It all started with waking up. The threads of consciousness, woven and spun into the glory fall, worked their way into me, seeping into the dreams lingering in my mind yet being steadily dispelled by the constancy of activity in the physical domain. Stillness. I had a thought upon waking up, profound and personally meaningful. Yet the wording and phrasing of the thought escaped the frail grasp of my groggy brain leaving nothing but the...
Welcome to the 2011 edition of my annual New Year's letter. If you are privileged enough to have been given the password to read this post, then I invite you to grab a cup of coffee (because coffee makes everything more enjoyable) and read on. Let me know in the comments how your year was too and what some of the lessons were that you've come away with. :) History
Trying to recall exactly what happened in January and February of this year is...
"In continuing this series on prayer, I wanted to focus on abiding in God's presence. Writing on this subject, my friend Maria Viola offers her intimate, insightful perspective from her experience of God in the quite place."
—David Andrew The Quiet Place We can learn to abide in God’s presence wherever we go, in any situation, in whatever we are doing. There is a starting point: being in the prayer closet. I cannot stress enough the...
This summer has been new: new house, new opportunities, new challenges. Most importantly (IMHO), I’ve come to experience a new season in my relationship with God. I’ve become aware of communing. Through all of the transitions this summer related to moving and all of the uncertainties about going back to school, I’ve come to a place where I find myself wanting to do nothing except be still and know that He is God. (Ps. 46:10) There is...
Oh boy. This week has been the best week of summer so far. Encouraging text messages, singing the Scriptures, convicting sermons... it's like God's trying to tell me that He loves me or something. =D Allow for me to share with you one of the convicting ideas floating through my mind this week: Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. In his message series entitled "The Supernatural Power of a Renewed Mind," Bill Johnson...
You're driving down the road and in the distance, you see a signal that has just turned green. As you get closer to the signal, you realize that it has been green for quite a while now and you think to yourself that it will probably change soon. Much to your surprise, the signal stays green and you pass through without even taking your foot off the gas! Ever had a moment like that? I just did recently and I was pleasantly surprised. I even felt...
All of my life has been waiting for this culmination. Yet somehow I'm still stuck in between. It's like everything about where I've been is about to give way into everything about where I will be and the catalyst is who I am now. I have been learning so much over the last few weeks about trusting God, and He's been speaking to me a lot about things with cumulative value—things that are worth very little by themselves but compound into things...
Got any to spare? Lately, it just seems like that's the one thing I'm missing. I have none. Zippo. Zilch. Nada. No bueno. I walk into a room full of people and I practically run to a corner where I can be a notorious "wallflower" and smile at people (sometimes) but not really talk to anyone. I make myself sick. You'd think I'd been locked in a room my whole life... ahem. So how about that weather we've been having? So anyway, I've been feeling a...
Have you ever been in a place where you're overwhelmed by a deluge of truth? It's like the facts of life are rolling in today and I realize how much I just need to trust God. Thank You, Jesus for opening my eyes. I feel like I have been given new information on my immediate future. It's information that is hard to accept joyfully, because on the one hand, it reinforces the fact that I might not be coming back to school in the Fall. On the other...
Lately, I've been consumed with looking up. Literally. Here's a picture for you. I think my obsession with looking up has some meaning to it. I'll get to that in a little bit. I've also been enjoying gazing at vast expanses such as this one. There's something inspiring about wide-open spaces—something freeing that beckons you to run wild and take ownership of and responsibility for all that you see. Maybe that's just me, maybe it's not. I've...
