A Blessing a Day...

This is going to be a normal post, unlike my scary last post.

I've decided I need to set more goals for myself, like immediate every-day goals. I want to compile a list of blessings God has given me by adding a new blessing each day. Today's blessing is my familiy, particularly the fact that they are faithful to God. This has shaped so much of who I am and I'm thankful that I can go to them when I have questions or simply need to be inspired. There were a lot of mistakes I didn't have to make because of their guidance and their teaching.

Thanks Mom and Dad. I love you guys.

end of days

Reading this post over, I think it needs a little explanation. I don't want anyone to misinterpret. This is a reflection of my own frustrations with myself and how complacent I can sometimes be. I saw a television program about children starving in a foreign country while I was running on the treadmill at the gym one day, and it really effected me. I couldn't get the images out of my head. But I was frustrated too. A couple of years ago I signed up with "Children's International" to help support a child in Ecuador. Since then, I've forgotten why I'm doing it, and I numbly let them take the money out of my account every month without actually acknowledging that this child is a real person. I've become desensitized. I've also come to feel that support programs like this one take the humanity out of donating money. I have barely any personal interaction with the child I help support and am completely out of touch with her life. I was recently shocked to see in the updated status report of her life that she was listed as only having one sibling. When I first signed up to support her, I know she had three. What happened? Did they die? How? Was I just supposed to notice that? I don't know why, but I felt disgusted that they never notified me in any way. I want to support this girl with more than just money if I can. I could have at least written a note of encouragement through their penpal system if they'd told me. But then, maybe it was just a typo, and her siblings are still alive and well. There's really no way to be sure.

It also makes me frustrated because I know the end is near. I also know that I'm not ready for it. I'm still too afraid to be an Ambassador for Christ with boldness. I'm too afraid of rejection and of people casting stones at me. So I'm discreet about it, quiet about it. I'll answer questions if asked but I'll avoid them if I can. I admire those who can live God's way with boldness.

Anyway, that's where this came from. My complacency broke long enough for me to write this.

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Treadmill running, heart pumping, mind blanking and going nowhere fast while staring at a TV screen of children starving somewhere in who knows where with swollen bellies and I don’t understand how they can look so full and be so empty but I bought a child once, sold on the street like some figurine by a man in a yellow jacket saying “hey girl you can save the world just save this child and all will be well” so I took out my credit card and signed it away because who wouldn’t want to be the hero that day? And I chose my child, thinking so hard to make the right choice of who was worth my money and time and then there was the picture of a girl with a smile so wide and she was alive even though her country was poor but when they sent me the updates of my child in the mail her smile was gone and I couldn’t understand and it broke my heart because she looked increasingly sad and I know she had three siblings once in the original specifications of her life but in the updated version there’s only one and I wonder did they cry when they died or were they lost in the paper shuffle, busy day bustle of the business of selling kids on the street to college students like me who want to change the world as quickly and easily as I can—do it now!—got a New York minute to spare, something that my supported child in Ecuador couldn’t understand and I saw on the news today that there’s more killing in Iraq—the Apocalypse is coming, are you ready?—shot down an Apache and two soldiers died buried in the sand of a foreign land and a yellow sun that was part of God’s plan of creation—are you ready?—it’s coming to a close and they say we’re accelerating towards a certain cause and effect but the cause has taken years and the effect will be here like a thief in the night—are you ready?—I can’t keep the focus of my sight on those swollen bellies and those smoking guns because every second another 4.17 kids are born and how many of those are gonna die from sword and famine and pestilence—are you ready?—but we try to tell them, try to make them change, Ambassadors for Christ, such a shiny term for living my life and praying in quiet and trying to show the world my example but not too loudly because then I’ll be weird, labeled an outcast in the days of the end with a stamp on my head—do you get what I mean? Because the time is near and we’ve got to be watching and prepared and ready for war because we’re soldiers fighting in God’s holy army so you gotta know—are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready?

I’m not ready.

The Flood

I found a link to a bunch of different versions of the flood story across many cultures. It's amazing how even though what God did with Noah and the ark has been twisted in its retelling over the years, all these different versions of it are still recognizable as describing the same event.

Take a look: http://www.dreamscape.com/morgana/titania.htm#BAB