Life!

My last week was wonderful.  I am involved in the handbell ensemble at Bethel and this last weekend we played for Bethel's annual Festival of Christmas.  It was a wonderful experience.  Quite busy preparing for it, but taking part in the performance was awesome.  My top three favorite parts of the concert were the entrance, our handbell solo, and the audience participation song "Come Thou Long Expected Jesus".  It was amazing to hear that song being sung by a full auditorium of people with an orchestra accompanying it.  Truth was being proclaimed whether every person recognized it or not. As I stood onstage during this I was consumed by being in awe of my Creator and my Savior.  Hallelujah, my God reigns forever!  And He loves me!  How awesome!  

Here are the lyrics to that song if you too wish to drink in the truth and reflect on it...Praise Jesus!

Come, though long expected Jesus, 

born to set they people free; 

from our fears and sins release us, 

let us find out rest in thee.  

Israel's strength and consolation, 

hope of all the earth though art; 

dear desire of every nation, 

joy of every longing heart.  

Born they people to deliver, 

born a child and yet a King, 

born to reign in us forever, 

now thy gracious kingdom bring.  

By thine own eternal spirit 

rule in all our hearts alone; 

by thine all sufficient merit , 

raise us to thy glorious throne.   

Something else that has been on my mind lately is how God is good and how He knows best.  It says in Job 1:21 "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart.  The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised."  This verse just reminds me of God's goodness and faithfulness.  This last Sunday marked the anniversary of myGrandpa Butch's death.  It still hurts to know that he is no longer here on Earth, but I find peace knowing that God loves me and He loved my grandpa, but more than that, God has conquered death and life everlasting is available to those who surrender to Him.  Jesus commands my destiny and that of everyone else.  Nothing is a surprise to Him.  He has a plan in all things and His plan is perfect.  Knowing this helps me to celebrate the life my grandpa had and the blessing it was and still is to be his granddaughter.  So on Sunday I was sad, but I was also able to celebrate life!  

My sisters, Grandpa Butch and me ♥

Further this week was cause for more celebration as Michael's niece was born!  Freya Jane is a beautiful and precious little girl.  We got to meet her on Thursday and oh how exciting!  I haven't experienced a birth so closely since my siblings were born, but I can't remember a ton about that, new life is truly exciting and amazing stuff.  

Michael and me meeting his new niece!

And to think about how amazing the new life of a baby is, it naturally leads me to consider how incredible and wonderful it is to be reborn in Christ!  Praise Jesus for new life!  

Life is a blessing.  Life is sweet.  Life is fast.  Life is fragile.  When I reflect on how fragile my grandpa was before he passed on and how fragile little Freya is now I am amazed and in awe of thing we call life that is but an instant in comparison to eternity.  

I encourage you to live your life with with purpose.  Love God first and others second.  Life is far too short to live it all for yourself when there is so much truth to be experienced and shared.  

Busy Busy Busy :)

Wow, Praise God that it's Friday!  It has been an insane last few weeks, and this last one just seemed to take the cake.  Up every night until 2 and up every morning before 7 and then busy all day long...oof!  Needless to say, Thanksgiving break cannot come too soon!

One reason it's been so busy is because I had another exegetical paper due in my male and female from a Biblical perspective class today.  This paper was on Biblical sexuality and was really quite interesting, I wish I would have had more time to research the topic as I know there is still more knowledge out there...maybe I'll look some more over Christmas break.  But as I have class soon I'm not going to go into everything the paper was about, but I would love to talk about it sometime, so if you're interested in hearing about it let me know because good discussions can be had :)

It's my roommate Brittany's birthday and I'm just so thankful to have her in my life so I thought I would share a couple of the pictures she and I have taken together over the last 3+ years that I've known her...she is such a blessing and I praise God for her!

Beauty

Over the last few weeks I worked on writing a paper about beauty, attempting to answer what it is.  Through the process I learned a great deal and much of it actually connected to things I had been thinking about a lot over the last almost year in some cases.  As a result I was actually able to put many of my thoughts into words and that was incredible.  Basically what we did in the paper was first identify our presuppositions about beauty and what we consider to be a beautiful woman.  In doing this we considered how different things like family, friends, school, church, and media have shaped our view of beauty.  Next we looked at the different Hebrew words there are for beauty (there are 12) and how they are used in the Old Testament (they can mean majesty, glory, honor, rock, authoritative, desirable, covet, beautiful, handsome, etc.) and then try to sum up what beauty is in a biblical context.  After this we explored the idea of original sin and human nature through looking at the ideas of Augustine and Calvin as well as Newell.  We eventually had to take a stand on one of these and defend their point of view with four scriptures and find one scripture that seems to contradict it and explain how that works.  After that we basically summed everything up by saying what we think beauty is in the world and what a beautiful woman looks like.  I would like to share my thoughts on a few of these things. 

Through my research I found that I most agreed with what Augustine and Calvin said about original sin and human nature (essentially we are corrupted from birth because once sin entered the world it altered all of creation).  There are multiple passages that support this some of which are Romans 5, 1 Corinthians 15, Ephesians 2, Psalm 51, and Psalm 58.  One struggle I did have with this view had to do with being made in the image of God.  If we are sinful from birth, how can we be born in the image of God when He is all goodness and there is no sin in him?  The passage of scripture that seemed to contradict Augustine and Calvin's viewpoint was Psalm 139 where it says "...you knit me together in my mother's womb, I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  Your works are wonderful, I know that full well."  I know that the image of God is a completely other much debated theological topic, but I thought about it on my own without any research.  When I think about the image of God I think beyond the attributes and characteristics described in the Bible and settle on His triune-ness; three in one; Father, Son, and Spirit all held together by agape love.  Agape being other focused, selflessly serving, pouring into others  without a thought about self.  This is God.  So taking that image of God I think of the creation of Adam and Eve, before the fall there was no sin and they partook in agape love relationship with one another and with God.  When sin entered the world it grossly changed EVERYTHING.  No longer were humans focused on others but on self.  Self love.  And this is how it is for everyone as soon as they are born.  However, the image of God is not lost I don't think, I think the image of God is found in our potential to have agape love relationships. 

This leads nicely into what I believe is beauty.  Beauty is God, specifically Jesus living a life of agape love in order that He could redeem those who are lost (EVERYONE is lost without Christ).  By lost I mean not able to partake in agape love relationships.  As it is impossible for a selfish person to be truly focused on anyone else but themselves all of the time, we as people need Jesus to come in and change our selfish hearts.  There is no beauty in the world without Christ.  I would argue that before Jesus came hope and beauty were found in the sacrifices that were made for their sins and seeking that forgiveness.

It makes sense.  We lost what we were created for at the fall, we were created to exist in agape love relationships, in the image of God, in beauty.  This is why we seek after it ALL THE TIME.  Our sinful nature however causes us to search for it in the wrong places because we just don't know the difference without Jesus showing us.  So instead of looking for Him we look to what the world says about physical beauty.  We look to the media, Hollywood, etc. and strive after impossible beauty that only creates a mask hiding our hurt inside.  We do seek to do good things for others like charity work and stuff like that which by human standards is good stuff but without Christ it doesn't cut it.  I can't think of the passage right now but I am fairly certain their is a verse in the Bible that talks about how even the good deeds of the wicked (all who don't have Christ) are not good.  We know we are missing something, but we don't know what so we dabble in one sin after another until Christ opens our eyes, sets us up on a rock and fills us with the Spirit giving us beauty.  Thus I don't believe real beauty is limited to only women, but that men can have beauty as well.  Beauty is simply Christ saving us from ourselves so that we may partake in agape love relationships and show this beauty to the world.   

Real Life

This has been a big weekend of thinking more or less for me...thinking and internal struggle.  I've been wrestling with the fact that I am not very good about being open and real with others since last spring and it's been convicting but I haven't really done very much to act on it.  God kind of,  ok not kind of, He definitely placed me in a situation this weekend to make this very clear to me and I was kind of able to be called out on it.  One of my roommates and I had a solid heart to heart about well community and more or less living life together.  You can't live life together without being real...that's not real life!  I have had a really hard time being real with others who are outside of my immediate family for a long time, and I think part of that reason was either I didn't want to burden them or I didn't want them to feel sorry for me or pity me.  But I've kind of come to realize that those things don't matter, people can't love you if they don't know what you're struggling with.  Love doesn't have to mean pity. 

A final thought I have regarding this stems from Shift.  For those who don't know Shift is a campus ministry I'm involved with at Bethel and basically what we do is reach out to the freshman class in hopes of forming relationships and having Bible studies as floor communities.  I'm a team leader for Shift this year which means I (with a partner) lead the Shift leaders, and one thing we committed to from the beginning was memorizing scripture together so we've just been taking turns sharing one of our favorite verses.  This weeks verse is Galatians 1:10 "Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God?  Or am I trying to please men?  If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ."  Now when I first heard this verse I was like "Duh, of course I'm not trying to please anyone but God," but as I have reflected on my life this weekend I have seen things differently.  Why am I not being real with those close to me?  Because I'm afraid of what they'll think or say?  Because I don't want to step on toes?  Those are definitely not focused on God for one thing, and for another those are not love!  Wow.  I feel like God has been trying to teach me this for a long time and it just now finally clicked! 

I have made a commitment to be more genuine with those around me.  Not genuine in the sense that I am really being kind or caring or those things...that is great but I want to be real with others, transparent, I want to go beyond surface level because I was created for more than that!  I have a purpose in this world and I cannot fulfill that by living halfheartedly...it's just not possible...

So if you feel led, I would appreciate your prayers in as I truly try to begin this new journey of real life. 

Lately there's been a lot of talk about community so I've been thinking about it quite a bit.  Community is or at least should be more than just living with or interacting with people.  I think true community involves sharing your heart with them...your true heart, what's really going on inside.  I think community (in a Christian sense) needs to be centered on Christ with a lot of selfless love.  I think this kind of love involves being intentional about your relationships within the community; intentional about seeking them out, intentional about having the hard conversations, intentional about living life together.  But here's something else I've been thinking about...how far do you pursue community if others don't seem to be interested?  Do you continue until God brings you to another place in your life?  Do you move on and seek true community elsewhere?  I feel like I could really see both being true, on the one hand I don't think that Jesus really just gives up on people necessarily...He continues to love.  But on the other hand, if we're supposed to be living in community with one another, building each other up in love, wouldn't it be better to continue loving  but move on at the same time?  Or is more or less giving up on relationships not loving?  How far does community go...I don't believe community can be done halfheartedly if it's going to be a true community...and why would anyone want to be real and transparent with others who are not intentionally seeking a relationship with them?  Oh Lord Jesus, what does one do in a situation like this one? 

Well those are just some of my present thoughts on community living...and here's some pictures from my last two weekends in wonderful Iowa :)

Roommates Kristen and Brittany

Roommates Tina and Roz :)

All of us after playing at this awesome park!

 

We got to see Lizzie :)

And we wished Lori was there...

Josiah scored 4 touchdowns in the first half of his game!  This is is fourth!

Sam and I enjoyed watching the game :)

I got to see Charley do quite a bit of flags...isn't she cute?  :)

 Unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries too soon and I didn't get any with my parents or Shelb, but I loved getting so see them!  Home is my favorite place and I'm excited to head back there again next weekend!

The last little while...

Well it's been a full and busy last few weeks. My parents came up for a quick visit and we got to have dinner. Michael also turned 21! I threw him a surprise party complete with ice cream cake and it was really fun. I got him Planet Earth and we've started working our way through the episodes. We really like getting to see different parts of creation through it!

Last weekend my roommates and I all went on a little road trip to northwestern Iowa to visit Tina's house. It was a really good time! We hung out with Tina's family quite a bit and got to see Lizzie some. We took some pictures throughout the weekend, and hopefully I'll be able to post some of them later this weekend!

A small but huge chapel thought...

Well it's getting relatively late, but I wanted to talk a little bit about my today and something that occurred to me. At my college we have optional chapel on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and as I was worshiping in chapel today it hit me how great of a blessing it is that I can have time set out in my day to go and worship for an hour with other believers and to be taught something from scripture. How cool is that? And it's not mandatory! I can't really say that I have many friends from high school who have such an awesome opportunity and I am so thankful for it! It is such a blessing. After church on Sunday I've really been trying to proclaim the Gospel to myself as often as possible and chapel is such a good time to be able to do that because many of the songs we worship to are filled with it. What a beautiful reminder during the day!

We've been going through a series called "Grounded for Life" where we've been looking at what could be considered 'the basics' of the Christian faith and today we talked about Jesus' death, resurrection and ascension. One point in particular caught my interest from today's message and it was a quote from C.S. Lewis in his book Mere Christianity:

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us."

Wow, he says it so well, how stupid humanity is for trying to claim He was a great moral teacher. I mean come on, Jesus can't even be called that if everything He said about Himself was a lie because last time I checked it wouldn't make any sense for a "good moral teacher" to lie about his identity while doing his "good person" thing. Oh humanity, open your eyes so that you may see Truth! How our selfish, sinful selves keep us from Love. I pray that eyes and ears would be opened and hearts softened so that they too could have the beautiful Gospel of our Lord Jesus the Christ proclaimed to them and be known by them as Truth.

Today begins my first full week of college for Fall 2010 and I can't say that I'm super excited about it, but I am excited about the weekend I had!  Friday night we had a birthday party for one of the girls from my freshman floor and it was just a really good time to connect again and hang out.  Some of us came back to my room afterward and watched part of Emma.  We finished off the night by going over to Emily's room, she's a freshman RA and it was fun to visit!  It's so crazy to me when I think about how much has changed in the last two years and how much my friends and I have changed (for good).  It was just so clear to me how much more grown up I am compared to freshman year.

Saturday was also fabulous, probably more so because I got to see Shelby and my Uncle Kent!  They were up in the cities for a volleyball tournament at Augsburg and Michael and I went to watch.  It was so much fun!  I love volleyball and watching it was so great especially since it was Central.  Central volleyball just has a special place in my heart as it has always been a family thing for me.  The last time I went to a game I went with my Grandpa Butch and I have some good memories from then and other Central volleyball games.  So watching volleyball was great but seeing Shelby and Kent was way better!  I know I've been at college and away from home for two years now but I still miss not getting to see Shelby (and all my family) as much so I really treasure those times I do get to spend with them and wish there could be more.  I don't really know what else to say other than that it was so good and I wish it could happen more often! 

Sunday was also very good.  Church was so uplifting.  The songs we sang were just filled with Gospel truth and the message was from Jude and focused on remaining in God's love through building yourself up with the Gospel, praying, and waiting eagerly for Heaven.  I was reminded of the fact that while my love isn't fixed or perfect God's is.  His love for me is forever and it never changes, not even when my love for him is less.  The pastor shared this analogy with us: it's like a mother holding a young child, both are holding on but the child's safety rests in the strength of their mother's arms not their own.  After church Michael and I got Chipotle and then just relaxed for a little while before finishing up some homework.  We spent tonight over at Jason and Claire's (Michael's brother and sister-in-law) apartment for dinner and games.  I love getting to hang out with them, they are so much fun and yeah I just really appreciate them and getting to see them as often as we do. 

It really was a blessing of a weekend and I'm very thankful for it.  Hopefully it will help me to be more joyful tomorrow when I wake up to be at work at 8:00 :) 

5-4-3-2-1

Five roommates sitting in the living room, four drinking cups of tea, three wearing long(er) sleeves, two wearing tee-shirts, one minute we're focusing on our tasks and the next minute we're not. 

I love this, sitting in the same room at the same time with all of my roommates.  Last year this never seemed to happen, but this year it has already happened quite a bit and the school year has only just begun.  I'm really excited for this next school year.  I'm excited to get to know my roommates and other friends better, I'm excited to have my mind stretched (ok, more or less I'm excited for this), and I'm excited to see what God has to teach me this year!  I think back to how much I've learned and changed over the last year and know it will happen again. 

God is good, and in moments like these it's very clear to me how blessed I truly am.