just came back from C² for CES weekend. wanted to share something from Mike Woodard, our speaker:
God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life...
DON'T FIGHT - yield to God
DON'T REPEAT CLASSES - be teachable
DON'T RUN IN THE HALLS - be patient with God's timing
FOLLOW THE RULES - obey God
so it seems like hurricane isabel arrived late at york. it was raining so hard this afternoon it was unbelievable. but something cool happened. my friend was heading out when she asked if any of us had an extra umbrella. since i figured she had a longer walk home than i did, i happily lent her mine (complete with reflective bands on it so she wouldn't get run over by a car). when my turn came to head outside, it was still pouring so my other friend and i decided on going out another door. the oddest thing was that by the time we set foot outside, the rain had disappeared! so i walked home without getting wet.
sometimes, God's grace shows up in the most unexpected ways.
updates will most likely be more sparse from now on - unless something major happens that's worth writing about. ;> two months of insanity. one december to rest. and three more months in the studio/theatre. that's fourth year in a nutshell. :>
anywho, here's something interesting i received today...
---
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is
at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and
you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not
raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.
---
downs and ups of living in res.
downs: -fire alarm at 2am, right in the middle of my REM sleep...
- no elevator access to our 14 floor building after the fact
ups: i live on the third floor. :D
8:30am history lecture this morning did not find me a happy camper. but my building didn't burn down and i got a decent night's sleep. :>
God is good. always.
here's a good verse to chew on for ya:
had a challenging conversation with a friend last night that left me feeling quite inadequate and frustrated. this morning, i brought it to God and i realized that i'd been striving to impress the other person when really, that wasn't the point. a true friendship cannot be based on anything other than genuineness. so whether the other person sees me as less mature or considers me an equal, i can be at peace because there are no false pretenses.
i never really thought i'd be trying to impress others because i felt i was secure about myself, but i guess this morning God broke my pride again. i need to trust God more and myself less.
my classmates think i'm intoxicated and my worship team thinks i'm crazy. but last thursday, as i was sitting outside for my drawing class, trying to find something that inspired my pencil, my eyes settled on a wall covered with ivy. as the wind blew, the leaves rustled up and down in waves. to my tired mind, it appeared to me as if they were laughing! so in a moment of utter heaviness, when all i wanted to do was lie down and sleep, God brought laughter into my world - through ivy, of all things!
came across a few gems from Brother Lawrence's Practicing the Presence of God:
...the end we ought to propose to oursleves is to become, in this life, the most perfect worshippers of God we can possibly be, as we hope to be through all eternity.
...the greater perfection a soul aspires after, the more dependent it is upon Divine grace.
...Hold yourself in prayer before God like a dumb or paralytic beggar at a rich man's gate: let it be your business to keep your mind in the presence of the LORD.
been pondering the emotion of missing people lately. why do we miss people? what makes certain people missed more than others? are missing and longing for someone the same thing? in my mind, i picture the emotion as a little blue character, sitting all alone at the bottom step at my heart's door. and it's curious that although i may miss people for different reasons, the emotion is still the same.
for a while, i was questioning God why i should stand up in defence of the current definition of marriage. i reasoned that our christian standards shouldn't be expected of people who are not christians. but God showed me in my quiet time last week that it's not about rights. it's about love. if we really love these people, we wouldn't let them settle for less than God's best. 'cuz in reality, people who find satisfaction in same-sex relationships are really selling themselves short of real love - which is as God designed it to be.
i remember at Urbana 2000, Pastor Ken Fong told us that the measurement of when a couple is ready to have children is whether there is an overflow of love between them. the reason why God created us is that He was so full of love that He wanted to share it with someone. so love, in its fullness, ultimately gives. in a relationship between a man and a woman, this design of love can be acheived naturally.
it's true that because we live in a fallen world, children are born and raised in families that fall very short of this ideal and that some relationships between two men or two women may seem more genuine than some husbands and wives'. but in the end, it really is for our benefit if we live by God's design.
so this same-sex marriage issue is like anything else in life that deceives us into exchanging our good for God's best.
God's gift today was this picture: tiny sparrows dwarfed by grass, feeding by the pond on campus.
two lessons i learned from this picture:
1. i am just as tiny in the world, yet God feeds me with plenty
2. just as i find delight in watching the sparrows minding their own business in complete simplicity, God delights in us when we go about His work in simple trust and obedience.
and somewhere, in the midst of intently watching the sparrows, God whispered to me, "remember this picture; store it in your heart. you'll need to come back to it when life gets noisy and school wears on." how timely. 'cuz it's 1:37am and the frosh week pub night's still going strong. the party's out in the parking lot and my windows are rattling with the beats. but i'm happy. 'cuz i got a gift from God today. :>
Thanks, God, for the gift of sparrows.
had a most amusing experience last night. after a long day of moving and unpacking and settling in, i'd gone to visit a friend in the next residence. coming back up to my room, i walked up the stairs and entered the suite. i noticed a girl sitting in the common room, watching TV so i stopped to chat with her. since i'm living with three new people this year, it didn't occur to me that i'd never seen this girl before. i clued in that something was wrong when she looked at me funny and asked me if i lived there. then i realized, i was on the wrong floor! i ended up talking to her for about an hour and we found out that we're in the same tutorial for one course (even though we're in different majors!) praise God for new friendships, especially random ones. ;)