I might as well get the ball rolling……

Ok guys

We know that we haven’t really been posting very much lately and we are very sorry about that.

A few weeks ago we came up with a really good idea to all blog at least once a month and do it on a similar topic so it can bring about discussion and then we don’t have to wait for something exciting to happen to write. The problem is that no one really wanted to be the person that started off this new blogging adventure. Every few days a conversation comes about between us that goes something like this:

“So that blog thing, is it going to happen?”

“Yes we really want it to happen”

“So is someone going to do something about it?”

“Oh yeah as soon as I have some free time”

But nothing seems to ever happen and now I will change that. I don’t exactly remember what our final topic was going to be but since I am the one starting it I believe I have artistic license to choose the topic and I know at one point we had the idea of doing something to do with the idea of destiny, everything happening for a reason, and stuff of that genre so I will do something on that line, knowing that my opinion on this topic may be very different from some of the others.

I believe my life has already been planned, that while I make my own decisions that there is someone who knows everything that will ever happen to me and that person is God.

“For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb…

all the days ordained for me were written in your book

before one of them came to be.”

Psalm 139:13, 16

I was raised a Christian and I still am, but now the faith is my own, not my families. One of the things that I believe is that there is an all-knowing, all-powerful God who can also be known on a personal level and with that that he knows me and everything that will be happen to me. God does not control me however, if he did God would be a puppeteer and that is not something that he tries to be. I make my own decisions, my own mistakes, and God knows every one that I will make (and there will be many). I know that many people don’t believe what I do and would frankly be creeped out  with someone knowing everything about them. I take comfort in that fact, knowing that there is someone who at every single moment of every day knows what I am going through and is there. I know that he has a plan for my life and though many days I wish that he would just hurry up and tell me what that plan is I know that it will be amazing.

On the topic of everything happening for a reason I do believe that is true, good and bad. I heard a term last night called “Christian Karma” and I completely disagree with it. It pretty much says that many Christians believe that if we do lots of good things that God will be nice to us and we will have a really easy life and if we sin God will cause all these horrible things to happen to us as a punishment. To that I have just this response.

“The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not. “
— C.S. Lewis

We do not suffer or prosper because of things we have done and while we do not understand so many things that happen in our lives I do believe that each of them have a reason for happening.

I will use two examples from my own life to explain this that I could not see the meaning in them while they were happening but now looking back I can see all the good that came from these events.

My first example happened when I was 9 and my grandpa passed away. As with all these type of things I was confused and hurting and didn’t know why God would take my grandpa away from me. I still do not understand everything (and I never will) but what I do know is that in the days and weeks following his death I prayed more that I had ever prayed before in my life and for the first time I made my faith my own. Life meant more to me after that as I saw how quickly it could be taken away and that would not have happened if my grandpa had not died.

The second example is a lot more recent as it was just last year. I had applied to work at the camp I have attended since I was eight years old, but for reasons I didn’t understand at the time I did not get a spot. Two months later a spot suddenly opened up and it was offered to me and I did not hesitate to say yes but with very different motives in my head. I did not apply for camp in the first place for the right reasons. I applied because it was what I felt I “needed to do” after 8 years of attending the camp, because I wanted to have a fun summer, and because I couldn’t see myself doing anything else with my summer. When I finally said yes on that very exciting day in May my reasons were very different. I went to camp to serve God, to serve the hundreds of campers that would be coming to that camp in the summer and wash their dishes, and mostly to become closer to God and all those things I achieved.

So many things in our lives we don’t understand why they happen, but we cannot see our whole life, we only see what is going on right now from our point of view. But God sees more than that, he sees the whole picture and everything that will ever happen to us. It is because of that that I trust him with everything as everything is already his to begin with.

And as a very smart lady by the name of Julie Andrews once said “Every time God closes a door somewhere he opens a window”