxes reign.

There's four years I forget about in the story.

There's four years of Esther's life the Bible does not speak about in detail. All we know is that Esther was queen of an empire and that she hid her Jewish heritage.

I always overlooked this small detail in the story, but I now think God put that detail in the story on purpose. In the four years between Esther's coronation and her courage to face injustice, she must have wondered why God had led her to the palace.

She was not from Persian royalty. Esther was a descendant of exiles and a woman of a religious minority. The choice of Xerxes to make her queen probably seemed more like random chance than anything else.

I'm convinced that in those four years, Esther probably stopped more than once to ask God, "How did I get here and why I am here?" These questions are ones we all ask we encounter change and especially when we have to wait months (or even years) for God to reveal answers to these questions.

Esther had to wait four years to find out why she was placed in the palace.

This fact gives me hope. Knowing that God slowly revealed his purposes in the life of one of the Bible's greatest heroines encourages me to trust that God is slowly revealing his purposes in my life.

We overlook four years in the story of Esther, but perhaps those four years were the most powerful in preparing Esther to fulfill the promises of God when Mordecai asked her to stand up for her people.

A New Chapter.

This post is more of an update rather than my usual jumble of thoughts about the colliding of the infinite God in my finite life. Long story short, I might need to change the name of this tumblr.

As some of you might have known, I graduated college back in May and interviewed for various teaching positions throughout the summer. After much prayer and dealing with the unique implications of ends and beginnings, I accepted a teaching position. With this position, I decided it was best to leave my work at the church.

It's been different. I've been adapting to new people, places, pressures, and joys as I dive into teaching full time. It's been great to recognize that although there have been ends, there's also a lot of beginnings at this point in my life.

I don't know what the future holds, but I have the feeling that I'm where I need to be at the moment. I could change the name of this tumblr, shift the direction of my posts, or just flat out cease writing down the beautiful mess that is my faith; however, this blog was never about a job. This blog was never about writing a quotable quote or attempting to wrestle with theological questions. I started this tumblr to write down the myriad of thoughts I develop as I experience life in Jesus.

I can assure you that I'll continue to write down my thoughts because, let's face it, I'll never be able to stop marveling in how God continues to reveal himself in my life.

I want to thank every person who has followed, messaged, asked a question, or somehow made sense of my spiritual searchings over the past few years.

I can't wait to see what all the beginnings of this season of life have in store and I hope you join me in the journey.

Thank you and God bless.

I thank you for being the God of ends and beginnings. I thank you for being the One who teaches me ends are not to be feared, but beginnings to be embraced. I thank you for reminding me in the midst of ends and beginnings that you are the end and the beginning.

Part of a recent prayer.

A curious fact of the heart is that it can believe in the Way, yet remain convinced it must know every step upon it.

Thought about doubt.

Ecclesiastes Prayer.

Lord,

I give my days to you.

I give you all the times I say yes and no.

I give you all the strengths you develop in me along with all the weaknesses and insecurities that lurk within my heart.

I give you all my worries and doubts.

I give you all my work.

I give you reign in all of the relationships in my life.

I give you the rightful place as the third cord in the weaving of my friendships.

I give you the ability to draw people near and let them fall away.

I give you the moments when all seems meaningless.

I give you the moments when all seems hopeless.

I give everything because it is all yours anyway.

I give everything because it is all temporary.

I give everything because only you provide meaning.

I give everything because you are my God, which is the only thing that matters.

Amen.

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

The Complex Life of a Church Janitor.