Fishes and God

Wow. Never have I been so challenged as I am here, now. The views I am being presented... The questions I am being asked... Then I don't have the time to process it and it all just sits in my head screaming for attention. Then on top of it all these books are being recommended to me and I want to read them so bad... Ah I love reading. But truly... being here has taken me to a whole new level of being...of living...of thinking. I can't even explain. My mind has been pushed farther and to places that are new and scary and mysterious and exciting and uncomfortable... But they are alive. There is a lot of thinking to be had in this new place. I don't know where I stand yet... There are a lot of things to work out, work through. It's like when you're writing a paper and think there's no more information to be gotten from the books you've read, then you're given a huge stack of loaded new information. It's like, gosh Juliana you know nothing. Nada. You think there's nothing really else to know and you're taken to a whole new library. Truth. There's more truth out there than I have.


Our Bible. It's a Middle Eastern book. It's not an American book. A Western book. Yet the Middle East sees it as that. And so reading it is in a way deserting their culture. To a lot of Middle Easterners, its the western book. The Western religion. Um.... Jesus wasn't born in America. As Western Christians, why do we think we "take" Jesus to the Middle East? Heck He was from the Middle East. I have been humbled by this thought. Missionaries come to the ME to take Jesus to people. People need to be coming here to find Him. He is still here. I'm getting to know Jesus in a whole new way. I've put him in a box and thought I new about all there was to know about him, and boy was I so wrong. I feel like every day I get to know a different side of him, and I love it. I will never be able to get my mind around him. I may be able to look at his life and make a set of rules for me to follow that would make my life similar to his, but that is not knowing him. The question of Jesus' place in general revelation has been on my mind a lot lately. If people are able to know Jesus without having to have a Bible, it would make so much more sense to me, and the trinity would be more understandable. The Bible would be more understandable and approachable. If you can know God with out having to have scripture, through general revelation, then you have to be able to know Jesus. Then yesterday I read a verse in John (8:56): Abraham knew Jesus. He did. He came to know him. Jesus has been here, forever. He is knowable by all. Accessible. I can't explain the walls that broke down for me. Jesus is more than a person. An answer to my sin. He is God, the Almighty, the beginning and the end, the Creator of all. He did not appear in the scene for the sole purpose of taking away my sin so I wont go to hell. God was God always, majestic and wonderful and oh so creative. I went snorkeling day before yesterday in Dahab, and the fishes and coral screamed His name so loud I was humbled and honored to witness such praise. The glory His creation gives Him testifies enough to His love. How could a mean god make such beauty? And then allow us to witness it? There is no way. He loved me by creating me and letting me live in this world. By giving me life, He loved me. Then when I screwed it up, He gave me life again. God damned Himself on the cross, so that Life could kill death. He died so He could be resurrected and in His resurrection we have life. The law is our death, and He finished the law. Now we get to live for Him. But His redeeming us is only part of who He is. He is so much more. There is so much more to find out. Ah, how God can be known so much better when we stop thinking that its all about us.





So..


Dahab: amazing chill place. I will post pictures soon. oh food...two words: coconut milkshakes.


fav fish seen- sweet retro half black half white fish, bright pink and green striped fish, then purple coral.


I saw Saudi Arabia across the Red Sea. =-O


Mount Sinai: Moses must have been a beast, my body was dying by the time I got up there. Worst hike ever. Physically. Most amazing experience... to watch the sun rise over the mountains.. to see everything from way up there, close to God... to sleep on a ledge and wake up to find you're on top of the world and its the most calm place you've ever been... I think that was my favorite part. Waking up there.


In one month our travel component starts. The place I'm looking forward to the most: Palestine. Place I'm looking forward to least: the bus. I get motion sickness when I get off buses here. I can deal with the motion when I'm on the bus but when I get off my body is still swaying with the bus but the floor isn't = dizziness and vomit.

Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow


Praise Him, all creatures here below


Praise Him above ye heavenly host


Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.