December 10, 2005

The signs God will give you in everyday, normal things are amazing.

The signs He gives you within extraordinary circumstances are even more so.

I say this because, for some time, I've been neglecting almost any rest at all. I always figure that I can rest when everything's done. I also forget that God gives us an order to rest, biblically.

In my neglect, I think God gave me no choice but to rest, in that, waking up Saturday morning, I could barely move I was so sick. It's the first time I ever remember getting somewhere, but have no recollection of how I got there. This is in reference to the exam I had to take on campus Saturday morning. To me this strikes me as God telling me I have no choice but to sit myself down for awhile. Sometimes the signs are not pleasant when we refuse to listen at first.

I still have to say that I'm seeing God in this new job. After three years of spiritually squashing labor at a corporation, this job makes me feel right at home. The people are amazing, every one of them. I already feel like I belong there, three days into the job. God is showing me that I'm meant to be there. He's helping me to figure everything out very quickly, from cooking to cleaning, He's getting me there faster than I thought possible.

I still fear that I may be losing myself in the world, despite what God has been showing me as of late. The business that comes with the last week of school, and starting a new job is enough by itself, but for both to come during the Christmas season, when we're supposed to have a present for every person we know, that just makes it even more stressful.

The irony of that statement is that Christmas is when we're supposed to be focusing on God, not presents. Christ was born on this holiday, but we're so caught up on whether we're going to get our new X-box or iPod that we tend to forget that the most important gift in existance started on this very day. No amount of X-boxes or iPods can live up to the gift we were given in Jesus. I wish I could do well to remember that at times.

This is probably the first Christmas I can remember that the presents didn't really matter to me. I really want to be with my family more than anything this Christmas, and that is a new experience to me. For the first time, I honestly want to experience what Christmas is, and by that I mean, acknowledging the day as Christ's birthday. I want to feel that sense of awe that the three wise men felt that season, or that Mary and Joseph felt in that manger. These all mean more to me than presents this year, honestly.

When we give presents, how many of us have ever even CONSIDERED that what we're doing is representative of a gift exchange that occured 2,000 years ago? How many of us even know that it's true, that the first christmas gifts were in fact, given to God?