Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I won’t be able to go home, but I’m still thankful for so many things.

I’m thankful for the life that I have. For the ability to breath, to drink, to eat, to smile, to sleep (and wake up), to ponder, to wonder, to feel. So thanks for my life. Thanks for my yesterdays, my tomorrow, and the rest of my days. Thanks for the hope of a better day. But thanks for the day that you’ve given me now. Thanks for the food that sustains me, the clothes that cover me, and the place to lay my head. Thanks for the pain and regret that I’ve felt throughout the years. Thanks for the understanding that comes with the passage of time.

Thanks for turmoil and for peace. For solitude and loneliness. Thanks for my emotions – my up-and-down heart. Thanks for my reason, for giving me the ability to see through the fog of life. Thanks for giving me faith. Thanks for hope. Thanks for love. Thanks for my family – my father, my mother, and my sister. Thanks for my father’s life, and the peace of my mother’s death. Thank you for my sister’s support. Thanks for my brethren, my friends, my associates, acquaintances. Thanks for those people who I will never see again – fortunately and unfortunately. Thanks for confrontations and for battles. Thanks for my foes and enemies through the years.

So many things I can thank You for… my country, my countrymen. The struggle, failure, and success. Thanks for the opportunities taken and for those lost.

Most of all, thanks for giving me a mind and a map to decide where I want to go. But thanks for the one-way ticket to Heaven.

Happy Thanksgiving Day.

It dawned on me slow yet strongly
The thought and longing – the hand of God is upon me.
Despite the wrongs that I spawn, seeds
That grow into scrawny long green weeds
The hand of God is upon me.
It moves me along like a rook or a pawn
Or a knight or a king, in dreams and in songs.
Despite the words and thoughts, and the emotions in which I’m lost
I take up my cross.
The hand of God is upon me.

-Nalej Bonz

Going through it right now. Sometimes I get the feeling that life is just slipping through my fingers. But I’m confident that things will get better – even if they have to get worse beforehand. I know that God has a plan for me.

1 The words of the Teacher, [a] son of David, king in Jerusalem:

2 “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.”

3 What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun?

4 Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.

5 The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.

6 The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course.

7 All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again.

8 All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.

9 What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

10 Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.

11 There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow.

12 I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem.

13 I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven. What a heavy burden God has laid on men!

14 I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

15 What is twisted cannot be straightened; what is lacking cannot be counted.

16 I thought to myself, “Look, I have grown and increased in wisdom more than anyone who has ruled over Jerusalem before me; I have experienced much of wisdom and knowledge.”

17 Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind.

18 For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.

Food for thought.

Image taken from Wikipedia Commons.

Worries build up and fears grow. Problems multiply and burdens increase. Insecurities and uncertainty is everywhere you turn. In your heart and in your mind, there is no sunshine, only grey skies. You feel like a stunned farmer helplessly watching her crops being devoured by swarms of locust. Or like you’re alone treading water in a treacherous sea storm, trying to stay afloat against the waves. Life itself is barreling out of control.

I feel like that now, and maybe you feel like that too. Well, I’ll be honest with you, the answer lies in God, in Jesus Christ. I find it hard to describe, but in my relationship with Christ, I find hope. I find strength to carry on. I know that lots of times Christians are prone to looking down on people with problems. But they’ve got problems too. Nobody is perfect and especially not Christians. The goal for Christians is not to leave the world behind, but to struggle with those who are struggling and walk with those who need support – sometimes we forget that.

Before your attention goes to another website, I just want to say that life is hard enough as is. Don’t bury yourself by worrying about your worries. A relationship with God will not immediately cure all of your problems, but it will help you get through them. Well, if you have any more questions or maybe you’d like to sound off with your own thoughts, leave a comment or send me a message at 4403606[at]gmail.com.

Lately, I had been particularly stressed out. I’ve been behind on reading. My outlines are barely started. I still don’t have a job for the summer. I’ve got to get a new place for next school year. I haven’t given any thought to what courses I will take next year. I have no real preference as far as activities. My relationship has been on the rocks. I’ve been sort of irresponsible with my spending. On top of that, I feel like school has been squelching my non-law related aspirations.

People tell me, “It’ll be okay” or “It’ll get better” or an even more typical, “Stop stressing yourself out.” Yea, I believe everything they say, but evidently I don’t believe it enough because I’m still stressing. Even when my Dad told me to commit everything to God, I “tried” to but I didn’t really do it. And lately, Christ’s admonition to seek the kingdom of God first had been ringing through my head. Although I did try to encourage myself, I was never successful. Until last night…

Last night I randomly turned to the book of Psalms and found Psalm 146. It read

1 Praise the LORD. Praise the LORD, O my soul.
2 I will praise the LORD all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.
3 Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men, who cannot save.
4 When their spirit departs, they return to the ground;on that very day their plans come to nothing.
5 Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God,
6 the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them— the LORD, who remains faithful forever.
7 He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets prisoners free,
8 the LORD gives sight to the blind, the LORD lifts up those who are bowed down, the LORD loves the righteous.
9 The LORD watches over the alien and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.
10 The LORD reigns forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations. Praise the LORD.

There are so many things that this small passage said to me. But most of all it said 1) don’t worry about what other people are doing or prima facie appearances, 2) trust in God, who is the most important of all and 3) God is faithful, even to those who are downtrodden and at the margins of society.

Simply by looking at the news and noting the tragedies that permeate our society, a skeptic would discount any contention that God watches over the socially forgotten and marginalized. This is strong argument and I don’t discount that there is a lot of pain and suffering going on in the world, but I do believe that God is faithful in ways that we may not realize. Who knows the full story of those who suffer? Who knows what remedies God has put in their lives? Who knows? I can only say that this passage reaffirmed my conviction that God is a closely-involved actor in my life…