This semester in Chapel, the ministries staff has chosen the theme School of Prayer through Psalms to help address an often overlooked aspect of faith: simple prayer. The first couple of chapel services brought familiar messages like Prayer isn’t hard, it is unique, and prayer literally has no guidelines.
On Monday, Paul Boersma spoke about praying constantly throughout the day as the Israelites did in the Bible. Although I’m not so diligent and oftentimes I let more time pass between my prayers than I would like, it has brought up a very important theme in my own mind: Living for today or Living Prayer.
Living for today encompasses a lot of aspects of your life. But honestly, I think it’s most easily relatable to major United States holidays. Which is kind of strange, I realize. Just hang with me for a minute.
We start off the year with NEW YEARS and everyone makes the inevitable Resolution. Um, excuse me. I have a question?! If we have pent up dreams and aspirations that we feel as if we need one day a year to dedicate to the formulation of……why aren’t we living our dreams now?
Valentines Day: We tell the people we love how much we love them. Why aren’t we doing that now?
Easter: We recognize the fact that Jesus Christ died for our sins to grant us salvation. Not because we deserved it or earned it, but through grace. We praise God for his everlasting mercy. Why aren’t we doing that EVERYDAY?
You can see where I’m going with this.
Why is it so hard for us to live our dreams, do what we love and tell others about it, LOVE others, and praise the One who made us? We’re human and we most certainly fall short.
But on my way to living prayer, there is a huge, HUGE, huge, huge part that I can’t forget to include: Giving Thanks.
I know I’ve dedicated probably 2 or 3 posts already about how thankful I am, but really. I am. And I want others to know it! I have been so extremely blessed, as I’m sure you have. But I’m changing my thankfulness to include the unconventional things that I am really thankful for, even if they’re a bit strange.
In September, I had a little accident. It’s actually pretty embarrassing….but it’s a learning point and I hope that by embarrassing myself you learn something! So listen up. Hope College does this great service to our community by edging their sidewalks meticuously. They are perfectly edged. You cannot find a sidewalk on campus that has grass within a centimeter from the edge of the sidewalk. They’re just that good. Well. Add perfectly edged sidewalks to rain and slick conditions and then put a girl (with a 60 lb backpack) on a bike. Just watch as she peddles a block to class and within 500 feet from her class location, her bike tire hits that wet, edged sidewalk. And the girl flies across the sidewalk. On. Her. Face. Yes. You read it right, I’m afraid. I slid across the sidewalk. Or rather my cheek slid across the sidewalk at a high rate of speed. Inertia came into action!
An hour after my unfortunate meeting with cement, I looked like this:
<img src="http://blogs.hope.edu/students/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2012/01/img.jpg know that I'm still the talk of many concussion discussions (as many friends have told me they've heard my story shared a fair number of times).
This was my opportunity to open my eyes and say Thanks. Look at how fortunate I am. My problems are miniscule compared to those of others around me. Thanks, Lord, for not allowing me to be thrown into a tree and be suffering instead with paralysis. Thanks, Lord, for not letting a stick be on the sidewalk to take out one of my eyes. Thanks, Lord, for allowing me to still have the brain power to get through my studies, even if I score comparably to stroke patients on cognitive testing. Thanks. Thank you so much for letting me live on this strange, bizarre, but totally cool planet. Thanks for letting me attend Hope College to explore my potential in the world and meet inspiring people that strive to help me every day.
Thanks.
Please. Think this week about how thankful you are for the small things and the big things. You have a stomach-ache? I’m thankful you have a stomach because I’ve met a few people who don’t. You don’t want to take that test at school? I’m VERY thankful you have an opportunity for great education in this great country we call America, I think you can handle a test. Think of it instead as a Priviledge.
THANKS for reading my post. 🙂
A
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CASA!, an after school mentoring program here at Hope. I volunteer to mentor Angelina, or Nina, for two hours twice a week. We always have a BLAST and she is really smart. She’s in fourth grade and she’s such a doll. Last week we made Valentine’s day cards for CASA supporters. Every day she tells me that CASA is the best part of her week. HOW CUTE. As she slowly acclimates to me, she feels a lot more comfortable and has starting to say hilarious things all the time like today when she jokingly told me I was “bad news” after I had distracted her from playing MathBlaster division. hah!;)
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(HEI). We presented in front of several Alumni, faculty, and people from the community. I really enjoyed speaking about my summer project of Hope Grows to the audience. ;)
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men are ranked 7th in the country??!;)
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