It's Thanksgiving today, and I've never felt so weird about it in my life.  I have this thankfulness that I can only really express intellectually.  God has been teaching me so much this past few months, about how incredibly blessed I am.  Nothing that I have today is because I deserve it.  Especially the simple things like a roof over my head, food in my stomache, and clothes on my back.  I did nothing to be born into the family I belong to, to have been given the opportunities for a great education, a good job, financial help to get me through (though I will be paying for a while ) and to have found friends who love me no matter what.  Which makes me wonder what else I take for granted.  Something else that God has been teaching me, and teaching me daily, is that I am a terrible sinner who deserves nothing from God.  I am completely and utterly dependent on his amazing grace, that he would send his son to live perfectly.  I mean seriously, I fall into so many sins everyday, yet Jesus was able to like every single day as a pure and holy man.  But he went to the cross to die in the place of a sinner, me.  That sacrifice, and only that sacrifice, is what has saved me from death.  Nothing I can do on this earth can ever compare.

The past few months have been about me recognizing those truths.  But for some reason, today, this day of thanksgiving, I can only attest to them on an intellectual level.  I mean I guess its better than not being thankful at all, but I feel numb to it all.  I look at the food on my table and think about how it could feed dozens of people, and yet there are but four feasting.  I listen to the testimonies at church and wonder about ones that are cold and wet and miserable, while we are warm and dry proclaiming how God provides for all of our needs.  And I don't feel thankful.  I feel sickened that I am so blessed when others are without.  I am sickened that it doesn't spur me to more action, that while there is so much I could be doing, I am content to sit back and relax. 

I was just talking to one of my friends about what it means to really invest in things eternal.  We've had a couple chapel speakers lately that have really convicted me.  An analogy that one of the speakers used was that of building a wooden deck on the back of a tent.  Ridiculous, right?  But if you look around, thats what each and every one of us is doing!  Storing up, when really these bodies are temporal.  We have our flat screen TVs, laptop computers, stereo systems and countless DVDs  Why spend this time we have on earth accomplishing things that we will never see in eternity? 

But we all do.  Question is, how do you ever stop?

"know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.  So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified."

     -Galatians 2:16

"Are you so foolish?  After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?"

     -Galatians 3:3

"If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other."

     -Galatians 5:15

Unity in Christ, through grace.  Grace, not law.

Newsflash!  Guys and girls are very different... and there is a lot we can learn from each other.  Thanks to my guy friends who are willing to be strait with me

In other news, we've been listening to this sermon in Urban Min class the last two days that has really hit home for me.  Some favorite quotes:

"You don't put salt on steak and say, 'gee, this salt sure tastes steaky!' NO, the salt flavors the steak."

"Light only makes sense in the darkness.  Yet we're all going around shining out flashlights in the bright noonday sun!"

"You gotta go where Satan is saying 'no trespassing' and say 'NO, you will not occupy this, this belings to God, these people belong to Jesus."

Beauty

http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com/

and we wonder why girls struggle with self esteem... go dove

comments?

God, I want to GO!  Pick me, pick me!