Gentle Reader,
This series didn’t go the way I had planned.
I wanted to give you something thought-provoking each day. I wanted to go deep. To be deep. Instead, I wound up going over the basics. Again and again. Because that’s where I am. I checked out of graduate school and returned to kindergarten during these 31 days.
I think that happens sometimes on this journey of faith. Things throw us for loops and we have to go back to the foundation and examine it. We have to remind ourselves that God is good, that He loves us, that He has a good plan for our lives. We have to remember that He is going to take care of us, come what may. Sometimes we just have to sit there, too dumbfounded and numb to cry or rage. We have to wait for Him to show us where to go. What the next step is.
This conclusion isn’t going the way I planned, either. I don’t have anything remotely resembling profound to end with. Life is messy and difficult. It’s also unexpectedly beautiful and fun.
And all of it is so much better with Jesus.
For all entries in the Jesus: 31 Days with the Savior series, go here.
I have really enjoyed your series and I thought you had many thoughtful insights to share along the way. Also, I appreciated the way you presented the basics of Jesus’ life and ministry. I saw them with fresh eyes and was filled with love for Jesus, for who He is, how He taught and what He did for us.
I can empathize with being in a place where even the next step is unclear. To be honest, I sometimes feel that way on a daily basis! 🙂 But we can remember, as you say, to simply trust Him in the messy waiting. Sometimes I pray the first few lines from the 23rd Psalm: “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.” That helps me remember the main thing- that Jesus is guiding me along and I can just rest in that.
Thank you for sharing this series, and also your story. As soon as I found your blog and began to read the first entry, I knew I had found someone whose faith had been shaped by suffering. I think it’s a privilege to hear those stories and to learn from faith that has gone down deep and continues one step at a time through hard things.
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Jenny, you bless me. You really do. Thank you so much for your encouraging words and for reading the series. I hope that you’ll stick around! I’d love to interact with you more. 🙂
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It’s a funny thing about intent and execution. We can come up with something in our thoughts that sounds good, but between our fingers and the keyboard the Holy Spirit can step in. Almost every time I begin to compose a blog post (which is embarrassingly often), I have only a vague idea of what I’m going to write about. As I write, ideas “pop” into my head, or I’ll be reminded of some bit of scripture or something from a book I’ve been reading that I hadn’t considered when I’d started typing. I never know if what I’m writing will be 1500 words or over 3000. I just stop then I’m finished. I’ll do editing for spelling and grammar, then do the content editing, sometimes in two or three passes, but rarely will I change much of the content or flow of the original piece. When we speak from our hearts about God, God helps us speak about Him and about ourselves. I’m privileged to be among those who are reading what you have to say about your experiences with Jesus.
Blessings.
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James, you’re awesome. For reals.
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