Sabbath Day Musings...

Another week ends, another begins right on the tail. That is the truth about time, isn't it? No matter how much we try to slow it down, stop it, or try and hang on to it, the next seconds comes and goes before we even know it happened.

This marks my last official week on staff at First Baptist Oak Grove. When I was offered this internship, sitting there with Cassie in the orchestra practice, watching Dr. Waters lead, I never imagined what the offer that Dr. Hicks was giving me would hold. At the most, I pictured a nice little country church, the generic type with a nice little steeple and cute ushers at the door that will greet you with fake smiles and a half-hearted handshake. I imagined sitting there each week, watching the same routine over and over, wondering why Americans even get up each Sunday morning to even do this "Christian" thing. I wondered how guilty I would feel when I watch the offering plates pass by and I fail to put anything in.

God has a funny way of looking at our finite imaginations and blowing them apart. He then brings the pieces together to create a puzzle that is both mysterious and beautiful. He brought me into a dysfunctional family of sinners. A family of mothers, fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, youth and children... all marred with the pain of sin. But through the pain showed life, a light that pervaded all my preconceived notions....

Coming into the summer I realized that I had become quite a cynic. The world was screwed up, and I felt like I was turning into the storybook villain that wants to shake up the comfort and complacency, and force people to start looking at their lives in respect to God. But as the summer went on, and those that God surrounded me with at the church began to break down the walls I had built around myself to keep out the crazy, insane world around me.

It's hard to be a part of a world that constantly wants to blow itself up. It's hard to call yourself a Christian when the most driven in value is hate for those who wrong you, who differ from you, who threaten you and want you to change how you live, how you think, how you act.

Jesus did that. He still does that. I think that is why it is so hard to follow Him without straying. He calls us to a life that goes against what our body, what our soul thinks is correct and true.

Wow. I got off of subject. A lot.

Anyway... one more week of internship... I'm excited what God is going to do with the ending here, and see what He wants me to leave the church, and what the next month holds, as I leave one life and prepare to return to another. Another life with a new outlook and hope.

Amen.