Sunday (for you, Mom)

Saturday evening I wrote out, word for word, what I wanted to say Sunday morning. I was so nervous that without doing so, I would have been standing in front of the congregation, unable to find words in either English or Spanish. I was nervous, but not as much as I feared. I repeated my thoughts during the evening with the youth group, though didn't read my paper the second time. I said some dumb things (I mentioned that I had been "thinking some...thoughts"), but I'm trying to laugh at myself. Mom, you're right, the reflection that went into it was valuable for me. I went through my journal, reading what I had written about my studies, and then made those thoughts more cohesive.

Here's an English version of what I shared (more or less):

Lately, I have been reading in Romans about the spirit that God has given us. Romans 8:15 says: "For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." Before we received the Spirit that binds us to God, our spirit was the exact opposite of the freedom we are offered. Our old spirit was one of fear, sin, and slavery. The good thing is that we died to this spirit, separating from it. Rescuing us from the old spirit, God gave us a new spirit full of life.

This passage spoke to me because lately I have been thinking a lot about the future, in some decisions that affect my future, at least for the next year. The future is something that frightens me at times in the following sense: It's not secure; we can't control it even though we try; and without being able to see what is ahead, it is difficult to trust that we are on the right path. But, thinking like this comes from our old spirit, not the Spirit from God. We were adopted, and now we are on a journey with our Father driving. Even though we don't have the whole itinerary or map of the trip, our Father does. He knows where we are walking, knows where we need to go, and so I believe that he won't permit his children to wander off the path if they are seeking Him.
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You know, it kind of reminds me of this one time I was with Dad walking through a nature preserve to glimpse some endangered quail (or were they chickens, Dad?) on the way home from Chicago. For as far as I could see, tall waving grasses stretched toward the sky, the expanse only broken by a few copses of pine trees. Walking into the grass was like wading into the sea. On either side, the strands parted to let Dad and I through. Soon, I could see nothing but the grass that had swallowed us whole and the clear blue sky directly above. When we came to a clearing covered with fallen cottonwood trees, chopped down by the caretakers, I climbed up onto the tallest stump. Looking out over where we been, I could see what before had been hidden while I was buried in the prairie: the car, the road, and the tops of the grass. It reminded me of how, on our own, we walk through life with a limited perspective, but once in awhile, God provides a tree to raise us out of the short term to see what lies ahead and to give us perspective on the past. Just as I thought back then, I think that right now I'm in the prairie, swishing through the snake grass, far from any tree. Wouldn't it be nice to have trees or even stumps to climb every few meters? Or, perhaps not...I'm not sure.