Tricks and Treats

this season is already full of ups and downs, tricks and treats, lessons and learning. we are often encouraged, full of hope and ready to endure anything together... but we are, sadly, just as often frustrated and "so over" this waiting around.

its clear that God is shaping us as individuals and as a family because we are constantly being forced to figure ourselves out - who we are, what we are as a family, what we want, what we're even doing, etc. any time we meet a challenge (be it personal or practical) it seems that we end up in these same questions.

i've been reading about the israelites in the desert these days. as a high schooler and new christian, i thought they were the most ignorant and stubborn people... but the older i get, the more i find myself going back to those stories because i see myself so clearly in those "stiff-necked" israelites. they cried out because they wanted their freedom, so God goes and gets them and takes them on a journey out of egypt, away from their captivity. but then they moan and groan because they are wandering in the desert, totally forgetting the fact that the reason they are in the desert is that they are on their way to something better.

hey had all the reason to rejoice: you're not where you were before, God is with you now, the future is bright.

why do always want to make it so much more complicated than that?

so, despite two speeding tickets (the first for both of us in one month!), a mysterious car problem, calculus tests, disappearing finances, longing for our own place, and all the other "temporary afflictions" that keep showing up these days, we are comforted. we are learning to joyfully live on the manna, lest we be buried in "graves of craving" along the way.

and really... "along the way" aint so bad. ;)