community.

on tuesday morning, dr. roger olson spoke at chapel on the subject of community. i didn't have super high expectations, mostly because "community" is so cliche these days and such a buzz word around truett seminary, so i wasn't thrilled about another sermon on the topic.

good news: i was pleasantly surprised.

he defined community as requiring availability, vulnerability, and accountability. after i got passed the fact that all of his points ended in "ility," i realized that he really did nail it. those things are vital in community, and when they're lacking, their absence is all too obvious.

as i listened, i tried to think about when in my life i've experienced the type of community he was discussing. i thought of the several individual relationships in my life that i could throw into this category...

...but then my mind immediately went to hanoi, vietnam.

wow. what an unbelievable group of people. i'm not even sure i could adequately put into words the type of community the 10 of us had that summer. our time together was rich, and deep, and sweet. i could not be more thankful for these people.

my favorite part of dr. olson's sermon was that he described this type of community as a rare gift, and claimed it to be a brief glimpse of heaven, a snapshot of the kingdom of god. i couldn't agree more.

fiesta.

meet katelyn and walker:

this happened on saturday night:

walker: "everything about you, marry me."

(he was nervous. clearly.)

katelyn: "sure, why not?"

(typical.)

with that, the fiesta began... mariachi band included.

it's still pretty surreal that they're actually engaged, but i couldn't be more excited for these two.

it's always fun to celebrate a best friend getting engaged...

...but i've decided it's the most fun when two best friends get engaged to each other.

congrats to two of the most fun people in my life. let's be friends always. duh.

our highest activity.

i recently came across this excerpt from the problem of pain in my daily c.s. lewis readings book and had to share it on here. i think too often i find myself trying to muster up love for god, trying to figure out how to love him in the best way i possibly can--when in reality, to love him is to respond to his love.

If the world exists not chiefly that we may love God but that God may love us, yet that very fact, on a deeper level, is so for our sakes. If He who in Himself can lack nothing chooses to need us, it is because we need to be needed. Before and behind all the relations of God to man, as we now learn them from Christianity, yawns the abyss of a Divine act of pure giving--the election of man, from nonentity, to be the beloved of God, and therefore (in some sense) the needed and desired of God, who but for that act needs and desires nothing, since He eternally has, and is, all goodness. And that act is for our sakes. It is good for us to know love; and best for us to know the love of the best object, God. But to know it as a love in which we were primarily the wooers and God the wooed, in which we sought and He was found, in which His conformity to our needs, not ours to His, came first, would be to know it in a form false to the very nature of things. For we are only creatures: our role must always be that of patient to agent, female to male, mirror to light, echo to voice. Our highest activity must be response, not initiative. To experience the love of God in a true, and not an illusory form, is therefore to experience it as our surrender to His demand, our conformity to His desire: to experience it in the opposite way is, as it were, a solecism against the grammar of being.

thankful for this reminder of god's inexplicable love for me--a love which demands my love and surrender in response.

2 corinthians 1.3-4.

"blessed be the god and father of our lord jesus christ, the father of mercies and god of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by god."

i remember a few years ago thinking that there was absolutely no way that god could ever use my pain and my grief for good. the only way i could possibly imagine any good coming from it was if i could somehow be in a place where it could be used to benefit someone else in their grief...but the thought that i would ever be in that place was literally unfathomable. i was too early in my own grief process to imagine being able to speak into anyone else's.

i knew, however, that it wasn't really an option. when you enter this type of grief, it's almost like you've become a member of a club, and this is one of the membership requirements. you've got to walk alongside the new members and share with them what you've learned. that's just part of it. i could not be more thankful for the people who have done this for me--mary catherine burson, meg beasley, jessica stowell, liz dewberry, eryn humphrey, erin groth....

one of my best friends from home, whitney, lost her mom suddenly and unexpectedly on friday morning. needless to say, my heart has been HEAVY the last few days--heavy from hurting for whitney and her family, heavy from knowing the road of grief she's about to walk, and heavy from the weight of responsibility i feel to walk that road with her. these have been some of the hardest days i've had in a while, as so many memories and feelings have come to surface that i haven't thought about or felt in months. but i have to believe that it's worth it. i have to believe that this is one of the ways god may choose to use my grief for his good. i have to believe that this is what paul was talking about in 2 corinthians.

i can only hope to encourage whitney in the way that so many have encouraged me in the last few years. pray for me as i seek to know the god of all comfort and strive to encourage whitney to lean into him continually. more importantly, please pray for whitney and the mcmahon family in these days.

glimpse.

i hope this video that my brother made gives you a little glimpse into our time in ethiopia. i love the songs that he used. enjoy!

Ethiopia 2010 from Drew Crowson on Vimeo.