The Range of God’s Power

Thanks, God, for the little things

You hold up the heavens

and prevent endless dangers

that we don’t even know to thank you for

You are still in the miracle business

and heal cancer

You are still in the life changing business

and let little actions change lives

a random thought

a random meeting

a random cloud

all of these have changed my life

except they aren’t random

they are perfectly, lovingly placed

by You.

I wonder at Your creative power

in the sunset sky

I wonder at Your abounding love

washing dusty feet

I wonder at your wisdom

in Your Word

but I also wonder

at how you keep the stars aligned

and still listen to my small prayers

You answer my cries for peace

as well as my asking for wisdom on my english quiz

You answer my prayer for healing

as well as my prayer about not being late

The range of Your love

astounds me

Pixabay/user:Hans

Prayer Request

I know this blog is normally a creative outlet and a place where Christianity, poetry, super-heroes, and thoughts are shared, but this post is different. I have 293 followers and I would like to use you to help for something very important.

Please pray. Please pray for my friend’s great niece who is only seven years old and was diagnosed with Leukemia on Friday. The doctors think that they caught the cancer early and the girl — Emma Lockhart — has been healthy up to this point so that should help with her treatment. She has already started chemotherapy and is doing well. When my friend asked if she could do anything to help, the girl’s mom said that she wanted to yell from the hilltops for prayer, so my friend said that she would tell everyone she knew to pray. Please pray.

Dear Lord, give this family and especially Emma Your strength. Give them Your peace that surpasses understanding. Be their light during their of darkness. Comfort them and let them feel your presence. Guide the doctors and the nurses and all the health care professionals in making decisions and treating Emma. 

We know that everything works accordingly for the good of those who love You and though this is not good, You can make it good. Lord, we only see tangled threads of life, but You see the big picture. Bless this family and work Your will in their lives. 

Keep this family’s focus on You for You are the master miracle worker. Heal Emma and help her in her treatment. Thank You for medical advances that can save this girl’s life, but thank You most importantly for being a caring God and working in our lives. Please work in this girl’s life, save her. In Your words we put our hope and trust. Amen.

More Than a Quote

I have a blue notebook in my office that I received for Christmas in 2014, in which I write down in colorful pen whatever words touch me. I call it my Quote Book and I’m up to page 49 now. Not all the quotes are from famous people though, some are from my best friend, my teachers, myself, textbooks, or just random people who I hear talking in the halls.

Yes, this is what nerds do on perfect Sunday afternoons or on late Friday nights. I scour Goodreads looking for quotes and then I get lost in the ocean of humanity’s mind just like I get lost in the encyclopedia. Ralph Waldo Emerson once penned “Words are finite organs of the infinite mind” and I want to douse myself in other’s lively minds. I want to pour wisdom into my mind from wherever I can find it, so that I can have that wisdom while I live my life.

And so if I get lost on Goodreads then that just means that I am getting lost in wisdom that will prepare me for living. I am being found.

I am in a constant state of losing and finding myself. I am designing and developing myself by adding to my schema the thoughts of others who have already lost and found themselves hundreds of times over.

This is why I like learning because in learning about the world and how it works or doesn’t work, I am really learning about and forming myself so that I can change the world. Muriel Rukeyser once said, “The universe is made of stories, not of atoms” and so I learn about the universe by learning about stories and the people who tell them.

If you can’t tell already this blog post is gonna be loaded with quotes 🙂 If you are asking yourself why a teenage girl is writing a blog post about quotes when most girls her age are either taking duck-face selfies on snapchat, let John Green answer your question, “Nerd life is just so much better than regular life.” And let me remind you, you are reading this nerdy blog post so you might be included in that “nerd life”. Plus, you have hope for humanity.

Anyway, back to the Quote Book, on the inside front cover I have written a quote by John Green “Maybe our favorite quotations say more about us than about the stories and people we’re quoting.” So what does my Quote Book say about me?

Well, on surface level, I at first only wrote down quotes from Superhero movies and comicbooks then branched out to other types of quotes. I was on a Mark Twain kick for a while (thanks, Goodreads!) and now my quote-obsession is John Green.

On a deeper level, just from that information of who I quote (comicbooks, Mark Twain, John Green), a statement is made about me. I do not care about who said the words; I care about what the words say to me.

I like to play a game where I read a quote from my book and a friend has to guess who said it: a professional writer, a normal person, or a comicbook. Generally they are surprised by who said it, and so the speaker of the words holds little power over the words themselves. Just because comicbooks has fist fights and aliens, doesn’t mean that they also have heart and poetry. “No acknowledgement or any amount of money can return integrity once it is spent” is a quote from One Month to Live #5, which was a comicbook  produced by Marvel Comics in 2010.

But what is my favorite quote? My favorite quote is my mantra, my motto, my manifesto that was written two thousand years ago; it is my rallying cry when I do not want to move forward; it is what is written on my heart and what I want to be written on my every action. My favorite quote says everything I want it to say about me and what I want to say. “But anyone who is not aware that he is doing wrong will be punished only lightly. Much is required from those to whom much is given, for their responsibility is greater” Luke 12:48.  I have a great purpose to accomplish and I will fulfill my potential with every breath I take because that is why I breathe. My favorite quote tells me the meaning of my own life and what I should do with it.

Plus, my favorite Bible verse is oddly similar to my favorite comicbook quote, “With great power there must also come great responsibility” from Amazing Fantasy #15. But this is a case where authorship is everything because I want the words I live by to mean more than words. Although I love Stan Lee, I have so much more assurance in the truth of words spoken by Jesus Christ, Creator and Savior of the Universe.

Ossie Davis said, “Any form of art is a form of power; it has impact, it can affect change — it can not only move us, it makes us move”; I think that quotes are similar to art. Quotes necessitate action. They inspire us to move forward and encourage us to keep moving forward. Quotes tell us to live. And yet quotes are just words of other people to whom we entrust power of our belief upon. A quote — if I choose to give it power — could literally be as plain as “I walked my dog”.  A quote has power if we accept it as truth.

And so, John Green’s quote about quotes has power because I accept it as truth and will transform its words into actions. With this in mind, I think that my Quote Book is not as its name implies; rather it is a collection of words that I have granted power and have promised to take action upon. It is a compendium of thoughts I have deemed worthy to hold prestige in the ranks of my identity. The words that others declared and whispered and hoped are the ones that tell my story because they are the ones that I have chosen to tell it.

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“Keep my commands and you will live; guard my teachings as the apple of your eye. Bind them on your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart.”

-Proverbs 7:2-3

Simple Fear

I sometimes wish

that our fears

stayed as simple

as the monster under the bed

stayed as simple

as the shadow in the corner.

Instead of life choices

and concerns over our nation

and how our future will look five, ten years from now.

But those fears from childhood

only represent the anxieties of adulthood

fear and worry about the unknown and uncontrollable.

But only sometimes do I wish that.

Only sometimes because

I know my God holds history and the future

in the palm of His hand

just like He holds me.

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“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”

-Matthew 6:25-27

The 4 Choices of the Heart

The world,

even the adrenaline in you body,

will tell you that you have two choices:

fight or flight.

And this might be true for physical crisis

but for matters of the heart?

Not so much.

We put that emotion

that heartache

that conflict

that wronged feeling

that abuse

that anxiety

that tangled thread of life

on a shelf

under a bed

in a closet

in a drawer

We ignore it

and hope that a magician comes along and makes it disappear.

Except there are no magicians for heartache

there is no remedy from memory

there is no elixir for the heart.

When told there is only fight or flight,

we rebel by doing nothing.

We choose the third option: let it fester.

We let that emotion fester and grow

into a thing without edges or boundaries,

something uncontrollable and unknowable

because we don’t even want to recognize its existence.

The world tells us that emotions are for the weak

and so we let the brain drive

and the heart barely survive.

The heart is like an overgrown, abandoned mansion

covered in poison ivy of festering emotion,

it once was great

but now it is just ignored.

Oh, poor, poor heart

will you ever beat again?

***

Then along came a gardener

He looked at this overgrown, abandoned mansion

and said that He could make it better

He came armed with three nails, an old wooden cross, and a dump truck of grace

He cleaned up this slow beating heart of mine

and is glad to do it night after night

because He’s a gardener that is what He does.

He prunes and cuts and nurtures and waters

and watches the flowers of my restored life grow.

The world might tell you that there are two options: fight or flight,

others might choose a third option of festering,

but the gardener has told me the best option:

forgiveness.

He showed me by His example

He showed me His scarred palms and back

He showed me grace.

And now I will go and tell the world about the gardner

about His best option

about His grace

I will shout from the mountain tops about my salvation

I  receive grace to show grace.

***

Oh, poor, poor heart

will you ever beat again?

Yes, yes you will

because my Redeemer’s heart still beats.

I Thanked God for You Today

I thanked God for you today

I thanked Him for your smile

I thanked Him for your silliness

I thanked Him for your patience

I thanked Him for your understanding

I thanked Him for your spunk

I thanked Him for your optimism

I thanked Him for your funniness

I thanked Him for your excitement about life

I thanked Him for you being a Christian

I thanked Him for your support

I thanked Him for your wittiness

I thanked Him for you

I would want to say that I thank Him for you everyday

but gratitude is such a fickle emotion

And so now, in one of those surpluses of appreciation

I want to tell you that I care about you

and that I am so glad that you are in my life

You truly are sunshine to my rainy days

and stars in my night.

I thanked God for you today, my dearest and best friend.

Pixabay/user:Mary_L

Singing Life

Since I was little I loved the songs at church that I could put motions to. Songs like “I Cry Out” or “On Christ’s Solid Rock I Stand”. The motions weren’t something that I learned but instead something that I did by choice.

I grew up with these songs and my motions to them. My sister and I on either side of our father acting out the words to the songs. Now it is not just us acting out the words but also my mother as well as my cousin and her boyfriend.

As Christians, when we sing songs in church we sometimes act like they are just words and not worship of the One who spoke the universe into existence. We act like they are just silly little diddies and not teachings and promises for our everyday lives.

This is why I think that acting out the words to the songs are important. The songs can be just as important as the sermon or any other part of the church service. I believe that every part of the worship service has a reason to be there.

In a self-centered society, Christians seem to take the stance that church services are for their own benefit. They are not, church services are for God’s benefit. We sing praises and thankfulness to God, and yes the songs get us in the right mood for the rest of the church service but that is not their entire purpose.

Acting out the words to the songs helps me internalize their meanings. When I sing “Make Me a Blessing” I want to confidently say that I will be a blessing. When I sing “Go Tell It on the Mountain” I want to confidently say that I will share the Good News. When I sing “Blessed Assurance” I want to confidently say that I have felt a bit of heaven.

Acting out the words to the songs can also help others. When my father, sister, and I acted out the words eventually other people caught on. Just think if we carried this message further: to act on God’s Word and to see it spread.

So I challenge you, the next time you hear a Christian song (whether at church or on the radio) try acting out the words in the song. This doesn’t have to be a big interpretive dance routine, just listen to the song with more than your ears. Try not only acting out the words during the song but also in your everyday life.

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Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.

-Psalm 95:1

God’s Infinite Love

The rambling of a Christian AP Calculus AB student about God’s love and math:

God’s love is ∞ (infinite) and always continuous

God’s love doesn’t have holes or sharp turns or cusps in it

God’s love has no limits

Makes your sins DNE (Does Not Exist)

God and us were parallel lines,

we were never going to intersect

but then Jesus died on a cross † (perpendicular lines)

so that we could meet.

God’s love is irrational (π), it doesn’t make sense why He would love us like He does

but it is real (7) and radical (√) anyway

When we share God’s love it does not subtract (-) from our own;

rather, it multiplies (*) and adds (+) meaning to other’s lives

He knows eXactly where to find us

and He knows “Y” (why) we are there

He knows you from you minima to your maxima

His love circles you X² + Y² = r²

from your center to your tangent line

To love God back has the absolute greatest value

We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God

It is a simple opposite over hypotenuse equation

the opposite side is always shorter than the hypotenuse

our sinned filled lives are always shorter than God’s perfection

God’s love to our love is not ∝ (proportional)

it is always > (greater than)

***

Of course I’ve saved the best for last: God’s math

1 cross + 3 nails = 4given

Love Extravagantly

I created a Christian mix tape this past summer and my mom, sister and her best friend and I were driving to an amusement park listening to the CD. On the mix was Proof of Your Love by for King and Country (which has the best music video I have ever seen in a Christian song). In the middle of the song are these beautiful words about love. We all stopped and just listened. Not until months later did I find where the words came from. I get a Bible verse on my phone everyday and I like the Message translation better than NIV in most cases. When I first read these words, I was dumbstruck. I could easily recite 1 Corinthians 13 – which is known as the love chapter – in the New International Version, but when I read it in the Message it felt so new and alive. So below I am sharing with you the Message version of 1 Corinthians 13.

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If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.

If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.

If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.

We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.

Saved For a Purpose

I had the pleasure of listening to Nicole F. Nelson at my church today. It was an excellent message about us being saved for a purpose and that purpose is to use our talents to help others as well as share the Good News, especially when there are so many challenges in this world. Her words speak from God’s heart and they blessed me and I hope that they bless you as well. Below is the video of her sermon.