Commands - not suggestions

I think we like to soften Jesus. We like to take his commands and make them optional, turn his "when you" statements to "if you"

But Jesus doesn't say if you pray, if you fast, if you give to the needy. Those things aren't optional, he just clarifies how to do them well. (see Matthew 6)

juststopandthink.com

"Right now you and I are standing on a giant ball that's spinning at a thousand miles an hour. Am I the only one who thinks this is weird? The fact that we're flying around this ball of fire that is about a million times our size. We're flying around this thing at 67,000 miles an hour, and we go, eh its just another day." Francis Chan

A New Year ...

It is a new year. Newer still because I have graduated with my bachlors in art - perhaps an unimpressive degree but it marks a transition in life none the less.

The holidays where good in spite of all of the working and running around. It was good to take a go at compromising on Christmas traditions with Chris, it was very good to have different people in and out of my house all of the time. And even though I kind of resented it sometimes, it was good to be working.

In this transitional time I want to read more and listen more. To take walks for the sake of walking. To be ok with being alone and to actually return phone calls. I want to pursue photography without being bound up by my fears and to trust God with this whole weird engagement thing.

Call them resolutions if you want (although I won't) but I do want to be intentional with my time, especially in a phase of life where it would be very easy to just get by and have nothing to show for these years when the mythical future morphs into the annoyingly unavoidable present.