Arrival

I’m fighting a losing battle. (Great, Steph, go ahead and use a cliché right out of the gate.)  I’m battling the “I have arrived” feeling.  I have my ear buds in, my music is queued. I am in the appropriate setting typing away in a cool local coffee/ sandwich and and resale music shop called T-Bones. How much cooler can I get? I mean really?
I have intended to start a blog for a couple of months and now that I’m typing on my Mac I am feeling quite at home. I am ready. Deep thoughts are going to start flowing any moment. In the sea of blogs, this blog will be the rainbow fish. The wisdom you gain here will be my gift to you. No clichés found here. 

Who do I think I am? (This is were I start fighting the battle.) The whole idea of blogs has always kind of irked me; why am I succumbing to the idea that there are people out there who want to hear what I have to say? Because I have a voice, gosh darn it! (Battle lost. For better or worse.)

             I think this is the place in the blog where I’m supposed get to the actual point, but since this is my first real entry, I haven’t fine-tuned the segue quite yet, so I’ll come on out and tell you that this blog is for those of us who have committed to read the Bible in the year 2014. We have arrived at the beginning of this challenge, and even though it feels right, I’m anticipating being unsatisfied along the way. You see, reading the Bible has always left me wanting. When it comes to really experiencing and figuring out Jesus he seems so far away so often. I feel him, and yet he feels far away at the same time. I want more. Has anyone else ever felt this way? Anyone?

 The Bible says John saw Jesus, touched the man who changed everyone who would let him change them. In John 1:1-4 he says “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life – the life made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it, and proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with the Son Jesus Christ.” He touched him: The water of life.  If it’s not all a mirage, I want to plunge into the cool, cleansing reality that these flat black words testify to. He promised that anyone who came to him would never thirst again. For me, that has been true in the sense that nothing else satisfies in a way that a personal relationship with him has. Even when the exhaustion of the desert deceives me into thinking that the well cannot be real, cannot quench my thirst, it doesn’t take long for me to realize there is nowhere else to go. I taste the crystal drops. The type of satisfaction they give boast of a source the depths of which seem impossible. But the well does not go dry. I always come back. I’m committed to pulling up the bucket each day, trusting in the words that bring Jesus to life and by faith bring him to my side. They will satisfy me until I get to the foot of the river that feeds the well. And it will be there, when I can actually touch Jesus’ face, when I will have truly arrived.
Stephanie