7 Quick Takes Friday (Vol. 4)

1. Nothing for a month and then suddenly...bam! So much has happened to me this week that I'm still journaling and processing and thanking and blessing and wishing I could go back to Monday and live it all over again. Don't you just love weeks like that?

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. 

2. Lent is coming to a close, Easter is around the corner. What a journey it's been... And I feel like it's only just begun. This Lent, more than any other time, I've become conscious of how I try to soothe my anxiety by trying to control everything, bend everything to my will. What if we just let go? Unclench our fists?

For You created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb.

3. I've spent a lot of time on here and elsewhere complaining about everything that's happened after college graduation. How nothing has gone according to my plan. I can't adequately put into words how much has changed, and how much I have changed since last May. But I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. It's looking more and more likely that I will be spending the next year as an elementary school teacher in South Dakota on a Native reservation. Nothing is 100% yet but it's getting there. Always getting there....

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for peace and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

4. How have things been working out for you? Has it been a season of waiting? A season of disappointment? Have you been praying and waiting for a miracle with none in sight? That's been the last year for me. But maybe it's time for a new vision for this life. I'm not talking about pop psychology (Oprah...); I'm not talking about "attracting the forces of the universe to you" or some ancient secret "hidden" in plain sight. I'm not talking about "just smiling." I'm talking about a vision that comes from above, the "What is it?" kind of sustenance, the bread of life, the bitter waters turned sweet.

5. Do you see it now? The glimpse of things as they can be? Can you look past the misery of each moment, the fleeting temporality of each moment, and glimpse eternity?

Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters... hear, that your  soul may live.

6. How much time have I wasted out of fear? This Holy Week, I will pray for Vision. For a vision of an abundant life; I will remember and look forward to the Resurrection, to the victory yet ahead and already accomplished. Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart; naught be all else to me, save that Thou art....  Will you join me?

7. These pictures were taken by my dad two weeks ago in Washington, DC of the incredible cherry blossoms there. These trees which were a gift from Japan in 1912, which were here before Pearl Harbour and after. Which grow even in seasons of war, of hatred, of fear and which remind us of the Beauty to be found here and now, if we only have the eyes to see.