April Showers bring May Flowers...

GROWTH

I mean two different forms of this word. 

The first is spiritual growth. The fact that we do not have to be stagnant Christians is such a blessing. God reveals things to us everyday, and we are constantly learning. 

The second is growth in nature. Even though it's January, it feels like spring right now. This also has to do with my beauty entry. Spring is my favorite season because of  all the newness that it brings. It is analogous to the Christian life - we go through times of hardship and barrenness (winter), but eventually the Lord leads us through it and we come out as something beautiful. 

The Ship of Friends

FRIENDSHIP

I'm so very thankful for the friends that the Lord has placed in my life. They are all so very different and unique, but for some reason I love them all, and they love me ;)

"There's no business like show business!"

ENTERTAINMENT

The obvious reason I'm thankful for this is because without it, I would be out of a job. :)

But it also baffles me that Christ not only saved us from the penalty of sin, but He also doesn't make us work like slaves on this earth. We have so many joys and get to play so much and be entertained. 

I love entertaining people. Right now I believe it's my calling, and where my talents lie. :)

Body Movement for the Glory of God

DANCE

Yup, I'm thankful for it. Not just because it's incredibly fun to do, but also for the connection it can provide with my Heavenly Father. A few days ago in Chapel the Dance Ministries group performed a piece that lifted my heart towards heaven, and provoked praises to my Lord. 

It's mysterious how the arts draw us closer to the One who created us. I guess it has to do somewhat with the Beauty idea, and the fact that when we are creative we are imitating our Creator. 

Dancing is one of my new discoveries of worship since I've been at college, and it's a wonderful way to praise His Name. 

"Let them praise His name with dance: let them sing praises unto Him with the timbrel and the harp." 

Psalm 149:3

Gotta catch up on my thankfulness...

CONSCIOUSNESS

Yes, I am thankful that I am not in a coma. Ha Ha no I mean something totally different by this word. The past few days I have been wallowing in my own hardships...and the Lord has opened my eyes to the difficulties and trials of others - and they are so much bigger than mine!

My trials seem so puny compared to what I see in my friends' lives. This has caused me to stop grumbling (or at least try to) about my own petty hardships, and work on encouraging others.

Thank you, Lord, for making me conscious and aware of other people's trials in order that I may minister to them and forget myself.

"For the Beauty of the Earth"

BEAUTY

This is what I was thankful for yesterday. (Well I suppose I still am today, but yeah...whatever.) 

Life is beautiful. Everywhere around you there is beauty. Not only in nature, but in people, words, actions, and circumstances. 

It is said that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." In a way this is true. If you look at the world as being created by a powerful and loving God, then you will see His plan for it and see it as beautiful. It is not perfect though; since the Fall it has been scarred and twisted by sin.

This is why we can look forward to heaven! It is the ultimate place of beauty and perfection! 

Even though this world's beauty has its flaws, it points us to the day when we will never get tired, our faces will be without blemish, and we will sing perfectly and continuously praising our King!

Some beautiful things that I saw/discovered yesterday: A sunset, a hairstyle, God's infallible  plan of salvation, a hug, and music theory. :) 

Lightbulb in the Gloom

Sometimes I receive little messages from my Heavenly Father (what I like to call 'lightbulbs') - they are not dissimilar to pulling my eyelids back a little farther in order for me to see things more clearly and properly.
I received a message today as I was walking in the gloomy doom (or doomy gloom?) on my way to my first class. It totally brightened my day. God showed me that I have so much to be thankful for.
So I know you're thinking, "WELL DUH!!!!! doesn't EVERYONE know that?!??!"
Well, yes, I see your point - but just because we "know" that we ought to be thankful, doesn't necessarily mean that we consciously are, or that we ever stop to ponder what we are actually thankful for.
I started praising God for all of his marvelous works in my life, and when I got into the Prayer Room later today I didn't know what to pray about. My mind baffles me sometimes.
My dad always told  me that if you didn't know what to pray about, you could always go through the alphabet and think of a word for each letter on a topic that you wanted to pray about (i.e. God's attributes, people, etc.) I realized that this is what I should do for my prayer of thanksgiving. Unfortunately, I did not have enough time to go through the entire alphabet at that time.
Actually, due to my spastic brain, I only got through the first letter.
But that is OK because now I have resolved to spend the next 36 days or so writing about one thing I am thankful for, corresponding with each letter of the alphabet. I will also finally discover how many letters are actually in the alphabet.
So, my word for today (the first day of this great adventure) is.......
ATONEMENT
Yeah, seriously, that's what popped into my head when I thought of the letter "A". And, like a lot of things that pop into my head, I feel as though I don't thoroughly know the meaning of this word.
So I looked up the definition on dicitonary.com (because that's where all the answers to your heart's desires are located), and the first definition was, "satisfaction or reparation for a wrong or injury; amends".
I feel like this definition is somewhat satisfactory...except that the atonement that I'm talking about is on a much much much grander and more epic scale. The second definition (which was prefaced by the phrase, "sometimes initial capital letter: Theology") said, "the doctrine concerning the reconciliation of God and humankind, especially as accomplished through the life, suffering, and death of Jesus Christ".
So that's pretty good for a website, but there's still so much more.
Romans 5:8-11 says, "But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement."
So in order for us to be saved from the WRATH of GOD, Jesus Christ had to SHED HIS BLOOD and DIE for us. Wow. Atonement is the beginning for all the other "theologically-sound words" such as "Justification", "Redemption", and "Sanctification". It describes the actual act of Christ mending the immense wrong in the world. Beautiful. 
Atonement is definitely a word I'm going to use a lot now. It makes me think of a hymn but I can't remember it at present. When I think of it I can't help but be thankful for what Christ went through in order for my wretched person to be saved from wrath! Praise be his glorious and merciful name!

But What About the Polar Bears?

So I read somewhere the other day that clothes were invented with a dual purpose: to protect us from the weather and to symbolically cover our sin. 


I thought about the Garden of Eden, and I had a question: Did God create winter/cold? Because if the world was perfect when God created it, then it must have been intended to remain perfect as long as an imperfection didn't enter the world. But in order for the world to be perfect, the trees must continually bear fruit so that man would not have to work for his food. So were the trees created impermeable to winter? Or was cold weather a product of sin? Sometimes I feel like it is ;)


Let's assume that God did create winter in a perfect world. Man would have to be resistant to cold (because he wouldn't have had clothes to protect him), or he would have had an impeccable immune system so that he would not get sick. The animals probably would have been created as we know them, because almost all of them were created with some sort of mechanism in order to protect them from the cold or avoid extinction. Like I said before, the trees would have to be impermeable to cold so that man could continually eat the fruit from them for food. 


So continuing on our train of thought that God created winter, what would sin cause? Sin caused man to become weak and mortal so that he would need coverings and buildings to be protected from the weather. The trees would also be affected and would become withered and barren during the winter months. 


But does the Bible give any evidence of this change occurring? Besides the fact that man became mortal and had to wear clothing after the Fall, there is nothing else that has been revealed to be true. If you know of a verse that may prove these statements, I would be delighted for you to inform me. 


Now I know the question you all are wondering about: What about the Polar Bears? Yes, yes, I will answer it presently. I often have the problem of thinking that the perfect world that God created only entailed the Garden of Eden. That is not true because Genesis 1 says that man is to rule over "all the creatures". If the world was created perfect and God created cold, what about the cold weather animals? WHAT ABOUT THE POLAR BEARS??? Did they travel all the way to the Garden of Eden in order to be named by Adam? Wouldn't they have died if they did that? 


Or if God did not create winter and it was thus caused by sin, were the polar bears caused by sin? This I know is not true, because evolution is not true and there is no evidence in the Bible that any animals were produced from sin, even spiders. 

I will stop this philosophical argument here, as the only answer I have to my question is, "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law." (Deuteronomy 29:29). I am perfectly content with the mystery and awesomeness of God's power, plan, and polar bears. :D