I’m going to Disneyland!

Olivia says that we are “Disney Adults”. I don’t know if that’s true or not. But I do enjoy me a good trip to a Disney park. And so, with that said: I’m going to Disneyland tomorrow! The picture above is from our last family trip to Walt Disney World, back in September 2023, but this time it’s just a parents trip.

Is this strange? Two adults go to Disneyland without their children? Of course not! Have you ever been to Disney with two (or more) young, rambunctious children? If so, then you know just how much of these types of trips are devoted to helping the kids enjoy the trip, which often leads to a lot of unwanted stress for the parents. And so, being two certified Disney Adults, we have elected to go, just the two of us, to the Happiest Place on Earth (note: this says ON EARTH 😉) this weekend. I’m just posting this to say that I couldn’t be more excited. The Lord has blessed us with this opportunity, one we missed on our actual anniversary last year (Sept. 27), and I am just so very grateful. The kids have a hard time understanding this, but Olivia and I were partners before we were parents, and thank God we still love being around each other.

So yes, I’m very excited. 😊

-Sam

Two Weeks

They say that it takes about two weeks to form a new habit (don’t they?) and so here we are at the two week marker, and I’m as motivated as ever. So far, I have found that each day’s readings just light up my brain and my soul, and I yearn to read more of God’s word. Every day it feels like I stumble across another passage that illuminates or prefigures the coming of Christ and His eventual death and Resurrection.

Take Abraham, for example, commanded by God to take his “only-begotten son Isaac, whom you love” (Gen. 22:2) and offer him as a burnt sacrifice on Mount Moriah, in the same place that the Lord God would eventually give His own “only-begotten son” as the sacrificial lamb for all of humanity. Or take Jacob, conversing with the shepherds of Haran and hearing them explain: “‘We cannot [water the sheep] until all the flocks are gathered together , and the stone is rolled from the mouth of the well; then we water the sheep.'” (Gen 29:8) Are we not the sheep that God gathers together in his pasture, neglecting not even the one? And when the stone was rolled away from the tomb, did we not drink of the water of eternal life? It’s these moments that take my breath away, as I realize God’s work and His astonishing plan, which was there from the very beginning.

I used to walk around blind and disheartened, feeling like God was just sitting around up there, kind of bored, watching us ants go about our daily lives. Maybe we’d do the right thing, maybe we wouldn’t. Who cared anyway? But now I see the vision. Nothing the Lord does, or has ever done, is by accident. The variable is us, humanity. Our brokenness, our self-centeredness, our frequent inability to see God when it’s dark. If anything, these first couple of weeks have really helped to illuminate God’s perfection, and to increase my faith in His plan. It’s like, who am I to question God’s plan when He never even once asked me to offer David or Miguel as a burnt sacrifice? If Abraham could trust the Lord even after that command, then I better be able to do the same when I can’t understand His plans for me and my life.

I continue to stick to the daily reading schedule, and have started to lean more towards keeping that up. It’s a nice manageable dose of the Word each day, and it gives me something to really look forward to.

Until next time,

Sam

“In the beginning…”

Well today is Day 9 of my journey, but this is my first blog post. So I’ll have to play a bit of catch up here. For reference, through today I have covered Genesis 1-19 and Job 1-8, with a bit of supplemental reading from Psalms and Proverbs.

What do we learn from these first 19 chapters of Genesis? Well…quite a lot in fact.

First of all, this will probably reveal exactly what a novice I am at this Bible stuff, but I really never realized that from Creation through Jesus Christ, the story of Salvation History (a term possibly coined by Jeff Cavins, or at least he’s the first person I heard it from) is really that of God’s repeated attempts to form covenants with his greatest creation: Mankind. This early God strikes me as quite a bit more…fearsome(?)… than we’re used to once we understand Jesus as God. But at the same time, what’s equally as apparent if not more so, is that God loves his Creation, and wants to have a loving relationship with humanity. But thanks to our original Father and Mother, Adam and Eve, we lost that opportunity for ever and ever…

Or did we? And that’s my second point is that God never gave up on us. Did he call down the rains to wipe out all of humanity? Sure, but he also saved Noah and his family so that humanity could have another chance. And despite the many failures of Noah, and later Abraham, God still promised us salvation.

He also told Abraham “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless.” (Gen. 17:1) So we certainly have to do our part too.

I’m fighting the urge to “read ahead” because there is part of me that wants to make this journey last the entire year. But then there’s this other part of me that yearns to keep reading God’s Word. I will have to continue praying in order to determine how best to proceed.

That’s all for now.

In Christ,

Sam