Celebrate Life!

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Today is our annual Celebrate Life Day. Every year it is a day of mixed joy and pain, laughter and weeping. Every year. This year. We celebrate life today because four years ago Tanzen was born. We celebrate life today because four years ago we almost lost Crystal to her stroke. This year we celebrate life because we have watched our beloved Ita step from this world into her eternal home. 

We take our celebration seriously. Today is not a day that we wallow in sentimentalism or bask in trivialities. 

We will not hold our daughter’s hand and think of how lucky we are.

We will not step into the sunshine with Crystal and forget that she can walk.

We will not relegate Ita’s existence to a place in our hearts or happy memories. Whether or not her memory lives on within me makes no difference. Her existence has not ended.
No. We will take this celebration seriously because we take life seriously. We take eternity seriously. We take joy seriously.
We will not forget that we are more than particles and energy.

We will not forget that every breath we have is a gift. 

We will not forget that evil is real and not an opinion. 

We will not forget that death is painful and will one day be eliminated.

We will not forget that life is hard and tears sting.

Today we celebrate life.
We celebrate because the Maker has given us one more day. We celebrate because he has promised that there is more to come. Celebrate with us!

Batter my heart, three-person’d God

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Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
– John Donne

Unending Joy

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Anticipating unending joy in the presence of Christ changes everything. It means we can relinquish control over our lives. It means we have no fear of the future. It means all our pressing toward personal holiness is not in vain. God elects so that we will be conformed to the image of Christ, in his holiness and in his happiness. It will be done, and we strive and obey in this inescapable hope.

  • Tony Reinke, The Joy Project

The Holy Spirit

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The Holy Spirit, in his indwelling, in his influences, and in his fruits, is the sum of all grace, holiness, comfort and joy. In one word, the Holy Spirit is the entire spiritual good that Christ purchased for men in this world. The Holy Spirit is also the sum of all perfection, glory, and eternal joy that he purchased for them in eternity.

  • Jonathan Edwards