Unmerited favor.
I started a small record of day-by-day blessings a few months ago. The little things, like Pennsylvania fireflies or an email from Hannahstasia. Things that made me laugh or smile or look to the presence of my God. I have been training my thinking to look for the good in a flawed world, the blessings despite a cursed nature, the completely undeserved moments of joy that come when I am spirit-sensitive to the hand of God—and I have been amazed at how such a seemingly small change of perspective has opened the floodgates of God’s grace into my life. Nearly every day, I find myself on the verge of tears at the sheer magnitude and goodness of my God, not because He has made my life perfect—but because He has breathed life into my lungs for another day, because He has resurrected my sin-dead soul, and because He has poured out unmerited blessing upon unmerited blessing into my life, based on His perfect knowledge and control over all.
I already do this daily in my little brown journal, but I am going to start doing a weekly list here on the blog as well—a place where I can give the overflowing cup of my soul a few words and a photo, a place where maybe it can encourage someone else somehow. If any of my fellow bloggers would like to join, I’m including a linkup tool at the bottom of the post. :)
i. the way the light drifts through the turning autumn leaves in southwestern Pennsylvania.
ii. peanut butter fudge ice cream at Ritchey’s Dairy.
iii. the friendship I have been blessed with in these two beautifuls.
iv. time spent with all my friends in Pennsylvania.
Friends who are fully in love with Jesus, who can say with me that they owe Him everything that they are. Erin, Dusty, Logan, Hannah, Janae, Luis, the Johnsons, the Sterns—this is all of you.
v. photo shoots (some still in the works!).
vi. snow in October.
vii. music:
This song is the plea of my soul to my God, set to music. It is the prayer of my every day. It is what I want the definition of my life to be.
viii. words:
[Jim] and the other men with whom he died were hailed as heroes, “martyrs.” I do not approve. Nor would they have approved. Is the distinction between living for Christ and dying for Him, after all, so great? Is not the second the logical conclusion of the first? Furthermore, to live for God is to die, “daily,” as the apostle Paul put it. It is to lose everything that we may gain Christ. It is in thus laying down our lives that we find them.
- Elisabeth Elliot
ix. Bible:
Traveling always makes me reflect on this passage, especially when it’s to temporarily remove the thousands of miles that separate me from people I love. My heart literally pulses with joy at the thought of all my homes being in one place for eternity: at the feet of Jesus.
God is good, all the time.
Amen, especially to the last one :)
ReplyDeleteI was also going to say that I was just planning on starting a weekly list of blessings on my blog, one from every day of the week! You read my mind. They were going to go with my fashion posts maybe. . . . But I'll link mine up with yours :)
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