Happy Ending to Mad Season

My parents were able to go inspect the damage out in the fields today and Mom texted with some good news...and some not-so-good news. More than half of the crop has been voided but the remaining part is going to survive. My parents wanted to have it replanted but Kuya Ranie (the farmer in charge) is still mourning (Mom said he actually cried during the inspection and I don't blame him for doing so---farming is hard work) and he doesn't want to replant.

The good news is that all the farmers who get their fertilizers from my parents' shop have sufferred no blows to their crops so they'll hopefully get good harvests. That means they'll be able to pay after harvest and our meager capital in the shop can start rolling again. That's hoping no more rains come in and that none of the gazillion things that threaten good harvests show up.

*****
I have to get it off my chest folks. And I’m trying to do so in the most sober and sincere manner.

I ask forgiveness from all the people I’ve Bible bashed. It’s a heady feeling when a surge of self-righteousness grabs you and that happens to me a lot. I’m sorry I wasn’t gentle with you, that I didn’t love you and that I screamed at you for the speck in your eye when I had a plank in mine. I’m sorry for looking down on you instead of getting down on my knees beside you to help you.

I don’t know why I did this. I haven’t been bashed over the head today. Not that I know of anyway. I’m really dense sometimes so I guess the bashing does me more good than harm. But today while I was walking back to the dorm I remembered Mandy Moore in “Saved” throwing her Bible at the lead star and screaming “I am full of the love of Christ!” Somehow, the image of me doing that instead of Mandy Moore popped up in my head and I was horrified.

So, I’m sorry to everyone I’ve ever did some subtle Bible throwing at. Please be patient with me, for I am a work in progress. As for myself, I have to patient too and trust that He who started a good thing in me will finish it to the end.

*****

This evenings sermon sent me home full of things to sit down with journal, coffee and Bible and think about. I was late for the service and I didn't get everything but the part I did hear was enough. It was on being a good steward of everything God has given us.

I'm deeply thankful for every gift God has given me. I was made in His image, my heart reflects His, and my breath is His. My unique childhood; my weird teenage years; my education; the oppurtunities I have been given, taken or not; my complex personality; the wacky but warm family I go home to; the friends who stand by and hold my hand; the mentors who teach me and lead me; the church and communities that discipline, teach, help me grow and let me serve; the desires I sometimes don't understand; the talents I have unearthed and those yet to be discovered---everything I have and all that I am He has so graciously given and bestowed on me.

While these thoughts and feelings of gratitude and joy warm me, they also terrify me. All these are great gifts. All these are great responsibilities too. That side to the coin overwhelms me for I know I am lacking in both wisdom and disipline to manage them, let alone use them. But at the end of days, my Lord will seek an accounting of everything and I do not want Him to find me overly mediocre. It is not that I fear He will turn me away or cease to love me. I know nothing around me or in me will ever separate me from His love. But it the very thought that He loves me that makes me want Him to find delight in me, that makes me desire to be all that I can be for His glory.

And so,for the gifts and talents I now know I have, I pray that God give me wisdom and grace to use them and develop them. For the time and wealth He grants me, I pray for discipline and the grace to realize the sufficiency I have in Him and not in that nice thing at the mall. I pray that I will remember that I am doubly owned by God because He has not only created me but He has bought me with a price. And just not any price, but the price of the very blood and life of His Son. And when I fall, I pray that I will not lose heart but remember and listen hard to His voice of truth.

"Every one to whom much is given, of him much be required." Luke 12:48

P.S. Kuya Butch, how about speaking more often?