My hand at poetry

This is essentially a continuation of my Discovering Grace post. After the talk that we had, and after I made this amazing "rediscovery" of grace, we were told to write a poem about this talk. I therefore tried my hand at poetry one more time.

I have tried writing poems before, while I was at school, and while I thought that they were pretty good (for an amateur), they were not exactly breath taking. I have tried a few times after school, but never found the right things to write about. Till now...

This picture of God as a mother crawling after her baby learning to walk struck me as a very potent description of what grace was. And so, I had the perfect thing to write about. And this is what I came up with.

_______________________________

Prevenient Grace

As a mother,

on her hands and knees,

crawls after her infant child,

God, our life-giver,

with tears and cheers,

desires to have you know Him.

With tears He sent His Son,

with cheers He welcomed me,

He lifts me when I fall,

And He loves me even though I turn.

As a mother, on her hands and knees,

crawls after her infant child,

God, our life-give, with grace

pursued us to see with faith.

_______________________________

May God's blessings follow you, and may His grace become real to you!

DE COLORES!

Andrew

Re-discovering Grace

From 5-8 September (so basically this past weekend), I attended something called The Walk to Emmaus. It is a 72 hour program focused at Christians in order to just refocus their lives, and to RE-present Jesus to them, to encourage you to be a disciple, and to get involved in church.

Over the weekend, you listen to a series of talks. For me, the talks were very good, but the things that struck me the most were the experiences that they arrange to help focus you. I would love to tell you about these experiences, but so many of them are just indescribable. Also, I do not want to ruin it for anyone that might go, as the whole idea of Emmaus is to surrender and just let go.

You are asked to leave your phone and watch behind, so you have no clue what the time is, and also none of the people who help on the Walk will never tell you what is happening next, so that the experience is one of amazement and surprise. It is an absolutely beautiful experience.

You might be wondering why I am writing this blog post then, if I do not want to tell you about anything that happened on the Walk. Well it is simple, there is one thing I can tell you. It is one of the most vital and important lessons I learnt on the walk after reflecting on a talk about grace. I am going to type out exactly what I wrote down in my notebook during this time of reflection.

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"Even though God was seeking for us while we were sinners, it is amazing to realize that He is still seeking after us now that we are with Him. There are times we turn away (deliberately or accidentally), and yet every time He is following us, like a mother following close behind a baby who is still learning to walk. He is on His hands and knees, close enough to catch us if we fall, but just far away from us to allow us to fall, cause without being able to fall, we will never learn."

"It is only after we are up and walking again that we look back and realize that God was with us from the beginning. It is at this stage that the responsibility is on us to be aware that we must look back and realize God's hand over our lives, and then to thank Him for looking after us and protecting us."

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Having grown up in a Christian household, and going to church since the day I took my first breath, the concepts of the LOVE of God and the GRACE of God become somewhat cliche, and so it starts loosing its potency. This is part of the point of the Walk to Emmaus, to make God's love and grace become very obvious to you. 

For me, over the past few years, the love of God has become more and more real, but not His grace, and with this comment that I wrote in my notes, the grace of God has certainly become a lot more real! Praise be to God!

DE COLORES!

Andrew

Starting off

And so it begins!

For the past few months I have been thinking about starting a blog, but I was never certain whether I wanted to take the final just and just go for it! I have finally decided that it was about time to share some of the experiences I have, for two reasons:

Reason Number 1
I am a young adult Christian man, and I feel that I need to show people that just because you are a Christian, it does not mean your life needs to stand still.

Reason Number 2
This is for me. I wanted to start something that I would have to keep going, a sort of personal accountability thing. So that when I look back, I can see what God has done for me.

And so, with no more further a-do's (bad spelling, I know), I announce that Discovering Life is up and running. Hope you enjoy the journey as much as I will!

Andrew