A Story Never Written

All right, so the title isn't particularly accurate. Clearly I did write the following, otherwise I wouldn't be able to post it. A better title would be "a story never posted," but I'm posting it now so that isn't true either.
Anyway. I wrote this with the intention of posting it in pieces on Facebook, but for some reason I don't think I ever finished. I found it on my iPod today and thought it was worth posting - partially because I found it convicting, even though I wrote it, and mostly because I have nothing else to post at present. But don't despair! That will change shortly!
In the meantime, without further ado...

We are the privileged.
But we don't understand it.
We compare ourselves to the wrong people.
We look at what we don't have rather than what we do have.
Maybe we don't have the new iPad, but we have clean water constantly, readily available.
Maybe we don't have the latest and greatest smart phone, but we have shoes. More than one pair, in fact.
Maybe we don't have the nicest car, or the most expensive clothes, or the fanciest computers, but we have roofs over our heads and food on our tables, three times a day.
We have everything we need and a good deal of what we want.
And still we don't understand.
There are children dying of malnourishment, disease, and neglect (among various other reasons) in dozens if not hundreds of countries around the world and we think life isn't fair because we can't get exactly what we want when we want it.
We live in an age where we can reach thousands of people with the touch of a button.
We speak the language of technology in its various dialects - phones, computers, video game systems, mp3 players, stereos, etc. - but so few of us fail to take advantage of what we have been given.
Not only do we not understand gratitude, we don't understand the impact we could have on the world and the change we could bring about. We have an opportunity staring us in the face and we are blind to it.
If we could join our voices together and fight for a common cause, we would create a roar so loud that it would resonate in every corner of the globe.
A common cause, a single goal. No matter what it is, we could accomplish it with very little effort, if only we would wake up and understand.
But we don't, because we don't understand who we are. We are the privileged, and we prefer to live our comfortable lives in oblivion.

Confessions*

(*that really shouldn't be plural, because at present I only have one, but "Confession" just doesn't have the same ring to it)

There should probably be another disclaimer here about how this is another more personal, less thought-out post about what's happening currently in the oh-so-riveting life of one Emily Macadam. I would write one, but I figure that sentence does the trick equally well.

Here goes...

I don't want to graduate.

There, I said it. Oddly enough, I don't feel any release or relief or urge to jump off a building shouting, "I can fly!"

Sure, I'm excited about college. I'm thrilled with the way God orchestrated the events that were necessary to allow me to attend Gordon. I can't wait to meet new people, make new friends, experience new things, explore new places...

But at the same time, I'm quite happy with my current friends. I'm content with the familiar things. There are plenty of places I haven't explored right here in Orange County. The problem is, whether I get on board or not, change is coming faster than a runaway freight train and no drastic measure I could take to slow it down would prove effective in the slightest.

I get kinda eloquent when I'm experiencing deep emotions; can you tell?

Yesterday I went to the first of several graduation parties that I will be attending in the coming weeks. It was a time of joy and celebration, but there was an almost palpable undercurrent of sadness. Graduation is a tremendous milestone: marking not only an achievement, but the end of a chapter. It means new decisions and directions, goodbyes and hellos.

I've learned, in the past year, how much I hate goodbyes. I'm eager for the next step, for continued growth in responsibility and maturity and wisdom. But taking that step means giving up so much - even if it's only temporary.

If I'm being honest, the prospect of leaving home terrifies me as much as excites me. I'm afraid of losing my friends, of leaving for so long that they have time to fill the hole my absence might create with new friends. I'm afraid of coming home and feeling completely out of place, out of touch, out of style. Being replaced.

But I can't stay, because everyone is moving on too. If I don't get on the train, I really will be left behind. I can't stop the clock or opt to live in the past. I can only move forward, or be lost in the stampede.

So many conflicting thoughts, emotions. But when all the confusion is stripped away, the bare-bones truth is this: I can't stay a child forever. Growing up is a fact of life and there is nothing I can do to prevent it. If I accept it for what it is, knowing that God will always provide for me and never leave me or forsake me, then I will find joy even in sorrow, and a new beginning at the bittersweet close of this chapter.

Getting older sucks, but God is still good.

Days Go By...

I never intended this blog to be about my life, partly because it's not interesting enough to post about on the Internet (at least, aside from Facebook) and partly because that's what journals are for.
But after a crazy couple of months, I think it's worth posting here that the trips I have been on recently have impacted me in a number of ways and I am so grateful for the opportunities I was given to go back East to visit some colleges that I was considering, to fly to Colorado by myself to see CCU, and to travel to Macedonia with my good friend Alyssa.
Probably the biggest result of these trips is my college decision - I will be attending Gordon College in Massachusetts in the fall and I am so excited!! But I also learned, through a variety of experiences, the value of friendship, family, simplicity, solitude, silence, submission, and asking. After spending three weeks in Macedonia eating delicious food, I rediscovered my desire to exercise upon returning to the States as well.
That, in a nutshell, is where I'm at and where I've been. Next on the agenda is graduating...but I'm told finals have to happen before that particular event takes place, unfortunately.
There are some MK pictures on my Facebook profile, or you can check out just a few of my favorite snapshots here.

Resolutions

Well, it's a good thing my New Year's resolution didn't have to do with blogging more often, because I would have already failed miserably. Come to think of it, I don't think I had a New Year's resolution this year at all, actually.
Anyway. I've been reading this awesome book called Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life (thanks Ben :]). In chapter two there's this great quote from D.L. Moody. He states the following:
"A man can no more take in a supply of grace for the future than he can eat enough for the next six months, or take sufficient air into his lungs at one time to sustain life for a week. We must draw upon God's boundless store of grace from day to day as we need it."
Personally I find this statement quite convicting. It's not my habit to start each day by seeking grace, humbly admitting that I can't make it through on my own strength. Instead, I rely on my lacking abilities to get by, only stopping to ask for grace when I've failed - miserably - yet again.
I wonder what kind of difference it would make if I began to pray for the understanding that I have no power in and of myself to succeed in life, or even to make it through a single 24-hour period without sinning? What if I began to view grace not as something that I withdraw only when I have a debt to pay, but as something that is as readily available, but also as crucially essential to life, as air?
It's a little bit late for a New Year's resolution, but if we waited around for the new year to make changes in our lives all the time, we'd never get anything done. So this is my resolution, starting today, March 7: to begin each day with a petition for grace, understanding my need for it at all times, not just when I fail.

When People are Big and God is Small...

...then you should watch these videos! Louie Giglio does a fantastic job of pointing out how creation declares the glory of God, and then bringing it down to a personal level. It really helps put things back into the right perspective. If you haven't seen this message before, I highly recommend it.





These first two are about creation, and it's pretty amazing. If you only have time for these two, it's enough to make you think. But then he switches gear...

Here are the links to the other three parts.

How great is our God.

Perspectives, or Faith and Hope and Where They Belong

Today I went to a Christmas brunch at my grandma's church. A woman named Nicole Johnson spoke, and I really wish I'd taken notes or something because what she said was really powerful and anything I say won't do it justice.
First she talked about how so often she feels like she's invisible - her kids and her husband ignore her and don't appreciate all the work she's doing for her family. Then her friend gave her a book on cathedrals, and as she read it she discovered that most of the great cathedrals of England have no builder's name attached to them. Men invested their entire lives in these beautiful structures that took more than 100 years to complete, knowing that they wouldn't be remembered for their work, because they did it unto the Lord, and not unto men. Nicole went on to talk about how spending your life building a monument for yourself is a waste of time. People will never appreciate us as much as we wish they would, unless we tell them and then they express their 'gratitude' out of obligation. What's worth it is building a monument to a God who deserves to be worshipped with our lives. We may not see the monument completed in our lifetimes, but we will have invested our time and effort in something that is so much greater than ourselves.
Then she talked about the story of Jesus healing a man's shriveled hand on the Sabbath. It was mostly speculation, but there was a lot of truth in what she said. She talked about how the Pharisees may have baited Jesus with the man, egging him on and hoping they could trap Him, and how He saw their hearts and asked them a pointed question: is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath, or ignore the man and essentially do evil by refusing him help when Jesus could heal him?
Then Jesus told the man to stretch out his hand - not the good one, because he knew how to use that one and what to do with it - but the withered one, the one the man was probably trying to hide and maybe had been ridiculed for. The cause of the defect was unknown - a wound? An injury? Had it been that way from birth? It didn't matter, Jesus could heal it. But first the man had to stretch out his hand - to offer up his imperfection, to display his shame to everyone - and demonstrate his faith in Jesus' power to heal him. "This stretching," Nicole said, "separates fear from faith...hurt from hope...shame from trust."
The man stretched out his hand and was healed, and the wounded went away whole and unashamed. The Pharisees, on the other hand, full of their whitewashed selves and convinced of their righteousness, were left with their shriveled hearts and their wounded pride. Why were their hearts withered and cold? Had they been wounded? Injured? Jesus could have healed them, but their pride stood in the way.
Nicole went on to apply this story to our lives. She told us about her tendency to try and control her life and everything and everyone in it. She talked about how in order to grow, we need to stretch and offer up not what's whole in our lives, but what's shriveled and useless. Often we want to hold so tightly to those areas, afraid that if we let go, everyhing will fall apart. "And you're probably right," Nicole said. "But it may be the best thing that's ever happened to you."
It reminded me of that week in youth group when Mark Driscoll talked about the different views of Jesus, particularly the one that says that Jesus isn't king enough to rule over every area of our lives. Until we learn to let go of everything and trust that His hands are more than big enough to hold it all for us, we'll be fighting Him for control every step of our journey.
As temporary residents of a physical world, it's tempting to place our hope in things or people - which are all 'appearances' that will fade away. Reality - the truth of the Gospel and the promise of heaven - are where we should place our hope. Nicole summed it up better than I could: "I tell God, 'please take my hope and put it way up high, so I can't reach it, because I know if I hold onto it I'll put it in the wrong places.'"

Trains

The other day, I was thinking about color - how many different colors and shades of colors there are, how different colors evoke different moods and memories, and how nice it is that we don't live in a black and white world. How boring would that be??
But even though the range of colors that humans have recreated is astounding, how many more colors is God capable of creating? I bet the number is somewhere pretty close to infinity. If you hold up any number of leaves from different plants next to each other, I bet you couldn't find any two that were exactly the same shade of green. The sky's blue isn't the same every day. The number of different colors on flowers and animals is probably near uncountable. Why would God bother to paint our world in such wondrous hues? He could have left it black and white. Seems pretty clear to me that it's an expression of His love for us - and also evidence of His glory and praiseworthiness.
Thinking about color led me to think about eyes, how we perceive color, and how I would venture to guess that no two sets of irises are exactly alike. Eye color is amazing - it's no wonder eyes are fascinating when everyone's are different. Then there's the function of the eyeball. Our pupils widen and contract involuntarily depending on the amount of light they take in. We've all heard this a million times, but if you stop and think about it - it's incredible! Most of us don't understand much about a camera, except that it has a lens and it takes pictures. But even cameras, with all their high-tech settings and program capabilities, can't match the superior design of the eye. While the camera lens position has to be manually adjusted to zoom in or out and focus, the eye lens not only does this automatically, it does it by adjusting the SIZE of the lens.
I don't know about you, but I think that's really cool. And that's not even considering the fact that we see things UPSIDE DOWN, and then our brain takes the images that we're streaming to it for about 16 hours straight every day, and flips them around so fast that we never see anything upside down.
I have a question. How does anyone in their right minds possibly believe in evolution? How can matter that came from who knows where create life that has the capability to evolve into the complex, rational being that man is today? Man is more intelligent than matter, and still no one has been able to prove or figure out how this is possible. I respect people who are evolutionists, especially those who have well-reasoned arguments, but I don't understand.
This is not what I planned to blog on today, but it's probably better than whatever it was I thought I was going to say. I love trains of thought like this - they lead me to a deeper appreciation for God's creation and a deeper sense of humility as I realize, by His grace, that there is no way that I deserve to be loved by a God this great.
All glory, honor, power, and adoration be unto Him forever and ever!!

"For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well." - Psalm 139:13&14