Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!
I find my mind captured by details that are small. In doctrine today, seeing Drew's notebook that isn't a normal college notebook, but more like a journal, with the flowing ink script inside and a sketch of a tree. Bare feet tucked under the chair in front of me and a hand reaching through curly hair to support the head while staring in awe at the professor, whose words are raising goosebumps on the skin of everyone in the room. Walking out of the room and into the sunshine and cool air, thoughtfully watching the grass crumple and spring up again as I walk through it, thinking of the implications of God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit, about them being distinction within One person, and what it could mean if I thought of them all as God. God the Father. Jesus is Lord. The Spirit of God. How can it be? I think...I love that I don't and can't know how it can be. It's a mystery that draws me in. The mysterium tremendum. I wrote that on my hand when I first heard it, because it meant that what I experience in the presence of God means more than I ever knew. God makes me want to run away as fast as I can, and He makes me want to rush towards Him and desperately grasp a hold of Him. (I won't let you go until You bless me). It's the feeling of standing on the edge of a cliff, my limbs tingling and my mind thrilled with the fear of falling off, yet strangely curious and longing to jump. My soul draws back from God because it cannot comprehend Him, and then it doubles back to cling to Him for precisely the same reason. The fear of God has never been a concept more dear and curious to my soul as right now.
I love the fellowship of catching someone's eye and laughing over a joke, of discussing classes and giving advice and revealing the most awkwardly hilarious moments of our lives to one other. You get to know people when you clean bathrooms and throw trash together. I like the core group of friends who know me in and out and I like the fringe group of friends who haven't come across that line. Yet. I love that being built up and encouraged in a Christian community doesn't require you to be best friends with every person giving the encouragement, and they don't require that you know them wholly. Funny thing is, the encouragement isn't fake because of that.
My soul is hanging on these words, words of the man we so hypocritically call "doubting Thomas":
"Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing." And Thomas answered and said to Him, "My Lord and my God!"
I love the fellowship of catching someone's eye and laughing over a joke, of discussing classes and giving advice and revealing the most awkwardly hilarious moments of our lives to one other. You get to know people when you clean bathrooms and throw trash together. I like the core group of friends who know me in and out and I like the fringe group of friends who haven't come across that line. Yet. I love that being built up and encouraged in a Christian community doesn't require you to be best friends with every person giving the encouragement, and they don't require that you know them wholly. Funny thing is, the encouragement isn't fake because of that.
My soul is hanging on these words, words of the man we so hypocritically call "doubting Thomas":
"Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing." And Thomas answered and said to Him, "My Lord and my God!"