Transience

My current world is transient. Annie and I both work temporary jobs, she works at her dad's office filling in for the biller on maternity leave, and I work random day jobs throughout the Bakersfield area. My favorite job is up on a ranch in the mountains east of town, where every day is beautiful. Working at the ranch somehow reminds me of God's goodness, immensity, and creativity. One need only spend a little time in the midst of creation to notice His plan working together. Plant, animal and terrain all fit together so masterfully that it can not be denied. Walking the fence gives me plenty of time to think about my life and my spiritual walk and it reminds me how my walk itself is often transient. I never remain in the same state as I seek God. Sometimes that is good, like when I do a bad job following Him and loving Him and loving others, but it also ends up frustrating me, like when I start something good and then nearly immediately stop doing it. I mostly frustrate myself because I rarely get to a point where I constantly continue to move forward.

My ideal image of my Walk is a mountain summit trip. I begin down in the flats walking through a green meadow and slowly and progressively hike to the top (which is the end goal, Christ in Heaven). Throughout the hike I pass through some easy parts and some parts so diffcult they are nearly impossible, but i always picture myself moving closer to my goal. Real life, however, is filled with all sorts of backslides and struggles and there are often times when I can say that I don't ove closer to my eventual goal. I guess I spend my life trying to get my life not moving backward, when I should just focus on getting to the goal. Maybe the reason why my Walk struggles is because I focus on removing the struggles rather than the goal of being closer to Jesus and being more like Him as I interact with others.

So transience is my current life. Job, living situation, even our hearts really aren't able to settle in as we expect a move and radical life change into our lives in ministry. We pray that God would be with us as we face so many changes and that He would keep us in His will. We pray that we could stop focusing on things beside Him, and that we would be refreshed in our disciplines.