Tagged again!

Like a vicious circle. Every couple months or so, there's another one that pops up!

25 Things I want to do before I die:

1. Record and perform my own music. Perhaps even for a living, or as a calling.
2. Read all of my favorite books, one more time.
3. Meet Bono.
4. Learn how to speak German fluently (not just the "Lebensmittel deutsch" that I know now).
5. Visit Iona and study my celtic Christian heritage.
6. Live in my native (kind of) country (Austria) for a little while.
7. Find a real cause to be part of.
8. Act in a movie. Even if just once.
9. Understand my relationship with God, develop a deeper relationship with Christ
10. Write a beautiful and profound fantasy/novel/memoir book.
11. Own a Lowden Guitar.
12. Live in peace.
13. Get to be involved in world events, like missions, or aid, or diplomacy, or something big like that.
14. Build strong and lasting friendships.
15. Visit England.
16. Revisit Russia.
17. Learn how to speak French fluently.
18. Learn how to dance. No, really, I'm serious.
19. Climb some 14'ners. Probably only Coloradoans will pick up on this one.
20. Inspire people towards their relationship in Christ.
21. Visit China.
22. Meet, marry, and spend my life with a beautiful and woman who I can be a wonderful husband to.
23. Have a lasting impact on the next generation, especially through a family of my own.
24. Understand my place in time, and how to prepare for eternity.
25. Learn how to really, honestly love.

Ok, tagged are:
Foolish Knight,
Tuesday's Child,
Ruth,
...And that's all for now.

Grey And Wet

Never Truer...

"Seattle is like living with the most beautiful woman in the world...

...Who is sick 90% of the time."
~Heard from J.J. Kisinger

Amen, J.J.

A hearty amen.

Grace (EDIT: This is the 100th post of Eucharisto! Yay! Happy Birthday, dear, beloved blog!)

Lord, thank you for grace. Thank you that it's something I see everyday, throughout my life. Thank you that even though falling down still hurts, it's cushioned by your grace, which gives me a reason to get back up again. After all, all of your saints are just sinners who fall down, and get up. It's like a weird dance in a way, isn't it? The graceful steps of remembering your promises to me, even as I knowingly swing to close to sin, and sometimes fall right into it. Sometimes I dance with two left feet. But I really like dancing with you anyway, God, because you know all the steps, and always pick me back up, and help me remember the rhythm and rhyme of the song. Grace is good, because you are good, God. I love every minute of experiencing your grace, living in it.

But Father, grace isn't fair. I'm starting to see that now. It's unequal, unmerited, and unexpected. I love it when those things are in my favor, I love benefiting from grace. I think in my fallible self, I like grace best at those times. But the problem is, grace is an equal opportunist, and just as I live "in" grace, I must also live "out" grace. That's the hard part. It's easy enough to accept it when I don't deserve it. But it's so hard to give it when others don't deserve it. That's the frustrating thing about grace. It's exactly what Bono said, that "love interrupts the consequences of our actions". And when others deserve to reap consequence, we have to push against it, putting on the face of love, and change what should be, under justice, to what must be, under grace. You knew that we'd need all the grace we could get from you, because of the enormous task it would be for our small-minded selves to turn the tide on our own sinful natures, and love anyway.

Jesus, I don't deserve to be loved or given grace, but I am. You altered logic and reason, so that you could live in me and through me, and now I am filled with your Spirit. It wasn't fair that I received grace, that I get to feel alive and loved, but you abolished fair, because if the world must live by what is fair and deserved, then we're all of us humans going to Hell. Thank you God, thank you so much that grace isn't fair. Help me to remember that with my interaction with all your people.

P.S. Thanks to Foolish Knight for inspiring this post with his "Grateful Tuesdays". I'd apologize for stealing his template this one time, but then again, prayer is public domain, right?