I think that God has been working in me and teaching me things that are essential for living. I am loving it and my favorite lesson learned has been about beauty.

This past summer, I went on a mission trip to Connecticut and I got to spend a lot of time around people that were a lot less fortunate than I am. One person there changed my life and he was six. His name was Terrence and he was a small black boy with a giant mother that was kind of mean to me. Everyone at the camp that I worked at thought for sure that Terrence was a trouble child and they treated him as such. I don’t know why, but Terrence and I hit it off and I was designated his personal guardian for the week. I was the one that was supposed to control his anger and his behavior. Instead, Terrence taught me something.

Over the course of my life, I’ve liked a lot of girls. I’ve liked all of them for different reasons and I’ve always thought it would be nice to have a girlfriend. I liked the pretty girls with the nice clothes and the ones that would make me popular. I wanted somebody to share my life with and share myself with. Slowly, as I’ve grown, my standards for girls changed a little bit. I started to see girls in a little bit of a different light and I have found features in these ladies that I really like. Through this girls are teaching me something. They are teaching me about beauty and what it is.

In the Creation account, it says that God created man in His image. I’ve always been taught that this means that God has hands and feet, and a face with a nose and two eyes and somehow has both guy and girl parts. I think that this may be true, but I think that this might mean something more. I have emotions, fears, love, and passion and I didn’t create these things, they came from God and God possesses these same characteristics in the most perfect beautiful form.

In Terrence, there was much anger and resentment towards authority. But, on the last night of the camp when I had to say goodbye, he looked at me with his dark eyes and I looked back and I caught a glimpse of God. In all his confusion, I saw God in him. It was beautiful.

In the different girls that I have liked, there have been attributes that are so breathtakingly beautiful. There have been things that are beautiful but not attractive. There are parts that most people wouldn’t notice, but they are beautiful.

All these things point back to the source of this beauty => God. I know that I can’t hug or kiss God, but I can embrace a person and tell them their worth and I can’t think of anything more rewarding.

Dear God, of all the beautiful things that You have created, the most beautiful thing is You. There are people around me that make me nervous just being around them because You are so bright in them. I don’t even think they know it. I love You and I’m falling for You everyday.

When the new year came around I decided I was going to give up something big for God, I was going to give up my biggest addiction which not many people know about. I decided that God was bigger than my addiction and I truly believe this. A lot of my coworkers decided that they were going to give up various addictions for the new year as well. I have seen all of the them fall. Every single one has given up. I know that I will not give in. But this morning I gave in. I felt terrible. I think that anyone in my situation would too. But some how, I can’t even explain it, there is a peace. God isn’t mad at me. I don’t know how I know, but I just know. There isn’t anything that I know of in the Bible about this, but I know it is truth. Right now, I feel so good. I’m loving this day. It isn’t full of forgiveness like I would expect. I don’t know if it is anti-Christian to say this, but it almost feels like God doesn’t even care that I fell. The only explanation I have for this is that maybe I didn’t fall. Maybe I didn’t really give into my old addiction. I had always heard that when you give into your old self, you are denying your new identity in Christ. Because of today, I am rethinking this. This might not be wholly true. There is definitely truth in that statement but how does that explain this morning? I think it is that God doesn’t know about my old self. He only knows my new self!!! That is such good news! Of course I’m not going to indulge in every old habit, but God’s love became so real to me today! Dear God, You are beyond holy. I love being your child and I love that you call me that. Thank you for allowing me to grow in You. It is the most exhilarating adventure that any kid like me could imagine. You have blessed my life with so many awesome people and there is such beauty in each of them. It is so awesome to catch glimpses of You in other people. I don’t know what my future holds Lord, but whatever You hold in store for me is okay as long as I’m with You.  

The other day in youth group we were discussing the first man and woman which is obviously Adam and Eve. As we were talking I found myself being more and more swept away by Genesis.

One of the big things that I “discovered” was that God let Adam and Eve eat fruit. I had always thought that Adam and Eve were vegetarians but, God didn’t let them have vegetables. I wondered why this was and I remembered what my Farmer Dad had said about the definition of the difference of a fruit and vegetable. Farmer Dad said that a fruit was attached to a plant: an apple comes off of an apple tree or a banana comes off of a banana tree. Then he told me that a vegetable is the plant: a celery is the stalk of a celery plant and lettuce is the actual lettuce plant. When he told me this my entire view of fruits and vegetables changed but I was not as blown away as I was when I applied this truth to the Bible. God let Adam and Eve have fruit because if you eat a fruit, the plant does not die. There is still life in the plant. However, if you eat a vegetable, you are eating the plant and the plant therefore is dead. Before The Fall, there was not death, so… eating vegetables was impossible. It might suffice to say there were no vegetables in Eden. I had never thought of this before and I thought this was fantastic. The book of Genesis is becoming more and more alive every time I open it up.

But what really took me at youth group the other night was when we were discussing why God created man the way He did. We asked why God would create man with a bunch of dirt and a bit of breath. The youth group took the conversation more towards the breath part and not as much to the dirt part. However, while they were all talking, I was being bothered by the significance of the dirt and wondering if there was any at all. This was really causing me trouble and it was festering inside of me all the way home.

When I told my mom about my suffering she told me something that I will never forget. She told me that if we are just breath and dirt, there’s not much God can do with us. I said “Okay…” and she continued, “it is not until we accept the living water of Jesus Christ that we become what God wants from us.” I was really lost. I asked her to explain and she said that dirt (us) mixed with water (Jesus) becomes clay and God can mold and shape you into what He wants and that as clay we are where we are supposed to be.

I am easy to excite so of course I was blown away by this. I had never heard my mom say anything so profound. When my meaningless dirt is mixed with God’s breath I become alive and able to live according to how I want. But if the Living Water is added to that I become something so much more. It’s like the breath and the water and the dirt become a beautiful threesome that becomes more than the three alone. I am nothing without the breath and even with the breath I am not much without the water. How beautiful is that?

There is so much more going on in this world than I can ever begin to realize and this bowls me over. What is even more amazing is that there is so much to me that I never realized. I don’t mean this in an arrogant way but exactly the opposite. I’ve been pretty sure about who I am in Christ and who I am to everyone else but lately this has all been changing. There is so much more than just me and that “so much more” is definitely God.

Dear God, You are so beyond me. You are so holy. I cannot thank you enough for what you are doing to me on a daily basis. Thank you for being so much more than me. Time spent with you is most assuredly time spent alive.

Not too long ago, in youth group, we were talking about suffering and why asked the big question, “Why would allow something so bad happen to such a good person, and allow something so good to happen to somebody so bad?”

People offered their input and nobody really rested on an answer. I heard several answers that seemed to be partly right, but not fulfilling to the point where I could say that the question would no longer bother me.

One pretty renowned Christian writer, Phillip Nancy, wrote about suffering and he said that we shouldn’t ask that question at all because God is so big and so sovereign that we shouldn’t let that sort of question bother us. To me, this seemed like a pretty sheepish way to just escape the question. Maybe there was more to it that I didn’t understand, but that answer was not very good. It kind of made me angry, because it kind of felt like people were casually throwing away this question. The problem is is that we ask it and we are not content without an answer.

I was reading a book and it stated that the author was too afraid to go to God with this question because if he asked the question, “Why do You allow suffering?”, God would ask the same question back.

We are Christians (A.K.A. the hands and feet of Christ), yet how often do we allow suffering to occur around us? How often do we allow the homeless to be so lonely? Is it just me or is loneliness the root of all suffering? Think about the sick. The elderly are all in their nursing homes suffering from cancer, emphysema,Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and arthritis Or… are they actually suffering from being without their families everyday. The cancer patients are afflicted from leukemia, lung cancer, skin cancer and so many other kinds and they are afraid that they will die leaving their families alone and going off to another world by themselves. And we are so hurt by death because… we are without the ones we love. And we suffer because of it.

This happens to good people and bad people. To add the parts about the good and bad people to me is irrelevant. The truth to me, is that we are all broken, busted up, in-need-of-something -to-lean-on people. Do we so easily forget that good things DO happen to good people and bad things DO happen to bad people? Especially when life is over. Do we think that because we are the redeemed that God should only reserve his love and blessings for us and only bad things can happen to the ones who have yet to find the light? If this is true I don’t want to have any part of it. If I have to give up my blessings to someone who is not yet redeemed so that they will see what God is all about, then I am all for it.

Not all of Christians are doctors, or scientists, or have the ability to build homes, or the money to just give away, but we all have ourselves. We have personalities, faces and love inside of us. We may not all be able to cure cancer or AIDS, or be able to give away money to the homeless, or build homes for them, but we all can be with those who feel so by themselves and show them the light inside of us that they may have forgotten about. I think that this might be part of the cure for suffering.

Dear God,

Let me not forget who You are and who You hung out with when You were on this earth. You walked with the poor, and sinful and the ones who were full of sadness. You spent time with the outcasts and laughed with the lepers. Make me someone who is like that. Shine your light where You want me to go. I am Your hands and feet.