The moon.

The inanimate object, the dead chunk of rock that is suspended above our earth - the moon is a truly beautiful thing. 

I love seeing the Cheshire cat smile sliver of the waning moon. Smiling down at me.
The nights of the full moon that show it's brilliance.

The nights when the moon is not there, concealed by cloud, or still yet to rise, cause the immense blackness, the dark, the night, to be so vast.

The black of the night sky is unending. 

The moon is somewhat a comfort when it is there.

The nearness rids the sky of danger and installs a sense of safety within me. 

When the moon is above me, near in the sky, everything is okay.
When the Lord is near, everything is okay.


Scientifically speaking, the moon is a lifeless object, cold and grey. 

But, the light of the sun is reflected by the moon. And by reflecting that light, the moon sheds light on an otherwise dark world.

Without the sun, the moon is nothing.

One could say that we need to be like the moon. 
Psalm 34:5 reads "look to Him and be radiant."

Reflect the light of God, the light of the Son. He is the giver of the light, the radiance.

The world, the earth is a dark place, and like the earth to the moon, a force like gravity pulls us towards it. 

The pull of the world.
Gravity.

Constantly the world is pulling us in, tempting us with things that seem so great, so fun, so easy.

But so empty. 
So dark.
So lifeless.

Is there life in selfishness? 

Give in to gravity, or resist it. 
There are only two options. 

We can choose to be out of the world, as the moon is. And we can reflect the light of the Son onto the darkness of the world.

He provides the light, gives it to us.
Now, reflect it.

Without the sun, the moon is nothing.
Without the Son, I am nothing.

A name

“They say Aslan is on the move - perhaps has already landed.”
And now a very curious thing happened. None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different. Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something which you don't understand but in the dream it feels as if it had some enormous meaning - either a terrifying one which turns the whole dream into a nightmare or else a lovely meaning too lovely to put into words, which makes the dream so beautiful that you remember it all your life and are always wishing you could get into that dream again. It was like that now. At the name of Aslan each one of the children felt something jump in its inside. Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror. Peter felt suddenly brave and adventurous. Susan felt as if some delicious smell or some delightful strain of music had just floated by her. And Lucy got the feeling you have when you wake up in the morning and realize that it is the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of summer. - The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe

The thought of God, and to hear His name can have a different affect on me at different times in my life.
So many different feelings, moods. Never static, ever-changing.

Sometimes, I long to hear that name, when He feels so distant, I will go frantically searching to find out everything and anything about Him.
But, other times, I shy from that name. The name will conjure a sense of shame in me, as past and current sins begin to surface in the front of my mind.

On rare occasions that the name of God overwhelms me and fills me up with such an astounding happiness and lightness within me.
It is at times like these that I wish upon the clocks to stop moving, upon the earth to cease spinning.
The far and few times I have felt like this have been so brilliantly lit in my memory have helped me to endure, and push through the times when I feel the darkness is overwhelming me, drowning me.

It is these moments of perfection that I hope for every day.
And the remembrance of the moments cause me to continue to strive towards Him.
I want to be closer and closer.

His name does make me feel differently at different times; scared, unsure, ashamed, happy, sad, lonely, crazy, numb.
I want the sound of His name to make me feel endlessly happy and the thought of Him to be perfect. I want this, so I endeavour to alter something in my life, and the sound of God's name changes upon hearing it, and I want to be at a time where His name is all that I want to hear.

To change the feeling I receive when I hear His name, I have to change something within my life.


How does the name of God make you feel?

What is unseen.

So, my big adventure is over, but the greatest adventure has only just begun.

After three months in Peru, I was really ready to go home. There is no place like home.
But, God had other ideas in mind for me.

In Southern Chile a volcano erupted three weeks prior to when I had planned to leave, jeopardizing my flight home. Those three weeks, I will say, were the hardest three weeks of my time away.
Weeks of stress, of wanting to go home.
Weeks of tears and nightmares and frustration that I could not change the movements of the earth or of the atmosphere. It was out of my hands.

I ended up stranded, in limbo, halfway between Peru and New Zealand. I was in Santiago, Chile. My flight was cancelled.

I was not going home.

That moment, was one of those moments when I wish, when I have a longing to know something - anything of what God was doing, of His plans.
But, of course, I had no idea.

But, then He said to me:

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight." - Proverbs 3:5-6

All of those troubles, the tears and the nightmares I had in Peru, in the place that was familiar to me, quickly vanished.
And, it was in the unknown city, in the place of uncertainty and where I was lost, that I was found.

I realised that I no longer felt scared of what would happen to me, I knew that now I would look beyond what I can see.
To what is unseen.

Because I will never be able to figure out what God has planned for me, I will never be able to decipher Him.
But, this place of unknown allows room for trust.
To trust despite having no idea.

To know that when suddenly all of my plans have dissolved in my hands, it is because of precisely that - they are in my hands.
And I needed to transfer it all, everything, even the parts that are hard to let go of, into His hands.
For in His hands nothing will go wrong.

I still have no idea why God wanted me in Santiago.
But I should stop asking why He did that or why He's doing this. I should just trust Him.

And lean not on my own understanding.