purple makes the world go round.

Alright, lame pic, the bun is actually about the size of my face but as you can see I ate most of it.

MORE PURPLE FOOD! SO GOOD.

You should have seen me geeking out about this one. Definitely trumps the last purple bun I had. Man. So yummy.

Music [confession] of the Week.

Yeah. We'll put it that way.

I'm not usually one to give the pop country singer Taylor Swift a shout out (aside from this song), and I'm not really obsessed with her (nothing like Tenth Ave or Narnia or Jane Eyre or anything...::grin::) ...nor do I believe it's generally a smart idea to sing things like "all you're ever gonna be is mean" and "you're just another picture to burn" to people you fight with. Harbouring anger isn't a good thing.

I also have this like...automatic bias against celebrities that the general population is obsessed with. People put you in boxes based on who you listen to, and I generally prefer to be in the "celebrity haters" box rather than the "fangurl" box. The fan population worships the celebrities far to much. And it's pointless.

She does, however, write very well....very extremely well. She's kinda especially good at writing love songs.

::ahem::

ANYway, you know. They're...love songs. The music videos are amazing, but they all basically say the same thing. Nice, but mushy. Kinda frivolous and shallow sometimes. "Baby just say yes" gets a little old.

But for some reason this one is just AMAZING. I love it. I don't generally say so much about her music videos, but I love this one. And because of it I've been listening to her music all week. Maybe it's because it's set in a library with a lot of old books, maybe it's because her outfit is awesome, maybe it's because I feel like I can identify with it, maybe it's the...oh, it doesn't go into words. That feeling of frustration, of not being able to do anything. The song just says it.

"I'd tell you I miss you but I don't know how...I've never heard silence quite this loud."

Tell me what you think, if you dare to hit the play button.



ps - today I'm graduating. Mmhm.

OH MAH GOODNESS.

As much of a Narnia-nerd as I am (yes this is a Narnia post, deal with it, it's only 5 lines long.) I didn't really know they *had* a Narnia exhibition - at least a traveling one, anyway.

BUT THEY DO!! and even better, IT'S COMING TO PORTLAND!!!!

Check it ouuuut!

Yeeeeahhhhhhhhh. :D

I call all times soon.

Obviously it's like a week late to be posting this, but I'm doing it anyway.

A year or so ago, there was a lot of fuss and hullabaloo about the Mayans predicting the world's end in 2012.


I remember first hearing about this - and thinking "Yeah. Riiiiight." The clips from the movie on youtube make the entire thing look even less realistic.

But the other day, I started hearing a lot about (you guessed it) May 21st, 2011. Which, might I add, was almost one week ago.

When I read the articles about it, I was kind of shocked. I mean, to hear other religions preach the end of the world is all good and well - I know it's bogus. They're just predicting that everything's gonna blow up, which as we know from the Bible is not the way it's going to happen.

But these were Christians - not just predicting the end of the world where everything explodes and we all die, but predicting Jesus' return. They were using scripture to back them up, talking about concepts, ideas, and beliefs that I was accustomed to.

My initial reaction was "this is ridiculous."

My second reaction was "what if they're...right?"

When I was little, a friend of mine asked me what the one thing I wanted to see before I died was - and I told her I wanted to see Jesus coming back.

But lately, Jesus' return has been more of an up-in-the-air sort of thing for me. (no pun intended ;) You know. This dreamy sort of over-the-rainbow-idea that Jesus is going to come back, flying in majestically in the clouds with trumpets.

I mean, really? It's all rather unrealistic, don't you think?

But lately I've been starting to come to terms with the fact that...God is so much bigger than my little "realistic" worldview.

Have you ever thought about the idea that God is real?

Wow, do I sound like a skeptic or what.

But what I mean, not just that you believe in Him - because God is so much more than just a belief. He...IS. He's as real as the trees, flowers, and grass that I can touch.

And one day, the GOD of the universe, in all His glory, power, majesty, and REAL-ness is going to come back to earth.

I guess, the powerful thing about these people's prediction was that: These are Christians. They (roughly) believe the same things that I do about Christ. And they are saying Jesus is coming back - tomorrow.

Would I be prepared? Was I ready?

I'm ashamed to say I probably wasn't. I went to bed thinking "Dear God, please don't come back tomorrow. I'm not ready yet."

Because, for a time, the idea of that....that *possibility* that Jesus could really come back was suddenly very real to me.

I mean, come on. We all know the Sunday school "Jesus could come back any day, and we just have to be ready." Sometimes we take it for granted. "Jesus could come back any day" gets a little bit old after awhile, you know?

But the weight of the...the reality. That Jesus WILL come back in a very physical, real form. It won't be some emotion, some spiritual mountaintop or a nice worship experience. He really IS coming.

Can you even *imagine* how glorious it would be to see Him come down from the clouds with trumpets?

So squash the stuff about the world ending. As one of my friends said the other day "the odds of Jesus returning on May 21st were just the same as they were on May 20th, and May 22nd."

We can predict it all we want, but Jesus is clear in the book of Matthew that "of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only. "

The thing is - it really *could* be tomorrow.

What if it was?

When He comes - can He say to me, "well done, good and faithful servant?"

Am I doing the most I can with what my Father has given me? Or am I wasting what I already have? Will the bridegroom come back to a bride who is not prepared to marry him - or will he come back to a bride who is ready, expectant, and completely in love with Him?

I guess the thing that stuck out to me with these people's prediction was that they were predicting something different from what most people do. And it made me realize the...kind of, reality, I guess, of Jesus' return.

My friend Shelby wrote a really amazing post on the subject, which you can read HERE.

Here's an excerpt of what she wrote:

"Live every moment like it could be your last, because it could be! Just stop and think. You can be prepared and be assured and live each minute safe in the arms of your Savior. You can use your life, your time, your resources to make an eternal impact. You can someday stand before God and hear Him tell you "Well done." You can be ready. Don't put it off. It is the one and only thing in this world that simply cannot wait."

I love this quote from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

[Aslan] ”Do not look so sad. We shall meet soon again.”

“Please, Aslan,” said Lucy, “what do you call soon?”

“I call all times soon,” said Aslan.

It could be today, it could be tomorrow, it could be a million years from now. Will you be ready?

It's radical...crazy...giving Christ my life. Completely. All of it. Absolutely every aspect...forever, always, every breath I breathe.

I like to imagine being absolutely in love with the man God has for me someday in the future. But what about the lover who gave His life for me, who loves me always, who is my strength, my all, my everything?

Can I honestly say - There is no one else who has my heart?

Listen to Absolutely, by Starfield

My little brother is cuter than yours.

During Bible reading this morning...

Mom: If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also.
John-Luke: What happens if you run out of clothes?

Mom: whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.
John-Luke: Does that mean when you punch someone, you should always punch them twice?

l'éléphant

I was in the car with my mom, listening to the radio....and this speaker was talking about the sculpting of a famous statue. It reminded me of this one joke...

"How do you carve an elephant out of marble?"
"Well, you get a block of marble, and you start chipping away at everything that doesn't look like an elephant"

::tehe::

(image from amazon.com)

But the speaker was talking about how God is the sculptor, chipping away at us.

And I got to thinking. As God is carving me, am I letting Him chip away at everything that "doesn't look like an elephant"?

Jesus says "Be holy, as I am holy". We are to reflect Christ - but are we letting God purge us of the things that don't reflect Him, so that when the work is finished, all you will see is Christ?

Brother Lawrence, in The Practice of the Presence of God (amazing book) says (on attaining spiritual fulfillment)

To accomplish this, it is necessary for the heart to be emptied of everything that would offend God. He wants to possess our hearts completely. Before any work can be done in our souls, God must be totally in control...we need to abandon everything that isn't of God. Doesn't He deserve this and much more?

Like I was talking about in this post...there are so many things that take captive of our hearts instead of God.

What does your elephant look like so far? I don't know about you, but mine still has a lot of lumps of non-elephant-looking marble...

Re-Blog: This is the Title Page

This is a post my co-admin wrote for Aslan's Meditations on our website. (Aslan's Country) I absolutely love the way he put everything - it's short, but it's powerful.

Like a lot of you, I’ve been insanely busy this past school year... AP courses, chemistry, the list goes on... and that doesn’t even include the whole month-and-a-half of my life I (almost) entirely dedicated to promoting Voyage of the Dawn Treader and traveling to London for the premiere. Nor does that include the long laundry list of church and family events. No wonder it’s already May.

I love to think about eternity... how one day very soon those who choose to follow Christ will all live in eternity with God in Heaven. And when I think about eternity, it makes life on earth seem so trivial and relatively unimportant. I ask myself, “Why am I living for today? Why am I doing (or not doing) things because of the effect they will have right now? Shouldn’t I be living for something more?”

Yes.

You see, the mentality I think many of us have is that we live a good life on earth; then one day we die and eternity begins. But this is so far from the truth! Eternity starts now.

Think of it this way. Why would you live one day homeless if you had a Father who had a beautiful mansion and wanted you to live in it? In the same way, why would you live your earthly life pursuing worldly things when you have such a larger life to live?

I love how C.S. Lewis puts it in The Last Battle (scan from my first edition copy):

You see, our life on earth is only the title page of the great story of eternity. When you pick up a book, don’t you expect its title page to reflect the contents of its chapters? You wouldn’t expect a book about candy and delicious foods to have a title page that says “Poison,” would you? Just so, shouldn’t the title pages of our eternal lives reflect the greater purpose we live for?

This is a concept I love to think about, yet rarely carry through in my life. Just this morning, I was at a high school in town (I’m homeschooled) with eleven other students, anxiously awaiting the beginning of the AP U.S. History Exam. Believe me, that’s no easy exam. So there we were in the lobby, waiting for the doors to the exam room to open. The students were gathered around one of the teachers, who was attempting to go over a quick review of U.S. history with them. He began it like this.: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Suffice it to say that this was a very liberal school, and most people there were not interested in God, at least not in glorifying Him. Several times the students interjected “and Jesus” into a very warped retelling of U.S. history. I glanced away, shocked at their blindness. “How can you not see that you’re making fun of the Jesus who died to save you?!” I wanted to ask.

I’m not sure why I didn’t.

In truth, these students and teacher were exactly like the dwarfs in The Last Battle. They didn’t believe in Aslan, and they didn’t believe in Tash. “The dwarfs are for the dwarfs,” I could only imagine them saying next. There I was, in my Narnian armor, and yet I didn’t have the courage to speak up. “Oh,” I told myself, “that would only make me more nervous before the exam.” Perhaps it would have. But what’s an exam score in light of eternity? There were the students who were destined for hell, and here I was, worried about the details of the Vietnam War.

This is the title page.

Will the title page of my life be like this morning? Will I continue to live as a Christian who doesn’t speak up for my God, who did so much more than speak up for me when he died for me? Will I continue to create a title page that says “poison,” or will the title page of my life truly reflect the contents of my “Great Story”?

We should become more like Reepicheep---longing for Aslan’s Country, longing to see our Master’s face, living every second of our lives for one purpose alone: to make our title pages match the story of eternity.

What does your title page look like?

Images: Scans from my first edition of The Last Battle (except for the image of Reepicheep)