Travel Journal: Cuenca, Day 12

Choose This Day

“Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord . And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord , choose this day whom you will serve , whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord .” Joshua 24:14-15 (ESV) "Choose." If we're living in the reality of the Kingdom of God, I don't think there's any way to over-spiritualize. That phrase gets on my nerves like nothing else. I think we use it as a cop out, a way to sidestep the responsibility of living like the Kingdom has invaded every nook and cranny of our existence. Every choice is an opportunity to feed my flesh or feed my spirit. Every choice is a challenge - am I going to lean on my own understanding, or listen clos...

March 4, 2020

Tonight while Nick and I were having good conversation over dinner, he asked when I last read my Bible. I said, "Not that long ago," to which he replied, "Was it before the weekend?" and I had to say, "Yes." He likened it to fasting for five days, which he rightly pointed out that I've never done in the natural, so why would I deprive myself like that in the spiritual? The conversation stirred up some old confusion and hurt regarding my difficulty with staying engaged with Scripture, but it also stirred up an old hunger to know the voice of God - to be steeped in the history of his speech, to be enraptured by description of who he is and rejoice with the authors of the Bible about his goodness. To know how he talks, to hear it inside my head as I read and become more and more familiar with the cadence of his conversation. I remembered being a freshman in college, newly exposed to the Pentecostal tradition and desperate to hear the voice o...

A New Thing

My worldview has been wrecked on multiple occasions over the last year and a half. I almost wish that was an exaggeration, but it is not. Sometimes for the better, always for the unknown. Each time feels unprecedented, each revelation seemingly irreconcilable with life as I have known it. But that's the point. Each of those instances has been a point of no return. One cannot put bubbles back in the bottle after pouring out dish soap. We cannot shrink our minds or appetites for adventure back down to former size once God has blown them wide open with possibility. (Plus, it's much more fun to have bubbles everywhere.) Faith tastes like the gunpowder-residue air that comes with fireworks. There's a right good chance that things will explode, but it's going to be beautiful. Whenever it happens. However it happens. Why is it that as we're eagerly searching the skies, refraining from blinking as much as we are able, barely hanging on to the edge of our se...

lengua de corazón

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