Here we come a lentening: A Trinity of Experience

Here we are, the second week of Lent, and I am seeing results of God's work already. I am, once again, having my students celebrate Lent by fasting and picking a Spanish-speaking country to pray for and look for signs of God moving in that country (while I fast, pray for my students, and look for signs of God moving in them). One of my students caught me yesterday after class and told me that she picked Mexico and she always hated Mexicans and while she was praying last week she kept hearing the song, "open the eyes of my heart Lord" while she was praying and she realized that God LOVES Mexicans and she repented of her racism and is starting to see them differently. I laughed with joy as I pointed out to her that she HEARD God talking to her! (So cool to see!) The saddest story is the boy who came to me at lunch today and told me that he doesn't like praying and that this project is really hard for him because he has never heard God talk to him before in his entire life so he's really struggling to have the faith to even pray. I am really praying for him, that God would open his ears and eyes to see and hear God's voice and love. Please pray for him too.

My little Katie, the girl that I tutor, when I left her on Monday was elated that she finally understood how Spanish worked. Her Spanish teacher, however, upon seeing her all-of-the-sudden correct answers decided that Katie was cheating and Tuesday saw Katie leaving class crying. Her mom talked to Katie's counselor today, who I am pretty sure is my friend Vicky who I know from ISF, and there ends the story for now. We'll see next week where it's all going. The thing is, I've seen God's fingers in this pudding too much to be distressed and I'm curious to see what he's doing with it. There are just too many coincidences. Me and Vicky in this family's life? Is this how God is going to lead them to salvation? What blessing is he going to do for them? I can hardly wait to see.

The third thing is an interesting dream that I had a few nights past. It was an analogy that God gave me for life. In my dream, (my) Josh and I were hiking in the dry hills on a hot day where the clouds are high and wispy with that light light blue sky that you get here in high Summer. We were walking through snake country, but I had had inoculations against snake poison. Josh saw a thin black snake with one red stripe down each side and picked it up out of curiosity. As he was holding it, it leaped out and bit me on the top of my right arm, in the muscle. As I watched my skin began to ooze with infection, but it wasn't fatal like it would have been because of the inoculation. In an odd dream fast-forward, the bite mark began to heal, but kept oozing a little and crusted over with that odd yellow scab. It burned, and hurt blazingly, and I was furious with Josh for picking up a dangerous snake, but I realized that it would all be ok because I had been freed from the consequence of death. The Josh in my dream represented a part of me. It was I who picked up the snake. The inoculation was Jesus' blood. The bite and poison was sin. The pain that I suffered was real, I suffer because of my sin and other's sin, but it isn't a fatal suffering. Even though I do dumb stuff and pick up snakes that I know I shouldn't, and I suffer for it, or even when I'm just viciously attacked by the Devil, I am inoculated and won't die. This is what Jesus has done for me. This is what Jesus has done for all of us. I woke up with a feeling of horror, wondering if a snake bite hurt so much, how much more did the whip that bit Jesus hurt?