beautiful faces.

here's a video of pictures from mom's trip to ethiopia last week with some youth from our home church. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK6r2KvzW70&feature=channel_page

for more info, check out buckner international. 

justice and grace.

i've been thinking a lot recently about the tension between grace and justice. God claims to be a God of both and calls us to a life of both. it's all over scripture. 

in the old testament, the prophet micah writes, "he has told you, o man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"

do justice. love kindness/mercy/steadfast love.

in the new testament, jesus told the pharisees they had "neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness" (matthew 23.23). of the entire law, he gave the most weight to justice, mercy, and faithfulness. 

perhaps the most vivid illustration of this is the cross. The justice of God demanded a sacrifice. The grace and mercy of God offered Jesus. 

so what does this mean in real life situations that reek of injustice? looking at friends' pictures from rwanda and ethiopia is beautiful, but overwhelming. praise God for the opportunity to love on a handful of orphans, but what about the other 143 million? 

thinking about injustice doesn't just bother me, it makes me angry. i have to do something about it, but what does that even mean and how can i make a difference? but i feel like the only other option is to give up and do nothing...and that can't be the answer.

but then it becomes more personal. one man dies of cancer while another is miraculously cured. a terrible father and husband dies a peaceful death in his late 80s while a man who loves the Lord and loves his family suddenly dies in his early 50s. where does a God of grace and justice fit into these situations? and if we claim God did the healing, did he not also allow the dying? is that gracious or just?

yet again, i can either be angry at God and give up or be angry at the injustice and press on. i don't like that answer, but i don't feel like i have any other option. i have to believe that Jesus knows what injustice feels like and that God ultimately is merciful and just...but i don't think i'll ever understand it.

any thoughts? 

homesick.

i feel like my faith is cruising on autopilot right now. don't get me wrong, i'm still full of unanswered questions, but i think i'm just tired of wrestling and being the over-analytical skeptic. i'm also maybe a little tired of the fact that i feel like it always comes back to just choosing to have faith no matter what. i recognize the value of that, but it seems so disengaged, almost spiteful....like a kid obeying his parents, but doing so kicking and screaming. that can't be right. so instead of actively choosing and fighting, i feel like i'm just cruising right now, but at least i'm not just giving up, right? 

i finally finished philip yancey's book, disappointment with god. this paragraph is from one of the last chapters:

"The Bible never belittles human disappointment (remember the proportion in Job--one chapter of restoration follows forty-one chapters of anguish), but it does add one key word: temporary. What we feel now, we will not always feel. Our disappointment is itself a sign, an aching, a hunger for something better. And faith is, in the end, a kind of homesickness--for a home we have never visited but have never once stopped longing for."

i know faith is supposed to be simple, but it's so confusing to me. however, i think i can get this "homesickness" description of faith. i long for something i don't even understand. my heart hopes for something that i can't walk away from. 

"and lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight..."

round 3.

so as always, the anticipation last week was much worse than the actual day. it helped that i got to spend the weekend in alabama with some of my favorite people in the whole world. it was so good for my soul to be around people that really know me and love me. 

the whole two years thing really is so bizarre though. i know on the outside it sounds like a substantial amount of time, but it certainly doesn't feel like it. in the beginning, two years sounded so far away, but friday came...and went..and life just kept going. i don't know what else i expected, but it's weird to me that everything just keeps moving on. so where does that leave us now? like the first year, everything was so shocking and weird and different. the second year, i feel like we figured out how to make things work. so now that we're starting round 3, is it supposed to be normal life now? i mean, people talk about the "firsts," but who talks about the "thirds"? answer: nobody. but isn't it weird that all of the sudden it's supposed to be okay? 

i had the realization last week that i'm in this really bizarre middle ground between being scared to remember him and being scared to forget him. it's like i don't let myself think about him much because i don't want it to hurt and i don't want to miss him but i certainly don't want to get to the place where i don't remember him or don't miss him. does that make any sense? 

i was reading deuteronomy this week for my scriptures class and had forgotten how much i love that book. god continually reminds the israelites that the covenant between them is not based on their righteousness but on his divine grace. he continually reminds them of how he has constantly provided for them. it was such a good reminder for me that the same god that has been faithful to me in the past has been faithful to me in the last two years, is faithful to me today, and will continue to be faithful to me in the future. i have to believe that he is faithful even when i am faithless.