The Project of Me

God volunteered Job. It wasn't that Satan had already targeted Job and God allowed it to happen. Satan came looking for someone to accuse and God suggested Job. Why do bad things happen to "good" people. The Bible tells us that no one is truly good. But Job was presented as blameless and upright ( Job 1:1 ). The same word used to describe Job is used to describe the animals offered as sacrifices. So you could say Job's lived his life as a pleasing sacrifice unto the Lord. That's about as close to being a "good person" as you can get. When Satan came before God, he was looking for a follower of God's he could attack and make God look bad.   And God said, " What about Job? " Satan challenges God, saying the only reason Job follows God is all the wealth God had blessed him with. "Take it all away and I bet Job will curse you to your face!" Satan wanted to prove that people only follow God when it benefits them ( Job 1:6-12 ). H...

" If God worked in ways that we could understand, then he wouldn't be an awesome God." -17 year old me May 31, 2009 was the start of a lifetime of learning to trust God with what I cannot control. I had my first ever seizures in the church bathroom on a Sunday morning, was diagnosed with viral encephalitis, and spent 18 days in Children's Hospital. I lived 8 years with no seizures and no complications. But in 2017, I started having seizures and was diagnosed with epilepsy. Today, my seizures are mostly controlled by medication with my last "big" seizure being 3.5 years ago. But epilepsy still forces me to daily trust God with my health and wellbeing. When I read through the posts written by young me on this day throughout the years, there's a part of me that wants to say to that younger version of myself, "Just wait... you have NO idea what's coming." But I think adult me needs to listen to young me instead. Jesus tells us to have childlik...

The past two years of my life have been hard, but the past 6 months of my life have been especially hard. I'm in a season of life where I feel as if God is mercilessly piling hardships on me. I’ve been doing a lot of figurative stomping my feet and angry fist-shaking at Heaven. Part of the reason I’ve taken up hiking is that it gives me quiet, peaceful, distraction-free time where I can be completely alone with God in nature and we can duke it out and deal with these things. Recently, I was watching “The Chosen” and learned about the "Dayenu," a song of gratitude sung during the Passover Seder. It is a Hebrew phrase meaning "it would have been enough." The idea is that even just one act of faithfulness from God is sufficient. The pattern is as such: "If God had brought us out of Egypt, but not punished the Egyptians, Dayenu". I was hiking the day after watching this episode. As I was walking through the forest, I started recalling specific moments of ...

This weekend I went on a solo-staycation (more to come on that later). I spent the day at a state park not too far from home. My family went on multiple camping trips there when I was young, so my mind was flooded with nostalgic memories when I arrived. The park seemed so much bigger and further away when I was little... funny how that works. I took a long walk and eventually found a spot to sit and put my feet in the water. I noticed some small shells in the sand by my feet and another childhood memory came to mind. I remembered swimming in the lake as a child and finding several of these same kinds of small, clam-shaped shells. I spent that day seeing how many I could find, collect, and take home with me. To my young imaginative mind, it was like finding buried treasure. They were so important to me, I believe I may still have some in a memory box. As an adult, I held that shell in my hand and the difference between then and now struck me. I almost hadn't noticed it. Even whe...