Uncertait

Today was the completion of my first day as a college graduate. I am already sick of hearing the question: "How does it feel?" But it is inevitable when anyone realizes what happened this last weekend. It feels great to have accomplished, almost a feeling of arrival, coupled with the desire to want more; to want to learn more; to want to be more; not wanting to settle as achieved, but to achieve greater now.

It is also terrifing. I have all that was concretely planned for my life. Yet there are still things that I know that I will achieve and become, but a fear of not knowing how those will come about grips me. I have been working for this moment for so long, now that it is here - what is next? How do I bridge the gap of my dreams and future to my current reality?

I feel like a batter trudging from the on-deck circle to the batter's box, ready to swing but unable to see where the ball will go. I've been practicing for years, sitting in the dugout, watching, waiting for my opportunity; I'm working to find the balance in patience and aggressiveness. Thoughts of failure race through my mind, but everything that I am knows I am designed for success.

I know that I just need to rest and let the game come to me. A friend of mine said: "Rest is not the absence of activity - but the presence of peace". Provision has never been absent in my life, nevertheless, uncertainty still remains my biggest adversary.


I have been set up to trust.

Counterfeit?

Sitting in my class, faithfully discussing the intricacies of a language that is no longer in existent, inevitably we detour to a discussion on the character and nature of God from the ink on the page. Quietly I sit in the back, more focused on preventing my head from bobbing than engaging in the class, knowing the inevitable destination of our conversation. Slowly, but definitely the ideas return to the familiar place of what God is not, rather than what God is.

Agendas shift to proving what some label as from God, as expressively fake. Listening, I begin to wonder, are we more comfortable and more apt to focus on what we think we can prove is not God than what we know is God? I wonder why we are willing to limit the limitless based on our frugal minds and emotional experiences. I wonder.

The Almighty I serve has no limits. The Faithful I follow has never been known routine. The phenomenon who knows my name is unique in all that is Him. The willing pattern to base the another's experience on my own encounter as the drawing board for validation is a common but limiting cycle. I am unwilling to judge another's testimony based on my knowledge through experience. If all future actions of God can fit within my experience and within the comprehension of my mind, at 22 years of age, I have thus experienced all there is. If I find it necessary to throw around the labels such as fake or counterfeit because I do not understand, if this is all there is, I want out.

But I know that there is more. I know an argument cannot debate with an experience. I know an argument is only one experience away from changing the argument. I know my praise is not contingent on counterfeit, I praise when its real, I praise when its not.

I know.