Happy Sabbath

I am in a very reflective mood. I have tons of different thoughts going through my head, so forgive me if this doesn't make any sense...

One of my favorite parts of my chrysalis flight was that I didn't have to worry about time or what I would be doing. Everything was planned for me. I could focus on God without any interruptions. That was incredibly refreshing to me. Just thinking back to my flight relaxes me, makes me happier, and reminds me of God's love. I'm so thankful for those 3 days. As my dad and I were eating lunch today, I was trying to convince him to go to Emmaus. I was telling him why I loved my flight so much, and I told him those things. He, of course, had a suggestion I had never even considered. What would it be like to have a time like that in my life more frequently? How would it change my life to spend a solid hour just twice a week and to commit to not worrying or thinking about other things. To spend an hour searching out God. hm... interesting. That idea sounds amazing to me. I have such a busy schedule, but this is something I'm going to start to try to incorporate into my life. I probably won't start with an hour, but that's not the point anyway.

Today I'm excited about the fact that I serve a God I can get to know. I can be close to Him. I have a friendship with God. Everyday I have the opportunity to learn new things about Him. I wish I could say I do that everyday. I wish I could say that I focus on God a lot throughout my day. The truth is, I get caught up in school or activities or my friends or homework and instead of getting to know Him through all of these things, I try to get to know Him in scheduled time between these things. That's so stupid. I've been trying to work on that lately, but I'm learning it's a process that requires time.

It seems like our generation is trying to get away from all of the negative perceptions that have developed about Christianity over the years. That in itself is a great thing, but as we're moving as far away from those problems as we can, we're running into a whole new set of problems. We have somehow developed the idea that loving someone and not judging them means letting them continue in sin even if it's hurting them or someone else spiritually, emotionally, and physically. But is that love? We have somehow started believing that if we put too much emphasis on God's commandments, we're automatically legalistic. But Jesus said if we love Him we'll follow His commandments. We have started believing that we need to dress up Jesus to look fun and shiny to the world in order to bring people to know Him. But God is the One who draws people to Him. I think a lot of these things have been caused by the fact that we're trying to avoid being the stereotypical judgmental, rule keepings, uptight Christians. Like I said before, there's nothing wrong with that in theory, but we have to address these new problems, too. The question is, how do we go about that? Where is the middle ground?