Sometimes I wish God would just write the first sentence to my thoughts. Because I know there's all this stuff up there that I want to try and piece together, but I don't know which piece to pick first, or even for that matter, what piece says what. Even with things in my life, I wish God would just give me that nudge (or maybe a more noticeable nudge than normal) which tells me where to go. At times I feel like I really know where I'm going, and that God has his hand on things. However recently I had to look back on all the things that I've been prioritizing and see how they were fitting in to my whole puzzle. I don't know why I chose to describe this as a puzzle but it seems to make sense in my head. As if I find some puzzle piece lying off in the corner (one in which I had to spend awhile looking for) which seems to be the perfect piece, and I start devoting all my time to try and figure out how to make this puzzle piece fit in. However, there's no way that I will be able to make it fit in unless I realize that I can't overlook the pieces right in front of me which will form the opening for that piece.

I know that that is vague, but for some reason that's kind of what I'm thinking. Apply it however you want to yourself, but it seems that all of the sudden I've realized that my thesis and future career and wife and all these things that are "important" really aren't important unless I make time for other things and people first. The pieces that may seem too ordinary at first but are crucial for the final picture.

I wonder if God wants us to go through life like this though. If we had someone (God) sitting beside us the entire time we worked on a puzzle and telling us which piece to pick up next and where to put it, the puzzle wouldn't be exciting anymore. It wouldn't hold the same value to us when we finished it. What if God expects us to get really frustrated over not finding that one piece that we have spent days looking for so that we may begin to appreciate the complexity and beauty of the puzzle once it is completed. When you work on a puzzle, you have to put your faith in the designer of the puzzle, you expect that they put all the pieces in the box and that it really is possible to complete. It's the same with our faith in God. If we don't trust in Him and believe that all of these little pieces of cardboard actually form together to make something bigger, it would be easy to get discouraged quickly. Because we would never know whether or not it was all actually possible.

But that's the beauty of faith. Because it gives you the assurance that all of this is worth it. That you will be rewarded for your time and effort and will be able to sit back and smile in the end.

Now I guess it's a little different because God doesn't give us the cover of the box. We don't know what it all looks like together. Instead, we are left with these little images and feel that we have to immediately figure out how it all works together. If God gave us the cover of the box, life would be too easy. But this is why God has placed friends and people who love us in our lives, because they can come and give a different perspective on our puzzle and help us find that one piece.

Ok, so this is getting pretty metaphorical for me now and maybe it only makes sense to me because it relates to stuff happening around me. Sometimes its easy to write your thoughts out and other times its pretty hard. And for the record, it is a lot easier to think when the music is turned off. Sometimes I go and take quiet time for myself but leave the music on, surprisingly it is actually a tad bit distracting, go figure. Anyway, I really don't have any wonderful conclusion or anything (sorry to let you down, ha) but I just needed to write something. Hence all of the above.

Every now and then I get caught up thinking that miracles are only things that used to happen in Biblical times. Sometimes I just can't get my mind around the fact that God really may still be working and sending angels into our lives every day. I feel like too much of the time I try to make God fit into my own little box. Not intentionally or anything, but I'm just so used to what's around me that I expect God to show up throw those things. I think that's why this summer was so awesome for me. Because I was thrown out of my normal scenario and into something I was very unused to. A different continent, different friends, and different culture. And for the first time I was in a situation in which I didn't know what was typical, so I had no walls built up in which to corner God into.

But it's not easy to recognize that there are walls and to tear them down. I keep finding these things about American culture that bug me. And although there's parts that bug me about the way people act, there's also a part that bugs me because I see how this culture has shaped me growing up. But I wonder if I would feel these same feelings had I grown up in some other culture and then come to America. Is it the culture that bugs me, or is it the fact that I've simply grown up in a culture. I guess that part's kind of hard to avoid, but it still frustrates me slightly.

I've realized that when I stop thinking about stuff, I see God working more. Maybe I should say worrying instead of thinking, but its' true. If I stop trying to figure out where God is going to show up, it seems that more often than not, God reveals himself. I think too often we try to figure things out on our own. I know for me, I love to be in control. I like knowing where projects are going and what's happening around me. I feel more comfortable that way. But look at this summer, all my control was taken away and I suddenly started seeing things so much clearly.

This bothers me, because I wish I could always have control. I mean even down to the fact that here in my bedroom, I can scroll through iTunes and pick the worship song that I really want to listen to. Which there's nothing wrong with that, but I've become so used to that form of worship that I sometimes forget to look for worship in other aspects of my life. In Africa, I didn't have iTunes, I didn't have Pulse every Sunday where I could go to and request any song that I wanted. Rather all I had was nature. Anywhere I went, nature followed me, naturally. (ha, I just realized that was a play on words). And I realized that God had placed this beauty all around me and for that entire summer, my worship was tied to nature. It was tied more into God than into the song with the perfect drum beat or guitar rift. I had never experienced that form of worship before. God was no longer confined to my box.

Now the challenge for me is to try to get rid of that box as I sit here in my room at Penn State. I wish I didn't have to try and get rid of that box, I wish it just came naturally. But I'm not in Africa, I'm here. However I've learned things and those lessons will stay with me. Now it's time to apply them to my life here, to the culture that surrounds me at Penn State. Traveling all across Africa is the easy part; it's applying what I learned to Penn State that will be the challenge.