28 Days

28 Days, 25 different worship services, 24 days of service, and immeasurable amounts of Love.  That basically describes my summer.  My summer was spent at Carolina Cross Connection, a non-profit organization out of Concord that serves the under privileged, and I wouldn't have had it any other way.

My summer was full of:

                                                    Lots of smiles, and goofy faces

                                                                  Lots of joy!

                                                                   Lots of hugs

                                                      TONS of singing too loud!

                                                                   Lots of family!

                                                           Beautiful new friendships!

                                                         ...and rekindling old ones!

But most importantly, my summer was full of God.  God was everywhere I turned.  God was in everything.  During my first week at camp on Friday night I was sitting in a church pew looking back on my week.  I tried so hard to find ONE defining God moment of the week.  As I sat there I realized that there wasn't just one.  God's presence and Love had been so visible that one moment couldn't contain it.  One moment could never define that whole week as a God moment, when the entire week was a God moment.  Now as I'm typing my blog I'm reflecting the same way.  I'm sitting here looking back on the wonderful summer I experienced looking for a defining moment, but there isn't one.  God was so present in my summer that not one moment could capture it.  God's Love was and is so present in my life and I thank Him so much for blessing me with the oppurtunities He did.  Looking back at the beginning of my summer I would have never dreamed of how present God was in those 28 days.

I, like many people, hate the end of a good thing.  My camp weeks are over and school starts in 2 weeks.  My worksites are left in far away counties, and things are turning normal again.  But I realized after I left camp the last time that camp didn't end, but it started over.  My worksite is now my school and community, and my project is to show the Love of Christ to all that I encounter.  Camp didn't end just cause I'm no longer physically there.  It just began.

Beautifully Broken

All humans are broken.  We're all torn, worn, and just flat messed up.  In this world we're raised in we try so hard to cover our brokeness with different things.  I personally try to look like I have it all together.  I spend so much time in having the right stuff, being friends with the right people, and covering up my weaknesses.  God doesnt call us to have it all together.  God didn't put me on the Earth to be the best at faking, he understands we're all broken.


 ^"But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. ” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me."  -2 Corinthians 12:9


I got back this week from Carolina Cross Connection seeing brokeness in a new light.  On Thursday night we had a power worship with the goal for us to throw away what was keeping us from being bold.  I talked to an AMAZING friend named Ginnie about different things and brokeness came up.  


God made us knowing that we were broken.  God uses our brokeness to show His masterpiece!  Look at our brokeness like a puzzle piece and God's using your strengths to cover up someone elses weakness and vice versa.  We're all part of a master creation and God puts our brokeness together to make something beautiful!  God uses your brokeness to show His greatness! 


I looked at the camp Friday night and saw 73 other people. All broken, but yet we had been made whole.  God's Love had united our brokeness and made us whole.  God's Love completes our brokeness.


Tell me this isn't beautiful

Something Eternal

 ^"For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future"
Jeremiah 29:11


"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose"
Romans 8:28


God wants you to be happy!  God wants you to live well, and he wants you to enjoy nice things!  God blessed the Earth with good things so that we could enjoy them!  I've been raised in this society saying that the best is all you can wear, eat, and drive.  I am a very materialistic person, and for a very long time put my self value in my stuff.  I thought that having the best stuff made me a better person.


3 weeks ago I was at a mission trip called H(omeless) O(utreach) M(ission) E(xperience), which is a new program through Carolina Cross Connection.  During this trip our goal was to befriend the homeless community of Asheville.  Like any mission trip I walked in thinking the point of the week was for me to "help" the homeless.  Well me helping them turned out to be the exact opposite of what happened.  Befriending these people helped me.  It taught me that where I found my worth, was worthless.  That these people lived with nothing but a tent and a blanket, yet they were happy, God loving people.  They knew where their worth belonged.  They didn't  have anything, so by societies standard's they were worthless, but they found their worth in something eternal.  There was a man at a homeless hangout one day.  I never had the chance to talk to him, but was told this story by someone else.  This man used to have a very stable job, a nice house, a car, etc.  One day he decided he had drifted from God and quit his job, gave away his money and lives in a tent.  He spends 8 hours a day reading the Bible.  He knew he had put his worth in something neverending.  


This was a hard concept for me to grasp.  My whole high school career I had placed my value in something worthless.  I had wasted so much time worrying about how I appeared to others.  I wanted to always look like I had it all together, but I found out during HOME that we're all broken.  That humans need to strive for completion, not for perfection.  When Jesus returns and judges the living and the dead it won't matter how much money I had, how great my job was, or how nice a car I drove.  Solely the content of my heart will matter.  


I still want things.  I always will, I'm human.  There's nothing wrong with having nice stuff.  If you work for what you have and don't take your blessings for granted, and most importantly, bless others since you yourself have been blessed.  God made nice things for us to own, not nice things to own us.  

The Real World: Carolina Cross Connection

MTV has a popular show called "The Real World".  The Real World involves 7-8 people living in a big house in a major city who all party, hook up, and get wasted.  Pop culture displays the "Real World" as a place full of drug use, materialism, and alcohol abuse.  Society teaches teenagers that the world is like this, and that these activities are totally acceptable.  MTV and the world I have been raised idolize celebrities who spend their time drunk, shopping, and other unproductive things.

Every summer I attend a camp called Carolina Cross Connection where I, and my friends, donate a week of our time working for underpriveliged citizens.  You spend around 7-8 hours a day working for a stranger that you didn't know before that morning.  Your main goal is to love the person you're helping and to show them the Love of Christ.  The Love of Christ is beautiful.  That Love is selfless.  The Love of Christ is giving everything, and expecting nothing in return.  When Jesus died on the cross for me, He knew I could never repay Him.  His gift was SO large that nothing could ever settle my debt to Him.  Yet His Love is free.  It comes at no cost, and everyone has His Love.

At the end of every day at camp there is a time to share about where you saw God that day.  On the last night everyone always says "I hope I continue to see God like this in the real world".  I sit there and think what is the real world?  Is the real world a place where materialism and sin rule, or is the real world giving God your all?  "But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."  Romans 8: 37-39.  Tell me whats real?  A Love that will never fail you, or this world.  The Bible very clearly states that when Jesus returns you WILL lose all earthly treasure you acquired.  So when Jesus returns do you want to be clinging onto Him, or to the things that will be gone?  


I firmly believe we live in a fake world.  A world where we are taught to believe that those with the most are supreme, and the poor are worthless.  In the Kingdom of God, the first are last, and the last are first.  In the Kingdom of God we don't love for gain, we love because He first loved us.  So people say they spend 51 weeks a year in the real world, and one week in CCC world.  I disagree, I believe that I (who attends 4 camp weeks a year through J staff) live 48 weeks in a fake world, and I live 4 weeks in the real world.  The real world is spending every waking second of Your day with God.


So you tell me, which one is "The Real World"?

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