Courageous Faith

Escaping to the good ol' blog to work some things out from this morning's quiet time.

Bold faith-- what the heck does that mean? And do I have what's considered 'bold faith?' The father I read about this morning in Mark is a daddy distraught with his son's seizures who desperately turns to Jesus as a last-resort to heal his son. Except Jesus is out chilling on a mountain with some of his buds and the dad gets the leftover disciples who botch the job and can't heal the son.

Can you imagine what it was like for that dad, when the disciples were repeatedly trying to heal him and nothing was happening? I bet he was ultimately defeated and embarrassed beyond belief. I bet it took a lot of courage to even bring yourself to this man you'd heard about, all the while keeping in the back of your mind the possibility of it not working. And then you looking like a fool in front of your community when nothing happens?

Fortunately Jesus comes back down the mountain in the knick of time, sees the now-arguing crowd (the pharisees decided to get in on the mockery of the disciples) all the while I can imagine the dad just sitting there like a deflated balloon having given up on the idea of there even being a God at all. 

He miserably cries to Jesus, "If you can do anything, take pity on us and help us." 

Jesus is all like, "IF?! I'm freaking Jesus, dude."

And I love the dad's response. He quick to say, "HECK YES! I believe!!" then he kind of retracts his statement and admits, "Well, help me to overcome my unbelief..."

At this point I'm not really sure where I was going with this, because it started off as an attempt to explore what it means to have a courageous faith but in actually, the distraught daddy understandably had a faith riddled with doubts and questions. I mean, who wouldn't, when you're standing by watching your child suffer his whole life, a human being whom you would gladly trade places with? But also, I think it took courage to even go see Jesus in the first place, having the hope that maybe He could finally be the one who would heal his son for good. 

All this to say, I pray that God would give me a faith that is bold and without fear.

It's a beautiful, chilly day outside and it's time to get out of the house. May you explore today your doubts and questions and pursue the meaning of this life and what it means to love our God without holding anything back!

a day on the Rhine

So, I'm officially "employed."

Two days a week I'll make the 45 minute trek out to Wiesbaden to tutor three of the cutest boys ever in piano and english. It's pretty much just what I was asking for... God is so good. Even if He hadn't provided this gig, I'd still attest to His awesomeness Just check out these pictures from our spontaneous adventure up the Rhine river:

The best part about exploring the Rhine is that you can hop on and off the train wherever you feel like. Which is what we did, first randomly stopping in St. Goarhausen. Being a Sunday, it was dead. I mean, completely empty, narrow streets; we felt like we owned the town. It was a unique experience, not to be surrounded by other tourists.

We hopped back on and decided to ride all the way to the top (Koblenz,) despite my prostrations of it being a lame city. Annie and I had attempted to check out this larger town on the Rhine but decided that it wasn't worth it, hopping back on the train after about 45 minutes of riding our bike to the river and back. (We were looking for vineyards, which weren't to be found...)

But, I stand corrected. Within this new context, it was actually lovely. We had a delicious German meal, saw where the Mosel and Rhine rivers meet, and did some shopping (T.K.Maxx!! Sooooo excited to find out that Germany has the British version, which is as close as I'm going to get to HomeGoods while here. And there's one in Frankfurt!)

Darkness falls early now as opposed to the 10:00 pm summer sunsets. We weren't sure if we should continue our journey or head home, but we decided to stop at Bacharach in search of wine. It ended up being my favorite part of the day and a town that I will absolutely return to with my momma in the daytime.

Again, we had the town to ourselves as we meandered through the streets, dreaming of what it would look like covered in snow.

We discovered cathedral ruins, which given the time of night, gave off an eery glow hovering over the town. A quiet moment was shared as we stood gazing out over the soft lights of the buildings, a train quietly working it's way along the river on the other side that made us feel transplanted right into one of those miniature Christmas scenes.

And then there was wine, 15 small glasses worth to taste and pretend like we knew how to distinguish between them all. My notes included the descriptions "pink, sweet, really sweet, ugh, buy this."

Days like this should occur at least once a week.