Answers to the Questions

In one of my classes we have been given the task of writing a letter to the famed atheist Richard Dawkins. We were subject to read his book The God Delusion and respond in a letter form to Mr. Dawkins himself. Many before me have had to write this exact same letter and it was none the easier for them. We are becoming apologists in this letter in a sense and that is something of a daunting task.

I have a firm belief that God is real, that he sustains us, he is Creator, and he is not three gods but three Persons in one God. He is all encompassing, the Father who created and sustains everything, the Son (a physical person of God in flesh) who came to dwell among us and to suffer what we suffer so that no one can say that God doesn't understand, moreover he died and rose again so that we would not have to endure Hell. Also, the Holy Spirit (a non-physical person of God dwelling withing us) that makes his temple in us to guide and direct us in this crazy mixed up world. These all coincide as the One True God.

To relate that to a person who has dug so deeply into atheism it seems too hard to dig them out through reason and proof other than testimony; hard proof, seems like an unachievable task. Dawkins puts on this stone-faced assurance that there is really no god. He almost does it to the point where he makes the reader think that he has already proven that natural selection is extremely more plausible than any belief that there is a Foundational God from whence all things came into existence.

It is like writing a letter to a brick wall

His book jumps from one subject to the next so quickly it is hard to get an apologetic thought in your head before you are having to defend another matter of theology. 

How then will we defend the faith when we are really in a situation where defending it is all you can do? When a person shoots question after question at you without giving you a moment to answer (this usually means they don't really want to hear your answer). When someone seems to have so many facts that right then and there you cannot explain yourself even though given time you could have. 

What happens when all you have is a moment, a pivotal point in time where someone could really see a side of God they had never thought about but instead we weren't ready with the answer?

Obviously we don't have all the answers. Nobody does, no witnesses to the creation story or how the earth came to be. No person has come back from the dead (other than Jesus) to tell the world that God is alive and he is the Alpha and Omega. 

How much more essential is it that we find our answers to the hard questions that we can answer as logically as we can when talking to a logically based person. Scripture even calls us to be ready and subject to questioning.

Are we ready?

All to God

Fizzler

I do a lot of dreaming. I create vivid pictures in my mind about the future, or a certain idea. It's hard to not make images in my mind about the things I really chase after, and almost always it isn't "things". But I dream in real color, real images, and real aspirations.

When I was a kid I dreamed I would do many things. Professional singer, actress, skateboarder, author, surgeon, archaeologist, anthropologist, and probably other things that wouldn't have happened. Like telling my high school math teacher I was going to try to get into calculus because I was shooting for the stars. Well unfortunately that never came to fruition, my lack of mathematical intricacy kept me from that one.

Nevertheless I always have had dreams of bettering myself, working really hard at learning a new skill, and also just all around being a better person. Often times I let myself down on these dreams because either I'm not motivated enough or it just fizzles out.

It's a terrible thing to be a fizzler

So a lot of the time I know when a dream is real, I know if it should come to reality and be sustained. I know because my heart still longs to achieve it and like anything you have to chose to stick with it or you are just basing sustenance with sheer emotions (hence the fizzling). There are those things I have imagined in my brain that goes along with my long-term dreams and aspirations that have stuck with me.

Fizzling is like a sugar high. You eat so much sugar you begin to feel great and motivated and hyper, then about an hour or maybe two later.......you are drooling asleep. Suddenly you wake up and you don't feel so great because you are still groggy but you can't complete anything. Luckily I have come out of the fizzly mindset that I was once in, especially since I was a kid. 

Do you fizzle out your dreams/goals/aspirations?

Were you a fizzler at some point?

Dreams worth bringing into action are not worthy to be eliminated by a fizzle.

All to God

Ready, set, no.

You know when you have an overwhelming passion for something but you seem to be too busy to further the passion or even calm it down? Then you've pinned me. I am so excited for the future, I am so excited to do something about it now and in ways I can! I think we all know what I'm talking about.

I've had an itch to speak the language, and be with the people. Although we all know I have confessed that actually speaking the language is tough for me, I've had an urge to just do it. Haste is and is not a necessity. There is an urgency to GO, but there is also a time to STAY. For now it is a time to stay and with this I must be content.

I am preparing for service in this part of the world and it is a mix of emotions, one of them at this stage is anxiousness. Quite possibly the worst of the emotions (instant gratification and all that.) So there I am, this is why my insides get all twisty with excitementanxiousnesshappinessimpatiencehopefulnessreliance and a slur of other things that I could smash together to look like a train wreck.

BUT God has time in his hands, it doesn't matter where I am my ministry is how I live my life. My heart however lies with the people, their needs, physical and spiritual. He knows my heart and especially the desires of it. In His time.

All to God.

To long, no talk

Well my friends I'm sorry for what seems like abandonment. I have not abandoned you. I have actually been writing to myself more personally, a lot going on inside this noggin of mine. Why I don't share you say? Well these are things just things you can't write about correctly...or at least I can't without the reader thinking "what in the world is she getting at?" So I write them personally.

It's just a strange time that I pray about. Times like these it's just good to have those things that really, only you and God understand. Some of it has to do with a great urge to get back to Bosnia, some has to do with other things. I am grateful to have a God that will listen, and who will even provide feedback and solutions in his own way.

So I do apologize for my lack of writing, the old noodle is being kind of put through the ringer. I love you my friends and I am so glad you are here and willing to read about my sometimes boring life. I'm grateful to have loved ones who pray consistently for me as I do live out this sometimes boring life. But sometimes this life is not boring and full of interesting moments that I am glad I can share with you, even if it is only through this blog. I am blessed to have you near and far.

All to God

A morning person

There are times I wish my brain didn't work the way it does. I want to have so many attributes that I just don't have. There are just some things I wish my brain would just get, but somehow it just doesn't. Things like 

Math

Man what I would be able to do on my own if I could master the principles in math instead of having to have other people check if I did my long-division correctly. 

But instead my mind likes to reject arithmetic and decides to fry out every time I work on it to a point of frustration and leaving me feeling discouraged.  

Or other things like

Time Management 

I have learned how to do this in college but not very well, although I seem to get it all done...some of it unfortunately piles up on the professors "late" stack on their desks. 

I try my hardest to figure out how to manage my time to where I can still live life outside of a robotic schedule. To some degree I do, but there are times....terrible times...when I feel like everything is like water rising all around me, and very quickly with no help in sight.

There are just these things and more that my brain like to reject or be able to figure out completely. I am capable I know, but sometimes feeling discouraged trumps trying harder. 

On the bright side of life...like that old song goes: Keep on the sunny side of life, there is rest for the mind, encouragement to counteract the discouragement, and joy to cover it all. Though sometimes life can seem impossible and annoying, God promises that joy comes with the morning.

We wake up to a new day, to make new decisions, love on another level, praise more than the day before, focus more than you previously have, and even change your perspective on a few things. We have the gift of waking up and feeling new. How great God is that he made us to be who we are and that he brings the new day.

All to God

Thanks Midterms, for Perspective

This week...............is midterm week for those of us here at MACU. It's Wednesday which means it's halfway through midterms, and I am trying my hardest to get everything done. Passing courses, performing well, waking up and not feeling like someone just ran over you with an eighteen-wheeler, and then backed up slowly over you again, are all blessings. There is still a lot to get done and it makes me feel a little like this most days:

Books piling up, work stacking and never going into the "out" box. It's overwhelming sometimes and sometimes gets a little crazy, BUT these are the days you have to take a hold of. These are the days that show you your diligence, that show you your will to succeed in whatever is put before you. This, of course, is on a small scale.

So I have chosen to conquer my enemy with a smile and have faith in myself and God that I will be able to sift through the work and come out the other end academically unscathed.

See that face there? That's the face of champions. Or just a really tired girl taking a picture of herself at a skangle (sky angle) feeling confident about her work.

Either way, its getting there, Friday is on the horizon, all things will be said and done. Whatever I massacre on my grades now can be made up by December, but I would like to not have that perspective but instead have the perspective of "Oh yeah, I'm going to pass without a doubt". 

Anyway, it's stressful but I can do it, and if there is a student reading this I say YOU CAN TOO! It's not hard really, we just have to stop our abnormally ADD American brains from jumping around long enough to get stuff done (this is no offense to anyone who is clinically proven to be ADD, we just use that excuse to much about why we can't succeed when it isn't even proven to us.)

Well that's my spiel. I hope your midterms are turning out beautifully.

All to God

Fall and Other Things

I may look back at this post and think "I am NOT as content as I was", but today I am content. I am content with life today, and I don't know why. Just a peace I guess. After a stressful week, maybe it's God-given, who knows? But the good and absolute thing is I am content.

I mean, it's October, a wonderful month indeed. A favorite of mine among other months, it is just one of those transitional months that are beautiful and different, not to hot, not to cold (depending on where you are in the world).

Soon enough this wonderful weather and these beautiful leaves will fade just like they do every year. Suddenly our surroundings might look like this again.

But not yet! It is still October!

I am content but the weird thing is I have a stack of work that MUST get done and is very important, but I am very ok with not doing it this day.

(Notice the Starbucks bag beside it? Yeah, that helps me get through all this work.)

I'll let the stress build tomorrow. I'm a procrastinator even with stress, isn't it twisted? Another wonderful thing about today is that my Mom is coming to simply hang out with me! I love her way a lot, and she is an awesome woman...you should meet her, you'd be blessed.

She's gonna kill me for adding this picture but I think it's precious, so get over it Ma...with love of course!

Yes, there are a lot of different aspects about today that make me really like today (no 8am classes for one). But mostly I am taking today because I'm embracing the contentment. It's a wonderful thing. I am blessed.

All to God