Sweet Holiness

"Holiness is a most beautiful and lovely thing. We drink in strange notions of holiness from our childhood, as if it were a melancholy, morose, sour and unpleasant thing; but there is nothing in it but what is sweet and ravishingly lovely." Jonathan Edwards

Quote taken from Seeking Him: Experiencing the Joy of Personal Revival

On Speaking Terms

"2
Mexico
Number of people who speak the indigenous Ayapaneco tongue; the two are not on speaking terms" (18).

I read this in Time today and couldn't help but laugh. This short statement aptly descripes so many of our problems.

Mango Kindness

My colleague dropped off fourteen mangoes at my office on Tuesday. He did this all because I mentioned how much I missed mangoes, good mangoes that is.

I couldn't possibly eat fourteen mangoes before they went bad, so I dropped off a handful at a friend's apartment and then gave some to my housemate.

It's a small thing: a crateful of mangoes. But there is a lesson here, when God gives blessings, the blessings are so overwhelming that they spill into the lives of the people around us. Here's then another reason to pray to be blessed.

Lord, bless me and make my blessings so large that they spill into the lives of all the people I come in contact with.

Instant Stress Relief

Here's a recipe for stress relief. It's very simple:have a massive storm blow through with such high gusts (80 mph in some places) of wind that the electricity is knocked out. Yes, that's what happened last night. My shoulders were tense coming home from work as I thought about all the papers I desperately wanted to grade before I left on my alumni weekend trip, but when I got home the electricity was out. Kapoot. I did some work on my laptop, but my grading plans were completely thwarted by my incapacity to grade by candlelight and my one dying flashlight. Instead I was forced to sit in a mostly dark house with tons of tea candles; then I had nothing better to do, so I went to bed early (gasp). While I can't say this storm was an overwhelming blessing for Central Florida, it sure made my evening! There's nothing like weather to put me in my place. Sometimes God uses storms to make us rest.

Not Holier, Just Weaker

A friend once implied that I was being a bit self-righteous when I declined watching a certain movie with her. I don't remember what I told her then, but what I wanted to say is "You don't get it. I'm not holier than you. I'm just weaker."

The Sound Books Make

Yesterday my friend from the satisfying buttons post ran into me at the library. I was browsing some books for sale and he started looking at the books with me. Then he told me, "Did you know that different books have different sounds?" He proceeded to tap the spine of each book and we listened intently to the sound each book made. He then commented that the tone of the books we were looking at was not particularly enjoyable. He had heard finer sounding books.

He also discussed how different book covers (matte vs. non-matte) had different levels of enjoyability based on their sound and texture.

H., I don't know if you read my blog, but if you do, thank you for adding your joyful creative perspective to my world. :)

A Satisfying Afternoon

I spent the morning having a breakfast with a friend then playing ultimate frisbee with a ministry group called Witness for Fitness. It wasn't a bad way to spend a Sunday morning, but I had great plans to come home and spend the rest of the afternoon grading papers. Before I started to grade, I decided I would clean up some. It's 8:30 pm and I haven't even touched the essays I was supposed to grade. And yet, I've had one of the most soul refreshing days that I've had in weeks.

And this is what made the afternoon so satisfying: I cleaned, I prayed, and I read. The smell of laundry, a slightly more organized closet, authors who made me laugh and think, and the simple closeness of God that came from solitude shared with him refreshed me.

So in the end, I'm grateful for this unplanned afternoon.