No more GRE!!!

It's done! Over! Kaput! And I'm happy with it. Sorry for the lack of interesting posts in the past week, but making my graduate school application look nicer took precedence. I took the GRE this morning and I'm happy with it, but most of all, ready to go back to school. Good thing that that's Friday's activity! Not that I don't want to be here, but I miss everyone a lot. On to more interesting thoughts...

Recently I've been thinking about what it means to have faith like a child. These thoughts came from two TFC sermons Sunday, one last week, watching the Chronicles of Narnia, and thinking about being an adult. The sermons were, in chronological order, about the following: the 9th commandment (thou shalt not bear false witness, ie no lying), the 10th commandment (thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's possessions, ie rely on God and don't grow jealous over what someone else has), and the parable of the prodigal son (did you know that prodigal means extravagant? GRE knowledge of the day).

Okay, I admit, from that list it might be hard to see what I mean by having faith like a child, but TFC's current 10 Commandment series has been focusing on applying the commandments to New Testament teachings. So for false witness we talked about not only not lying, but watching all of our words and making sure that they are edifying and building others up rather than taking them down. For covetousness, we talked about how the reason we become jealous over what someone else has is underlying fear. If you are jealous over someone else's job, then you might be afraid that your's is not good enough. Jealousy grows with comparing yourself to someone else and ends with a lie, a shadow of what you really want. The pastor (David Glade) noted that there are two great tragedies of life: not getting what you want, and getting it. The real issue here is not trusting God with our future, relationships, security, money, etc.

Then I was watching Narnia and it struck me how Lucy just trusted Aslan just like that. There was no question. She knew he was good and that she had nothing to fear from him. It took Peter and Susan a little longer and it was hard for them, especially for Peter, to realize what power they had because of Aslan. It's the same thing with us and God. It is so easy to trust when we're still innocent, before we go through tough times in life, because tough times cause us to doubt that maybe this time, God isn't going to come through for us.

Of course, that's a lie. He's always going to come through. A true adult faith is a faith like a child that is informed by life experiences. This kind of faith allows us to forgive and bring our fallen brothers and sisters back into the fold, and welcome new ones (see the other brother in the prodigal son story). This kind of faith recognizes that we are God's and He is our Father. He is going to welcome us home no matter what. This faith allows us to yield our dreams and hopes to God's will, knowing that His plans are good and for our future, realizing that even though others may fail us, He never has and He never will.