God – Page 2 – Thoughts from Blue Eyes

Sometimes Quiet is Violent

I remember sitting with Luke on the steps to the alleyway last semester. He was dying inside for lack of peace. Over the next few weeks, we talked and prayed and cried out to God together. I fervently read the Psalms with him. We’d eat french fries and wonder when God would respond.

We didn’t doubt, we just wondered.

I’ve been confronted with the idea that God suffers inconsolably with us, and that discontent breeds love, so we all must be discontent, including God. That he’s impatiently pacing back and forth, waiting for the day when perfection can be restored in heaven. Eden made us lose our innocence, and now we have to face the tragedies and sufferings that accompany knowledge of good and evil. He’s going to wipe our tears away, but I denote a problem with this image of a suffering God who is out of control, doesn’t understand, and doesn’t

Sometimes Quiet is ViolentKaitlyn2019-10-08T02:29:19+00:00

Travesty

Sometimes I read something and have to blink back tears.

Tonight I was scanning the news and saw an article about mass illegal immigration from Serbia and beyond through the Hungarian border to reach Western Europe. This has probably been happening for a long time, and I don’t ever pretend to be on top of things. But, tonight, the article was highlighted because of Hungary’s recent decision to seal the border with massive barbed wire and walls.

Accompanying this article was a brutal description of deaths: refugees found floating to shore from capsized boats in the Mediterranean, photos of little girls with hair tangled up in barbed wire, a freezer truck dumped at the border oozing decomposed bodies of Syrians who were trapped inside. They found a baby in there, by the way.

What is this dark world? Why? Sin? Evil? Travesty after travesty?

I can’t call it tragic because it’s expected. Sin has infected

TravestyKaitlyn2019-10-08T02:29:19+00:00

The cross is an instrument of torture. It’s the symbol of who we are in Christ, God’s love, his sacrifice, his awesome grace and cleansing blood. We wear it around our necks, paste it to our walls, build wooden versions of it on our church steeples. We see it so much….have we forgotten what it means?

Bible studies, sermons, small groups, fellowship, even communion and baptism….we have become desensitized to their significance and purpose. Our society has gripped the church and turned it into a selfish, experience-driven buffet that seeks to stuff us with bloated, boring, banal.

We are tired. We refuse to admit it. We are hungry. We don’t know why.

Oh, how the American church has lost its focus! Who can ascend the holy hill of the Lord anymore, as the Psalmist cried out?

Do we pray for Paul’s words to be true in our lives, that we might count everything as loss compared

TrendingKaitlyn2015-08-27T03:12:47+00:00

Wanted: a way to see beyond my sunglasses

Everyone wears sunglasses of perspective.

It’s hard to value your own at times. The big trendy thing to do is to take pictures with kids in Africa and/or post a Bible verse/indie song lyric on Facebook with a #vscocam landscape photo of some obscure beach. Meanwhile, back in the backwoods, God is moving quietly and has me singing in church on Sundays, hosting a couple ladies’ breakfasts, and selling toys in the next tourist town over.

Is this as exciting as spending my summer feeding widows in Guatemala or travelling the Southeast putting on Gospel camps for kids? Is it as meaningful as interning at a megachurch co-leading worship or studying abroad in the Mediterranean or serving at a family camp in Michigan?

God’s Word tells me the answer is yes. When I started working fast food at age 14, this was a verse I quickly memorized and treasured:

“Whatever you do, work at it

Wanted: a way to see beyond my sunglassesKaitlyn2015-07-19T00:28:05+00:00

Today I ran errands

It’s too easy to worry. I hate it.

Sometimes I look around me and wonder if other people are even thinking about some of the things that drive my mind to oblivion. Like, the kind of thinking that just snowballs races runs jumps until I’m standing teetering on the edge of anxiety. Where are the brakes on my thinking?

I know I’m analytical. I write to help me understand what’s going on in my life and what God is doing. Sometimes, though, the analysis slowly draws my head downward until I’m navel-gazing and trapped inside a melodramatic bubble where I forget Jesus is still Lord and that he’s in control because, hey, he made the universe and holds it together. Col 1:15-20.

I’m reading Luke. I’m taking each piece and just studying it, instead of glazing over and neglecting to ask questions: what does Jesus mean? Why did Luke choose to include this

Today I ran errandsKaitlyn2015-06-12T21:29:21+00:00

We’re having leftovers for dinner tonight

There is so much left to know about God.

Until about two years ago, I was sort of “yeah-okay-cool” about reading the Bible; I was frustrated that I had a hard time reading it, and I dutifully tried my best to please God by reading it. I didn’t really “study” a whole bunch. I didn’t invest a lot of time into thinking about what I had read, how it affected my beliefs, and what it all meant for reality, for life.

After all, growing up in church, I had essentially heard it all before. Right?

I think that, all too often, we as Christians forget about why we do what we do. Why do you read the Bible? Why do I?

“…that I may know Him,” wrote Paul in Phil 3:10. For too long, I was really only reading the Bible to check it off a list, to feel better, to assuage my own personal

We’re having leftovers for dinner tonightKaitlyn2019-10-08T02:29:19+00:00

Catharsis

It’s quiet around here.

I’m back in the city temporarily for work. Dearest Claire and I are rooming together for the week, and it’s a strange place without the crew, profs, and daily routines that light up campus during the school year. I’ve left Julia the Roommate, Hebrews class, and Year 2 behind. And I have come out more reliant on Christ than ever.

It’s as though this year opened up a whole new level of depth inside my heart. Things seem more real, more three-dimensional, more important. I know how much more I need Jesus, and I have realized that I am united with him as his chosen child. As the church, I am a part of the collective bride of Christ, joined with him as one flesh. I have seen intercessory prayer answered as friends have experienced peace, clarity, and reassurance from the Lord. My own faith has grown as

CatharsisKaitlyn2019-10-08T02:29:19+00:00

Brink

Sitting in the campus coffee shop with Corbin the Class President and studying for final exams is a strange deal. As I reflect on the ending of Year 2 and rain flops into the plaza, I’m reminded again of how time always flies too fast.

You blink, and it’s gone.

I’ve got several topics swirling around my mind: how we systematize too much, beauty as gift, intercessory prayer, motivations, grad school, frappuccinos. I’m thinking how adult I don’t feel even though I’m halfway done with Bible college and taking on more responsibility every moment. I’m memorizing the facial expressions and vocal inflections of those who are moving on. I’m praying that I may know Christ more each day.

Sometimes, I feel like this is a joke, or like I’m still 10 years old and will wake up in my pink Barbie nightgown one of these days to my dad making cinnamon raisin toast. There are

BrinkKaitlyn2015-05-09T00:34:18+00:00

“Lord, I Need You” and the Extrovert

I sometimes feel a panicky desperation in my heart whenever I’m with people I care about. It’s not because I dislike being with friends or claustrophobic; on the contrary, I want those moments to last forever, and I feel this rising tightness that whispers intensely to me: “Lock this in! Take in everything! Analyze every color and shape and emotion in this scene! Because it won’t happen again!”

I have an eternal Rolodex of those. Today, I added several scenes to the picture diary in my head. Watching the sunrise with some floor sisters this early morning, sitting quietly in the plaza as campus woke up, and skating at an 80s-style roller rink are some of those precious images. They are broken down into bits and pieces — it’s not like I can vividly remember each and every fleeting thought — but I value them. Sometimes it’s hard to move into

“Lord, I Need You” and the ExtrovertKaitlyn2019-10-08T02:29:19+00:00

“Hearts Like Ours” and the Assurance

“He is faithful. I don’t understand,” she laughed. “There’s a lot of grace.”

Brynna the RA and I took a long walk this afternoon through the park and down to the beach. The weather is beautiful, the end of the semester is near, and the campus is alive with shorts and flip-flops.

We hadn’t been able to really talk for some time due to work and school schedules, but I was so glad we were able to catch up. Her encouragement and experience is like a refreshing wave regarding some of the stuff I’m sorting through. God provides and speaks through our brothers and sisters more often than we know. I will miss her when she leaves for ministry across the world.

I continue to humbly learn how much I need Jesus. I need him to love others through me, to wake me up, to give me words that will help and not

“Hearts Like Ours” and the AssuranceKaitlyn2015-04-17T21:55:33+00:00