all that is... anything? Everything.

"Everybody is just a brave beggar looking for a blessing." 

I so wrongly assume that the rest of the world -- the majority of it, at least, with the exception of the starving hungry and the one's who've found it a hard thing to laugh spontaneously again and the kid who sits by himself everyday at lunch and is flat out of excuses to call home to call Mum to come pick him up -- doesn't have this need for peace, for fulfilment. That they don't have some kind of emptiness and they have everything they need. 

And there is so much wrong with that statement it's almost exhausting, just the thought of having to pick it apart. Wouldn't it have been so much easier to simply not write it? I do have a history essay to put together, don't I? 

But isn't it the starving hungry who know that God is the only Anything there'll ever be? And the beautiful broken souls of us who are simply unable to lift our heads, to believe in happiness we don't feel: didn't the flood waters just rise too high over sea-level and the cry for help was seemingly washed out with the roar of the ferociously devastating ocean, and isn't that all of us at some time and then another? But the cry wasn't really washed out. The wave brought us to our knees but the cry wasn't washed out. And our knees is the place we see Christ, we know Him, we know that He is everything. And the kid by himself, we can see the loneliness, is all. And we're all the kid, even if we've just lost Mum at the supermarket and we're being all brave about it. 

And we see that kid and we walk past and we can feel a little empathy but we flip our head at the thought of compassion, compassion that means to suffer with. Because to suffer with hurts, and we'd much rather find satisfaction and fulfilment in a more thrilling, exciting way -- rather less Jesus-like and more Princess Diaries-like would suit us quite fine, thank you very much.

Our own brokenness, it's so great. And we're aware of the fact that all of us, we're all broken, but still, we make exceptions and we don't believe that these people ever crumple because of their brokenness. 

But we do. We're a broken people. Christ came to be broken and He knows how it goes, because He was broken for you and He was broken for me and He was crushed by the pain that was supposed to crush us. 

How little anything exists but in the fullness of Him and it turns out we're all clinging to our own gods and means for happiness and then the perfect day comes around, and it turns out that happiness, happiness isn't a result of circumstance. 

It won't come in meeting the boys in 1D, in becoming a movie star, in feeding the stomachs of a hundred million starving children -- 

it comes in Jesus, who said that Everything you need is to be found in me. 

It doesn't come in getting a good exam result and making all the people who care proud or being able to run ten kilometres without stopping or finally being able to play chords without pausing for twelve hundred minutes between each transition.

I'm thinking that meeting 1D would be a pretty sweet blessing, laughing about something funny and taking a photo in front of Big Ben and drinking tea with them or something, even though I've never drunk tea before, and walking outside where they have those *insert accent* showers that are British. 

And to go to one of those countries that in reality, are not so far away: and by the grace of Christ give what I have and see their souls rejuvenate solely by Your grace and go to Cambodia where there are so many more broken souls just like my own, only they have been abused and hated and known so much un-love. 

People aren't better off than anyone else, not in regard to Life. 

And no-one is better than anyone else,

and I am no qualified person: no deserving person: to go give my life to the 'unreached' in Africa or heroically proclaim to prisoners that Jesus is alive! and sell my bed and my books and live on a beach towel in the backyard and write poetry or something. 

but when i am weak, then i am strong: Your grace is sufficient. It's all I need.

Happiness doesn't come from that. Fulfilment doesn't come from buying the plane ticket to Cambodia or sponsoring the child in India or giving a good piece of advice to a friend or talking to the lonely kid. Okay, maybe I've got no idea what I'm going on about, I admit it. I'm clueless, I am. Yes. 

But happiness isn't a result of circumstance and Christ says that, 

Now I'm the One who answers and satisfies.

And Christ is in all of it and if we know in that blessed way then will there not be peace and fulfilment and grace in all of it? 

Not in all of it be grace and peace and fulfilment but Christ in all of it be peace and fulfilment and grace. 

It's not you give up your life and Christ will bless you for it. He will bless you to give up your life. To find life. Give up your life and you'll find life, He promised it was true and He doesn't break any kind of promise, not ever.

We're raised a people to serve God, to bring glory to His name, right? 

I don't know about you, but there's only one thing that I can do for Him -- and that is to give Him my life, to Him. And the only way in all of life I can ever truly give that up? Is by His grace. 

Because I can only become less. And I don't want that. 

But by Your grace, dear Jesus,

may it be so. 

And it sounds as if I think that nothing good comes out of anything. I only mean to say that it's His Spirit moving in us that is; that it is not what we do, what we can do, what we want to do. It is what He does. Around us, within us. Not because of us but because of Him. Us simply giving up and embracing the Spirit in us.

I look out the window and I see dusty pinky grey clouds all flustered, golden light illuminated against a gum tree. (How Aussie is that?) 

I think that what I'm trying to say is that we're blessed. I feel like it's come out all wrong, Jesus said go, give all you have and love all the people you meet, and oh there is only grace, only grace Today and Today is all we'll ever have because tomorrow we're going Home, 

because we all end up falling on our knees, and God lifts up the fallen, I read it the other day, in Isaiah I think, but in all of this we recognize this massive need: for Him, and we all get hurt by people but we're all in the same boat, you know? By God's grace may we give grace: mercy. 

But don't chase after the world -- 

after the happiness we're not ever going to find -- 

don't live for it,

don't do simply to find it,

because it doesn't get found like that. 

"In Your love,

break down the walls that separate us and guide us along Your path of peace,

that we might humbly worship You in Spirit and in Truth. Amen."

Seek Christ, seek Truth, follow Him, pursue life! 

Travel the world, write words, tell stories make up jokes eat playlunch. Pray for all us, the world, and be thankful that Jesus loves us in our brokenness, cultivate gratefulness and give what you have right here right now no more holding on and all completely by His grace, and trust Jesus to guide lead you teach you and oh mate, life is a blessed thing. 

dear Jesus,

transform us Today,

that we may be a little more like You

than yesterday. 

                                                                                 *

"so you want first place? then take last place. be the servant of all." then, cradling the little one in His arms, He said, "Whoever embraces of of these children as I do embraces me, and far more than me -- God who sent me." Mark 9:35-37

 Clive Lewis said, if we love Him more than we do them, we will love them more than we do now, and Jesus said that in loving the people we're loving Him and doesn't it all just add up to plain old loving in the way we see how, by His grace, in all of it in every moment right now and not being preoccupied with the pattern on the carpet and trying to wonder if you need to say something but simply pray and trust His Spirit in you and breathe and say Jesus, thankYou.