My last day of work fast approaches: the ninth. Soon afterward Katherine and I will be venturing out on what we have dubbed our "senior trip." We're going to Schlitterbahn and plan to have as much fun as possible on the way. I've been thinking a lot lately about God and faith. And so much in the past year I've been wishing for faith, but it never really occured to me until I started reading Oswald Chambers and Elizabeth Elliot that faith starts here and now. So reticent and neglecting in the past to call upon the Lord in my times of even small need, I have found myself doing so more and more now, and have been shocked and amazed to find that... I am never disappointed. God... is always there. He is the quiet stirring within when all else has fallen silent. He is the steady peace in the face of overwhelming grief and loss. I have found that though His will for me is unfathomable, it is without a shadow of a doubt better than what I long for. It is beyond the fact that what I long for is transient and will pass. What I long for may make me happy. And what I "sacrifice" to follow the Lord's path may bring me great pain... But it also brings joy. Not happiness. Sometimes the two are one in the same, but joy is seperate completely from happiness. It is... when you sit alone at night listening and feel Him everywhere. Joy can only come from the Lord. But his plans for me are to prosper me, and never to hurt. Once again, not the prosperity of the world, though that may come as well, but the prosperity of the soul; that silent rejoicing that beats within when you are at worship and feel the Lord stirring the very depths of your being. Please, brothers and sisters, pray for my pride. Pray that it is "not to us, oh Lord, not to us, but to You, Oh Lord, be glory and honor."