Here is Love, vast as the ocean, Lovingkindness as the flood.

In my bedroom in my apartment, i have a picture that is basically just to the left of my head when i am at my desk. This picture contains a group of guys which affectionately call themselves "The Bros." The picture was taken at one of our high school's football games our senior year. It's probably my favorite photo. I love those guys like brothers, and that is why we call ourselves by that name.

i typically am a person who really enjoys having things laid out in front of me. i have no patience for not knowing. This is not all bad, because being in the field of accounting requires this type of person to some extent. But i'm just so tired of being busy. i'm tired of feeling like God is an old friend from high school. i'm tired of remembering when talking was something we did all the time and knowing that it's now just something i do. i'm tired of feeling like worship isn't real. i'm tired of feeling calloused. i'm tired of carrying everything on my back like the huge textbooks i seem to be forever buried in. For Jesus is my first and only true love, and while i am continually seeing Him work in and around me every single day of my life, i have been feeling for some time now that i am putting up a wall in our relationship. David said in the Psalms that all God asks for is a broken heart. He doesn't want fancy sacrifices or cool prayers or memorized Bible verses all the time. He just wants my broken heart. A heart that longs for nothing else to fill it except the Love which has turned the world upside down forever. A heart that realizes that at the foundation of mankind is the same problem. The problem of sin. There is no good person or bad person at the bottom of it all.

Only God and sinners.

God calls for me to be broken over my sin and realize that the only thing that can bridge the chasm between sinners like myself and the holy God of the universe is the cross upon which His Son Jesus died. i know this is true and i have placed my deepest faith in His promise to all of us. But so often i forget from where it was that i was rescued. More importantly, i forget from whom i was rescued. i was rescued from my self. On an October night in 1993 i was made new, but how often i forget! Oh how often.

Christians in Rwanda and in poverty- and war-stricken places all over the world are praying for Americans right now. Even those of us who would call ourselves Christians. Why? Because we are never broken. We are always put together. At least we think so. But because nothing on the outside, nothing in our culture or society can break us, we refuse to allow ourselves to be broken so that God can refine us like gold. So we continue to live inside a huge lie that keeps many of us, even Christians, from tasting the abundant life that Christ offers. An abundant life that is peaceful and rich even if i have nothing to my name besides the clothes on my back and if i am living amidst civil unrest. That is what i want. i want a life the is so real that my circumstances cannot dictate it. i crave an existence that matters for eternity regardless of my reputation. i need to feel God surround me once more in the way that He so longs.