Pray For Us

Pray for us that we would have strength and courage.  We who go out into the world every single day to work and to go to school, we need you to pray for us.  We can’t do this alone.  Pray that the strength would be the right kind – the kind that comes from the joy of the Lord.  Pray for us that we would have courage because our God is with us.  Pray that the strength wouldn’t be replaced by brute determination and the courage wouldn’t be overtaken by angry cynicism.  You who are older and stronger, pray for us who are young.  Pray when the days become weeks and the weeks become months, the months spent among those who don’t love our God.  Pray when the day by day of this breaks us down.  Pray when what we have believed and confessed seems to retreat to head knowledge.  Pray when we need God so badly and seem so far from Him.  Pray when the sin we see becomes normal and acceptable.  Pray when the cynicism that we don’t want grows up in us, until it tells us the Sunday services that we so need and want are just a joke, that the people at church are deluded.  Pray when the jokes at work become funny. Pray when the language we hear becomes the expected, even fitting response to situations.  You elders, we see what you do for the church, how you stay out late at meetings instead of being home with your family, how you deal with hurting people and hard situations, and we thank you and pray for you.  Fathers and mothers, we see how you raise your children and how that can be hard and we thank you.  But please pray for us too.  You who stay at home with your children or work in a Christian workplace, pray for us who go out into the world every day.  You who are older, who have grown up in a Christian country and deplore the way the world is going now, pray for us who have grown up in this.  You to whom the current state of things is shocking and horrifying, pray for us for whom this is normal.  Pray, because what you see as new developments in human depravity, we see as normal.  This is the world we were born and raised in.  It is hard for us to believe in beauty and good and love because outside of the church, outside of our homes, we don’t see it.  It becomes easier to believe our people are deluded than that good actually exists, when we go out into the world every day.  Pray for us at this time, when we feel so close to slipping away from our faith and the light of the gospel.  We need you so badly, we need the church, we need the gospel.  Don’t try to become “relevant” or “current”.  We need the traditions and the old songs and the straight truth.  We need the ties to our past and to others who have followed Christ before us so that we may walk in this way.  Pray for us when grace and mercy seem irrelevant, when the way to get through life is by creating a shell around ourselves, glaring at any who may come to interfere. Pray when we cease to love those around us and shut others out to keep safe.  Pray when trust is hard because the women we are surrounded by talk behind each other’s backs and the men talk about women as objects and not people.  Pray when the day to day of going to work is easy – the people are friendly and the work is pleasant enough, but the weeks and months turn into a weight.  When it is hard to believe the sincerity of anyone who truly loves God, and yet we want so to love Him that much, to be in close communion with Him, what are we to do?  Pray for us courage and strength, love and joy and peace and light and good. 

My Story Right Now

A blog writer, here, has been posting lately about writing your story. I actually haven't read many of the posts, but the snippets that come up on the blogger dashboard have been inspiring me.
My story. Where shall I start? Maybe with the land I live in.
When we moved to this area five years ago, it was ugly. Bare brown fields, November's grey skies, mud, rain. The land was flat. Not perfectly flat, but flat enough to make a girl who'd grown up among hills and forests feel exposed. There were no wild places, only empty fields of corn and soybean stubble with here and there a tame little forest. Worse yet, it was foreign. It held no little remembrances of fun or friends or events that had marked my life before. The road ways were unfamiliar.
Fast forward five years. The land is interesting. The next field is planted with soybeans, and we know who owns it and who is buying it from him and why. The field across the road is planted in soybeans too, though according to the rules of crop rotation, it should be corn. Since the spring was so wet, the farmer couldn't plant before June 15, after which one cannot get crop insurance for corn, so he planted soybeans. The roadways are no longer strange, for we can say, "That is so and so's road" or "That's the interesting way to go to soccer." The big openness of this land is actually considered an asset now. I know the joy of standing on a hill under a wide blue sky and seeing all the farms around and turning to see the town three km away. The scenes of this land are tied up with the happenings and milestones of the last five years, and I love this land so that it seems the most beautiful place in the world.
Do you have a story?
Justine

Books....and other musings

On Monday Allison and I started The Great Ideas courses from Tree of Life. Here are my books...

Since we revised the courses a bit in order to finish the courses by the end of this school year, we are not doing all the books. I have Macbeth in the picture, but I'm not planning to study it. I chose to do Hamlet but since the copy we have is included in a large volume of The Complete Works of Shakespeare, I didn't take a picture of that. So replace Macbeth with Hamlet and you'll see the books I have to read. :) Some of the books are just to study part of: How to Read a Book, Calvin's Institutes, and the Bible.

And here is another picture of books:

Leah was using them and I decided to take a picture.

I've been thinking about What To Do After Highschool. I am sure any of you who are in highschool, recently graduated, or even are approaching highschool, have heard the question, "So, do you know what you want to do after highschool?" A good question. But I never know what to say.

"Umm, I don't know."

"Maybe I'll be a nurse."

"I'd kinda like to be a midwife."

"Well, I'd like to get married and have kids."
None of them are definite answers. They weren't supposed to be. It is partly a cover up for the fact that I don't really want to go to school for anything. I really want to have a family and own a farm. Right now I would like to get a job when I am done highschool, work and save up money to buy a farm. Then I'd like to get married and have a large family. Though, at the same time, I'd like to learn more about healthy living and natural healing. I'd like to help children and especially young people from troubled families, by giving them a safe and loving home. I've also thought about going to South America to spread the gospel to tribes that have had little or no contact with the outside world. I have no idea where the Lord will lead me or what I will do in my life time. I've dreamed of an adventurous life in a different part of the world. But if I could choose, I'd settle down nearby and live to a ripe old age surrounded by children and grandchildren, in a peaceful, happy, and not very eventful life. I know, though, that our world is changing. In only a few years there will be new problems and realities to face, and likely I will end up with a different kind of life than I have imagined. But I don't need to worry, knowing it is all in God's hands.

What are some of your ambitions, if you don't mind sharing?

Anyway, since someone else is waiting for the computer, I'll stop.

Justine

Rambles

Since it is nearly the new year, I have been thinking over this one. What have I learned? What have I done? Has it been useful? Or have I spent a lot of time wasting time? I have grown in some ways: learning not to be shy, not that I ever really was shy, but learning not to be afraid to talk to people, for one thing. From February to May, Allison and I took a Canadian History course with our homeschool group. It was different learning in more of a classroom setting, with homework assignments, deadlines, and such. Back to the meeting new people/talking to strangers thing, we did a lot of fundraising so we could go on a trip. This involved knocking on doors selling pizzas, concert tickets, chocolate bars, etc. We had to present our products and reasons for selling in a clear and concise manner. By the end of the fundraising, I had grown quite comfortable doing fundraising, though I can't say I liked it.

In June I started going to Young People's Society (YPS - the young people at church aged 16+, who meet every Sunday after the evening service for either Bible study or a time of fellowship.) In YPS, I started to get to know older people. I used to only talk to people about my age or younger, and was practically scared of anyone older.

At the end of August I went to a YPS camp. There were about 180 campers there, so I met a lot of new people. It was fun making new friends of a variety of ages, from many different places. I did feel somewhat bewildered for a while, though, trying to keep names and faces straight, especially running on a low amount of sleep.

So, as a result of those experiences, I am much more comfortable talking to people.

This summer, working for my dad, I learned to enjoy painting. I think what helped was that the weather was warm and sunny for most of the summer, so we did quite a few outside jobs. Somehow working out in the fresh air where we could watch cars and pedestrians, feel the sun on our faces, and climb scaffolds :) was much more pleasant than working in a dark basement where the paint fumes tend to hang around rather than blow away.

Ongoing lessons I am learning would include accepting change and not stressing about things. With regards to the first, I have come to realize that no matter what, life is going to change. Things never stay the same. People move away, new people come. Children grow up. Sometimes people die. But change is irreversable. We cannot live always wishing for the past. That is a waste of the present. We cannot always stress about the future. Right now, where I am, I need to live to God's glory, realizing my time is not my own - it is God's. He owns it. I have to live in the here and now, loving and serving the people who are in my life right now, not worrying about whether these same people will be the people I will know in twenty years.

In regards to not stressing, I have to learn how to handle unexpected situations and how to handle stressful situations, like driving. I work best under a schedule, so I have to make a schedule for myself and discipline myself well enough to stick to it. The sticking to it is the hardest. :)

If you've really read this far, I'm surprised. :) I did not set out to write this much. I just knew when I started that since I haven't posted in two weeks, it is time for another post. So I wrote ... and wrote ... and wrote. And it was fun.

Justine