Extraordinary Faith for Everyday Life
by Amy 5 Comments
I keep recommending Crazy Love by Francis Chan and I do recommend the book. But I think there’s a bigger picture brewing that has me so excited about it. I could start the story when I stood inside a Books a Million and spotted it on the shelves among other recommended books but I think I’ll start a few years back.
This is a long one but a good one…
by Amy 3 Comments
The last 3 weeks we spent time watching Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ. We had seen it years ago when it first came out. I cried like a baby when we saw it. In particular, watching the relationship between Jesus and his mother affected me as a young mother. How could she watch him suffer so?
Most of us in the class had watched it before but yesterday. We discussed the things we had missed the first time and there are two things that I knew but just hit me hard.
One, in the movie and in most arenas, Satan is portrayed as someone dark and ugly with hands that need a manicure and an evil sidekick. Sometimes he has horns and tail. Certainly we’d know to stay away. But isn’t that exactly opposite to Satan in our lives? He and his temptations are beautiful. Like Bella to Edward in Twilight (oh yes I did) she was his own brand of heroin. That’s what Satan does. He makes sin gorgeous. That one specific sin we could fall to. You think you’d love it. You’d think it’d be fun. You think you HAVE to do it. Never does Satan make sin look like the horrible thing that it is. Only when you’ve said yes and you’re miles down the road does he show his true nature. Then, he looks ugly. Then you see the consequences of what you’ve done. Then you see the hurt and the regret and the pain. Never doubt that Satan can be beautiful. The Bible says Satan is like a lion prowling for us. It also says we like sheep have gone away. It is when we close our eyes and go blindly into sin that we are entrapped. Let us be wise to the nature of Satan and have our eyes wide open to what we are being drawn into. And not saying that the things of God are not beautiful but that’s just it…we need to be discerning!
The second eye opener was realizing why Jesus says “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” on the cross. Why indeed? Can God forsake his Son? Did Jesus regret what he had done? No, in fact, that is the moment that Jesus, fully man, took on the sins of the world. God, in his holiness, could not look on him in his sin and for a split second in history had to turn his face from him. For me, even more proof that Jesus took on MY sin on the cross.
We went on from Sunday School to a church service yesterday where God showed up and we actually had church instead of playing church. Can’t tell you how much I needed that.
This week has been intensely insane.
Monday was our first bible study. I felt very prepared when I was there and it went very smoothly. All the girls and leaders seemed to have good reviews afterwards. There is one girl who has, uh, issues and it might be interesting to see how that plays out.
So Tuesday I had something to do but I can’t think of what I did. Wednesday was the Parents dinner for the youth so I spent the whole afternoon and evening at the church. Thursday we did grocery shopping and went to Cracker Barrel with Mom and Dad before Mom and Heather left for Colorado. And Friday. Oh lovely Friday. I worked that morning and then left for work at 3:45 to do an implementation. I didn’t get home at 11:15 that night. Then sporadically worked until 5 on Saturday. In between, I went to see E in the hospital nursery and cleaned the house. Sunday was church and I took a nap in between church. I was up again at 6 this morning working when my pager went off multiple times. We have one more job today that runs at 5 that I need to verify. Hopefully it will not interfere with bible study tonight.
I feel a little less prepared for tonight’s bible study than last week. I’ve just been so busy with work that I haven’t had much time to prepare. I barely got through Sunday School on Sunday. Scott was there so he could help fill in some gaps a little. Or at least make me feel like I wasn’t a dork trying to teach by myself.
Pretty much, I’m exhausted. And we’re not nearly done with stuff at work. Bible study is another 6 weeks and of course Sunday School is the entire church year. I was thinking about entering some stuff in a Consignment sale this weekend but I just don’t want to add anything to my list of stuff to do. I really love studying for bible study and Sunday school and working on the youth group’s web site. If that’s all I had to do (except of course raising two children) and not have to work professionally, I think I would be set. Except of course those little things called bills. Oh well, here I go complaining again about such a wonderful job I have and I don’t want to, I just am feeling a little overwhelmed right now.