can I?

Pride shall be my downfall.

Pride in school, pride in life, pride in religion.

I read an article about how someone filed a lawsuit that the inauguration contains the phrase "so help me God," and the plaintiff claimed that this shows that believers are condescending and just want to show that they are better than nonbelievers.

I'm not going to deny that sometimes I have that mindset. And so it comes down to whether I am a good witness or not of my Lord. C.S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity that pride is the greatest vice of them all, and that all other sins stem from this pride. He has never been more right and more insightful in anything. If I were not prideful in all that I did, if I were humble, if I were ready to love unconditionally...

And so one of my friends said that the word "agape" had an impact on her. Unconditional love from God, loving beyond the self. This "agape" comes from dying to oneself, from killing the pride that lies within, for pride is the self.

So the question that faces me today, faces me in the future is: "Can I?"

Can I kill my pride?
Can I give myself up?
Can He change me?
Will He change me?

the 27th of December

I'm supposed to write about what was significant to me this past semester for LIFE group.

So...
1) Getting baptized
2) Growing in Christ, in prayer and in meditation and in worship
3) Having found my niche in so little a time
4) Grateful for my friends
5) Grateful for the structure that I have in my life
6) Grateful for having done well in classes

The thing that has the greatest significance for me comes from my relationship with Christ, which has grown through so many different avenues that I don't know really which one had the largest influence.
Hopefully this growth continues growing exponentially next semester!

Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas, and Joy to the World… This is the first Christmas where Jesus is at least relevant in any sense for me.

    The one thing that seems to hit me here and now is that

        Life's NOT FAIR.

I'm not talking about in the sense where five-year-olds normally talk about "fairness."Our normal expectancy of what is fair refers to when we feel like we have been cheated out of what we deserve. A lot of the times we say it because we were expecting something that we really DON'T deserve.

So as a Christian, a basic belief is that I do deserve to be sent to hell because of my own sinful nature. I will never dispute that – I know how screwed up I am. And in ALL fairness, that should be my fate because that is what I deserve. But what God did when Jesus was born on earth was something beyond that – an innate unfairness, so to say, because he was born for no reason except to make life unfair for us.

That's what I rejoice in – that life is indeed unfair for me, because there is a Savior who is willing to grant me my life through his birth, suffering, and death. And since I was baptized just a couple weeks ago (December 6^th), this is even more real to me - I've just professed that I'm willing to identify myself with that Savior.

So this Christmas has special meaning for me. It's a day full of life.