Your love.

Hello dear friends!

I come to the new year, 2011, with an open mind and a heart ready to serve. 2010 was a year of immense learning for me, but I think that I made it too much about myself. My running journey that I embarked on last year was phenomenal, but this year I want my life to benefit others instead of only myself. It seems that it would be a simple task; after all, I am pursuing a career in which I serve people 12 hours a day, 3 days a week as a nurse. I want my life to mean more than that though. I know that God has so much to teach me this year and I am ecstatic about it. I am so tired of being a lukewarm Christian. It's easy enough to go to church on Sundays, say a quick prayer before bed at night, and occasionally crack open a Bible... but is that really what it means to be a follower of Christ? For me, it isn't at all. As I was reading in Matthew today, I read and re-read Jesus's call to His first disciples. It doesn't say that they followed Him when it was convenient for them, or that they sat around for a while and considered whether Jesus was worth giving up their entire lives for. No, friends. Matthew 4:20 reads, "At once they left their nets and followed him." A few verses later, in Matthew 4:22, James and John "immediately left their boat and their father and followed him."

My mind can't comprehend what that must have been like, to leave their families, friends, and ways of life to follow Jesus. But even though I can't comprehend what that means, I know that I am called to it myself. Maybe not by the same means as these first four disciples, but I am convinced that God has called me out of my ordinary life to serve Him as I have neglected to do for the past 20 years of my life.

Hope you'll join me on the journey.

As Paul always says in the New Testament, grace and peace to you.

-C