a deep thought

this is not a jack handey deep thought. this is a deep thought from my spiritual director, a mentor who has blessed me more than he will probably ever know.

"doubt is the friend of faith."
"the enemy of faith is certainty."

i have found this to be true, more and more. i am certain of very few things in this world. lately, i am more certain that God loves me.

and i have had many a doubt in the last year. yet, when i go to Jesus with my doubts, it has been the case that my faith has increased.

i'm a beloved sinner

There is a pastor I like named Tim Keller, of Redeemer Church of New York City. I have probably listened to over 20 sermons of his on tape or online. I kid you not - each sermon has been good for my soul. He has this saying that he would use all the time in sermons:

We are more sinful than we could ever realize,
and we are more loved than we could ever imagine. (paraphrase, because I can't remember the exact quote.)

I thought I understood what that meant. But really, I am understanding now, after 15 years of following Jesus, how deep is my sin, how broken I am, and yet still, how loved I am. Only God could hold all these things together.

As a friend recently wrote to me, "God is SO BIG and SO SMART." Yeah, I think so too.

i went on a trip

the most ordinary things can be beautiful when in another world. grafitti in argentina, for example. they use stencils for their grafitti. i am no expert in grafitti, but i think it's pretty artistic. i was just amazed at the amount of effort these artists exerted - do they make stencils of bono for fun? Ok, I did just realize that they probably printed out the stencil or something like that, but isn't it cool, still?



I can't really condense my trip to Argentina and Peru (with spontaneous side trip to Uruguay) into words. I would have to whisk you away there, sit in a lovely cafe in Buenos Aires, sipping our cafe con leche and watching the beautiful people stroll by, listening to their sing-song-y Spanish. Or, maybe we could go to Machu Picchu and lie in the grass, just watching the mist rise off the peaks. Yeah, it was pretty a pretty amazing time.

One thing I don't want to forget - I remembered what it felt like to be an outsider - in every way. I didn't look like people there, I didn't speak the language, I didn't know that you're supposed to tell the bus driver where you are headed when you get on the bus and then he charges you a fare. Cultural etiquette was beyond me. And it has been so long since I have been on the outside.

But people here feel it every day. So, I want to remember what it feels like. And I want to remember that people were very often kind to me, and I only got cheated once by a cab driver in Lima. Maybe that way I can be kind too.

My friend whom I traveled with wrote more about our adventures. You can read about them here. And here too. We spent nearly every hour together, so we experienced similar things.