Pinterest

I have, very recently, become addicted to Pinterest.  For those of you who don't know, Pinterest is online pin boards that you can organize/catagorize and search through pins.

While browsing through some pins, I came across a prayer. It says, "Lord, empty me of me so I can be filled with you. Lord, empty me of the selfishness inside every vain ambition and the poison of my pride and any foolishness my heart holds to. Lord, empty me of ME so I can be filled with YOU."

Short, right? But now you want to be able to say, "I wish I had written that."

This prayer, to me, is the definition of giving yourself up to God. To be able to say, "Lord, rid me of me," and mean it.

Pocket full of Tickets

So the other night during our family devotional, our dad asked us what we want to say we accomplished by the time we get to heaven. My sister answered, "I don't want to have wasted any talents."

This question reminded me about a book I read two years ago before I went on a missions trip to Uganda. It's called "One Thing You Can't Do In Heaven" by Mark Cahill.  The "One Thing" is evangelism.  Mark Cahill talks about how we can't evangelize once we die.

Cahill made an interesting point.  He said that evangelism is like God giving us pocketfuls of tickets to Heaven. Our job is to hand them out. Some of the reasons why we are afraid to evangelize is we are to proud, afraid of rejection, or don't know what to say.  But we have a pocket, and that pocket is full of tickets to Heaven. We need to remember that just because we hand out the ticket, doesn't mean that it will be used.  We should look at every person we encounter as someone to share the gospel with.  We should be able to stand before the Lord and say, "I did everything you asked. My pockets are empty. I wasted nothing."

Thought of the Day

The Angles Sang

It's a Wednesday afternoon
And I'm sitting in this church in my black dress
Wondering why I'm here for you
Cause you were gone and it all happened out of the blue


Heaven opened up and the angels sang
And you had that huge smile on your face
All your pains and all your tears
Were washed away
When the angels sang


Down here you left a hole in our hearts
And the burden of having to live with our grief
But through our pain we see hope
Because we know that soon we'll be home


Heaven opened up and the angels sang
And you had that huge smile on your face
All your pains and all your tears
Were washed away
When the angels sang


And we are still here waiting for the day
When we can join you in paradise
Standing side by side to worship our King
As the angels sing


Heaven opened up and the angels sang
And you had that huge smile on your face
All your pains and all your tears
Were washed away
When the angels sang


You had that huge smile on your face
When the angels sang

School, Heaven, and General Senior Things

So it's been over a year since Virginia died and I find myself healing. There are still those days that hurt, there are those days when the grief is overwhelming, but then there are those days when I'm sitting doing homework and the only thing that comes to mind is, "I'm so jealous that Virginia doesn't have to study this right now!!"
I guess that's just one more thing that's going to be awesome about heaven. We won't have to study anatomy or calculus.

That must be the most awesome thing ever.
Ok, well. On to something else...

A few days ago, we had our senior pictures (I know, its completely weird) and I couldn't help but think about how we were short one senior. My mind wandered to Virginia and how one of the first things that I thought of last year when she died was, "But she was supposed to graduate with us and go to college." It's funny how God had his own plan for her. While we are down here, suffering through school and senior thesis and anatomy, she is up there having the biggest, rockinest, neverending party.

I can't wait til we get to "party on the rooftop on top of the world" (weird how that kinda fits) with her!!