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“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” Galatians 5:22-23
 How often do we hear about the importance of these virtues? We are taught to be kind and gentle, to make peace with each other and to love one another.  And yet, these fruit of the Spirit are really not supposed to be our end goal.

I don’t know about y’all, but I could use a telephone call from God every once in a while. Just a simple, “Hello Sarah, this is what I want you to do next in life…” Is that really too much to ask for? I don’t think so. I mean after all, if my desire is to do God’s will above my own then shouldn’t I just wait for Him to tell me what that is?

A few weeks ago, when we were at the National Youth Workers Convention in San Diego, one of the speakers, Harvey Carey, said the following: “It’s not about the gathering. It’s about the scattering. No one goes to a game to watch the huddle."

I grew up as a cradle Catholic, attending Mass every week and going through a traditional religious education program at my local parish.  I believe many people in the Church have grown up this way.  Either that, or they received their catechesis by attending Catholic school.  Whichever category you fall into, I bet you didn’t hear a whole lot of talk about evangelization while you were being formed in the faith.  This is definitely true for me.  It was not until I was in college that I started to become more familiar with evangelization and what it was.

A few weeks ago, I was contacted by an old friend from high school. She told me that when her father died years ago, I had told her “God doesn’t give you anything you can’t handle”. It encouraged her during that time, and helped her to cope. My first reaction to reading this was, “Wow I’m so glad something I said helped!” But I sat and thought about it for a minute. Does God give us anything we can’t handle? I can remember many times in my life where I have been in situations that I couldn’t handle. My parent’s divorce, a break up, the loss of a friend.

Do you know that moment when your are sitting a certain way and you feel one of your legs fall asleep? The feeling in your leg just slowly slips away, almost to the point of you not noticing. And you sit for a while, then you stand up and realize your leg is asleep.