Even when it makes sense...

Today was Tuesday... which means, like Sunday-Saturday, was AWESOME!

I love it when God uses a passage you have read a thousand times and transforms your whole view of it to something so relevant, so purposeful, so unexpected.  I have just recently started diving into scripture.  I mean, really started meditating over the Bible and its beauty.  I do enjoy a good book, so up until a few weeks ago I would concentrate on devotionals or Christian novels, with a side of Bible.  How misguided I was!  This book is legit.  I have a running tab of all of the books of the Bible I have read and I am considering crossing it out completely.  Sure, I read them.  But I wasn't really reading them, meditating on them, applying them, praying over them, et cetera.  Now I see how beautiful this love letter is, and I want it engraved into my heart.

Today, I read a passage of scripture that made me cry.  Background-- I am not a big crier really.  But something about God overwhelms me (I know, right?).  He's just so... everything.  I wish I knew bigger words.  I do, but they never make sense.  It wouldn't matter.  God is better than even the biggest words can describe.  And that was a semi-pointless aside...

Back to the Bible.  Philippians 4:6-9 it was.  "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God."  Verse 6, a simple yet all too often ignored proposed action.  After my eyes ran over verse 6, something about the next sentence struck my heart.  Apparently, hearts have a direct connection to eye balls, maybe a vein or something.  I never took anatomy.  Something beautiful, a phrase, a realization, a God who knew I needed this wisdom.

"And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." (4:7)

Beautiful.  There is a wonderful young woman of God in my bible study who uses the word beautiful to describe practically everything perceived as good.  And I never possessed that perception until now.  Everything created by God is beautiful.  Every breath is beautiful.  Those words...

transcends all understanding

God's peace overcomes me, crashing into me until I am unsure of anything else around me.  All I know is that God is real.  He is sure.  He is powerful.  Before my great God opened up my eyes after reading this passage, I had the view that yes, God's peace is what I need when things do not make sense.  But, what about when they do...

Sometimes I worry about things that make no sense at all to even think about.  Actually, I do that a lot.  Other times, though, this sinful and wicked world serves me a plate of disaster.  Clear, legitimate, humanly-devastating disaster.  It makes sense.  His peace consumes that understanding.  It engulfs it to nothingness.  His peace becomes our concentration.  He is that good.  Even when it makes sense, His peace is transcending.

I look up to the sky and say, You're beautiful.

Lou

By (un)popular demand...

*Disclaimer--While I am aware that sarcasm does not transfer well via written and/or typed documents, I will admit that despite efforts to tone my increasingly dry, sarcastic demeanor down a bit while writing this it somehow forces its way out onto the paper.  I tried.  Kind of.

Oh, look at me.  Blogging.  Shall I play croquet next?  Or, perhaps I should sip organic tea while I read something popular yet completely senseless, like Twilight.  By the fire.  In a robe.  Pushing it too far, am I?  Gosh, I knew the day would come. All of my high school friends, you knew it too!  And I know that the FIRST thing all of you want to do is read my never-ending thoughts.  Maybe that way you will be able to understand exactly why I act in mysteriously strange ways.  Well... unfortunately you will never understand that.  For even I do not understand that--BUT read along anyway, my friends.

So much has happened in my life since I have been in college.  More correctly, rather, I should say so much has happened to my heart.  And you say, "Lou, you have only been in college for three months.  Freshman."  While this is cierto y no falso (I like to keep my writing multicultural), I can undoubtedly say that I have never felt like this before.  Now, when you read that last phrase, you have to read it like "I have never felt like this before."  I am a psychology major, which all too often can be revealed by my oddly evident curiosity and interest in human emotions and thought processes.  But when I say felt, I mean, my heart has never been in this position before, poor thing.  This is not my doing, for I could never in a thousand years piece together emotions such as this.  Actually, I could never in 19 years...

This is what I have been missing?!  How did I ever live without it? How did I ever live without Him?  I believe in feeling what is happening and not just letting it happen.  Embrace your inner world, for its mysteries can reveal an eternity.  His mysteries can reveal an eternity.  (Quote me on that mess!)  He lives in me, so I must visit often.

Getting too deep?  Or too long, either one.  Human language cannot describe something so... see I do not even have the right word to use!  My good buddy C.S. Lewis once said, "Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite."  So while my words are insufficient, my heart cannot lie.  I can feel Him.  A feeling like no other indeed, it's like He is ripping open my chest unmercifully and grabbing my heart with His hand and shaping it.  Relentless transformation.  I never felt it until now.  It is hurting.  He is loving me so much it hurts.  Beautiful pain.  Reminds me of this crucifixion-type deal back in the day...


I will close by saying congrats if you read this far.  "Bless your heart."  Speaking of hearts... how is yo's?


Romans 8:37-39 is where it's at, yo!


Lou