When You Only Got One Hundred Years To Live

Love serving, missions, travel, cultures, food, art, maps, good books, running. But above all I love the Lord Jesus.

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Help Me to Trust You, Help My Unbelief

Over and over God proves faithful.  He demonstrates His miracles.  He answers prayers.  He loves us so much that He provided a way for our rebellious hearts to be found righteous through faith in Christ Jesus.  He paints beauty in every sunrise and sunset.  He speaks through His word and through others.  The faithfulness of God is limitless.  

My brain cannot comprehend how amidst all of the faithfulness of the Lord we as humans continue on so faithless.  I find myself, over and over, lacking trust in the very Creator of the Universe.  I want to trust Him completely.  

♫ "Dependent on You" Jon Thurlow ♪

There's not a care in the world When I am trusting You completely Help me to trust You, help my unbelief I want to be dependent I want to be dependent on You

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All the Good

Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can. 

- John Wesley

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Overflowing with Love

I have found my satisfaction and my joy in my attempt to apply Matthew 22:37-40 to my life.  

"Jesus replied: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." 

My heart overflows with the depth of the love of Yahweh as I attempt to love him with every aspect of my being and to love those he created.  How blessed am I to serve a God whom not only I love, but who loves me and each individual so deeply that He sent His son Jesus to Earth to be our Intercessor, Messiah, Savior.  His love is still alive and moving and is displayed through His word, the Spirit, and the gifts of the Spirit.  

Overflowing with love.

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Proverbs 16:9

Lately I have been experiencing these moments where I so strongly feel the presence of God saturated throughout my life; where I examine my life from the outside in and see how God orchestrated the smallest moments to culminate in the moment before me, the ever-fleeting present. His plans are better than our plans for ourselves. While I’ve planned my course in my heart, the Lord has established my steps. Ultimately, however, it is our established steps, not our planned course, that leads to our destination.

[itsfallingfromtheclouds]

A gift from Madison, 6. "I will never, ever, ever, ever forget you." ❤️ As humans we are called to love God and love others. We never know how big of an impact the little things we do in our life to love others can make. I won't ever forget you either Madison.

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Better Is One Day

There is something magical that happens when you encourage and empower yourself to surpass your mental limitations.  When you step outside of your comfort zone and experience the present.  To live outside of mundane routine and to stretch and push yourself beyond what you thought capable.

January 2014 I finished my first marathon.  The feelings and experiences I gained from training to running the race far surpassed the more temporal contentment gained from watching Netflix, eating popcorn, and surfing the  web (although I enjoy all of the above).

Despite the joys I gain from the world - running, traveling, learning - none surpasses the joy that I gain from having a relationship with Yahweh.  While He created all of these things and it warms His heart that I partake in loving for and learning about His creation, nothing of this world can compare to the love of Yahweh and Jesus.  

When I traveled to Nicaragua on a missions trip, there were many situations that put me outside of my comfort zone and beyond my mental limitations of what I thought I was capable of.

During a worship session in the morning our team sang "Better Is One Day".  While debriefing after worship, one of my best friends shared how we can spend a day in God's courts here on Earth by carrying out His will and mission, and how that one day is better than a thousand others.  The joy that comes from spending a day in God's courts, even in the midst of persecution, trials, and suffering, is one that truly creates lasting satisfaction beyond our temporal lives.

"How lovely is your dwelling place,     Lord Almighty! My soul yearns, even faints,     for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out     for the living God." 

Psalm 84:1-2 (NIV)

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Enthused beyond belief to travel to beautiful Torvikbukt.

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Blessed Beyond Belief

There's something about spending time with those who are less valued in our culture, whether it be the elderly, the foreigner, the homeless, beautiful men and women with disabilities.  The wealth of knowledge and perspective that these individuals possess enriches the lives of anyone who comes into contact with them.  While all humans are the same in quite an array of areas, we are still vastly different.  There are many individuals whom our society elevates in importance; however, perhaps this should be reevaluated.  Maybe the very people who are used as the footstool of those in power are the very people who should be elevated.

I have been blessed beyond belief working with many individuals who are oppressed within our society.  It fills my heart with joy.  I have learned much more from these individuals about life than I could ever have imagined.

 Now let me be clear, I myself find I am bound and oppressed by the structures of our society.  I do not see myself as someone with an elevated status helping those below me.  Instead, I am reaching out to those of equal value and holding hands as we attempt to better our society as a whole.  All individuals were made in the image of Yahweh (Genesis 1:27).

Beloved, these are the people whom we should poor our heart, our lives into. I promise, you will walk away with more knowledge, perspective, and hope than you could ever imagine.

[itsfallingfromtheclouds]

Fingerprints On The Windows

I believe that each and every moment plays a role in our lives, and leaves a fingerprint in others lives.  For an example, simply by exiting a building that has glass on a part of the door and touching it ever so slightly can leave a fingerprint.  As numbers of people's fingers accidentally or purposefully push open the door by pressing their hands against the glass, a collection occurs.  As a result, a person is employed to clean the doors and the fingerprints that were created, without a thought by those whom they belong to regarding the matter.

Each moment creates a fingerprint.  It is these details, the finest details in life, that I believe truly mold us into the individuals we are to become.  As a sculptor slowly removes the excess to create a final masterpiece, fingerprints from moments slowly remove the malleable part of ourselves until we are left as who we are meant to become.

Yesterday, December 26, I met a stranger at K-Mart.  He smiled and approached me.  Some of his dialogue went like this… "I can tell that you are a person that just loves people"… "It's rare to find an individual as friendly as you these days"… "Your smile lights up a room"… and "I haven't had a hug in an awfully long time; you look like a nice huggable person, would you mind sharing a hug".  A few minutes later he approached me again, sharing that I made his day.

While I never learned this strangers name, he certainly made my day.  In fact, it is encounters and phrases such as these that have impacted the course of my life, determining what is my major, social work.  These are words of affirmation that are surely welcomed from a friend, but left a particularly lingering affect coming from a stranger.

I am so thankful for Mr. K-Mart.  He left his fingerprint on the window of my life, and further inspires me to leave my fingerprints on the windows of other's lives.

"For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen." 1 John 4:20

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Captured

Bursting smile. Radiating joy.

Captured. Forever frozen in a frame.

Free.  Free from the weight of the future.  Free from all but one responsibility.

My little four-year-old lǎoshī Rosie, my Chinese host sister, was responsible for teaching me the basics of speaking Mandarin.  Laughter of delight poured from her lips for both every answer I butchered and every answer I perfected.

Never to be repeated.  This special moment - although special does not suffice to explain how much this instance has touched my heart - forever branded me.  The way I view children, their intelligence, how I want to raise my own kids, strangers, their kindness, and their ability to impact lives, is changed by one joyful four-year-old.  

As much as I want this moment back, it will always just be a moment signed in my memory.  The perplexing aspect is, while I will never forget, it is unlikely that Rosie will ever remember.  Receiving an e-mail from Rosie's mother after returning to the United States was exciting and heart wrenching, "Rosie really likes you, she always talks about you, waiting for you to play with her".  As days, weeks, months, and years pass without coming to play with her, however, I will slip away from Rosie's memory, and I will never fully know the extent I played in impacting her life.

This is a funny thing about life.  We walk around investing ourselves in individuals and meeting strangers, and this molds us into the people we are to become.  The impact others play in our lives will never be known - the conversation with a stranger on an airplane, time spent with a babysitter, or at age four teaching an exchange student Mandarin.  It is impossible to relive life without these experiences, changing one single variable and comparing the outcomes.  Yet, these moments impact us to the core, and may change the trajectory of an entire life.  Others will never fully know the impact they made in our lives, and in the same way, we will never fully know the impact that we made in others lives.

While Rosie is impacting lives every day in China, she will never know the impact she has made in the United States.  Maybe her story will be a catalyst, impacting the lives of those who read it and providing a new insight.  Maybe the way she has touched my life will affect everyone I come into contact with; the people I come into contact with might be touched by me because of the way I have been changed by her.  While this moment is frozen in the past, her spirit will never die as she has impacted the future of many, whether or not they recognize or know it was due to her.

Every day individuals are impacting our lives and we are impacting the lives of others.  We should live each moment as though our spirit, if captured in this very moment, were to live on and impact the future of many, because it some form it might.

I ponder if my spirit in that moment has impacted the future of Rosie's life.

Perhaps I will be a photograph, forever captured in a frame in their home, my stationary being displaying a bursting smile and radiating joy.

Captured.  Forever frozen in a frame.