A Life After Death

I realized I actually use this blog to go back and figure out my grandmom's medical history sometimes and so therefore I thought it necessary to report here that grandmom broke her hip yesterday and needs a hip replacement. It's a really bad break (or is it brake? which one is right?). Her doctor said her a ninety seven year old came in with a brake (or break) not as bad as her brake is and her family opted not to do the surgery.
She fell out of her chair yesterday (I told my dad to watch her, for the record!) after I left for Weds. Night Bible Study (which ironically was a message I really needed to hear and therefore I know God had me at church- no regrets)
So my parents took her to the hospital. I turned on my phone after church because Darla was laughing at her texts and I wanted to be cool like her and I was all like "I got four texts!" but then they were all "Call mom- ER" "Grandmom fell" "Emergency" "We need you" and not funny texts at all...boo
So poor grandmom last night was all "I'm to blame, I'm to blame" (and she was to blame...I told her to stop getting up all day) but she was just "I want to ball my eyes out" and very dramatic telling us that "Thank God we are not alone" and "I love you, you are my love" and we sang a little rendition of "You are my sunshine to pass the time away"
she's very loving during her near death experiences
all right
updates to follow
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my homeless friends
Bradley is still doing great...pray he gets plugged in to a church

Amy Carmichael died a very long time ago. But last night I read about it in the biography written by Elisabeth Elliot about her. I didn't cry like I thought I was going to. But Amy's life really inspired me and gave me such hope- A life lived fully for the Lord is worth it. A life of sacrifice is worth it. Because Jesus Christ is worth it. The biography is over 350 pages long and it took me about 3 months to read I think. It summed up the life of an 80 something year old woman who loved Jesus since she was a youth. Who was taught at a young ago that the Lord was able to keep her from falling. That she was going to have to close her ears to all other voices that would lead her away from her Lord if she was going to follow Him. She left her whole life behind in England- forlough was never really even an option for her. That life was behind her and wherever the Lord called her was ahead. Family members died back home without her. Missionaries despised her in Asia. She actually believed God wanted Christians to love each other (can you imagine that?) and believed God was able to do it in her life and the lives of those around her.

Amy Carmichael loved God.
Seeing her life summed up in less than 400 pages does not give justice to the inner turmoil she faced in her lifetime, the loneliness, I'm sure at times, the sacrifice, the pain, the joys, the triumphs, the daily ins and outs of service. But it shows a beginning and an end. I like that. Because for me sometimes it really is hard to imagine that one day this world, this life, will truly end and I will see my Beloved face to face. The here and now is so often all I can see. Waking up, getting Grandmom up, making coffee, planting flowers, reading the Word, listening to teachings, going to church, Coatesville, facebook, family, food...these things are what seem so real to me right now and I cannot imagine an end to them all. But one day...truly one day it will end. It was so encouraging to read about a life...a life fully lived for the Lord.

I'm reading through Acts right now. I came to the story of Ananias and Sapphira. I guess I've never really compared myself to them- I mean, God killed them. He literally slew them down for their sin- and I've never done anything that bad, right? But I'm seeing more and more how much I was it to look like I've given my whole life over to God- when really I hold so much for myself. My time. My laziness. My personal space. My friends. My family. I just want to hold onto it all. I hold onto all of my fears of what God will actually do with my life if I give Him all. But daily I need to go to Him, and allow His perfect love to cast out all of my fear. He desires so much for me. And I want to want Him to have my all...He is so able.

Anyhow, I'll leave you with one last Amy Carmichael quote: (scene- end of her life on her death bed, in constant pain):
"Not relief from pain, not relief from weariness that follows, not anything of that sort at all, is my chief need. Thou, O Lord my God, art my need- Thy courage, Thy patience, Thy fortitude. And very much I need a quickened gratitude for the countless helps given every day" p. 365

"Strength of my heart, I need not fail,
Not mine to fear but to obey,
With such a leader, who could quail?
Thou art as Thou were yesterday.
Strength of my heart, I rest in Thee,
Fulfill Thy purposes through me"

Amy's Confession of Love

"My Vow.
Whatsoever Thou Sayest unto me, by Thy grace I will do it.

My Constraint.
Thy love, O Christ, my Lord.

My Confidence.
Thou art able to keep that which I have committed unto Thee.

My Joy.
To do Thy will, O God.

My Discipline.
That which I would not choose, but which Thy love appoints.

My Prayer.
Conform my will to Thine.

My Motto.
Love to live, live to love.

My Portion.
The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance.

Teach us, good Lord, to serve Thee as Thou deservest; to give and not count the cost; to fight and not heed the wounds; to toil and not to seek for rest; to labor and not to ask for any reward save that of knowing that we do Thy will, O Lord our God."


"If by doing some work which the undiscerning consider 'not spiritual work' I can best help others, and I inwardly rebel, thinking it is the spiritual for which I crave, when in truth it is the interesting and exciting, then I know nothing of Calvary love"

My grandmom is 80 today! Who ever thought she'd make it? not me....
Happy birthday grandmom!

There is something about contrasts- black and white, happy and sad, death and life- that makes you see things clearer. Contrasts open your eyes, refocus us.

I saw two very different lives this weekend. Or maybe their lives weren't so very different- but their reactions to their lives.
Every third Saturday of the month, my college group volunteers at Cast Your Cares ministry which is basically a family's home on Kensington Ave in Philadelphia which they use to care for the needy of Philadelphia and provide them with food, clothes, but most of all the incredible Gospel of Jesus Christ. Every Saturday of the month they open up the alley alongside their house to the homeless to come and sit down and eat. We set up picnic tables and another church brings a ton of incredible food and we serve it and speak with the homeless with the aim to share the gospel and pray and minister to them. A lot of the people we serve aren't homeless though, a majority are addicts who are temporarily residing at halfway houses in the area. Some are business men, in their business suits, who are just so addicted to drugs and alcohol that they go to work, but then come back to the halfway houses to try to recover from their addictions. What brings a man who has achieved the American Dream to the place where he is finding his next meal in an alley sitting next to a man who hasn't showered in weeks? Surely it's their need for God that they tried to fill with drugs, sex, and alcohol...and so we desire to offer these people Hope from the One who is our Hope...

Last month a met a kid named Bradley. I shouldn't call him a kid, since he is 21 like me, but his youthful countenance, joy in life, excitement for the day, makes me see him as young- but not in a bad way. Bradley had been a drug addict, but had been clean for a couple months now (he could tell you the days without skipping a beat). He attributed it to the Lord. He was so refreshing in a city full of lost dreams, failure, and pain. He had hope- he had the Hope. He knew that God was able, and he'd learned that he wasn't.

This month I met a man named Danny. Danny was still intoxicated when he sat down at the table I was serving. He'd drunk the night before, and he'd drunk again that morning after realizing he'd screwed up. Danny's goal had been to get out of Philly his whole life. Make a better life for himself, for his family. The failure to do that left him with alcohol to wash away the pain. I guess Danny had not met the business man a few tables away who had found a better life for him and his family, who lived in suburbia, and was still as empty as Danny. Danny's hand was cut up and bloodied from the fight he'd been in the night before. Danny had an irish temper as his excuse. Danny was so ashamed. He'd been the one the men in the halfway house had looked up to. And he'd failed. He'd failed himself and them, he said. I felt so bad for Danny. I know what it's like to fail.

I caught up with Bradley before the afternoon was over. 166 days clean. Still full of life and vigor. Still trusting the Lord to be his strength.

Danny and Bradley were such a contrast to me. Danny was middle aged, eyes blood shot, countenance so heavy, totally despairing, and then there was Bradley: young, sober, full of hope and a future

How do we respond to failure as children of God? How do we respond to His chastening? His discipline? I love Hebrews 12: The Lord knows us and He knows how we get when we fail. Our spirits give up. We shut down. We act hopeless and despairing. We forget that God was able to save us in the first place from all of our sins, is He not still able to pick us back up? If He loves us before we were saved in all of our trangressions, will He then cast us aside when we as His children fall? Hebrews 12 is such an encouragement to not despair, to not allow our failure to conquer us, to not allow ourselves to be condemned...


Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Consider Him who endured from sinners such hostility against Himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.
In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.

And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?
“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
nor be weary when reproved by him.
“For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
and chastises every son whom he receives.”

It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.
Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live?
For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness.
For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees,
and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed.
Hebrews 12:1-13

Am I a major dork because I'm sitting in my house going on a trip down memory lane...like...when I say a trip down memory lane, I'm not looking at pics on facebook, I'm not reading old letters or emails, I'm actually going on Google Street View through York...baha...I'm just now passing the little newstand place on Walmgate where we used to buy our phone cards..haha- Google is incredible!

I'm a little jealous now that everyone from church went off the all my old Bible college stomping grounds- Sara gets to chill in York and Schylo gets to tromp across Hungary, and everyone in California is getting married and I'm just sitting at home with grandmom, in Langhorne, drinking coffee.

But in reality I would not be happy anywhere else, because sitting here in Langhorne is where God has me. He does not have me in York. He does not have me in Vajta. He does not have me in Prague, in San Diego, in New Jersey (surfing!), He does not have me in Haiti.
He has me in Langhorne, tending chickens, planning my garden, baking bread, reading, going to Calvary Chapel of Philadelphia, serving where I'm called- learning and growing and stretching and breaking. I'm so thankful. And I'm happy. I really truly am happy to be in the center of God's will. As much as I wish I had the cash flow to hop on a plane right this minute, God's plan and timing is just so perfect and He absolutely knows what He is doing...if there is anything I've learned walking with Him the past nine years is that He has the best plan and the best timing.

Now I'm passing Dreams Tea house! Where Becky from Canada used to work!!! It's so cute!
Aw, and now I'm on Piccadily! Where we talked to the Homeless Man....oh, and here's the Public restrooms where we talked to the prostitute...and here's the beautiful town center where all of the Holiday building were set up and the rides and stands...
Oh! And the Disney Store where Josh the intern worked! And there's Borders where I bought my giant journal before Speaker's Week...oh, and here's the corner where the man with no legs would play music!And here's Ask, the restaurant where they had dinner before Helen's bridal shower! ANd I can almost look down off of Museum st. and see the park where we would go street witnessing!
I love it
It's nice to remember
and nice to look forward
and nice to be where I am now- knowing that God is always faithful!