Destiny

This week, I am happy to say, has been a week of blessing.  There is nothing quite like blessing to remind you of what an excitement for life looks like.  It is amazing how busy we can get with our head down, grinding away, that we forget how beautiful the trees, birds, and sky are.

And what is the best gift worthy of lifting your head for is?  Easter.  No, not the bunny and colored eggs (however cute those traditions are), but the pure unadulterated gift from the son of God, himself: life.  And what a beautiful gift that is.  A gift, that unlike most, is not earned, but freely given.

Yes, I do fully understand the market will be flooded with well-meaning bloggers speaking of the value of Jesus' gift.  Regardless of this, my week of blessing will be fittingly incomplete without the mention of "The Christian Super Bowl" as our pastor so fondly calls it.

But anyways, one of the greatest lessons I have learned is that Christ's gift really was one of the only free gifts in life.  The rest take hard work and a lot of grind, but the reward at the end is so bright and beautiful that it makes all the hard work seemingly incomparable.  There is a sort of parable that comes to mind.  The Chinese bamboo tree doesn't break ground for four years after it is planted and then on the fifth year it grows 90 feet in 5 weeks.  Thus is the intricate story of success.  The beginning seems bleak and requires a certain multitude of faith in order to see its value.  Then, all of a sudden, after faith exceeds possibility, the impossible takes shape.  And what a beautiful thing that impossibility becomes.

I will be honest, this week I was laying in bed staring at the ceiling, thinking about why in the world faith has to exist.  Why can't God just reveal himself and then everyone could just sit in his glory?  Because God wants more for us.  He wants more for us than a mediocre acceptance of truth.  He wants us to be challenged and stand tough.  One of the best blessings he could ever bestow is truth after a lifetime of living by faith alone.  Only then will we grow to be all He longs for us to be.  Only then will we fulfill our destiny.

And Jesus answered them, “Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen. Matthew 21:21