Today marks my first full year in Quito, and it has been a tumultuous up and down experience, to say the least. I offer this song as an explanation of what I want my next 9 months in country to be:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=NPoxM0D_0n8
I truly want to use the rest of my time here to remove from my heart all the bitterness and past hurts I have carried around with me now for years. It has gone too long, I have made too many mistakes, and I have carried around pain for far too long; I really want to be remade, recreated by the grace, love and mercy of Jesus's Sacred Heart, in order to become the person I want to be and have always wanted to be. That person is not one of bitterness, but of forgiveness, not of frustration but of patience, not one of despair but of faithful obedience. It is my hope that this time rejuvenates me from the heart, mind and soul to become an outward display of the love and mercy of Christ. It is a daunting task, but one that I do not do on my own; one that Christ does within me. The Lord gives love to our hearts, and continually fills it; while the earth has no love to give us, and only takes away what love we have.
I cry thinking of all the opportunities I have had, all the calls I have tried to follow from God, all the times where I felt I was doing well only to fall again, or to half follow what God really wanted me to do. I have time after time tried to do it on my own! What a fool, everything we do and all that we are are given to us by God himself, the first thing we must do is surrender to Him, to His infinite wisdom and mercy, to allow Him into our lives...if we do not allow Him into our lives, we are trying to do things on our own, and we of course will fail. We have to allow Him to penetrate the barriers of our hearts, our pride, our own thoughts, to just listen to Him, to listen to what He says to us, not to what we say to Him. He knows what we say and think and what our heart truly desires, and He wants to grant us those things, but only if we allow Him to do so. We work so hard trying on our own, and to what end? As Paul told the Romans in his greeting in Chapter 1, we are ALL called to belong to Christ, and we are ALL called to be holy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=NPoxM0D_0n8
I truly want to use the rest of my time here to remove from my heart all the bitterness and past hurts I have carried around with me now for years. It has gone too long, I have made too many mistakes, and I have carried around pain for far too long; I really want to be remade, recreated by the grace, love and mercy of Jesus's Sacred Heart, in order to become the person I want to be and have always wanted to be. That person is not one of bitterness, but of forgiveness, not of frustration but of patience, not one of despair but of faithful obedience. It is my hope that this time rejuvenates me from the heart, mind and soul to become an outward display of the love and mercy of Christ. It is a daunting task, but one that I do not do on my own; one that Christ does within me. The Lord gives love to our hearts, and continually fills it; while the earth has no love to give us, and only takes away what love we have.
I cry thinking of all the opportunities I have had, all the calls I have tried to follow from God, all the times where I felt I was doing well only to fall again, or to half follow what God really wanted me to do. I have time after time tried to do it on my own! What a fool, everything we do and all that we are are given to us by God himself, the first thing we must do is surrender to Him, to His infinite wisdom and mercy, to allow Him into our lives...if we do not allow Him into our lives, we are trying to do things on our own, and we of course will fail. We have to allow Him to penetrate the barriers of our hearts, our pride, our own thoughts, to just listen to Him, to listen to what He says to us, not to what we say to Him. He knows what we say and think and what our heart truly desires, and He wants to grant us those things, but only if we allow Him to do so. We work so hard trying on our own, and to what end? As Paul told the Romans in his greeting in Chapter 1, we are ALL called to belong to Christ, and we are ALL called to be holy.
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