A Beautiful Week

THIS WEEK has been amazing fun, just amazing. This week has meant springtime for me. I have noticed the bright flowers more than usual, and God is surprising me with marvelous little miracles even within twenty feet of my house. Earlier this week I heard two birds taking turns chirping at one another, one and the other, one and the other, a very active conversation, right outside my window. So I pulled up the blinds. There were two birds, not only one, but two, hanging out right where I could see. They were not right next to each other, but flitting about the fence and the tree, and one even sat on the ledge outside my window. I wondered what was interesting them so much, so I looked around. Looking at the ground, I saw Orange the Cat (we call him that because he is orange) looking up at them. Ooh, they did not like having that cat over there! More than once this week I tapped on the glass and made a face at Orange and he went away, because I didn't want him to bother them. It was such a sweet little scene, cat and birds. I wonder if those birds have a nest around there, in the tree right outside my window. Wouldn't that be something! This is the beautiful week that the greenish buds in that same tree have turned white and exploded into clusters of wedding lace all over the place. I am really fond of this kind of tree, and what do you know, I have been seeing them more often than usual this week, when they are all blooming into lace and pearly beads.
And out in the front yard the nice-smelling orange flowers have just now gotten dry and the petals fallen off, revealing little round green things with the flower-centers on one end, the baby oranges. I get to look at that right before I leave for school and right when I get home, because the orange tree is next to the driveway. God is beautiful! He put beauty in flowers and animals and fruits and trees. He put it in DNA and in stars and clouds, and I just can't get enough! Oh, how anyone doesn't know He exists - all this certainly didn't get here by itself.
On Thursday a really cool thing happened. My family was trying to leave for school, and a little ways down the road we heard the tires making a freaky sound. Mom got out and discovered, to her massive frustration, that we had a flat tire. Okay, what in the world do we do now? Mom left and went to see if one of our neighbors could help us, and I just sat in the passenger seat praying silently that God would help us please to get to school safely, even if we were not on time. A few minutes later Mom returned with the man who lives next door, Mr. Krug, who rather kindly helped her change the tire and get back on the road. But the really cool thing is that Mr. Krug usually leaves his house around the same time we leave, 7:30, and that day, of all days, he was planning to leave a little later. That's really cool! I love how God is there helping with even the daily frustrations. And even if we would have had to skip school to push the car to a mechanic (which we wouldn't have been forced to do in any realistic situation, don't worry) I know God would still have been there making everything okay, even if it doesn't look like it's okay. I'm grateful to Mr. Krug for helping us out, to Mom for driving us to school all week, and to God for answering my prayer and letting us get to school both safely and on time. He is present and active in peaople's lives, more present than the air, harder to escape than one's own body. It's so marvelous that He sees everything and knows everything, and loves us anyway, and stays and helps us and makes us strong enough to do what we must for His glory.
On Friday Will took me to see a beautiful movie called Letters to God. I recommend it to you. It is about a little boy with cancer who gives alot of people inspiration by writing letters to God about his life and his sickness. A Bible verse accompanied the movie, 2 Corinthians 3:3 "Clearly you are an epistle [or letter] of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart." This means that we are a way for the message of Christ to be carried, so people will 'read' it and understand it. The little boy in the movie did this by very successfully imitating Christ's loving, patient, forgiving character toward both friends and enemies. Really nice movie. I don't think we could have picked a better one to see. It makes me want to be more like Jesus.
On Saturday I was very blessed to attend both sessions of Life Group at Five Guys with Jenny White. I went to the first group's meeting which was technically just me and Jenny this week. I always have a wonderful time when I just get to talk to Jenny one on one about the chapter we're in from The Purple Book. This week is Chapter Seven: Spiritual Family & Church Life, which includes an important passage: Acts 2:42-47 "[42] They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. [43] Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. [44] All the believers were together and had everything in common. [45] They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. [46] Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, [47] praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved."
Let's look at these people for a minute. They are the first church, where it all started. They are exactly what we ought to be now, both as a whole church (the whole body of Christ, all over the world, not just in individual church buildings) and as individual people. The chapter also discusses the fact that everyone in the church has an important role, and the whole body depends on all the other parts. The people's character is joyful, generous, unselfish, simple, honest, devoted, reverent. This is how all the Christians, the church, ought to be now. They gave each other what they needed, they ate together and hung out. They were really good friends, they were all one being. Jesus wants us to be unified like that, not divided up. After all, He loves the church like a man loves his wife. He doesn't want her to be all cut up and bruised because each little part couldn't get along with all the others. I was telling Jenny, I don't know what I'd do if my right hand decided that he hates my left hand and moved out. I'd need to get the issue resolved in time to type my blog post on Sunday. I pray to have a heart like the early church, just that generous and unselfish and uncomplicated, just that honestly devoted. I pray that the church today, both as a global whole and as individual members, could live in that loving way, not only on Sunday but on every single day of the week, not only to strong, solid Christians but also to newer Christians and to non-Christians, to friends and enemies and strangers. That's how love works. It doesn't matter who you are, you don't earn love. We can't earn Christ's sacrifice, the ultimate demonstration of love, so we certainly can't earn for people to show us unselfish love and to go out of their way for us at all costs. I hope we can all have the heart of the early church, which honestly only wants to glorify God, the way He wants to be glorified, never making up its own rules and always giving honor and glory where they are due. We can be like the early church by supposrting each other and praying with each other. We are sisters and brothers before we are coworkers, buddies, classmates or anything else.
I had a wonderful time talking with Jenny in the first Life Group meeting. I stayed over for the second meeting, where Kelsie and Gabby joined us, because I was waiting for my friend Sweetu to meet me. I have been wanting for SO LONG to get to see her. I've been trying for more than a month to set up a time we could meet at the town center. Her birthday was last month on the 13th of March, and since she had expressed a desire to have her own Bible, I wanted to be able to get her one. So Happy Belated Birthday, Sweetu, if you're reading this.
The second meeting was as nice as the first, with all the ducks and seagulls waddling around nearby. I had my friends pray with me a little while before I had to leave, and when Sweetu came we walked over and picked her out a blue copy of the Holy Bible, and we spent the next couple hours having a BLAST at the town center and walking everywhere. It was very exciting. I am very glad I got to see her and I hope we can do that again soon.
It's been a beautiful week. Go outside and take a few lung-fulls of the air God made just for you to breathe. Stand under a tree and look up at the sky, and then look down and see the little flowers. This next week is going to be beautiful too, if you live like you know God is right next to you, above you, inside and outside of you, and there is no mountain of laundry, tasks, homework, questions, pain, or debt that can make Him far away. All we have to do is trust Him that He is close and acknowledge His power over all situations. Trust me, it works out alot better that trusting in yourself.
Please leave any comments you have, I'd love to hear them. Have a blessed week.