27 Quotes/Phrases/Thoughts/Lyrics to live by: # 15

If you know me (in a face to face sense), you know that I'm a huge fan of languages and the respective cultural differences that accompany them.. "How do you say..?" "What are idioms in ________ language?" "How do you sign ________ in Russian Sign Language? Taiwanese Sign Language? Honduran Sign Language?.." 
I'm a linguistic nerd - and I own it ;)


This quote comes off a banana sticker..  El sabor de tu tierra


translate.google.com (my virtual best friend) tells me that it translates to "The taste of your land.."


For me, I take this a couple different ways.. first off all, it's my daily reminder (since I took the sticker off the banana and stuck it on my computer) to "TASTE and see that the Lord is good".. to experience HIS land as often as I can.. 


It also reminds me that there are so. many. different "lands" here on this planet we call Earth.. It makes me want to "taste the land" of  my compassion kids in Ghana, Haiti and the Philippines.. It causes my heart to be aware of the beauty that can be in the pain, and the repulsiveness that can come with stagnant indifference. It makes me think about the correlation to "tasting" and "seeing" something in a fuller light..


I want to "taste your land" - whether it's getting in my car and visiting where you live, and seeing your house, your family, your floor plan, your school, your co-workers, your pets - or if it's boarding a plane and stepping into the unknown.. By tasting it - I feel like it helps me to get a fuller picture of who you are.. like I know you a little better and get see you in your land! 


Soli Deo Gloria
:D

27 Quotes/Phrases/Thoughts/Lyrics to live by: #16

In light of some recent conversations I've had with a few different friends, here's a quote that I find both a challenge and a comfort..

“We do better to put saints on windows than on pedestals, for we are not meant to focus on them but to see through them to God who stands beyond." (when I first found it, the quote was credited to Saint Augustine, but I can't find proof.. no se)

If you have ever known me in a teaching setting, one of my favorite things to do is to make sure the information comes alive.. Whether it's a history lesson or a Bible story; a song lyric or a poem, I want it to be more than just words on a page.. I want you to understand that it really happened! It's someones experience that had a life attached to it.. it's not just a fairy tale (ok, songs and poems can be, but I'm talking abt the circumstances of the author that wrote it)..

I find myself on that pedestal from time to time by well meaning people - and I want to say "I'm just like you!" I'm human, I make mistakes, I'm not perfect.. 

But then I find myself pushing others up on to that same pedestal I so desperately try to get off of, and I think to myself - isn't it ironic? The very thing I want to do, I don't, and those things I don't want to do, I do - who will save me from myself? .. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ for his deliverance! (my paraphrase of the end of Romans 7..)

When I remember that the highest end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever - and that through other people, I get to see a deeper glimpse of who God is - I find myself offering a hand up to those I've placed on pedestals to help them step down off of it, and offering a hand down to those who've set me up on it to pull them up to a place of level ground.. 

Soli Deo Gloria

:D

27 Quotes/Phrases/Thoughts/Lyrics to live by: # 17

Today (well, what's left of it), I've got 3 quotes.. Three different men. Three different venues. But I don't think individually they hold water.. Only in triangular fashion do they dove tail into each other to create an honest and uplifting "quote to live by".. 
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"God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life." 
- 4 spiritual laws booklet composed by Bill Bright. 
"God loves you and has a difficult plan for your life." - Mark Galli 
"Life wouldn't be so hard, if we didn't expect it to be so easy." 
-Dan Allan
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The first quote I've said many times in my past 7 years involvement with Cru (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ). The four spiritual laws are like the laws of nature - we can't see gravity, but we know it exists.. right? So, the first spiritual law is this "God loves you.. and has a wonderful plan for your life".. however..
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The second quote comes from a book entitled "Jesus: Mean and Wild".. (worthwhile read, as our "Jesus of the 20th century" is quite watered down..) Mark Galli takes a good look at what a realistic Jesus of Nazareth might have been like.. and challenges the "daisy's and roses" paradigm of God's plan for us - Jeremiah 29:11 does say "plans for hope and a future.. to prosper and not to harm".. but what does that mean in light of Joseph being sold into slavery, and thrown unjustly into jail? What if God's difficult = for our good? 
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Which leads me to the last quote, one that resonated deeply with me while I was on my first Summer Project in San Diego California, experiencing what I felt like was an unjust situation of my father being unemployed for 9 months.. Dan's comment shook me to the core, and woke up that concept of "difficult does not = bad/easy does not = good".. 
.
So there you have it.. mis-match the quotes up and you get "God loves you, and has a wonderfully difficult plan for your life. It won't seem hard though, if you don't expect it to be a walk in the park. Expect life to be hard, and it'll be wonderful!"
.
Soli Deo Gloria
:D 

27 Quotes/Phrases/Thoughts/Lyrics to live by: #18

I think this is why I call most people "Friend".. it doesn't matter to me if you're one of my best and closest friends or I've just met you the week before and had that "What! You too?" moment while chatting these past 20 minutes.. 

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.’” – C.S. Lewis


I prolly use the term "Friend" to liberally.. I should probly use acquaintance more.. *shrug*.. I probably sound "Quaker-ish".. but I like friends.. and who's to know an aquaintance won't become one of those ISI (Iron Sharpens Iron) kinda friends? There's just something happy about being addressed as "Friend" - wouldn't you say? :D

Because of this, I also have 2 "twin-friends".. 2 girls, from totally different places. These 2 girls - whom, when we joined the respective groups where we met - became "identical" to me (for whatever reasons of the others in the groups, just kept confusing us).. 


This post was suppose to be on March 1st (but because of my Souper Sunday Coma, it was delayed) in honor of our "in-be-Twin" birthday with my lovely friend Sheila! (pictured on right). March 1st is the midian of our birthdays, thus it's our "twin" birthday.. She's from Georgia, and when I met her, everyone thought I *was* her..  Thus started our twin story.. I miss her.. sad day we live so far apart..


My second twin name is Andrea.. (And yes, I realize you can't technically be twins with 2 people at the same time, unless ofc you're triplets.. but I digress.. just roll with it).. :)  we met on Summer Project, and she's 2 years younger than me.. Our "mom" had a suuuuper long delivery, we joked. Same thing happened to she and I - we were constantly confused for the other while we lived together for a 2 1/2 month stent one summer.. (Picture below) 

Instead of being annoyed by it, we decided it'd be best to embrace our new found "twin-ness".. Sure miss my Gorgeous friend! (cuz when you compliment your twin, you're complimenting yourself too - we were told from a true-twin.. ) ;D


So.. if I ever address you as "friend", now you'll know why.. cuz at some point, there was a moment in a conversation we had where I thought "What! You too? I thought I was the only one..)


Soli Deo Gloria
:D

27 Quotes/Phrases/Thoughts/Lyrics to live by: # 19

Lately, I'm more and more aware of my "limitedness" to know the full story about.. well..  anything.. :D
which brings me to this comforting quote..


"With every step of our lives we enter into the middle of some story which we are certain to misunderstand" - G. K. Chesterton


So - I try my best to remind myself to stay humble, and to enter the story with grace.. Sometimes grace is accomplished, most times though, I feel like I'm just a messy flailing fish, flopping around where I don't belong. I'm trying to learn the art of tact.. it's a slow process for me.. but I'm trying..


Thus G.K.'s quote reminds me it's a life long lesson.. here's to never graduating! ;)


Soli Deo Gloria
:D

27 Quotes/Phrases/Thoughts/Lyrics to live by: #20

For those of you who know me.. It's also too short to care more than a 1/2 cup about if they match, are in style, or have a small hole in them somewhere.. 

at a conference with co-workers, this picture was posted on an overhead projector and we were asked to say the first thing that comes to mind

all my co-workers said "Jenna, in 50 years, minus the cigar".. 

That's not necessarily a bad thing.. is it?

 

Soli Deo Gloria

:D

27 Quotes/Phrases/Thoughts/Lyrics to live by: #21

(Sorry for my delinquency in posting. I've been in a Souper Sunday Coma for the last 3 days.. And I'm just "waking up, not out of the woods" yet. Souper Sunday is tomorrow.. so in this "calm before the storm".. I'm trying to get some things done that I've been slacking on..) 

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not promoting situational ethics.. per se.. But I've always been fascinated that it's not good to smuggle drugs and people into countries, but it is good to smuggle Bibles.. That speeding is generally frowned upon by cops, unless you have an injured person in the car or a woman in labor.. and that killing is bad: God actually calls it murder, but in the old testament he commanded that certain people groups be "wiped out" (a.k.a. killed)..  As black and white as we'd like the world to be, I have to conclude there's a whole lot more shades of grey.. 

So this quote reminds me to go back to the Book, and seek to understand more God's character. To make it a priority to "walk in step with the Spirit".. To remember it's not about a list of "do's and do not's", it's not about legalism, but God want's our hearts..To know that Jeremiah captures it well, when he says in chapter 17..

⁵ This is what the LORD says:

   “Cursed is the one who trusts in man,
   who depends on flesh for his strength
   and whose heart turns away from the LORD.
⁶ He will be like a bush in the wastelands;
   he will not see prosperity when it comes.
He will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
   in a salt land where no one lives.

 ⁷ “But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,
   whose confidence is in him.
⁸ He will be like a tree planted by the water
   that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
   its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
   and never fails to bear fruit.”

 ⁹ The heart is deceitful above all things
   and beyond cure.
   Who can understand it?

 ¹⁰ “I the LORD search the heart
   and examine the mind,
to reward a man according to his conduct,
   according to what his deeds deserve.”

Soli Deo Gloria

:D