After finishing the entire Old Testament, I figured hey: why not reread the New Testament? In typical Amanda fashion, I didn’t begin at “the beginning” but started in John because the first chapter is just so cool to me. I love the metaphors and the parallelism.
I’m in chapter five of John right now and I was reading about how Christ was speaking to the Jews. They were out for blood, and Christ knew.
Ever so poignantly, He pointed out that they shouldn’t blame Him for their ultimate status before God. Choosing to believe and humble yourself before our Creator is a conscious choice. The truth is right in front of millions of people, yet they choose to not believe.
In fact, Christ says that they had set their hope on Moses and this belief was what would judge them. This was really rebuking to me, especially in the wording.
Everyone in the world has their Moses, the thing that they choose to set their hope in instead of Christ. In fact, this thing may not be bad in and of itself. It, like Moses, may even be primarily an instrument of God. But, because of our sin nature, we have an automatic résumé addition: we are excellent at twisting anything and everything.
I was telling someone the other day that I love the end of a school year. It’s like Spring Cleaning for my soul. I have to sit down and take inventory of my past school year.
- Did I reach out to enough people?
- Make enough friends?
- Be involved in enough extracurriculars?
This is usually when I finally find that grime shoved underneath the proverbial couch . . . I reflect on how little I did to encourage my friends. How many times I chose to finish extra homework instead of doing my devotions. How many times I had an opportunity to have a conversation about God but instead chatted about marketing for the magazine.
I also begin planning out my summer (or, at least the few weeks I’ll have off since I’ll be at camp for a majority of the time).
It’s then that I realize all that I’ve set my hope in.
- Inspiring people and hearing their comments or praise.
- Just getting to Friday so I can get my weekly Starbucks.
- Even stupid things like living for lunch because that’s a daily mile marker, if you will.
- How many Instagram likes our posts get.
- How much hype we get on Instagram . . .
- And how “successful” each new magazine is.
And the things I prioritize during summer . . .
- I . JUST. HAVE. TO. GO. TO. THE. BEACH. It probably won’t happen but this year I’m obsessed with the idea.
- Getting all my camp counselor materials ready and ordered off Amazon (I HAVE TO HAVE THE CUTEST CABIN).
- Getting together with friends.
- Doing some random super creative project.
- READING. THANK THE GOODNESS.
- And I could keep going.
I encourage you to consider what you’re setting your hope on. What, or who, is your Moses? God is a Master at taking that thing away from you so you have no choice but to come running back to Him and restart.
It’s time for some spring cleaning for the soul.
SOME UPDATES
- Yes, I’m going to camp again . . . SURPRISE!! How can you go to Bob Jones, work at Chick-fil-A, and NOT work at the Wilds right? I’m planning on still posting on the blog . . . don’t know how that’ll work, but I have three weeks before to write posts like a madwoman and schedule them.
- The Reevaluation Revolution will still be sending during the summer. It may be a bit smaller than usual and just share what I’m learning, but it’ll be running!!
- The IDENTITY issue should be out sometime next week, amidst a flurry of finals. Wahoo! (also cries bc finals and gpa’s)
- Speaking of issue releases . . . our issue after IDENTITY, which is IN/DEPENDENCE, is schedule to come out right smack dab in the middle of my summer at camp. Still figuring out the details, but it WILL be coming out. I may have to train poor Rachel on all the things that go into the release.
- It was our beautiful photographer’s birthday on Monday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY LEAH!!
- I think that is all for right now. Someone in my photography class said that they heard a person speak for 25 minutes for their final photography presentation and everyone was laughing like that’s impossible but um . . . I could TOTALLY talk about five photos for 25 minutes. I know no chill. The words keep spilling. HALP.
