Speechless and awestruck

Sometimes God does things, and I have no clue why He's doing them, or why He's using me to do them, and even though He gives me the answers, I'm still left in wonder because of His ways.

Take, for example, this past Sunday. See, God had been trying to get me to talk to a friend for a couple of weeks about Him. He just stopped me in the middle of my homework and told me that He wanted me to give this guy, a friend of mine, a message. His message made me smile, and I knew that that was something that this guy needed to hear. But I had no clue how to tell it to him, especially because it always seems like he doesn't want anything to do with God. So I procrastinated. But God kept nudging and nudging and finally I pulled him aside at Impact on Sunday after small groups and I opened myself directly to God and gave my friend the message, God's words through me:

"I love you, and I miss you. I know you're not sure about me at all. But if you ever need to talk, I'm here, waiting to have a relationship with you. I know there's things you're going through, and I know it's hard for you to open and believe. It's okay. I just wanted you to know that I am here, and I hope you come to me. Love, God."

Of course, the answer I get back from my friend: "Couldn't you have told me this over Facebook?"

So I bow my head slightly in embarrassment because I probably could have told him over Facebook, but I felt that it was something that needed to be said in person. But I heard God telling me in my heart that saying this in person was better and that He was glad that I listened to Him. I felt so completely comforted and at peace. Later that evening when I went over to this friend's house to watch a movie, he never once mentioned the message I delivered to him earlier. I don't know what's going on in his head. I just pray that God works in his heart and that he opens up to His amazing love.

And another example of God's ability to leave me speechless:

Last night, I was driving to get gas before meeting up with some friends to study at a bookstore. For the first time, I heard on the radio Steven Curtis Chapman's story behind his song "Heaven is the Face," how his son accidentally ran over and killed his daughter with the car. It shook me, especially thinking about how awful the son must feel about the accident and how the parents feel about the whole situation. And then KLOVE played the song. I heard it in a completely different light as I pulled into the Sam's Club parking lot, from the perspective of a father who has lost his daughter in this accident. I started crying a little bit when he sung "Heaven is a sweet maple syrup kiss/And a thousand other little things I miss with her gone," and eventually I pulled into a parking stall because I couldn't concentrate on driving to the station a short distance away. I just wept, without having a pure reason behind my tears, just listening to the emotion of a father who loved his daughter so much and was now singing about her after her death.

But today, I heard the same song on my drive home from school, and God reached out and touched my heart in a completely different way. I felt like God was singing through Steven Curtis Chapman's lyrics to me: "Heaven is the face of a little girl/With dark brown eyes that disappear when she smiles/Heaven is the place where she calls my name/Says 'Daddy please come play with me for awhile...'/Heaven is the sound of her breathing deep/Lying on my chest, falling fast asleep while I sing/And Heaven is the weight of her in my arms/Being there to keep her safe from harm while she dreams." I felt so much like God's little girl that I was left at the stoplight between Rt. 31 and Crystal Lake Ave. with tears in my eyes and a smile on my face.

I'm His messenger, His daughter, His beloved. And I'm left speechless every time He embraces me and kisses me with sweet words of comfort and of grace and of hope and of love.

Passion

Last night, I watched The Passion of the Christ. If you have not seen it, let me first say that it is rated R with good reason: it is filled with violence because of all the persecution that Jesus suffered. There's no way to avoid it and still tell the story of Jesus's sacrifice to the extent that it should be told. If you have seen it, then you know what I am talking about.

Long story short, I cried. Hard. And for a long period of time, too. I was mostly in shock the whole movie until he was up on the cross and the criminals started talking to him, especially when Jesus told the nicer criminal that "today you will be with me in paradise." Tears streamed down my face as he suffered on the cross and as he gave up his spirit and as he was stabbed to make sure he was dead and as Mary held him broken in her arms. I cried to see him whole and new at the end of the movie. I went up into my room and cried for forty minutes after the movie was over, sobbing about how awfully they treated my Savior and how they persecuted my Jesus. I am so in love with him and it hurts me to see how much he was hurt, even though I know and he knew that he had to suffer and die in order to save us all from our sins. It felt like my heart was ripped open, to see my Savior lying beaten and broken in his mother's arms.

Before I watched the movie, I knew Jesus suffered to save us. I knew he went through a lot of pain. I even cried for that reason during Sandblast. But this was different. This was indescribable and unbelievable. It has changed the way I percieve Jesus's death. It's more real to me now.

This brings me to the word "passion." Dictionary.com describes it a couple of ways:

1. The sufferings of Jesus in the period following the Last Supper and including the Crucifixion, as related in the New Testament.
2. Ardent love
3. Boundless enthusiasm
4. An overwhelming emotion

We call Jesus's sufferings the Passion. In this Passion, Jesus had passion for us. He so ardently loved us that he was willing to give up his life to persecution and crucifixion. He was passionate for us, passionate that we would be able to spend eternity in Heaven, passionate that we would be given the chance to live.

Are we going through our lives with passion, like Jesus? Are we willing to stake everything for our faith in him? Or are we just going through the motions?

An awesome day at Woodstock Square

So yesterday, my friends Henry and Emily, my sister Brittany, and I all went to Woodstock Square because we were going to try to spread the word about Student Impact and try to get some new people to come. We had absolutely no clue what we were doing; all we knew was that we were near the park with a bunch of Impact cards in our hands.

We tried handing the cards out to kids in the gazebo, but it turned out extremely awkward, made worse by some things that I said that sounded really strange. Like, "So we were watching you and thought that you guys might like to come to Impact." We were watching you? Um, that doesn't sound creeperish at all...

So we walked through the park, not knowing what to do, feeling pretty down. But then, we came across a woman sitting on a park bench. She had a bunch of Sharpie markers and was writing phrases on rocks, like "Love" and "Pray" and "Faith" and "Kindness" and "Believe." We slowed down and she invited us over to look at them. She explained that she was doing this for a kind of ministry and she also talked about how she was homeless at one point, but what struck us the most was that she said that people need to just be bolder with their faith and keep planting seeds of faith; even though we may not do much, we'll at least plant seeds of faith, and God will take care of the rest.

That was exactly what we needed to hear, and we told her so and explained why we were in the park. She talked to us some more and let each of us close our eyes and pull out a rock from a bag she had. I pulled out one that says "Faith." Later, Henry and Emily paid for a Starbucks gift card for the woman and we gave it to her. After that whole string of events, we had much more success going up to teens and inviting them to Impact.

I just can't believe how awesome God is! I mean, what are the chances that we would cross paths with that woman? God is the one who brought us together; what an amazing day!