I feel like a bible-study Snob...

I went to a bible study Tuesday night and felt like I was in fifth-grade Sunday school. We were talking about prayer, working through a booklet that had chosen cartoons, captions and verses to help aid the discussion. Psalm 62:8 “Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.” What “key’s” to prayer can you find within this verse? The leader tried to pull answers out of us. I knew what he wanted to hear, that we should trust God at all times, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it. It was so painfully simple and dumbed-down, so I sat in annoyed silence. We moved on to Philippians 4:6-7, where we learned that we should not be anxious about anything, but give God our worries. I’m not sure how took us ten minutes to discover this “prayer key,” maybe because I wasn’t helping. Snobby, I know. Trust me, I felt terrible later that night, who am I to say where or how Gods truths can be shown? Sometimes simplicity holds the most truth. Our deep conversations and thoughts may only lead us into more confusion and complication, potentially steering us farther from what God is trying to teach; yet Tuesday night I sat in silence. Maybe it is because of the way I have been experiencing God since I have been here. It has been so radically different, unable to put into a form or drawn out by a question. It has been much more abstract, yet more present than ever. I have discovered that I no longer find time to think/pray/study God, but without realizing it, I am constantly. Maybe it is because my days are less busy, mind less full and I’m living within an adventure, but God has seemed to flow into the spaces I have opened up and flooded my soul.

After experiencing God so abstractly and without form for the last two months. Friends here, and I have discussed how there has been no place we have walked into a room with Christian music playing and “entered into worship,” but instead, worship has seemed to effortlessly flow out of us as we stand humbled by nature, giving us a genuinely divine experience.

I honestly do feel terrible about my attitude Tuesday night. Each person I was with was wonderful and honestly did reveal to me Christ, just not in the ways they thought. I saw God in the way she was earnestly seeking, within the stories he told that focused and enjoyed every detail of life, among his lighthearted energy and the way they so openly brought me into their group. I just have a complex: I don’t know if I am a snob, needing to be humbled and an attitude adjustment, or if that place wasn’t really for me right now. God, what are your thoughts?

Legolas Sighting

Last weekend we ventured down south to the Routeburn Track, a famous three-day hike through rouged mountains and jaw dropping scenery. The trail is also know as being located in “Lord of the Rings Country” and there were various cliffs that we expected to see Legolas and Aragorn come riding boldly over the horizon. Strangely enough we never did (so I guess my title is a lie), but we did a little reenactment of an epic battle scene. Our three day-two night tramp was amazing and very soggy. It rained the entire time, but there was something about the rain that felt authentic. Mountains are not made for sunshiny paths and whistling tourist, but are wild. They trap clouds around their tips, swirl wind through rocky ridges and change harmless drops into frigid flakes. Hidden within their wild weather and untamed landscape is beauty only able to be experienced by humbling entering at the mercy of the mountain. Pictures are unable to capture what is seen through the drops but it only leaves the sights more of a treasure for those who venture inside.