My cat, she is playing with her shadow. I don’t know why this is significant to   me yet, but for some reason it strikes me. She is content yes, she is entertained very much so, but… she is chasing her shadow. It’s like when she runs around in circles round and around and around trying to get at the appendix attached to her back end. Also known as her tail. She will chase at it for minutes, sometimes hours it seems and eventually she will go all out and tac it down only to realize when placed in her mouth and chewed, it is not so plesant. Not as plesant as she imagined.

Sometimes I feel as if I am simply chasing my shadow or attacking my tail. I work at it without cease. No rest. No calm. I go and go and go and go only to realize I have achieved nothing. Nothing for myself and nothing for anyone else. I have done it for so long now, thinking I have a goal in mind. A purpose worth pursuing and then I attain it and it seems as if there was nothing to attain. There are some who work a lot for a little. Some who work a little for a lot. Sometimes I’m not sure what I am working for. So hard, so diligently. Only to end up at the beginning. I dedicate my time, my emotion, my self to a cause only to watch it fall apart. Only to watch my place in it fade away.

Do I have a place. A place to invest. A place to share. To learn and to grow. I stand before God once again asking where shall I go? Who shall i become? I thought I knew. I really did. Where do you want me God? With whom shall I share life? What body shall I be a part of? Who will take me? I feel like the last in line. The one who waits. Waits for somone to decied they want them on thier team. They stand without saying a word affriad to be too showing. The appear unaffected. But inside they are screaming “PICK ME PICK ME!!!” I can do it. I want the job. Pick me! They stand, and wait. And in the end, they stand on the sidelines… uneaven teams, without a place, without a job, without a purpose.

God I know I have a place… a purpose, a vision, a goal…  Who will pick me? I know I have something to give. Something that is not of myself but something that is of you. Placed in me by you. Where shall I go? Who wants me? I feel like the trash left in the dumpster out by the road. Something that once was usefull but is no longer. Because it was soiled, or broke, or just wasn’t needed anymore. Who will find use in me? Not who as in one, but who as in whole. What body will find me usefull. What place will become my home. I feel orphaned and oppressed. I feel shut out. I feel as if they use and abuse and then leave out by the roadside without a second thought.

I need a church. I need a church that wants me.

but I want the church… the church I came from.

Judas…”a hard hearted man who never accorded jesus a higher title than ‘rabbi’ in three years as a member of His inner core. Never once did judas iscariot call jesus ‘Lord’”

“How would Judas Iscariot have responded to the resurrection of Jesus Christ? Of course, we can never know, but we can wonder, and there are some interesting clues in scripture as to what might have happened next. Matthew tells us that, prior to his suicide, judas was ‘seized with remorse’ (27:3). He ran to the priests declaring, ‘i have sinned, i have betrayed innocent blood,’ hoping there might still be some way to undo the deed. do we dare describe these words as a confession of sin?

Judas then tried to return the blood money, flinging those thirty, dirty silver coins at the feet of the priests and fleeing in anguish. is this repentance, or just the demented regret of a desperate man?

The priests, not wanting to be tarnished with dirty money, use the refunded coins to purchase a field as a cemetery for foreigners. And this is where-deliberately or by bitter coincidence, we cannot be for sure from biblical accounts- judas chose to kill himself by hanging.

he had committed a sin greater than any other in the scale of its consequence. everything seemed hopeless. what does a man think, what does he do, having betrayed the Lord to a tortured death for the price of a field? fr judas, there was no escaping the awful horror of his own heart. no future. and so, in the darkest despair, he hung himself.

but what if he had waited a weekend? thats all that would have been needed. i love to imagine jesus on easter morning deliberately seeking out the disciple more lost than any other. perhaps now, at last, he might be found! when judas first sees jesus, i imagine him wondering how this tumult of madness could now be conjuring up the rabbi in his tortured mind. slowly jesus approaches, but judas is frozen in disbelief. closer. closer. jesus unbearably close-so close now that judas can feel his breath on his cheeck. and then it happens: Jesus greets judas.

with a kiss.

he is carrying three questions for peter. He has scars to show Thomas. but first, a kiss for judas.

and some time within those moments, i imagine two words- jsut two- being exchanged very quietly between the men. Jesus looks deeply into the unblinking eyes of his betrayer, who is too dumbstruck even to avert his gaze in shame. and then he utters a single syllable, upon which eternity will surely swing. Jesus whispers:

“friend.”

do you hear the echo? it was another day, another kiss, perhaps another judas, too. but, in the garden that night, jesus had greeted his betrayer in just the same way. “friend,” he had said, “do what you came for.” and judas had done it, and he had not been able to undo it. and jesus had been to hell and back as a result. and now he is standing here, impossibly, greeting judas again, his heart unchanged for the twelfth of his deciples:”friend.” he, too, had done what he came for.

the sound of that word somehow echoes to reach judas, lost as he is in another eternity. he hears the greeting. he feels the breath. life to dust. ashes to embers. a kiss for a curse. as if slowly waking from a nightmare, judas iscariot replies to his victim, the victor, with a single word, surely more meaningful than we can ever know:

“Lord.”

it’s a whisper, barely audible. and yet the sound of that word resounds like a gunshot around the halls of heaven. “Lord” the angels gasp in recognition: “not rabbi-Lord! even judas, even judas,” they say.

and then perhaps judas, in those awkward, awestruck moments, moves to reciprocate the kiss, as one should. should he? could he? would jesus allow it once again?

and his lips touch the cheek, it is as though a pin pierces his stupor-his body just crumples upon christ’s, shuddering with the greatest sobs of redemption in human history. somehow the irreversible sin has become the very door to salvation-even him, the twelfth, the last, the thief, the greatest traitor of them all.

with those tears, the angelic realm erupts in praise. “rejoice with me,” cries the spirit, his voice echoing through heaven, “for i have found my lost sheep!” ad there is always “more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent” (luke 15:6). praises ring to the lamb who was slain for the sins of the world-even this, the greatest sin of them all. truly he loves his enemy and does good to his persecutor. he is the shepherd who left the eleven to find th last his one lost sheep. he is the alpha and omega who takes the twelfth brother and makes him first, lifting his name as the ultimate example of grace- insurmountable and eternal proof of the power of love to conquer sin.”

…

“please do not despair of grace. never give up. resist the temptation to pass judgment on yourself like judas- that path is the path of madness and self-destruction. now matter how desperate you feel today, hold on for tomorrow. stumble on a few more hours in blind faith, offering god nothing more than your hopelessness and your sin. we cannot rush the resurrection. but wait and watch, and he will surely come. no matter what you have done, i am convinced of this: there is more grace in god than sin in you. i defy you to tempt such love with so much as a breath or a glance or a whisper of confession. just one prodigal pace is all it takes to bring your father running to greet you with the kiss of his grace.

and he will call you ‘friend’
and you will call him ‘Lord’.”

this is from “the vision and the vow” by Pete Greig

to read the part that touched me… keep reading…

“I have been challenged and changed, reminded that love is that simple answer to so many of our hardest questions. Don Miller says we’re called to hold our hands against the wounds of a broken world, to stop the bleeding. I agree so greatly.

We often ask God to show up. We pray prayers of rescue. Perhaps God would ask us to be that rescue, to be His body, to move for things that matter. He is not invisible when we come alive. I might be simple but more and more, I believe God works in love, speaks in love, is revealed in our love. I have seen that this week and honestly, it has been simple: Take a broken girl, treat her like a famous princess, give her the best seats in the house. Buy her coffee and cigarettes for the coming down, books and bathroom things for the days ahead. Tell her something true when all she’s known are lies. Tell her God loves her. Tell her about forgiveness, the possibility of freedom, tell her she was made to dance in white dresses. All these things are true.

We are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. We don’t get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. We won’t solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way. We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we’re called home.

I have learned so much in one week with one brave girl. She is alive now, in the patience and safety of rehab, covered in marks of madness but choosing to believe that God makes things new, that He meant hope and healing in the stars. She would ask you to remember. “

http://www.twloha.com/the_story.php

I am still going to be a missionary! I am just going to get a degree in education first, at central!

So here I am, perplexed on how to go about doing this, but I suppose I will take it one step at a time. I want to walk in the things God has given me and He has definitely given me a love for words  and the piecing together of thoughts, phrases, and syllables. I have many ideas in my head on what to write about, but none have really taken root. They will. I guess I will just be patient for now and see what comes.

1.Wandering from place to place without any settled home; nomadic: a vagabond tribe

2.having an uncertain or irregular course or direction

3.a person, usually without a permanent home, who wanders from place to place; nomad

4.an idle wanderer without a permanent home or visible means of support

So I figured, seeing how there are so many meanings for this word, I would explain what I mean by calling myself a vagabond. I don’t have a permanent place, a permanent holding that I call my own. I have a house, but it’s not really mine and the location of my inhabitance could change at any time.

I’m just living and going and moving when led. I don’t want to settle for less (though I do sometimes…)