black beans and rice

Sitting on the couch watching 'Little People Big World' with the roomie and I thought it would be a good night to blog. There's been so much to go on this past week that it'd probably be good to put my thoughts down in writing.

It's amazing that when I look back, having experienced it all, I can honestly say that God has been in it all. I never want to say anything without bragging on God, not that He needs it but He truly deserves it. I never ever want to look back and take credit for anything, or every try to say I managed to get by on any amount of my own abilities.

I love blogging. I love writing and I love reflecting. One of my favorite books in the Bible is Joshua, specifically when God commands the tribes to pick up a stone of remembrance at the point where they are right in the middle of the Jordan. The middle. The place where you can look ahead and look back and you're just as far in as you'll ever be out. To go forward into a new land, a land that you have heard about for twenty years as being incredible when all you know is life in the dessert. Ebenezer, they were to call it- "Thus far the Lord has carried me". Picture yourself there- you've come this far and to to go back to the life you've known in this new land is no longer an option once picking up this stone. Setting it up at Gilgal is a reminder that you can only go forward.

Imagine looking at the pillar of 12 stones after the waters of the Jordan are flowing over the places where you walked. The image of picking up the stone is forever in your mind- you remember the weight of it as you carried it between two walls of water. At that moment you didn't know what 'forward' was going to look like; but you knew, with great familiarity, deep longings and comfortable feelings what looking back was like. You've been told that the promised land is better- and not just a casual better, but better in every sense of what it could be. In the desert, that has been home for twenty years, talk of the 'Promised Land' was common talk- always invoking in you, though often fleeting, a glimpse of something better, a perfect-sense of what should be instead of what was.

You weren't comfortable in the desert. The restriction of waiting 5 more years until the promise was fulfilled ensues thoughts of acceptance in a place where you know you are only waiting. Living, knowing that the Jordan had to be crossed makes frequent the doubts of how much you truly believe the Most High is with you and in you. When you cross over the river- how ever God is going to bring you across- will anything feel familiar? Will you remember the defeat you carried with you in the desert- will it all be gone when you pass thought the water? How long will it take to cross the Jordan- will God have you stay there (in the process of crossing over) or will you hurry across, anxiously shedding the desert mentality to embrace the promised land? Will you be full of confidence because you're finally moving or unsure if the years in the desert can be loosed from the chains that once held you to it?

Does crossing over the Jordan bring the change itself or will the act of crossing over only serve to spur the change- could God have perhaps been changing you in the desert and so by crossing only served as a bookend to it all?

I guess this is what comes out when you don't have a purpose in mind for a blog... can't say I hate how it turned out. Oh and the title, it's what I had for dinner. I guess you could say I was missing the Philippines...

peace out.