24 January 2010

Glancing Over my Shoulder

Today was the kick-off of Long Beach ministry as both staff and student leaders met to both plan and pray about this semester. It was such a sweet time and God really unified our hearts in vision and purpose, yet today I felt 'off.'

I couldn't help but think back to last year at my last Student Leader retreat at ASU. I spent time talking with my other senior friends discussing scripture and the Holy Spirit's role in our life. We had to speak about what legacy we wanted to leave behind and Immanuel shared a song he wrote in Mexico entitled "More than Conquerors" in which the chorus of the song still randomly resonates in my head from time to time. Life is different now.

Our regional conference is coming up and now on staff I so wish for the students of CSULB to attend and hopefully glean as much out of it as I have the past four years. It breaks my heart thinking too of friends from those years who now have made their own choices in walking away from Christ in their lives.

Reading through 1 Samuel yesterday, I was struck by a verse where Samuel is crying out to God distraught the people are asking for a king to be like all the other nations. The Lord responded saying, "Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king." What a sad thing to reject a perfect and just king!

One of my favorite painters, Caravaggio, depicted this scene entitled The Calling of St. Matthew. The thing I love about it is he painted Jesus' hand mimicking the manner of Michelangelo's Adam. The limp hand sitting there while God's was stretched out from heaven as pictured in the Sistine Chapel. But Christ came to Earth to die for us so that we may live! He took on human form for us! For an instance in time, Jesus had the ability to be weak as we are. Will you respond?

1 comment:

Gabe Hagstrom said...

Really, really great to hear. One of the greatest parts of God's plan is that salvation is something he controls, and not something WE can screw up. We just remain faithful so we can have a front row seat when to the grace show.