Life As A Museum: P-booking Episode 3

I'm back again! The loose cannon has been tamed. Here I am, thinking about museums.

Hmmm. I've been to many. The Milwaukee Public Art Museum was pretty sweet, even if I only went because my sister's artwork was selected to hang there (so proud!).

Then we get the Waukesha County Museum...been there a few times. It's pretty small, but was homey; I liked it because it felt like you were there really learning about people's lives.

The wonderful Milwaukee County Museum is quite the show. My favorite part is the Streets of Old Milwaukee, where you take a trip down memory lane to see what life was like yesteryear - never complete without a trip to the old-fashioned candy store!

My dad would say that the Packer Hall of Fame should count, but I don't remember much from there except wanting to leave...sorry, I just think gymnastics is much cooler.

I went to Washington, D.C. on a class trip, and made a trip to Smithsonian road. There's so much history preserved in such a small area! Although I was quite jealous that my roommate last year went and saw Nastia Liukin's Olympic gold-winning leotard in the Museum of American History.

And last year, I myself was featured in Beloit's own Wright Art Museum. I felt pretty cool, even it was just poetry and it was part of Artletics.

All of my favorite exhibits told a story, they gave me a connection to the creator, or the person it was about. Perhaps this explains my fascination with people watching - you can see so much from the way a person carries himself, what his eyes are doing, what he carries, what he wears. This world is a museum, an ongoing exhibit of life.

This is pretty exciting to think about for me. We are God's museum. Our Creator made and formed everything on this planet. It's all one big demonstration of His love and creativity. Did you know that when the Lord had finished forming every mountain, every river, every star, every animal, every plant, He said "It is good" (Genesis 1:25). And after He had made the very first man and woman, He looked around and said, "It is very good"(Genesis 1:31) ? The Lord of the universe thinks that we are "very good". That is awesome! We were made for His pleasure and glory, to delight in who He is, King of kings and Lord of lords.

What are we a display of if not that of our Lord Jesus Christ? When He returns for His creation, we will not have our money, art, or fancy buildings. All we will have is our lives. Did we worship Him? Did we make Him look good? Did we make His name known across all the earth? (Matthew 28:19-20) I don't know about you, but I certainly want my Father to take pleasure in the exhibit I paint with my life. His Spirit dwells in me (1 Corinthians 6:19-20), and I'd better make it look pretty awesome!

That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Philippians 2:10-11

Breaking Out On My Own: My Favorite Subject

I haven't written here for too long; I haven't had a prayerbooking prompt. Well I miss this, so I'm breaking out on my own, to talk about one of my favorite things in the entire universe, and it is certainly the thing I value the most.

I wanted to talk about grace, because God has been showing me so much the last few months. I memorized the book of Matthew, I'm leading a Mark Bible study, and our Christian Fellowship is doing Ephesians, I heard a story of someone truly understanding grace for the first time, I watched Fruitcake and Ice Cream, where I heard this phrase, "When you get grace, grace gets you, and you have to get excited about it". I read Six Hours One Friday and No Wonder They Call Him the Savior by Max Lucado, alongside Luke and John.

I wanted to share some quotes from the afore mentioned books:

"You make mistakes. God doesn't. And He made you"

"He is not on that cross for his sins. He is there for ours...such is the definition of grace"

"What does that Friday mean? ...Six hours. One Friday. What do you do with those six hours on that Friday?"

Here's what I say: In six hours, one man changed everything in the world forever. Jesus Christ hung on the cross for all of our sins. He died for me, for every lie I've told, every time I've hurt someone, every time I looked away from God. He got what I deserved. And now, I have a chance to thank Him with my life. Live a life to honor the God who gave all He had to make it possible.

"Jesus' love does not depend on what we do for him...You are valuable just because you exist. Not because of what you do or what you have done, but simply because you are"

"To accept grace means to accept its necessity, and must folks don't like to do that. To accept grace also means that one realizes his despair and most people aren't too keen on doing that either"

"...grace doesn't have to be logical. If it did, it wouldn't be grace"

"It's not every day that you find someone who will give you a second chance - much less someone who will give you a second chance every day"

"Look at the forgiveness in those open arms and take courage. And, by the way, never were those arms spread so wide as they were on the Roman cross"

The grace of God is this: He became a Man to bear the weight of all of our sin and transgression. He took our darkness and literally became our sins, nailed to that cross. And He did it with arms wide open. Nailed open actually. So even as we remember His blood pouring out, we know that He will welcome us lovingly.

There is no greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. John 15:13

All I can say is thank You, Lord. Your grace is more amazing every day!

I am here, right now, living and breathing, because Jesus Christ gave up His life so that I could have mine. And now, all He wants is to know me, to have a personal, intimate relationship with me. The God of this world has created me for His pleasure, for His mission. I get to be a part of that! And it's all because of grace. God at work. God, not me, at work. I can't earn it, I can't prove I'm worthy of it, it's just there. It is God's gift to me, and all I have to do is accept it! Wow. I have, and I will continue to strive to live a life worthy of this gift, the best gift I've ever received.

But God, who is abundant in mercy, because of His great love that He had for us, made us alive with the Messiah even though we were dead in trespasses. By grace you are saved! He also raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavens, in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might display the immeasurable riches of His grace in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you are saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God's gift. Ephesians 2:4-8

Communication

The building block of every solid relationship. With so many ways to express yourself, it's almost ridiculous how absent this simple principle can be. We can text, call, talk, dance, sing, write letters, write an email, comment on my blog (hint hint), make music, run around, make a facial expression. These, naturally, are not all inclusive, but I think I've touched enough to make a post out of it.

Texting: How do you relate texting and spirituality? Well every day I send out a Bible verse of the day to member of Christian Fellowship, and sometimes I feel like people don't care all that much. But then there are times where I temporarily forget and someone asks why they haven't gotten a verse yet, or someone responds with a "wow that was just what I needed". Prayers have been lifted up through texts; I have found out about answered prayers. I still can't picture Jesus with a cell phone, but at least His name is being honored through them.

Calling and talking are similar: How many God-moments have I had based on having the right conversation at the right time? Praying together, chatting together, learning how to love each other better. Talking to God-His line is available 24/7!

Dance: Free movement where we are no longer ourselves. We get lost in a world not our own; for me it is the most personal form of worship. No one has ever seen me worship dance, because it's sacred to me.

Sing: Wow I'm a bad singer, however, I love it! Belting out a message is such a great feeling, though, so is softly whispering a slow melody.

Letters: I write letters to God, I write letters to friends. I think it's so much more intimate than just a phone call or an email. You have to actually take time to think about what you want to write, and I often feel the Spirit guiding my thoughts and leading me to something completely different from my intent but infinitely better.

Emails: My favorite use of email is quick affirmations. Telling people in that brief moment how I see God moving in them, how glad I am for their lives; these are the things that make people smile.

Making Music: I play the violin and guitar, which are two similar but very different instruments. When I can't even find words to sing, I can pick up either one and make a joyful noise unto the Lord (Psalm 100:1) and know that He is with me, hearing me.

Running Around: Running is spiritual; it's all you. You and God. You're the only ones in your head, your body a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). Running is an expression of freedom, or maybe, as in my weekdays, it's a sign that I'm just a busy person. If you want me to walk slow, you can forget us walking together. How interesting; sometimes I run in constant noise, and then when I practice, I race, I'm actually stoked by a quiet flame.

Facial Expressions: Faces say it all. Eyes, mouth, cheeks, nose. I make a lot of faces that take people awhile to understand, and I'm not sure how spiritual this one is for me. Eyes, I suppose, in prayer, in church, in an apology, an affirmation. It adds to the song, the words.

And now I'm supposed to think about a prayer, poem, phrase, or mantra. This is easy; I have one I actually do get stuck in my head on a regular basis, even while running.

Forsaking All I Trust Him...aka FAITH

Running in FAITH is chasing after God, whether it's physical running or spiritual, I run.

I sing in FAITH when I surrender who I am, become vulnerable at the foot of my Savior, forgetting who I am for all He is.

Making music in FAITH is leaving the door of my room open and letting people actually hear what I'm doing; that perhaps it will be a small seed of Truth in their hearts.

And my ultimate goal in life is to walk, talk,see, and live by FAITH alone.

Jeremy Camp: Walk By Faith

Amen to that!

We live by faith, not by sight. 2 Corinthians 5:17

Week One: Holy Moments

As a Christian, a lot of my holy moments are cliché. The day I asked Jesus into my heart, my baptism, my confirmation. But then there are those moments where I rose to new levels in my relationship with the Lord, the biggest and freshest in my mind are within the last 15 months; right before coming to college, winter break 2009-2010, and during/after my summer internship with Generations of Virtue ministries. Then there are those moments when I’ve just looked around and the only word I could use to describe what I was seeing, feeling thinking has been “God”; on top of a mountain in Washington, watching a sunrise (on the ocean, on a run), looking up into the stars on a clear night, or even simply watching the shadows of light, the drizzling rain, the drifting snow. It’s learning to play guitar, and rekindling my passion for the warm rich sounds of the violin. They are group prayers when I’ve felt the connection between people so strongly I didn’t know how to ever go without it, memorizing a new verse, having an old favorite verse come to life in a new way. In a way, I believe each moment in my life has been holy, with the Lord’s hand upon every step.

We're supposed to think of any kind of object that represents our ideas of holy days. My object, I think, is going to have to be this video:

I love the lyrics, but I also love the story behind the song. It’s about Chris August rededicating his life to Christ, a really exciting, emotional, and powerful moment in someone’s life. I also enjoy all the nature references, because to me, all you have to do to see God is step outside and look at what He’s made.

Lord,

A prayer is nothing but the many ways You use to reach me, and I to reach You. Through Your Son dying on the cross, we can have this supreme intimate relationship. My observing Your world, and living for You in the midst of it, is a continuous song of praise. You’ve blessed me so dearly, and so completely. Your love is all I need. You have my heart, You not only have my life, but are it. You are everything good and true and real to me, the only thing that never changes. You amaze me, God.

Psalm 63:

God, You are my God; I eagerly seek You. I thirst for You; my body faints for You in a land that is dry, desolate, and without water. So I gaze on You in the sanctuary to see Your strength and glory. My lips will glorify You because Your faithful love is better than life. So I will praise You as long as I live; at Your name, I will lift up my hands. You satisfy me as with rich food; my mouth will praise You with joyful lips. When, on my bed, I think of You, I meditate on You during the night watches because You are my help; I will rejoice in the shadow of Your wings. I follow close to You; Your right hand holds on to me. But those who seek to destroy my life will go into the depths of the earth. They will be given over to the power of the sword; they will become the jackals’ prey. But the king will rejoice in God; all who swear by Him will boast, for the mouths of liars will be shut.

In Jesus’ Name Amen.

But anyone joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him. 1 Corinthians 6:17

Intro To Prayerblogging

Ah how wonderfully busy life as a Christian college student athlete can be! But hey, we like our blogs, and we've got to have our prayer so why not have our cake and eat it too? Prayerblogging comes from embracing the customization of the practice of prayer and worship, inspired by a fellow student. She sends the prompts, I'll be filling them here. Jesus Christ is not only the one and only Lord of my life, He is my life. I worship in a journal, in the Scripture, on the violin, on the guitar, with my verbal prayer, with my life, with my (awful) singing voice, and now I'm extending it to the blogosphere. I'm excited for this journey to a new realm of spirituality. Here we go!

Rejoice always! Pray without ceasing. Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18