Childlike faith...

Today I looked over some old notes on facebook which I had written when I was 21. I was struck by how young and fresh I sounded; I was super excited about life in general, enthusiastically throwing myself into whatever new challenge presented itself. I'm sure I was rather annoying. Roughly 2 and a half years have past since then and I fear that I have lost something of my younger self. I have lost some of my youthful passion. This scares me, and hopefully enough to change the direction I am heading. One of the challenges I set my 21 year old self was to talk to randomers about Jesus and offer to pray for 3 people every week. My 24 year old self thinks "What the flip was I thinking?!" I hope I would be willing to do so if I felt lead by God but I fear that now my head isn't even tuned into the fact that that might be something God would want me to do. I'm not properly listening. I'm not even really asking that he would use me to show his love to randomers. I think I have slipped back into the old pattern of only being willing to step out my comfort zone when I am supposed to; so at Late Love its completely fine for me to tell students about Jesus or to offer pray for those in chaplaincy but in my general day to day life it's not even on my radar.

I have been reminded of Romans 8:12-16 today and I love the bit that says: It's adventuously expectant, greeting God with a childlike "What's next, Papa?" Do I dare to ask him that wonderul and terrifying question?

I was hanging out with a new friend earlier who told me that he'd looked up my blog for which he then began to tease me merciously. I inwardly cringed and outwardly went red and longed to get home in order to delete this record of my character growing pains. And yet that's precisely why I can't delete it. It helps keep me humble and serves as a reminder that I am so very human. In a few months time I will probably be cringing at this very entry and yet I suppose that's a good thing as it means that hopefully I will have grown and been refined a little more.

I am currently approaching my final set of exams of my final year of university (or so it appears). This has truly been one of, if not the best, years of my life. I didn't particularly like Belfast, I didn't really want to be here and I wasn't all that fussed on uni and yet I have loved getting stuck in to student life on campus. Being on CU committee and living at Methodist Chaplaincy forced me to literally live and breathe on campus, with the Students Union and Queens Building on my doorstep. I have loved my final year of my degree, loved being on CU committe (despite weekly 4 hour long meetings) and loved living at chaplaincy. My future is currently like the Mumford and Sons song, a 'White Blank Page' but God has shown me that its not really blank, but already full of colour and adventure as my future will be filled with his Spirit.