Sun, Dec 9
... Hello goodbye
So Stu preached at the Well tonight... that was really great. That boy changed so much while he was gone and really, really grown up, but he's still the same old Stuart. It was a good message... he talked about God's blessings, and how so much of what we think of as his blessings--and what really
are blessings--are material things. Things like health, money, food, shelter, friends, family. Then he talked about how God's greatest blessing to us is himself. How him revealing himself to us in a big way is the greatest blessing we could ever receive, but that so often comes along with a deprivation of some of the "material" blessings in life. How sometimes we have to be in the lowest place possible in life--without security, hope, friends, or whatever else--before God can truly show himself to us. Not that he
can't, I suppose, but just that we don't see him as clearly when things are going really well. "When it gets dark enough out, you can see the stars."
It's interesting how the youth group's changed. When Stuart left, we thought it would be this huge transition for the youth group; that things wouldn't be the same; that it would take everyone all this time to get used to it, and I guess in some ways that happened. In more ways, though, I realized that things are still the same. If he'd left 2 years ago, things would have been drastically different, but not now. The youth group has changed so much that most of the people who knew Stu as a part of their group have graduated and moved on. And the youth group doesn't revolve around one person. Yes, one person's absence is felt, depending on who that person is, but it doesn't make or break the group.
It's a similar thing, even with Laura. She's still enough part of the age group that her absence is felt more keenly and her influence is missed more at this point than Stuart's was while he was gone, but that doesn't mean that the youth group and people's lives don't move on. I miss her sooo much, and I'm so excited for her to get back on Saturday, but her not being here hasn't stopped my life, and I think that's the way it should be. We love each other dearly, and our friendship means the world to each other, but we don't have to be with each other all the time to have that special bond, and to go on with life.
Anyways, those are my thoughts on everyone leaving and life changing so much. It's hard, and in some ways it's sad, but it's so exciting, too, to see how God changes our lives and where he takes us that we never, ever expected to go.
infinite || abyss
posted at 11:49 p.m.
