The Unbelieving Believers - R

Man, it's been awhile, hasn't it? Since the last time I wrote a blog post, I moved into a new house, graduated college, went to a different country, saw two friends get married, and started my summer internship.

In the immortal words of Ferris Bueller: life moves pretty fast.

I do want to focus more on one item on that list, though, and that's going to a different country. I had the amazing privilege to travel with a group from ACU to a small village in Ghana called Ateiku. This was my first time ever leaving the country, and I was a little nervous I will admit. When I first heard about the trip, it just fit so perfectly with my schedule (between graduation and my internship) and sounded so compelling that I felt like it was very important for me to find a way to get there. And I think it was important for me to be there, but more on that later.

First, I want to try to give you a small taste of the colossal amount of work God has been able to do in that country in the last twenty years. Our main contact was a man named Lawrence Oduro. It is very difficult to overstate the impact that this one man has had on the community around him. He walked by faith to that small village of Ateiku to spread the good news, but when he saw how deep the needs of that community were, he did more than start a church. To skip a few steps in the story, because of Lawrence's work in Ateiku and the surrounding villages, over 100 wells have been dug, which bring clean water to hundreds of thousands of people; dozens of churches have been planted all over the country; because Lawrence cannot preach at all these churches, he started a school to train preachers, which this year graduated twelve new preachers; he also started numerous primary, intermediate, and high schools to raise the quality of education in the area; and most recently, he built a hospital in Ateiku to make healthcare more affordable and more available, since the next closest hospital is a two hour drive from their village.

Like I say, God has done an incredible amount through this one man. The area has been completely transformed. If you'd like, this amazing video gives a little more information on the ministry there, and I'll even promise not to continue with the blog post until you finish watching it.

The entire time I was there, I was keeping an eye out for why exactly God had me there. What was I meant to learn? What was I meant to see? Who was I meant to meet? What was I meant to do? I'm now fairly convinced that one of the most significant things to come out of that trip was a one-hour conversation that our group got to have with Lawrence one night. We asked him about the culture, about the ongoing work he was conducting, about the state of Christianity in Ghana - everything we could think of really. He very graciously answered all of our questions, happy to share with us ignorant Westerners.

Towards the end of that conversation, I asked him (since he'd been to America numerous times and often hosted groups of Americans in Ateiku) what the main differences were between American Christians and Ghanaian Christians. What followed was a conversation that might rattle around in my brain for the rest of my life.

The first thing he said: "Huge, not small." Seems like a belief in Jesus may be the only thing we actually have in common. He thought for a half-second and smiled. He said, "I would say that about 70% of American Christians are not believers."

We stared. Not really sure I'm following Lawrence.

It turns out that Americans really don't know what faith is. He talked about American churches trying to plan, trying to accomplish something. The first place they turn is not to God with a prayer but to the budget with a pen. We have to make this make sense, we have to plan and be organized, we have to work out of the carefully constructed line items that keep the church running.

Lawrence said that Ghanaian Christians don't have that luxury. They have to operate out of faith. When they see a need, they trust that God will find a way, big or small, to fill it, and they ask God to do just that until he does.

My first thought was to be defensive, to think that well yes, we pay attention to the budget so that we don't run the church into the ground, we want to be responsible, don't we? Then I remembered a discussion that I once had in class on the disciples and the feeding miracles.

During those days another large crowd gathered. Since they had nothing to eat, Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “I have compassion for these people; they have already been with me three days and have nothing to eat. If I send them home hungry, they will collapse on the way, because some of them have come a long distance.”
His disciples answered, “But where in this remote place can anyone get enough bread to feed them?” “How many loaves do you have?” Jesus asked. “Seven,” they replied. He told the crowd to sit down on the ground. When he had taken the seven loaves and given thanks, he broke them and gave them to his disciples to distribute to the people, and they did so. They had a few small fish as well; he gave thanks for them also and told the disciples to distribute them. The people ate and were satisfied. Afterward the disciples picked up seven basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over.About four thousand were present. After he had sent them away, he got into the boat with his disciples and went to the region of Dalmanutha. - Mark 8:1-10

Let's go ahead and agree that the disciples here represent American Christians. They're asking a pretty good question. Or at least they would be, if they hadn't already seen him feed more people with less bread. Just two chapters prior to this in Mark, Jesus fed the 5,000! And then he walked on water! And the disciples are somehow still concerned with the question of how. It seems almost laughable at this point to think that Jesus couldn't find a way to do this, but it seems like they're doing exactly what Lawrence observed that we do. They're trying to make it make sense. They're trying to operate out of the numbers that work in their minds.

In the immortal words of Randy Harris, "God doesn't do math like that."

The sad reality is that Americans don't have faith because most Americans don't need faith. We are some of the wealthiest people in the world, we live in relative safety, we have an amazing infrastructure, and we have some of the lowest rates of hunger on the planet. For the most part, our needs are met regularly. We don't need faith, because we have the expectation that we'll be taken care of.

As someone who currently works in not one but two churches, I feel it's necessary to say that I'm not advocating for fiscal irresponsibility. I think budgeting is smart and important. The lesson I'm learning is that the budget cannot decide what we are capable of. What are mere dollars and cents to the creator of heaven and earth?

This is challenging me more than I can remember being challenged in a long time. I realized that even though I'm a proud Christian, I don't think that I'm a true believer. But there's no time like the present to practice. What's the wildest change you're hoping to see happen in your life or in the world? What's that impossible thing that hasn't happened yet? What's that thing that you could never do because the budget or the schedule wouldn't allow? Be crazy enough to believe that God can do that any way he wants. Start praying and start looking for opportunities. It may not make sense to us, but it doesn't have to.

Since when does God have to make sense?

~RJS~

The God Who Verbs - R

One of my favorite tasks I've ever been given while working at a church came in February of 2017. Ash Wednesday was upon us and I was gifted the job of making the ashes for the service that would end up on hundreds of people's foreheads. High stakes work for an intern, but I don't back down.

If you don't know, we don't use just any old fireplace ashes for an Ash Wednesday service, they're ashes from burned palm branches to honor the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. I made an impressive sight standing there outside of the church standing beside a trashcan with an open flame inside it being stoked by palm branches while wearing dress clothes. Afterward, my clothes smelled like the smoke from a slightly different plant that might have gotten me fired, but altogether a great time was had by all.

Palm rhymes with psalm. (Nailed it)

So Psalms is a cool book! It's not one that I find myself reading often, but I feel like every time I do, I find something incredible. I love that Psalms gives us such a rich vocabulary to talk about God in ways that we'd probably never think of. Most recently, the one to catch my eye was Psalm 103, a truly beautiful psalm. I'm only going to be talking about the first few verses, but it felt like a disservice to shorten it, so here it is:

1Praise the Lord, my soul;
    all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
2 Praise the Lord, my soul,
    and forget not all his benefits—
3 who forgives all your sins
    and heals all your diseases,
4 who redeems your life from the pit
    and crowns you with love and compassion,
5 who satisfies your desires with good things
    so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

6 The Lord works righteousness
    and justice for all the oppressed.

7 He made known his ways to Moses,
    his deeds to the people of Israel:
8 The Lord is compassionate and gracious,
    slow to anger, abounding in love.
9 He will not always accuse,
    nor will he harbor his anger forever;
10 he does not treat us as our sins deserve
    or repay us according to our iniquities.
11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
    so great is his love for those who fear him;
12 as far as the east is from the west,
    so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

13 As a father has compassion on his children,
    so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
14 for he knows how we are formed,
    he remembers that we are dust.
15 The life of mortals is like grass,
    they flourish like a flower of the field;
16 the wind blows over it and it is gone,
    and its place remembers it no more.
17 But from everlasting to everlasting
    the Lord’s love is with those who fear him,
    and his righteousness with their children’s children—
18 with those who keep his covenant
    and remember to obey his precepts.

19 The Lord has established his throne in heaven,
    and his kingdom rules over all.

20 Praise the Lord, you his angels,
    you mighty ones who do his bidding,
    who obey his word.
21 Praise the Lord, all his heavenly hosts,
    you his servants who do his will.
22 Praise the Lord, all his works
    everywhere in his dominion.

Praise the Lord, my soul.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that I've been struggling mightily to be in a "Praise the Lord" type of mood. And I think that's okay. I'm of the belief that God wants all of our emotions, positive or negative, just as long as we're bringing them to him. He can take it.

But that's not the point.

How do you think of God? I'm sure if you were trying to tell about what kind of God you worship, you'd play a fill-in-the-blank kind of game with the sentence "God is _______." In America, we tend to fill this in with adjectives such as loving or gracious or merciful or just or all-powerful.

Hear me say, these are both theologically correct as well as wonderful aspects of our Creator. But I do think that the ancient Israelites had a better vocabulary when it came to talking about their God. They knew that adjectives would just never do the trick.

For the Israelites, the single most important defining feature of the God that they served was that he was the God who brought them out of Egypt. During the Exodus, he enacted the ten plagues, he split the Red Sea, he defeated Pharaoh's army, and he brought them into their Promised Land.

To put this another way, Israel was far more concerned with the verbs than the adjectives when they spoke about God.

It is important to understand the qualities of God, though they may be far above our own understanding, but I think our human brains will have a much better concept of who God is when we focus on the actions of God. That's what the psalmist does in Psalm 103, and I think we have something to learn from this. They focus on the actions of God before they ever look at the attributes of God. In answering the question, "Who is God?" they decide to start with the verbs.

"Well let me tell you: God forgives, . . . heals, . . . redeems, . . . crowns, . . . satisfies."

When we limit God to adjectives, we tend to forget that he actually acts. He's alive, he's working, he's moving in the world all around us. We stop looking for his activity in our lives, content to just accept the kind of God he is. Genesis 2 tells us that our God gets in the dirt, works with his hands, and still makes things that are good. Who says that isn't true today? He works in the dirt that is our lives and transforms it into something good.

How is God working in your life? And if your answer is "I have no idea," like me, I have a follow-up question: how hard are you looking for God's working in your life? Keep your eyes open, and he might surprise you. Are you looking up to heaven asking him to come down and help you? Because chances are, he's already down in the dirt working, waiting for you to see the good that he's making.

~RJS~

Saturday - R

Hey everyone - the last two weeks have been awful, thank you for asking.

For anyone who doesn't know, I'm an RA here on campus and one of the RA's that I work with passed away on Sunday, March 31st. For all of you who have asked, I understand that you don't know why this is a bad question, but yes we were close. There's something about living in that kind of community with someone that makes someone more than a friend. We're family.

I'm not telling you this to ask for your apologies or sympathy. I'm telling you this to update you that life has been pretty crappy and it's been hard to write a blog post about how amazing God is. Truthfully, I'm angry. I am horribly angry. And I've been struggling with my emotions, but maybe blogging is the way to go, who knows?

The day that Chandler passed away, we had a gathering on campus to remember, to pray, to be in community. It was hell. But I loved every second of it. I loved seeing how much of an impact my friend had on campus. I loved seeing how deeply loved he was. I loved celebrating his life together with complete strangers.

Between this event and something that a mentor recently told me, I couldn't help but think about Jesus's disciples. In our Bibles, every single Gospel skips from Jesus's death on Friday to the resurrection on Sunday. There isn't a word mentioned about how the disciples spent Saturday. If I were forced to guess, I'd say Saturday was about the darkest day of all of their lives. The day of his death would undeniably be difficult for them, but there's something about the cold light of the next morning that cements the reality of the misery in which you're living. Saturday would've been dark. It would've been quiet. John tells us that the disciples (on Sunday at least) were locked up in a room together out of fear.

We miss something when we skip straight from Friday to Sunday. We miss that sometimes we have to live in the pain of Saturday. We miss that there will be times when we've lost all hope, when we feel completely alone, when our Savior feels completely absent, and when we have nothing left to do but lock ourselves in a room.

The tension of Christianity is living in the space between Friday and Sunday. We live between the comings of Jesus. We know that the kingdom of God is at hand, that it's begun breaking into our world, but it hasn't been fully realized yet and we have no idea when it will be. We live before the promise has come. We live with nothing but hope.

I'm living in Saturday right now. But I'm also living with hope that God will bring comfort. God will heal. God will restore. And God will give life to us all.

If you're here with me, take heart. Sunday is coming.

~RJS~

God Made Me ______ - R

When I was younger, I dreamed of being an athlete. Ripping that game-winning home run. Miraculously catching the touchdown pass in double overtime. Getting a quadruple jump and smugly telling my opponent to "king me."

Then I realized being an athlete is hard and I started playing video games where I can do all those things.

There's something about athletes that just makes us sit in awe of what they can do. In my opinion, one of the most incredible athletes of all time has to be Eric Liddell, and there are many reasons for that. You may not immediately recognize the name, but most people have heard at least some of his story. Liddell is the focus of the movie Chariots of Fire if you've ever seen that. If you haven't, I guarantee you've heard the music from it.

Liddell was a runner, and he had an absolutely amazing career. While attending the University of Edinburgh, he quickly became known as the fastest runner in Scotland. He ran in the 100- and 220-yard races for his school. He went on to win a bronze and a gold medal in the 1924 Paris Olympics before moving to China and becoming a missionary.

The truly amazing part of his career to me, as some of you may remember, is that Liddell completely refused to compete on Sundays as a way to dedicate his life to God. This sounds all fine and well, but it actually almost cost him one of those medals that he won. Liddell was highly favored to win the 100-meter dash going into the Olympics, but the schedule that was released months before revealed that the qualifying heat for this race was going to be held on a Sunday. Coaches and teammates encouraged him to break his rule just this once. They argued that winning this race on an international scale would still bring God glory through his ability.

Liddell refused.

Not content to just sit out, however, he began training for the 400-meter race instead. Though still an incredible athlete, even his best times in this race were modest at best by Olympic standards. He had only a few short months to train (all the while, never running on Sundays). In the end, he won the gold, setting an Olympic record that would stand for 12 years.

This kind of drive and work ethic is almost incomprehensible to me, especially because it involves running, which has been scientifically proven to be the worst. But this all stemmed from the sheer joy and passion with which he ran. In a later interview, Liddell said "God made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure."

What a weirdo.

There is zero part of me that feels anything remotely close to pleasure when I run, but I think there's an important lesson to be learned from Liddell.

One of the most amazing parts of being a Christian is receiving the transforming work of Christ. In him, we are made into something completely new. But in a sense, we are also made into what we were always meant to become. God had an idea of what he wanted us to be, that we naturally fell short of, which is part of being a human being. But God never scrapped that plan to start from scratch, and he never settled for what we made ourselves into. Instead, he became flesh and sacrificed himself so that we could become the versions of ourselves that he always imagined, one day enjoying perfect communion with him.

I was asked a question a few weeks ago (thanks Zane) that I'm still chewing on. It was posed as a way to do a sort of spiritual inventory check, and I think it's worth thinking about, so I'm going to pass it on to you.

When in the last week did I feel most like myself?

On first glance, I thought this was a much easier question than it turned out to be. But it really gets us to dig at something pretty important. There are moments throughout our weeks where we feel authentic and full of life. There are moments when time slips by us and the moments pass too quickly because we're so engrossed in what we're doing. There are moments that you can point to at the end of the day that made getting out of bed worth it. There are moments when you feel alive.

These are the moments when we're becoming what we were meant to be.

Liddell said that God made him fast, and when he ran he felt God's pleasure. I think this is the perfect model to figure out exactly where God is pointing us. It's a simple matter of fill-in-the-blank.

God made me _______. And when I ________, I feel His pleasure. Your answers here are no accident. This is how God made you. These things are meant to awaken joy in you. And they're meant to bring glory to the one who made you this way.

What are you going to do this week to be more fully you?

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. 

 - 2 Corinthians 3:17-18

~RJS~

Weak - R

I've been thinking a lot about weakness recently. I can probably thank Kaman Turner for that one since he usually embarrasses me during our morning workouts.

I remember in elementary school thinking I was fairly weak. I was never the fastest. Definitely not the strongest. When we did that fitness testing in fifth grade, I did a whopping total of seven push-ups. As a side note, I'm pleased to announce that after years of dedication and hard work, I can now do nine.

As I've grown up, I've focused a lot more on weaknesses in other areas, specifically as a Christian. Lack of discipline, failures in kindness, the habitual sin that I can't seem to shake, my inability to keep up with this stupid blog that brings me so much joy. I can never seem to focus on much else besides my weakness.

I think there are a lot of ways that you can describe the Bible, but one of the things that I have noticed recently is that the Bible is a humongous story of human failure. Over and over and over again, people get it wrong. Think of literally any Bible character, with the exception of Jesus, and try to find a time when they didn't fail.

You could look at this as disheartening, but I choose to think of it as God's way to tell us, when we fail for what feels like the thousandth time, that we are in very good company. God loves the screw ups! He's crazy about them! He came to die specifically for them. Remember, it's the sick people that need a doctor, and he gets to be that doctor and he loves that!

Even more than that, if we are to take Paul's word for it, our weakness is exactly what God wants.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side,but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you. It is written: “I believed; therefore I have spoken.” Since we have that same spirit of faith, we also believe and therefore speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you to himself. All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God. Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.       - 2 Corinthians 4:7-18

I love this passage so much. Go read it again. I'll wait. Read it through the lens of someone with complete confidence that they are a failure. Think of who is writing this. One of the most zealous Christian-killers of the first century. And he's saying that we were made to be weak so that God's power can shine through us. We carry death around in our body with us so that life will be revealed. We waste away every single day to emphasize the renewal that God is performing in our souls.

The Bible is a humongous story of human failure, but that's not what the story is about. It is about human failure pointing back to the God who is infallible. It is about human weakness pointing back to the God who has no weakness. It is about human imperfection pointing back to the most perfect God. God, in his infinite wisdom, does not let the last word ever be our failure. Through his miraculous redemption, the final word is always God's ability. His ability to love a mess like you and me, to make something beautiful out of our lives, and to display his power through our weakness.

You're going to fail this week. You might even feel like a failure this week. Here's what you need to hear. And I know you need to hear it because I need to hear it. You're human. Messing up is part of the gig. But messing up is not the end of the story. God is at work in you, here and now, in the midst of your perfect little mess.

Celebrate your weakness at some point in the coming days. And celebrate the God who is strong in your weakness.

~RJS~

my first love ~m

Happy late Valentine's Day. GraceYard is back, baby.

'tis the season

I'm writing this on Valentine's day, surrounded by an onslaught of totally cute posts from couples, Instagram stories about Galentine's, people typing paragraphs about self love, or retweeting #trendy, clever tweets that I'm fairly certain are just a low-key reason to complain about being single. I hesitate to even talk about love in a blog because it's pretty much all people are talking about right now, and yet it seems like we're obsessing over something we want so desperately and give so freely. It's like we're desensitized to something we put so much effort into trying to earn. 

If you're expecting me to continue on about how God is Love and how all we need to do is just wade into basking in his glory, your expectation may not be met. Bear with me as I try to unpack this...my brain is full of thoughts that make sense to me, so hopefully I can make them make sense to you.

the treasure you may not know you have

I want to get personal and opinionated for a second to talk about the priceless commodity you own. Some people won't realize how much they need it and how vital it is to their existence until you give it to them. This resource can make good things grow beyond your wildest dreams, and when healthily balanced it can make your entire life just...better. You have a set amount that you give every day whether you want to or not. The only thing you control is where it goes. In a world that seems like we have no choice, you have 100% free will to direct it wherever you want.

You control your love. Your own love is a priceless resource.

I'm not talking about physical attraction or what feels right. I'm talking about the action of love. It's like a steadily-flowing stream that you can't stop, but it's one that you can guide. You're always loving something, proving your love by putting your time, effort, and other resources into it.

There are so many directions we could go with this, but here's what I want to focus on for a little bit:

We can love being loved so much that we have no love left to give ourselves, other people, or who/what we actually want to love.

I said the "L" word so many times in that sentence that I feel like I'm running out of my own love. Hopefully it makes sense to you, though. Think about how much effort you've put into gaining another person's affection or attention. That's how others feel about the love you control. I'm so guilty of chasing it, and I've been so caught up with the concept of love that I've missed the whole purpose of it.

Sometimes we put all of our stock in the value of what we're trying to get, so much so that we forget the value of our own love.

__________________

I titled this blog "My First Love." This is a reference to a unique way many people talk about Jesus that has really stuck with me. It's even a line in multiple Christian songs. An interesting concept to me, for sure.

my love life

My first love was not Jesus.

He was not the first thing I gave my heart to. I loved things before I even understood the concept of a Savior. I'm sure you did, too, but I don't want to jump to conclusions about your life. There are the cute, childlike first loves like "I love my mom" (hopefully that's a love that carries into adulthood as well), "I love fruit snacks," and "I love JJ the Jet Plane." I don't know about you guys, but I put my heart and soul into my playtime, TV time, and food time as a kid.
Also, there are big boy and girl first loves. A job, general busyness, a love for physical things, a love for money, a love for sex, and a love for things that we think can give us value, even just for a moment. I loved many of those things before I loved Jesus, too.

So I missed the boat on the whole "Jesus was my first love" privilege, I guess. That sucks, because imagine how cool it would be to start life truly knowing how good Jesus is...what a thought, what a dream.

"first"

Let's mess with words for a second. I want to argue that though God and his grace can never be the one we loved first, he can be the one we love first. You and I can't control time, but we can control what we do with our time. Crazy how God did that. 

When you think about it from that perspective, we all currently have a first love, or a first place love. Now, it becomes a choice. Now, we're not victims of our previous naiveté. Now, I'm convicted. When I think about the first place priorities in my life, it's harder to justify God taking a back seat.
On the flipside, it makes what I talked about earlier so much more relevant. The fact that we not only control how much of our love goes where, but that we can rewire our first love to be whatever we want it to be. It makes our every action so much more powerful. It also makes songs like this so much more powerful.

I leave you with these three challenges:

1. Know the value of the love you give.

2. Take ownership and love where you want to love.

3. Strive to make Jesus your first love, if you're up for it.

~m

2018 - R

In light of the new year, I wanted to offer some reflections on 2018 for me.

It was a beating.

2018 was without question the most difficult of my life. For many reasons.

One year ago, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what my life was going to look like around this time. Boy was I wrong. I thought that by now I'd be engaged, have a job for next year, have my graduate school plans figured out, and that I wouldn't spend part of New Year's Eve crying in my bedroom.

None of those turned out to be true.

This last semester was the most difficult of my collegiate career, due to the severity of the course load, the complete lack of free time, the multitude of mistakes that I made that hurt people I care about, and the unshakeable suspicion that I was slowly failing at everything I put my mind to. I spread myself thinner than ever before, possibly in attempts to distract myself from the mounting unrest inside me.

2018 was a year of unspeakable pain. And doubt. And frustration. And wrestling. And questions. And worry.

Sorry if you were just expecting a bunch of fun pictures with friends from the past twelve months.

My main takeaway from this year has been the answers to two questions that kept popping up in my life, which I am going to personify in (a dramatized version of) a conversation that I'm pretty sure I had with God this week.

I look at Jesus. I shoot him an accusing look. I'm frustrated with the way my life looks, I'm tired of hurting, and I want to point the finger. He calmly meets my eye, and I'm pretty sure we're thinking the same thing. He and I both know that it's really myself that I'm most fed-up with. I lower my gaze, accepting a defeated posture. Shoulders rounded. Head bowed. I address the ground when I finally find the courage to speak. 

"I've messed up so much. I've wasted the gifts you've given me. I haven't been able to put you first. I've caused so much pain to others. I've done just about everything wrong. All I ever wanted was to live for you, and I managed to screw that up at every turn. Am I even worthy to be called your son any more?" He laughs, not unkindly, and pauses before his answer. 

"Absolutely not." 

The answer has its intended effect. My head shoots up, flashing him a look of hurt. He again meets my gaze, his eyes betraying the smile he's attempting to hide. I'm slow to get the joke."Ask your next question," he says. 

"But . . . Do you still love me anyway?" The smile breaks free. 

"Absolutely."

 The Gospel is beautiful in its simplicity, isn't it? It seems that God is in the habit of transforming messes into something beautiful. Just like he did with 2018.

2018 was a year of unspeakable pain. But it was also a year of incredible joy. Funny how pain can make us forget that part. In 2018, I was blessed with innumerable moments that I know were gifts from God - tiny peaks into the kingdom that he has planned for this world. I participated in the greatest Sing Song act with the greatest club at ACU. I was entrusted to work at Highland in Abilene with some of the most gifted and loving people I've ever met. I got to work with an incredibly talented, impactful, and encouraging preacher (looking at you Jonathan). I was gifted a boss and mentor that is endlessly encouraging, constantly inspiring, and tirelessly loving (looking at you Zane). I gained a second sister who loves fiercely and picked me up on some very low days, probably without even realizing it, because she's just that kind of person (looking at you Deja). I was reminded time and again that I have two incredible parents who love me and are proud of me no matter what. I shared some incredible moments with my oldest friend (looking at you Ashley) - the one rising to the top of the memory would be her giving me the honor of hooding her at graduation. I received further advice, encouragement, instruction, inspiration, and love from a trusted mentor and dear friend (looking at you Greg). I got to see God's breathtaking creation from the top of a mountain for the first time in my life with my best friend at my elbow. I got to work at a church that I love with students that I love. I got to be included in some of the best and worst moments of their lives. I got to be inspired by their enormous amounts of strength displayed in their vulnerability and leadership (looking at you Lucas, Josh, Davis, Colin, and many others). I got to work with two of the greatest people I've ever had the pleasure of knowing (looking at you Wes and Leanne). During my internship, I got to chat (semi-)weekly with a gifted preacher, a powerful advocate for the powerless, and someone I'm lucky to consider a friend (looking at you Collin). I got to feel the support of some of the finest men this world has to offer during the hardest time of my life (looking at you Kaman, Mason, JT, Christian, Mason, Jacob, Dawson, Aaron, and many others). I made a lot of fond memories with friends well past my bedtime, knowing full well I'd regret my lack of sleep in the morning (looking at you Sleep Skippers Club). I was encouraged relentlessly by multiple professors who I am quite confident do not read this blog but who I will shout out anyway (looking at you John, Rodney, Richard, Robert, and Houston). I started a blog with one of my dearest friends and have been endlessly blessed because of it. I invested deeper into my small group and was rewarded weekly with the kindness, joy, and peace they constantly brought (looking at you Ultimate DIG Group, but especially Craig and BA). I acquired a new and very strange nickname from one of the kindest and most joyful people I've ever had the pleasure of knowing ("precious gac" if you're wondering, apparently it's a kind of fruit). I could go on. And I wish I could. There are so many more who weren't named here that made my year incredible.

Endless examples of God's faithfulness. This year I've learned I'm a mess only a Father could love. And boy does he love me well. That monster of a paragraph is evidence enough. I'm entering 2019 immensely grateful for the God who loves in very real and observable ways. I look forward to seeing how God will thwart even my best attempts to ruin his plan for my life in the coming year.

But as surely as God is faithful, our message to you is not “Yes” and “No.” For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us—by me and Silas and Timothy—was not “Yes” and “No,” but in him it has always been “Yes.” For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God. - 2 Corinthians 1:18-20

Nothing left to say except Amen.

~RJS~