July, July

Um wow. It is July. I've always thought of July as the most hardcore summer-y of summer months. Perhaps because this seems to be the month most people are vacationing? Or because the vegetables are coming in much abundance at last? July is most hardcore for me this summer simply because everyone and his mother are hitting me up for garden jobs. I'm starting to think I'll have to say no to someone simply because I won't have the time to dedicate to pulling their weeds that they probably want me to have. I guess this is how people start businesses, but I was never in this for the business. I was just gonna come home, have surgery, and recover. There was no plan beyond that. But now I am seeing God decided He'd plan this all out for me, so I'm just gonna run with it and not fret about my (many) babysitting hours overlapping multiple gardening jobs.

In other news, I recently sat in a Barnes & Noble reading The Reason For God by Timothy Keller. About a year ago, I started slipping into some serious doubt about this very topic. I tend to get caught up in truth, logic, reason, rationale, etc., but it seems getting too caught up in all this leaves my faith in ragged form. That was a rough season of life, but I can see how God is perfecting me through it. With all the wisdom I lack and as cold as my heart can be, God gave me a season to point to and say, "Remember that? Remember how unwise and confused you were then? Above all, remember what that was like without Me?" Oh, I remember, and I hope to never be so stupid as to pretend it never happened. Loving God is not a matter for skeptics. Not all forms of doubt are really okay for freely infiltrating a believer's mind. This whole following Christ business is so dang difficult. And we're all experiencing different difficulties in our varied walks with Christ. I want to know your difficulties just like I know my own. I want to know how God has shown provision in your life as well as I know He has in mine. God has so much to show us through our relationships with one another, and that makes deep family bonds and friendships that much sweeter.

Starting this coming Sunday at church, I want to take this perspective to the youth Sunday school class when I talk to those kids about who Christ is and why He even matters. As simple a lesson that should be, it is so dang difficult.