Today I had breakfast with Ellie and a few of her friends and I also got to spend time in the kinder class at Redemptio. People ask if I'm ready to go home, and I think I have mixed emotions about it. I love Manila and I love the Philippines, and I think the culture and sense of community seen here is lacking in the States. So while I don't necessarily miss the physical environment back home, I do miss the people, my friends and family. I'm not sure if that's a definite no or yes but my heart tugs me both ways.
One verse from a song I've been meditating on reads:
How rare and beautiful it is to even exist
It amazes me that today I have the gift of life. Life is such a precious gift I take for granted, and also my relationship with my Father. He delights in us. He pursues us. He loves us. And I'm overwhelmed, overjoyed, delighted, radiant in who He is because this life is truly a miracle, a token of love I do not deserve.
It is a beautiful thing to wake up in disbelief at the Lord's goodness.
In the Philippines, I guess it's a little easier to be spiritually minded, to recognize God's presence and care each day. But I have to remind myself I serve the same God back at home, and I should feel the same awe and love and disbelief at what He is doing in my life and in my community in the States.
I want to take home with me this awe and this amazement. I want to wake up each morning amazed at my very existence and at God's provision and grace. I want to wake up each morning to fall in love with my Creator as if I had never heard of His good news or of His love.
Maybe Jesus said that's why the kingdom belongs to the children, because of their innocence and awe and appreciation for every little thing. They can see the same magic trick or hear the same story or watch the same cartoon daily and not get bored or lose that sense of awe.
According to G.K. Chesterton:
Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical ENCORE.
IIIhope that I will never grow
to tired of seeing God's creation but also life in general. I want to live with a sense of awe and gratitude at how wonderful the world and its Creator is. It's my prayer that this sense of amazement stay with me long after I return to the States.
Amanda
Amanda
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