Boston Marathon Bombing...Pray for Boston. Monday April 15, 2013.

If you know me at all, you know that I am a runner.
Running takes up a pretty big chunk of my life.
It’s just one of those things that I love.
Running has become some sort of spiritual experience even.
It’s hard to put into words.

Being a runner, I was naturally super excited about today.
Just ask my friends,
I had multiple live coverage stations going on my computer while
attempting (attempting being the key word) to do some homework.

Today is THEE runners’ day.
The Boston Marathon!
This is THEE marathon if you are a runner.
Every runner dreams about being able to make it into Boston.

I stopped the coverage, ate some lunch, took a nap,
and right before I went to my last class, I checked my phone.
My Facebook feed was covered with the news of the Boston Marathon Bombing.

My heart just dropped.
Really?
More violence?
More evil?
More sin in the world?

I just can’t even imagine the sheer terror,
pain,
trauma,
despair,
helplessness,
the injuries,
and the lives lost.

It’s just heart wrenching.
And this is just one of those things where no one has sufficient answers.
No one can answer the question, why?

I think this is just one of those situations where the answer to the question why?
is not what is important.
What is important from this point on is our response.

Our response should be one of fervent prayer.
Prayer for healing for the injured,
prayer for recovery from the trauma and fear,
prayer for those wondering about their loved ones,
prayer for the medical personal,
prayer for the volunteers,
prayers for the police officers, firefighter, and medics,
and prayers for whoever cause this bombing- simply because they need it most.

This is a tragic time
but one that reminds us of the brief beautiful gift of life that we have been given.
It’s a gift, this life.
It’s short; a blink of an eye in terms of eternity.
It’s beautiful.
It’s a blessing.
It’s an opportunity to pray for others who are hurting more than we are.
It’s an opportunity to embrace those whom we love and tell them so.
It’s an opportunity to serve the Lord who loves us so immensely.
It’s an opportunity to be Christ to the ones who need it most.
It’s an opportunity to have a Christ-like response:
PRAY FOR BOSTON.

Lent, Life, and Your Soul. Thursday, February 14. Lent 2013.

So, Lent has begun.
I absolutely LOVE the Lenten season.
It is definitely my favorite liturgical season.
There is so much room for growth in faith and relationship with Christ.
There is something incredible about sharing in the experience of Christ’s time of preparation before His death.
The incredible thing about Lent is that it is not a perpetually depressing or solemn time.
We know that this time of preparation is not perpetual because
we have this incredible hope in Christ.
We know that after this preparation time,
Christ offers His life as a sacrifice so that all the sinful might have life within Him.
And we know that along with this amazing gift of eternal life Christ rises again.

Lent is like rereading your favorite book over and over again.
You KNOW the ending.
You KNOW the hero will save the day.
And you KNOW in the end, good will overcome evil.
Yet, you still read that book over and over.

That’s kind of what Lent is like.
But a trillion times better because
it is the greatest story of love
and action
and good triumphing over evil
that has ever been written.
Ever.
Super cool.

So, we have this hope.
Today at mass the responsorial psalm was,
“Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.”
He wants us to have a strong and firm hope in Him.
Hope through Lent,
through the struggles,
through the pain,
through the joys,
through the triumphs,
through life.

Life.
It’s something that Jesus supports.
He is behind the whole idea.
After all, He is the one who blesses us with the gift of eternal life.
I found the first reading and the gospel interesting today.
I found them to be so related,
so correlated,
so intertwined.
Maybe they aren’t related at all but this is how they stuck out to me.

The first reading from Deuteronomy closes with this important line,
“Choose life, then, that you and your descendents may live.”
The Gospel reading was from Luke. It reads,
“What profit is there for one to gain the whole world yet lose or forfeit himself?”

I guess the connection for me lies here:
If you want to be a part of this world, wholly part of this world,
you must accept the rules of the world.
You must go with the flow.
You must be politically correct.
You must not offend anyone.
You must not challenge anyone.
You must believe that abortion is okay,
because the media and science say that
that beautiful life is just a blob of cells.
Then you would be able to gain the world.
Wholly and fully.
The world will be yours.

But if we choose the world, we risk losing our souls.
If we choose life,
we will be speaking for the precious unborn,
we will be supporting life from natural conception to natural death,
we will be supporting all life,
and we will not be gaining this world, but we will not be losing our souls.

Well, that is how those scriptures worked out in my mind.
Maybe it’s crazy or maybe it makes sense.
Please let me know what you think!
Agree, disagree, discussion.

I pray that this Lenten season may be a time
of closeness to Christ,
of hope,
of sacrifice,
and of life.

Reflection on the Connecticut Shootings. Monday, December 17. 2012.

Oregon mall shooting.
Riverside robbery and shooting,
CSUF placed on lockdown.
Connecticut elementary school shooting.
Fashion Island, 50 shots fired in the air.
Bomb threats via telephone in the middle of noon Mass
at St. Rose of Liam in Newtown.
Man arrested for threatening LA elementary schools.

I just do not get it.
I do not understand why there are a bunch of evil crazies in the world,
why hundreds have to suffer at their expense,
why people have to fear holiday shopping,
and why some parents have to live the rest of their lives void of their precious children.

I do not think these incidents should result in arguments and discussions about
gun control,
or mental illnesses,
or school safety.

I think that these incidents should stir up in us an acknowledgement of the ugly evilness of sin but even greater than that,
the power of Christ’s healing.

It is going to be a long and hard road.
My guess is that many people will be asking why.
Why us?
Why right before Christmas?
Why my child?
Why did God not stop this all?
Why did God allow it?

Honestly, the only sufficient answer that comes to mind is this:
What God permits, He can redeem.
I still do not fully understand the concept which is confirmation of St. Augustine’s famous quote,
“If you can understand it, it is not God.”

God has permitted this string of heart-wrenching events this week.
But that does not mean that He does not care and
that does not mean that He was incapable of altering these events.
It means that He permitted them.
Which means He can redeem what has happened.

Maybe those children were most ready to receive God in that very moment,
maybe hundreds of people will come to Faith because of these incidents,
and maybe we will never know the form in which redemption will come.
But we can be confident in the promise that redemption will come
because He is in control
and what He has permitted,
He can redeem.
There is redemption in His name.

Truth, Lies, and Instagram. Thursday, December 6. 2012.

Late last night I was wasting time on Instagram.
There is definitely something beautiful and unique about viewing life through pictures.
I was just clicking hashtag after hashtag and picture after picture.
Creepy, I know.
But I love seeing life through others’ eyes, or rather pictures.
Last night I came across a picture that just broke my heart.

A picture came up of a girl’s wrist
all red,
all torn,
and all cut up.
She inflicted these wounds upon herself
and then posted the picture for the world to see.

Her comment was something along the lines of,
“But I’m okay, right? #sigh.”
Her friends proceeded to argue with her
in an attempt to convince her that she is worth more
than the negative attention she was trying to gain.

One of her friends was arguing however,
that, “If she busted some vein while cutting, maybe people would care.”

My heart broke even more, as if that were even possible.
I couldn’t believe the lies that were flying around like nothing at all.
It makes me so sad that this girl who has so much worth thinks so little of herself.

If only this girl could know her beauty and worth.
But the lies loom over her heart.
The lies steal her ability to see her incredible identity in the Lord.

Everyone believes certain lies that hinder their ability to see their identity in the Lord clearly.
“I will never amount to anything.”
“Nothing I do is ever good enough.”
“No one loves me.”
“I have to bust a vein for someone to care.”
The devil is at the root of those lies,
whispering them deep within our hearts.

And then there the Lord stands,
waiting with the truth to shatter those lies.
He is eager to take those lies,
reduce them to nothing,
and replace them with truth.
His truth.

He is telling you how much you are worth.
He is convincing you that He sees what you do; and He is pleased.
He is proving that He loves you.
And He cares for you more than you could ever know.
There is beauty in His truth.

Take the lies you believe and destroy them.
Fill the void with His truth,
for His truth shall set you free.

To the girl in the picture:
Know that you are worth more than you could ever imagine.
Know that you don’t need to harm yourself to gain love.
Know that someone cares, always.
Know that you do not deserve to live in lies.
Know that you deserve to live in truth.
Know that you are loved.

Switchfoot Concert. Tuesday, October 30. 2012.

This Sunday I had the privilege of seeing one of my favorite bands,
Switchfoot.
It was seriously awesome.
The lead singer, Jon Foreman, is just a man filled with such tremendous joy.
He is an incredibly talented musician
who also has a magnificent way with words.
I could literally start a whole new blog just simply gushing over Foreman’s stunning lyrics.
Their newest CD, Vice Verses, is a legitimate work of art.
I honestly do not know if I could pick a favorite song off of Vice Verses
but one of the best ones is Where I Belong.
Foreman closed the concert with this song,
leaving the attendees with something incredibly important to think about.

Where I Belong is just a whole bunch of awesome
but my favorite lyrics are close to the beginning of the song:

But I'm not sentimental
This skin and bones is a rental
And no one makes it out alive

The dude has got it.
He understands it all.
He understands this life.
He knows that this life is
our holding place and
he understands our aim and
our eternal goal.

We are not supposed to be bound to this world by material things.
It is all His.
He gives and He takes away.
We do not belong in this world
and the things of this world do not belong to us.

“I’m not sentimental.”
I would like to vouch for that
but I know that I cannot.
Far too many times I find myself
being sentimental towards material or worldly things.

My iPod has a deep scratch on the back.
My brand new Converse have a scuff mark on them.
In the moment that I find that scuff mark or that scratch,
it seems like my world is ending.
I need to remind myself though that
IT.
DOES.
NOT.
MATTER.
My materials things are damaged
but really, what does that amount to?
Nothing.
Jesus is not going to be in heaven asking me about my material things.
He is going to be asking,
“Were you a good Christian?”
“Did you live your life well?”
“Did you live your life for Me?”


“This skin and bones is a rental.”
Uh, blunt.
Our bodies our not our own,
they are His.
He has gifted us with these bodies
and with the life that he breathed into us.
What an honor,
what a gift these bodies are.
What a blessing for our bodies to be temples of the Holy Spirit.
How amazing that He has given us these bodies as a means to bring others closer to Him.

The other side of that is, praise God these bodies are rentals,
that they are not permanent.
Praise God that “No one makes it out alive” in this life.
Life is hard.
It is pain.
It is a struggle.
And He knows that.
He has given us a goal,
a reward,
and an end.
HIM.
HEAVEN.

Praise God that He does give us this life
to learn how best prepare for the next,
for our true home.
And hopefully on that day we can sing to Him:

And on the final day I die
I want to hold my head up high
I want to tell You that I tried
To live it like a song

And when I reach the other side
I want to look You in the eye
And know that I've arrived
In a world where I belong

We do not belong here.
We belong with Him.
Praise.
God.

Subjectivity. Tuesday October 23, 2012

Through certain experiences and just life in general
one thing that I have learned is that
essentially everything in life is subjective.

And I guess subjectivity works equally to our advantage as well as to our disadvantage.
Say grades on a paper-
if the teacher favors you
or if the teacher is an easy grader
than in that sense,
subjectivity would work to your advantage.
But if the teacher is a tough grader,
your grades might not be looking so hot.

Subjectivity is a bizarre thing to me.
It honestly amazes me that everything is what it is because someone cool said so.
Get that? Yeah. It just sounds so unstable.
I dislike that it seems like society gets to decide what is and what isn’t whenever they choose to.

Though most of life is subject to society’s subjectivity,
I have found one thing that is not subjective in this world
and luckily for us,
it is the only thing in this world that truly matters:
God’s love for YOU.
His love for you is
totally,
completely, and
100% not subjective.
His love for you is real and true.
Society does not dictate His love for you.
Society does not get to decide how much He loves you.
He.
Just.
Does.

God is Love.
That does not mean that God is super duper good at loving His people,
well He is but it means more than that.
It means He IS love.
That means He can do nothing other than love.
He is not capable of anything other than love.
God’s love for you is something that society cannot and will never dictate.
His love is not something that you must earn.
He.
Just.
Loves.
You.

With all the subjectivity in the world,
all the changes, and
all the fluctuations,
in this mad, mad world,
know that one thing is not subjective,
one thing will never change,
God’s love for you.

Let His love for you be your strong hold,
your saving grace,
your constant,
your everything.

He loves you.
That is not subjective.
That will never change.

A Hope That Disappoints Not. Wednesday, August 15. 2012.

St. Paul made a hefty promise in Romans 5:5.
He proclaimed that,"hope does not disappoint".
This passage stuck out to me.
It reads beautifully.
It is a passage filled with well, hope.
It makes me hopeful because
I know all too well that I am really good at being hopeful for things.

Two semesters ago I reeeeeally was hoping for 3 extra points to appear
so that I could get an A in Marine Biology.
Too many times to count I have hoped for plans to follow through
and they definitely did not.
Last night I was hoping I was going to wake up without a headache
but the heat got the best of me again.
Often times, what I hope for does not happen.
In my crazy, selfish, little brain I whine at God telling Him
that I was hopeful for that A,
for those plans to follow through,
and for a headache-free morning this week
Annnnndddd...
He just laughs.
He laughs at my plans.
He chuckles at me trying to block out the rest of the passage
and at me being complete focused on one line of the Bible
and for my own benefit at that.

"...We rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."
Romans 5:2-5

Ah, very interesting.
So there are steps to obtain this hope that does not disappoint.
We must rejoice in our sufferings.
It is this rejoicing the will lead us to hope.
When we rejoice in our sufferings,
we are automatically brought so much closer to Christ.
When we are in such close union with Him,
our hopes and desires change.
Our hope will not be for an A in a class but rather,
for the salvation of souls,
or for the protection of loved ones.

While there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting
good grades or even some material things,
it is far mor beneficial for our souls to desire things that God desires for us.
Next time, instead of my hope being for an A in the class,
my hope is going to be whatever God wills for my life.
If we hope for whatever He has in store for us
then we will truly never be disappointed
because we will trust that He has a hand in it.
Hope for His plans for your life,
it is a hope that will never disappoint.
Paul promised.