from my notebook

And about waiting: I wrote in a prayer update today that I thought this might be a season of waiting--that sounds very Christian-y, but it made me think of Psalm 130:5-7: "I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning. O Israel, put your hope in the LORD, for with the LORD is unfailing love, and with him is full redemption."

This is wonderful on so many levels. When I wrote 'his word' just now it made me think of his word, his promise to me: "Now the LORD was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did for Sarah what he had promised." My hope is in the Lord for him to fulfill that promise, but what is wonderful is that it doesn't end there.

Fund raising is not the end-all. The Lord is the ultimate, his unfailing love, his full redemption. It doesn't end at eighty or 100%--this excites me, makes me look forward to a whole lifetime of relationship with my God. Even as he is going to fulfill this promise, this thing that seems so huge and hardly possible to me right now--he is so much bigger and gets into all of my life. And even when we try to compartmentalize it, turn it into, as my friend Patrick said, a 'functional savior,' he won't be contained, and neither will his love for us. Neither will his redemption. That is awesome news, friends.

quote-of-the-day

Taking a sort-of break from blogging for a little while, but in the meantime I'll still be posting quotes. This one, from a book about the history of the Balkans:

"The truth is that while for many centuries religious coexistence was undoubtedly more accepted under the Ottomans than almost anywhere in Christendom, there was certainly no sense of religious equality. If there was no ethnic conflict, it was not because of 'tolerance' but because there was no concept of nationality among the Sultan's subjects, and because Christianity stressed the 'community of believers' rather than ethnic solidarity."
--Mark Mazower

quote-of-the-day

Uncrowd my heart, O God,
until silence speaks
in Your still small voice;
turn me from the hearing of words,
and the making of words,
and the confusion of much speaking,
to listening,
waiting,
stillness,
silence.
--Ester de Waal

i love my city

Sitting in the Union breezeway, the one where both sides are nothing but windows all the way across, all that light. Eating a bagel and reading, probably writing soon. I found my SD adapter early this morning and was able to pull a bunch of pictures off of my phone, some from as far back as my sophomore year. It was nice to look through them all, and now, looking out over the campus in the quiet, there's this one, from my last day of classes ever.



And I wouldn't be from anywhere else.