jambalaya

this is going to be a random assortment - a jambalaya, if you will - of thoughts that have been collecting in my head but are only now making their way into blog format. i'm not sure if anyone even reads this anymore, but i know i need to start using it again, if for nothing other than the pure discipline of identifying my own thoughts enough from time to time to try to explain them to others. so here goes ...

amazing grace. just watched the movie last night. never knew the slave trade was the origin of the song. totally blown away by wilberforce and his humility - took my mind to the passages our church has been teaching on ... "have mercy on me, a sinner". seems he didn't forget that, even in victory.

schemes. been really convicted lately to not forget there is an enemy who schemes against our hearts and souls. our weapon is prayer and to be honest, i'm pretty lazy in prayer. but lately my heart has been so encouraged by the Spirit to remember i'm not fighting against the flesh and blood and daily in-and-out struggles. the fight is how my heart responds to those flesh and blood struggles. and i'm not really the one fighting. i am the one who needs to turn to the One who will fight. Who am i turning to? myself or my God?

which brings me to my next link in the thought-chain. self. self is a four-letter word. and i really should treat it like that more often. again and again i rely on self. ugh, this is sin. just think of how many things we extol as a culture that are all about self. self-reliance. self-sufficiency. self-esteem. self-assurance. self-inflation. self-promotion. self-regulation. you might be thinking, "hey, this or that isn't a bad thing just because it has the word self in it." my point is not that all things with the word self are inherently evil, but seriously, if you really take the time to think about how MUCH we extol self, it gets rather nauseating. and here's why. we start believing we really are self-reliant, self-sufficient. let me change the pronoun here. I start believing that. I forget to rely wholly on my Maker.

the box. we live in a fast, demanding, expensive corner of the world. we've had some unexpected turns the last few months, and you know the saddest part is that i came home from our trip so determined not to just put it in a box with a pretty bow and look at it every so often with comments like "wasn't that such a lovely trip? ... why yes it was ... and what a lovely bow on that lovely box ... sigh ... ". gross. life was real then and life is real now. it's time for me to start connecting those dots. i plan on taking that box down and unpacking it more. i need to take that box down and unpack it.