Balloons

When you were a little kid didn't you just love to get balloons? One night when i was working at "the wal" (walgreens lol) there was this little kid riding around in the buggy and he had a balloon in his hand. I just knew what was about to happen though... and sure enough it did. He let it go. It wasn't a big deal because we got him another one, but i just thought to myself, "Now how many more times am i going to have to do that?" Sometimes when i was little i would just forget that the balloon was in my hand and it would float away. That was always a bummer.

 

I have been learning some really cool stuff lately and a few of my thousand plus questions have been being answered in the coolest ways. I love how God is working in my life right now. But to be completely honest, the better it gets the more paranoid i become. Sometimes i feel like i have to hold on to God so tight. I am so scared of losing sight of Him.

It's like im holding a balloon. I want to hold on to it because it's pretty and fun to play with, but sometimes i want to use that hand for something else. I dont want to let go though because i might not be able to reach it again. So i hold on to it. But what if i just forget that it's in my hand and i let it go? What if i don't notice that i've lost it?

 

All of these thoughts came to me last night (June 18) as i was writing to God. I have a really pretty journal that has verses on the bottom of each page. It's kind of funny how each verse somehow fits with what i was saying on that page (Very cool God!) So yesterday's verse was Matthew 28:20 "Surely I am with you always, to the very end of this age."

I cant really tell you this cool analogy that i made up to answer my question. All i know is that i have to trust the Bible. That is what it says and that is what im hanging on to until God decides to give me a further explanation. 

I dont know if anyone has ever felt like this. Heck, i might just be making a complete fool of myself. But this isnt about me. I want to help other people but im not going to write about what i think other people need.  I have to write about what is true in my own life because that is all i can do. I am the only person i can speak for. Maybe someone can learn something from it. This is what God is doing right now and that has to have some weight.

~peace.

My Serendipity

...Wow... My day was just that. 

So I love thesaurus.com. It makes me sound so smart in my term papers. :) I was looking for a word to perfectly describe today, and I found the perfect one. 

 

Serendipitous: the faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident.

 

Let me elaborate...

So my day started about 12:30 this morning. I woke up in a sweat. Not because of a scary dream or anything, but because it was actually like 90 degrees in my house. Why? I’m glad you asked... MY ELECTRICITY WENT OUT! Ugh! And for the most ridiculous reason i've ever heard... a woodpecker... yeah... Having the electricity out is only fun when it’s on a cold night and you get to have fun with flashlights. But that was not the case today... You see last night we had fajitas for dinner. They were delicious! But this morning the whole house smelled like hot raunchy onions. So here I was annoyed and sweaty and bored. So I decided to check my facebook mail...HA!!! 

So after that I just figured that the hot outside was better than the hot oniony inside of my house and I decided to go for my morning walk. There was nothing better to do so I walked farther than I usually do this morning. I always love going into this neighborhood called Sapphire Island. No, not because it's a magical land with roads made of sapphire...ha-ha. It's has just always been a beautiful place to me. Every house or mansion I should say, has a dock that overlooks Betz Creek. The neighborhood always has the most colorful flowers on every lawn and the sides of the streets are covered with tall palm trees. But today when I walked through the neighborhood it was different or maybe it was always this way and I never really noticed it. It was really quiet. I was greeted only once with a head nod and half of a wave. As I walked farther I noticed I was alone. No one was outside. The only other greeting I received was from a whiny cat who I think had rabies or something. Maybe there was no one else outside because everyone was at work; or maybe because the power was out and everybody else's house smelled tolerable enough to stay inside. I don’t know. It just felt eerie. Every single house had beautiful homely porches with two or three rocking chairs but I never saw anybody sitting in them. I saw picnic tables and baseball toy games in the yard but nobody was out there to use them.

I remember when we were in the Dominican Republic. When we went horseback riding through the villages we had to make sure we didn’t run over people because everyone was outside. There were dozens of people sitting around the streets just talking and laughing with each other. We saw old ladies fixing soup for anyone to have as they came to visit. We saw a huge game of baseball going on. It seemed like all the guys from the village were either playing or cheering them on. These people were really living.

I think that it’s ironic that the Dominican people had next to nothing yet they were the most giving people I have ever met. Maybe we are different because we have so much. Maybe if we didn’t put so much worth into our possessions they’d be easier to give away. Maybe the reason Christ tells us to sell our stuff and give to the poor is not just for their benefit but for ours as well.

Maybe this all sounds cliché to you, but all of this has really rocked my world this week. I don’t have a deeply profound little slogan to explain my thoughts. I don’t have a three-point lesson. I don’t even think I have final point. My purpose in doing this blog is to tell other people how I am recognizing God in our world with hopes that they will be inspired to do the same. I know all of this sounds random. So maybe all I want to say in closing is that today I saw huge beautiful houses with unfriendly and closed off people living in them and in the Dominican Republic I saw run down shacks with some of the most giving, genuine, and wonderful people in the world living in them. Maybe someone can learn something from this. Comment if you did.

~Peace 

"I, therefore, a prisoner in the Lord, urge you to walk worthy of the calling you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience accepting one another in love, diligently keeping the unity of the spirit with the peace that binds us. There is one body and one Spirit just as you were called to one hope at your calling; one Lord, on faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all"           Ephesians 4:1-6

The Love of God is Folly

So this is my first post... kind of exciting i think! This one isn't an answer to any of my one of my seven thousand and two questions. It just explains the crazy cool meaning behind my blog title: "L'amour de Dieu est folie!"

I first stumbled upon this awesome nugget when i was reading "The Ragamuffin Gospel". (great book by the way, visual edition too!)
On Easter morning in France, you will see this phrase posted on the side of buildings, buses, and houses; graffitied on sidewalks and lamp posts and written on bathroom walls. The French sing it in church and even use it as a greeting as they wave to their neighbors. It means the love of God is folly (or foolishness). It sounds absurd and yeah it is. But it is kind of cool when you think about it. Jesus came down from perfectville and became one of us lousy humans, wasn't even liked by many people, was punched and spit on, humiliated, and eventually nailed to a piece of wood- for us. All because he...loved us? I've been learning lately that God’s love is not rational most of the time. Not only is it not rational, but it is also not in the least bit dignified. I was reading this other guy's blog and he put it perfectly. "The love of God is folly. It's insanity. It's crazy. Its the stuff of legend and myth and story. It's a scandal. It's an injustice. It's not reality. Or maybe I am all of those things and the love of God is all that really is."

God's love is that unrelenting. And that is hard for me because Christ tells us to love like He loves. I don’t have any examples of how I have loved someone like that lately because, frankly, I stink at it. We all do sometimes. But I pray that I, along with anyone else who is reading this, will have an opportunity to give someone this crazy thing called love. (I think that’s a title of a song… ha) We are all on this journey together so if you have any cool stories about how you have given love, received love, or seen love in action, please comment.

“I pray that you, being rooted and deeply established in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love and to know the Messiah’s love that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with the fullness of God.”   
Ephesians 3:17b-19