Here We Go...

So this is totally a first for me...I've never considered myself a writer, more of a life enthusiast if you will, passionate about many things but more likely to spill about them when prompted rather than to express them in writing. However, I can't seem to get one thought out of my head: what would it look like to live our lives as if we were writing our own gospel? I mean really take up our crosses, shed the skin of this world for the eternal Kingdom that rests at our fingertips. As I've let the spirit of Christ transform me this year, I've realized more and more that having the personal relationship with him means nothing if I can't translate that to my relationship with others. Yes, our personal relationship is first and foremost, that is the greatest commandment, but let us not forget that second one (the one that is like it...) to love our neighbors as ourselves. Sure, I'm a nice person, I consider myself generous in many ways, but so what? Has that generosity ever made me uneasy? Has it ever put me in my place? Have I ever looked into someone's eyes and seen the heart of Jesus in them because they are so broken that he is all they have left inside? I fall drastically short of this in my lifetime, and the more I think about it, the more I realize that causes me to fall short of Christ's greatest hope for us. He left his children, all his children, in our hands only for us to drop them by the wasteside so we can fix ourselves first. Unfortunately none of us will ever be "fixed," we are all intricately screwed up and retched in our own ways, there's no denying that. But that must not keep us from fulfilling Christ's call for us, and it is not an easy call to fill. No, in fact it is will cause us to leave the things of this world by the wasteside, drop everything, pick up our crosses, and follow him. This is where our gospel comes in, the one each of us is called to write in the lamb's book of life. What would that look like? What would it feel like? How would we do it? For that I do not have the answers, and that's why I'm writing this. I don't have the answers, but together, together we can converse enough, converge enough, to transform our lives as closely into the lives of Christ as we can. Scary? you bet your cute little bottom it is. Worth it? We will never be able to grasp even the the tiniest idea of how undeserving we are of this calling, but it is ours and we must not waste time trying to grasp what we will never reach. I feel my life taking a radical turn, one that will push me into areas I'm terrified to confront. What I envisioned my summer being a few months a go is a far cry from where it's going now. But here's the beauty in it all, Christ is holding my hand the whole way. He's telling me, "it's ok my child, I never promised you the ride wouldn't be rocky, the journey wouldn't be hard, but I did promise to wrap my arms around you the whole way." So I'm wrapping back, and I'd love nothing more than to share that story with you this summer, maybe for many summers to come. Read, don't read, comment, call, laugh, cry, just converse in your head or with others, whatever tickles your fancy. I'm not attempting to be profound with this, I'm not saying anything new, but I am trying this little thing called living radically. I'll leave you with a question I ponder every day...What would your gospel look like?