More than conquerors

HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO COMPETE WITH THESE AWESOMELY BEAUTIFUL BLOGS? Spoiler alert, this is my first blog, I have only a vague concept of what I’m going to write about, and I am just going to start typing. Also, I hit a button so now there is this weird paragraph thing on the screen that will not go away…AHH! Blog start now. Praise the Lord! This has been such a year so far, I could never have imagined half of the things the Lord has had in store for us and we are only a little over three months in. On that happy note, I now transfer to more serious blog writing #russianaccent (is that how you use hashtags?)

      We need reinforcements; things at the center feel dreary, the air is thick with the underlying sense of discouragement, and everyone seems to be trying to “just get by.” All these things are fine for a normal, worldly, dare I say secular mission organization thing; but SPIRITUS is part of the mission of Jesus Christ! I think Sam is right, I think we humans all too easily forget who we are… “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, through which we cry, ‘Abba,Father!’”

      We are not simply organisms who are the result of some mindless series of events leading to a random evolution of species that is ultimately going nowhere, nor are we creatures caught in a hopeless attempt to accent to a God whose relationship with which we have royally screwed up (well... the screwed up part may be true), we are children of God, who never ceases to love us, never ceases to think about us and believe in us! God who thinks we were worth dying for; this same God is calling us to participate in his mission of saving Love. But it does not stop there, it gets even better! This same God who went as far as he could to save us, who loves us infinitely, who calls us into his mission; he is the one who gives us the grace to accomplish the same mission he calls us to. As Dietrich Bonhoffer (sweet name!) says, “He who knows Easter cannot despair.” We must not despair or become discouraged, but hold onto the hope that Jesus Christ brings.

      I have homework for anyone from SPIRITUS who dares to read this blog (also anyone who needs encouragement) , read Romans chapter 8! It so totally rocks,what follows is some scripture taken from a section from the Bible on the USCCB website titles God’s indomitable love in Christ. INDOMITABLE! “What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? As it is written: ‘For your sake we are being slain all the day; we are looked upon as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” We should take heart, knowing that through Christ we can conquer anything, especially any challenges that may arise while walking the road he has marked out for us. We will not settle for anything less than the Glory (capital G!) of God (also capital G!), we will not settle for simply “getting by,” we are more than conquerors through Christ.