as the year, the semester, the week, the day, the "holiday" season creep ever so slowly to their respective ends, i find reflection unavoidable. it's impossible to let one book close, shut the cover, and start thumbing through the next one before you reflect on what it is exactly that you did within its pages. within your year, semester, week, day, and holiday season.
i'm definitely thankful that i'm optimistic enough to see all the good things God's done for myself and others around me. friends are tearing through acceptance letter after acceptance letter from colleges most people can barely dream of attending. we had a mighty fine rain a couple of weeks ago. performances went well. events that aren't meant to be performances, but always come with pre-performance anxiety, were humbling, and therefore went very well. there are many many many things we have to (as in necessity for an action) and have to (as in the possession of something) be thankful for. if you lump together all your good works for a year and put them on one end of a seesaw and lumped together all of the things God has done for you and all of the things He has in store for you on the other end, the outcome would be interesting, to say the least. the image i get in my mind is that of those cartoons we all (maybe not all...) watched on saturday mornings back in the days when homework was to bring leaves from the backyard or scribble out a couple addition problems. on the lighter side of the seesaw, stands the cartoon character, usually he's trying to get his paws/finger/claws on a huge basket of food, or something along similar lines, that just so happens to hang directly over his head. he detonates the explosives he's placed underneath a huge boulder resting precariously on a cliff edge, and the boulder plummets down. with a loud and very animated cartoonish "BOOM", the boulder smacks the earth and the character on the other side flies upward. that was a really long analogy. but like that cartoon character, there is nothing we can do to match or repay the weight (physical, but also measure of importance) of the contribution given by the other side. that's huge.
get it? :P
anyways. the point is that God is most definitely good to us. too good to us. He gives to those that will never be able to repay a fraction of the value of His gift. and yet somehow, it's too easy to forget that. i'm pretty sure i've typed a blog about this before. i'm too far to stop, and it's still relevant.
i look back on the past three weeks or so, and i see nothing that really screams "God's grace" at me. i look back on the past year and a half or so, and there's almost a literal black cloud hanging over everything. that almost whispers the opposite of what i'm looking for. i look back and i'm essentially dissatisfied. dissatisfied with what i've done with my life, what i haven't done with my life, what i've done for God, what i've claimed to do for God, what i have'nt done for God, and all the things i've done against him. i look at my relationships with those around me and i see so much room for improvement, for more care and encouragement, for more love on a whole. i think about how many times i've shared (the BEST kind of sharing, i might add) the huge, incredibly undeserved gift God's given to me and everyone else as well. but maybe it's better posed as how many times i haven't shared God's gift with people around me. at the very least, i present the gospel in it's most dilute, veiled, and soft and fuzzy form.
this post is just a whole lot of vaguely connecting supertangents... :)
Christmas is just a season and a day. New Year's Eve is just a single day. New Year's Day is a single day. you just change a couple of numbers. there's little value anywhere. as it is right now, Christmas seems like some magical time when families start remembering that love is something that's needed in the household. our consumerism takes over and we pull hairs out thinking of what to buy people. it seems like some magical time when we suddenly go "hey. maybe God does love me."
New Year's is sometimes worse. and i admit i'm extremely guilty of all of this. i can specifically remember crossing into some January 1st's with the notion that the change of years meant something significant. i can recall looking up, mid-pushup to the cheers and fireworks blaring from the tv. one year, i jumped into the air at 12:59:59 so i'd be midair when the new year came. who knows what that was supposed to do. :P and yet it's just another day. countless resolutions have been started at the beginning of each new year. often they end after the first day, or couple of weeks, or months. but too many times, our failures don't spur us to try again. they just make us sigh... and wait for the next January 1st to roll around.
or maybe it's JUST another day. just like any one of the 365.
maybe it's a new day in which to praise, sing, play, and glorify.22 Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.23 They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.24 I say to myself, "The LORD is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him."Lamentations 3:22-24
maybe it's another 24 hours we have to stop dead in our tracks and turn our lives around.
maybe it's another blessing. one that we still don't deserve. one that we will never be worthy of.
because loving family and friends needs to be a daily occurrence.
appreciating and thanking God for all of His gifts should be happening daily.
appreciating and thanking God for His gift of Jesus should be happening daily, at the very least.
three weeks is a long time.
twenty one days.
five hundred four hours.
thirty thousand two hundred forty minutes.
one million eight hundred fourteen thousand four hundred seconds.
i'm not multiplying any more.
that's a BIG chunk of time.
it's too much time for one person to spend sulking and wishing for improvement.
it's much too long to not be praising God for His grace, His mercy, the new friends He's placed in my life, the old friends He's brought closer, the humbling solutions to to crippling issues, the guts to slowly break down walls, the hope for the future, the less hesitant trust in His plans, the incredible joy of worshiping with vocal cords and heavy guitar strings, the blessing of school, the occasional successes at school, and His stupefying love for sinners eternally undeserving of such.
So, God.
Thank you. :)
And thanks for a beautiful end to yet another beautiful day.
Love,
Spencer
