Relive

This semester is so different for me than last. Everything from my class schedule to the people I surround myself with to my relationship with God feels somehow different and new. I've had such good days and had a joy about me that wasn't there before. I think it's because God has become a bigger part of my life.

I think it's because the old is gone and the new is here. God has taken the old away and given us a new life. We become spiritual beings that are stuck here on Earth. We realize that there is more than just the here and now and what we see in front of our face. We begin to realize that there are heavens above that mean so much more than just what we are here.

"Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits at God's right hand in the place of honor and power. Let heaven fill your thoughts. Do not think only about things down here on earth. For you died when Christ died, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God. And when Christ who is your real life, is revealed to the whole world, you will share in all his glory." (Colossians 3:1-4)

Just as Christmas brings us new gifts and New Years brings resolutions that throw away the old things, we are caught in this world of change. I was reading a book lately and the author's note said everything I want to say I want to say with this lesson series. This is just an excerpt that I think speaks a whole lot:

"The seasons remind me that I must keep changing, and I want to change because it is God's way. All my life I have been changing. I changed from a baby to a child, from soft toys to play daggers. I changed into a teenager to drive a car, into a worker to spend some money. I will change into a husband to love a woman, into a father to love a child, change houses so we are near water, and again so we are near mountains, and again so we are near friends, keep changing with my wife, getting our love so it dies and gets born again and again, like a garden, fed by four seasons, a cycle of change....I want to keep my soul fertile for the changes, so things keep getting born in me, so things keep dying when it is time for things to die. I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently." -Donald Miller, Author's Note of Through Painted Deserts

This series has been about change and it ends with reliving, which is what we do in God. I've presented all these steps as though they are separate things, as if when you finish with one you go to the next, but really these steps are all one big mesh to make up change. I have found that while reliving I have still been removing myself from people who pull me away from God, I always continue restructuring the way my life is composed to be built upon God, and I am constantly finding new friends so we can share our faith together. There is never a moment where we reach any sort of perfection or rest. "I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago..." We should look forward to the future and always strive for it, strive for the change that inevitably will take place and relive inside of it.

"I don't mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection! But I keep working toward that day when I will finally be all that Christ Jesus saved me for and wants me to be. No, dear brothers and sisters, I am still not all I should be, but I am focusing all my energies on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead." (Philippians 3:12-13)