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wings_01
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Name: Raven
Location: Searcy, Arkansas, United States
Gender: Female
Interests: Reading, watching cheesy reality shows, talking with my friends, reading all these crazy weblogs, and listening to music. I LOVE to listen to music!
Expertise: Babysitting...it's what I do every other day.
Homework, since I have a few more years of that coming up. Talking..ask anyone that knows me LOL!!
Occupation: Full time student. Only I don'
Industry: Other
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  babyhay101
MSN: hay_26_11@hotmail.com
ICQ:  112677060
Yahoo:  cavaren57
Member Since:
3/22/2004
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| It's spring time, and this is generally a time for renewal. But before rebirth, some things have to die. In my life, there are many things that I have to die. I hope I'm up to the challenge.
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| I was talking to Kevin tonight, and we had a pretty interesting conversation. He asked me what I think about abortion, to which I gave him the answer I have given frequently in the past. I've written about it before, but I don't mind sharing it here again. I feel that there are always ways for God's people to provide hope, encouragement, and other options to those women who feel that an abortion is her only option for a pregnancy she didn't anticipate. I also told him that abortion is only possible when good people do absolutely nothing. We kept talking about it, and he said something totally out of the blue: he said that he felt that most of the time, the church drops the ball in how we treat those women that find themselves pregnant or have had an abortion. We throw their sin in their faces,and basically make them feel as though hell is where they have a reservation.
Kevin made the statement that "Jesus came to earth to be like us so that we would have way to become like him." So all of the sudden, our conversation became more of a question: how would Jesus treat the young ladies if/when something like this were to happen to them? Like a brick hitting me in the face, a certain passage of Scripture came to me. John 7:53-8:11.
Now if you look closely in your Bible at this passage, you'll notice that there is a disclaimer. The earliest of manuscripts don't include this story. When one reads it, many possibilities for this story being left out will spring up. For those who don't know the story, we see that Jesus has come to the Temple early in the morning. A lot of people saw him there and came to him and he started to teach them. While he was doing this, the scribes and the Pharisees came to him, and they had a young woman with them. This woman, they inform him, has been caught in the act of adultery and they wanted to know what he would do about this. While they are doing this, Jesus bends down to the ground and starts to write. No one knows what he wrote, but he does say something that stuns and angers the Pharisees: let the one who has NO SIN, cast the first stone. Finally he looks up and says to the woman "where are the one who accuse you? Has no one condemned you"? She says no, and Jesus tells her "neither do I. Go and sin no more."
This story leaves much to be desired in terms of knowledge. The most curious of us want to know what it was that Jesus was writing. Personally, I think he was something like "Leviticus 20:10" or "where's the man?" I say this because there is something else that is missing from this scenario: a person for the woman to commit the act of adultery with. She didn't sin alone, but she was the one that was being drug through the streets. There was a crowd there, and many of them probably looked at her as though she was trash because she was caught sinning (mind you, they/we all sin. All of ours have yet to be brought to light...).
What's so amazing about the grace that the Lord shows this young lady is not that he lets her live. Her life was forfeit the moment she was brought out to answer to the world that she was guilty. In any other group of people, on any other day, she probably would have been stoned to death. So when Jesus tells her he doesn't condemn her, and to go and sin no more he wasn't just forgiving her. He made her see that while she did sin, her life was not forfeit. Hell was not her destination. Her life could be firmly put in his hands (and already was whether she knew it or not) and she could live a new, better life. This woman can walk away from that situation, and be better than she came into it.
And that is how it should be for the young women (and men) who find themselves in the middle of something as complicated and sad as abortion. We can give them hope that no matter what they do, there will always be forgiveness, grace, and an opportunity to leave differently and better than they started.
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| Lately I have been going through a new season of my life, and for the most part I have been having a hard time with it. Someone once said that "the leaves change in the fall because they are dying. And when you think about it, they're at their most beautiful when they are dying." It seemed an odd statement to make, until I thought about what Jesus said. In John 12, Jesus says that unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and DIES, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.
By allowing certain "deaths" to happen, many beautiful things are starting to grow. And I'm so excited about the possibilities.
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| I would be willing to wager that many of us know the story of King David, and how he had a one-night stand with Bathsheba. I would also be confident in saying that most of us know that he got her pregnant, and worked out a scheme to make her husband believe that he was the father of the child. And that when this great plan didn't work, he had Uriah (Bathsheba's husband) sent into the most heated part of a battle that Israel was fighting knowing that it would most likely be deadly.
What I found out from some people I had a conversation with the other day is that most people assume that this pregnancy of Bathsheba and David is how we get Solomon. That, unfortunately, is not true. This was another child entirely, the first for this new couple. When David is confronted by the prophet Nathan that God has seen his sin, and that He is grieved by it, and that even though he is the king of Israel he has done what is evil in His sight. Though he won't die because of what he did, this sin will have consequences that will affect everyone in his life. Starting with his newborn son (2 Samuel 12:7-15).
David feels convicted and so saddened by what he has heard from God that he immediately starts to fast, pray, and cry out to God in hopes that this will change God's mind. Scripture says that after seven days of this, the child that is borne to him and Bathsheba dies (2 Samuel 12:16-17). As soon as David hears the news, he gets up, washes himself, goes to the house of the Lord to worship, goes home, and asks for something to eat. Everyone around him is stunned, and they begin to question his sudden change of demeanor. He sums it all up quite beautifully by saying "While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept, for I said 'Who knows whether the Lord will be gracious to me, that the child may live?' But now he is dead. Why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me" (2 Samuel 12:22-23).
For some reason, I have been thinking about this passage of Scripture a lot, even before the conversation I had with my friends the other night. Even though this is one of the dark moments for David, something struck me about the way he handled his situation once he allowed the Lord to discipline him. He fasted and prayed. He sought out the Lord. He grieved over his sin and what that sin would do to his family. He prayed that God would spare the life of his baby. When it was over, and God did what he saw fit in the situation, David worshiped God, and started to live his life as a different, better man from that point forward.
I've been thinking about many things in my life lately. I have know of people and relationships that God has asked me to let go of. I begged and pleaded that God would change his mind because the loss of those and people in my life seemed (at the time) too much to bear. Even though I've lost those relationships, and those people who used to be a major part of my life are now gone, I still beg and plead with God asking him to resurrect things in my life that are dead now. I haven't grieved the losses because I want God to change his mind to make things easier on me. Never mind that those people and relationships were toxic to my life and my walk with Jesus.
I have to grieve, and I have to let them go. And I need to worship God because not only is He just, he is merciful. He loves me with a fierceness that I cannot even being to fathom or put into words. I'm not sure that I know how to grieve, but I think that if I allow myself to really feel the losses, the Lord will grieve with me.
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| I'm sitting in the coffee shop in Hastings enjoying the free WiFi and the air. Too hot for coffee right now, I'm afraid. It's mildly sad that the lazy summer is almost over. A lot has happened this summer to be sure, but I spent so much of it cooped up and ill. I'm glad for the moments it has given me to further deepen many of my friendships, and it has even given me time to reflect on some relationships that have come to an end. I'm hoping that fall will be a great time of renewal. I'll write more later.
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