Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
About Me
Subscribe To
Posts
Comments
People's Blogs Who I Talk To In Real Life Too!
Other Awesome Blogs
Inside of a Flower
I love the way the inside of this flower came out in this picture, God is absolutely amazing and even these little things show His awesomeness.
Blog Archive
-
►
2008
(131)
-
►
September
(18)
- Koinonia-Greek For It Happens, But I Can't Explain...
- When This Is All You Have To Say...
- Frustrated
- Like Everyone Else...
- Rose
- Encourage Expression.
- A Collection Of The (supposed) Best and Worst Chri...
- I Give Up.
- Sleep
- Would You Believe They Put A Man On The Moon?
- Oh My, Let Me Hide Under A Desk.
- A Little About Me.
- When I Look Back On My Life This Is What I See.
- Personal Goal
- Screw Up
- Nothing To Understand
- Love Is Patient
- Hobbies
-
►
September
(18)
Good Friends are hard to find.
But strange friends are easy to spot in a crowd.
Family
My favorite picture of my childhood. My Grandparents, my brother Eric, Cousin's Chris and Matthew, and myself.
Summer Sunset in the Keys
Sunset at the Islamorada Fish Company. Great food...Bitchin view!
Jupiter Beach
One good reason to live in south Florida!
Jupiter Lighthouse
Very cool picture of the Jupiter light house one evening.
Coral reef at John Pennekamp State Park
A good reason to dive.
Angle Fish
Another good reason I dive.
Tree Frog
This was the biggest tree frog I have ever seen.
8 comments:
there are times when forgiveness seems like a very ethereal thing to me. there is a person who hurt me and i don't like them anymore. i maybe even hate them and definately get angry when i think about them and what they did. however, i know i need to forgive. so i do forgive and release the anger. or at least some of it. but a part of me feels like if i forgive them...truly forgive them that i have to be good with them again. to like them. to be ok with them and with what they did. and i'm not ok with it because it was wrong. not just because it hurt me, but because it was actually wrong. maybe if i can just not be agnry about it, that would be forgiveness. that i could remember that person and not have a knot in my stomach and not have the desire to punch them in the face. maybe forgiveness would be not to think about them at all.
I wish I had some answer, maybe some Christianese churchy thing to say, but I don't. I have struggled with forgiveness my whole life. I understand mentally that I need to forgive, I amnot sure how that is acted out though. I guess forgiveness is not having to be around that person(s) and act like everything is just great. I guess for me, it is more the issue of harboring the anger, releasing that and moving on. I don't think I have to act like I enjoy those tha I have been hurt by, but I do have to forgive them.
i used to have the Christianese churchy thing to say. now all those cliches fall flat.
So I just started reading two new books. I read four or five books at a time because I am a little ADD and I have figured out that I actually finish a book much quicker, five to be exact, if I use this method. Amazon loves me for this.
Anyway, three of the books I am reading are "What's So Amazing About Grace" by Phillip Yancy, "Soul Cravings" by Erwin McManus, and "Messy Spirituality" by Mike Yaconelli. I guess it is the perfect storm of reading material to make me realize just how much I DON'T understand grace and forgiveness.
Here is a quote I would like to share with you from "Soul Cravings."
"Bitterness is the enemy of love because it makes you unforgiving and unwilling to give love unconditionally.
It is the enemy of hope because you keep living in the past and become incapable of seeing a better future.
It is the enemy of faith because you stop trusting anyone but yourself."
i'm reading about three books right now myself. sometimes i get distracted. hehe. also, i'm taking a class so i try to focus on my homework. anyway...i own Yancy's book, but haven't read it yet and i heard about "messy spirituality" and want to read it. "soul cravings" is a new one to me, but sounds interesting. thank you for sharing that quote. McManus expresses it quite accurately. he makes it hit close to home.
what other books are you reading?
"Traveling Mercies" By Ann Lamott. "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho (the lady that does my tattoos gave this to me as a gift Friday, I gave her "The Shack")and in my bathroom I have "Church History in Plain Language" by Bruce Shelley which I have been reading for like a year. I have ended up in the "Cool Christian" book rut for the past couple of years and I am starting to wonder if there is anything out there new and interesting. I just ordered two more books on amazon from the "Joshua" series by Joseph F Girzone. I read Joshua last year and only found out last night that there is a whole line of them.
the Alchemist!!! I almost bought that book on my last trip. i love to buy books in airport bookstores. or any bookstore really, although, it is probably cheaper to get them from amazon or somewhere. anyway, the alchemist looked interesting and hopefully i will buy it or borrow it from the library at some point. the shack is the last book i actually finished. parts of it really spoke to me. speaking of the "cool christian" book rut, have you read "unChristian" by David Kinnaman. it is one of the books i am currently reading. i've never heard of Girzone, but then again, i'm a bit out of the loop. ;-)
The Alchemist is interesting so far. I sometimes find it difficult to read books translated to english from latin speaking languages. I have read a couple books by Andre Trocme who is/was French and they were translated to English. Then Again Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton uses words and references things that you have to research to figure out what he is talking about. The writting style is a little different than American litterature to say the least.
I have unChristian in my "to buy que" on Amazon. I guess I have read enough of those type of books to finally get the point. It all goes back to the idea that western Christianity is no longer content with the way we "do" church and is finally disgusted by the 20 billion a year we spend on operational expenses.
Post a Comment