Wed, Sept. 29
... No one loves me the way you do
Wow... yesterday was quite the day. A very good day.
The verse in Philemon really is true (heh... funny that; a Bible verse is true?)--you know, the one that says "I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ." (Philemon 6) Right now, that's becoming a reality in my life at work. Blair gave Ismarys a Bible yesterday, and she's been asking all kinds of questions, trying to understand it all.
It's amazing to watch. It encourages me to see her get so excited when she understands something, and it makes me excited when she says something so profound and yet so simple at the same time.
Yesterday afternoon, we weren't that busy, and she had been devouring her Bible every spare minute, so in the afternoon, the three of us (Blair, Ismarys, and I) sat down on the kitchen floor and started discussing what she was reading, and we tried to answer some of her questions. She asked something about the Trinity--what a topic to get into for someone who's just starting to explore God! Blair was trying to explain it to her, and she said, "So God is in three different forms so that people could experience him differently."
Wow! I couldn't have explained it that way!
"God is in three different forms so that people could experience him differently."
Yeah, that's not all of it, but that's a great way to get a basic grasp of a very complicated theology.
I'm reading an incredible book right now, called Blue Like Jazz, by Donald Miller. It's one of my new favorite books--just a collection of essays and thoughts on Christian spirituality. Anyways, I read something yesterday that completely fit, with the experience of watching Ismarys discover God for the first time.
The goofy thing about Christian faith is that you believe it and don't believe it at the same time. It isn't unlike having an imaginary friend. I believe in Jesus; I believe He is the Son of God, but every time I sit down to explain this to somebody I feel like a palm reader, like somebody who works at a circus or a kid who is always making things up or or somebody at a Star Trek convention who hasn't figured out the show isn't real.
Until.
When one of my friends becomes a Christian, which happens about every ten years because I am such a sheep about sharing my faith, the experience is euphoric. I see in their eyes the trueness of the story.
It's a beautiful thing... I really am so excited about this development in life right now. I'm excited for Ismarys... I can't wait to see what happens. I can't wait to watch GOd work in her, and I'm excited to learn from her, and to see her faith grow, and to see the God in her grow.
infinite || abyss
posted at 10:47 a.m.
