A life apart from You

I just cant fathom a life apart from God. I really can't. Life is good. I am blessed in so many ways that I can't begin to count them. This is true for most of the people in my life. We have opportunity and we have freedom and we are young and we are ambitious and we have been given much. More so, for so many of my friends - we know what a life centered around Christ looks and feels like and we couldnt imagine the alternative. Even with all the good that goes around and even among the daily gifts from God I still have the occassional day where I wake up and everything seems to be wrong. Not wrong but not as I would have planned it. This is our story though, right? Part of life is really about learning that it will not go as we planned. We aren't in control. We know this but we tend to think there are some areas that are ours alone. Nothing that I have is mine nor from me. Everything is by and for God. But, yes, in my own mortal self sometimes I do wake up and wonder why in the world I am where I am. Let's be honest: single, fairly discontent in a job and full of way too many ambitions that I can't seem to meet (of course on my own)....but I do know the Lord. And, really, that is all that matters. I couldnt imagine being a 25 year old woman like myself in this society of appearence and performance pressures, not on track with what society (well, atleast Southern society) thinks I should have under my belt, daily going to a job that really doesnt interest nor value me and not knowing God intimately.
This past weeks my friends and I have seen first hand the worst kind of sin you can imagine. We have watched one man's selfishness rob the life of another person. I am not okay with this. I am not immune to it. None of us have considered this week lightly. This week will be one of the most influential single events of my life. For the last year I have been so immune to pain and to evil in the world. It's easy to do that in your twenties when you look at the world as something to conquer. This week death was all too close and all to familiar and it has really shaken our community. I am ashamed that it took someone else's helpless death to remind me of the fraility of each day. I have been reading and rereading Thomas a Kempis' book, Imitation of Christ. Much of Kempis's words speak about mourning for those around us who do not know the intimacy of the Lord. I have read and reread his words front to back over and over and over these past few months. I have glazed over the main theme that Kempis is teaching. Outr hearts should be so burdened daily for others to know and experience the goodness of the Lord as we have that we can't be satisfied because we are constantly aware of the brokenness around us. This week my heart was transformed. I really couldnt imagine experiencing (even from a distance) the events of this week and not have a heavenly father to turn to. It is easy to question God. It is easy to wonder why He did not intervene. His ways are so much bigger than our thinking and that is what is comforting to me. Really, I dont want to understand everything. I want God to be big to me. I want to keep Him as he should be: omnipotent. Above all things.Even this thing. Even this terrible terrible thing. I experienced this week what Kempis spoke so beautifully of....an unquentiable desire to make His name great to every single person I come in contact with....no one is exempt from the love of God. I pray that my heart is so aware of the brokenness around me and that I can't be settled because I am constantly aware of the work to be done.



Romans 8:28....choose to believe.