So I know it's been a while, and it feels like I need to update, but I'm not exactly sure what to say, ha. I don't have anything too deep on my mind, but I think that mainly recently I've just felt very thankful. My eyes have really been opened to see how much I have and how much God has blessed me. I have some of the most amazing friends in the world, a family who loves me incredibly, I am a part of a church that has grown me and stretched me, I attend a school which has blessed me and taught me in many ways, and all of my needs have been met. And also it is summer. ;-) God has blessed me so much, and my only hope is that the way I live every day makes Him proud to call me His son and reflects the love and hope and power of Christ, even if in the smallest way.

And for the longest time, that has been my prayer for everyone around me, too -- that they would know and experience the scope and depth of God's love for them in such a way that their only response could be wholehearted devotion to serving and loving one another and helping to break God's kingdom into their everyday situations. And that isn't easy. It takes sacrifice and denying our feelings for the sake of loving those we don't get along with, and it takes initiative and prayer and work.......but it works. :-) And it's what we're called to -- it's the whole reason for our existence -- to love God by loving His people -- our enemies, the outcasts, the popular, the poor AND the rich, the conservatives AND the liberals, those who have blessed us, and those who have only hurt us.

And so I just pray that thankfulness wouldn't stop at a prayer in my heart, but that it would spread contagiously to those around me by the way I live. And I realize that's easy to say and it's maybe a cliche thing to say as a Christian, but that's what's on my heart right now and I am SO thankful that God's grace has covered my mistakes and is new EVERY morning to strengthen my weaknesses and fill me again with an amazing understanding of God's love for me and the faith I need to trust that He has a perfect purpose through all of the confusion in my life now. Everything He does is wonderful, and I am confident that the work that He began in me will be carried through to completion on the day of His return. :-)