Aaah yes, you've guessed it. I'm at home in Marietta and I've actually had time to marinate and do some good reading and heart searching. This semester (my first one doing this job that I do) has been hard. I've learned so much about myself and the nature of humanity. I don't know all that much about God, and I thought I did before this semester. I can't show up and make things happen, and I thought I could before this semester. I'm frail, fragile, and broken, and I don't really think I thought I was before this semester. There's been a void and I think the void has been the tangible experience of the grace of God. I've been so busy worrying about what to have girls study, and figuring out how to share the gospel in such a way that will make someone want to accept Christ that I've forgotten about experiencing Christ myself. As a result there's been this unquenchable hunger and thirst for love that's made me cry at movies, sigh at happy couples, and look at the Bible skeptically because it doesn't have arms to hold me with. I've been so hurried, anxious, and cynical that I've overlooked Christ. But I can behold Him in the faces of my dear friends, feel Him in the wind that envelopes me, and smell him in that chai tea that tempts me. When did I stop looking at the world with awe and wonder?
“My personal experience of the relentless tenderness of God came not from exegetes, theologians, and spiritual writers, but from sitting still in the presence of the living Word and beseeching Him to help me understand with my head and heart His written Word. Sheer scholarship alone cannot reveal to us the gospel of grace. We must never allow the authority of books, institutions, or leaders to replace the authority of knowing Jesus Christ personally and directly. When the religious views of others interpose between us and the primary experience of Jesus as the Christ, we become unconvicted and unpersuasive travel agents handing out brochures to places we have never visited.” – Brennan Manning (The Ragamuffin Gospel)
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Sometimes I forget that I am not the only one who feels these sorts of things, and who knows what they need but relentlessly, or unconciously, avoid it. I love how one person's honesty and struggle is another's liberation and encouragement. I am longing for a little rest and realization myself (nice title, by the way).
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