Rome, the great adventure!

Rome
Originally uploaded by hnwate04

Have you ever thought about going to another country? Maybe you have. If not, I highly recomend it. But not just for the sake of a great adventure, but for the sake of a greater view and understanding of the world that God created. The variety in peoples, landscapes and plants, architecture and art... they are phenomenal. This photo is St. Peter's Square, Vatican City. A fantastic place full of every kind of person from sisters in habit and priests in cassocks, to tourists from Asia, to Romans, traveling Europeans, and many more.

Traveling to a foreign country can give you a great opportunity to learn important values in life that may not be as magnified when you are in your home. One of the most important values that a traveling Christian can learn is the ability to trust God, no matter what! Trust God if you got on the wrong train, if you can't find your hostel, if it rains and you lost your raincoat... just to name a few possible instances. Seriously, these situations show us that we are not in control and that God is. If we allow ourselves to learn from them and know that God had something in mind the entire time, then we have a value well learned when we come back home.

Whether or not you can afford to go to another country, try to look at the world knowing that there is a lot more to the world than one person can know. May God bless you abundantly in humility and love for others!

Pathways

Cinque Terre
Originally uploaded by hnwate04

God leads us each in a unique direction. The trick is how we find that direction. For some of us, this includes spiritual direction from a priest or mentor, hours of prayer and meditation, and above all, absolute trust in God. Piece of cake right? Yeah right! Sometimes this seems so hard. For instance, how can you trust that you are at the top of a staircase that you have never been on if you have your eyes closed? It would be easy to stumble and fall, unless you had someone to tell you where the next step was for each step. This is what God does for us. He doesn't want us to fall down the stairs, he wants us to successfully climb the stairs to be with him. Look at this photograph. If you look closely you can see a small path that goes along the shoreline. But you cannot see the end of the shoreline, and you cannot see even a horizon. But it's there even though it is escaping our sight in this photo. The farther along this path you walk, the more you will see ahead of you. It is also like walking in thick fog. At times you can only see three feet in front of you, but if you move forward, you can see more and more that didn't seem to be there before. These small examples of trust can show us how to trust God with our lives. He is the Almighty, we can feel safe trusting Him.

My life has shown me many doors that I only need to walk through in order to follow God's will. And every once and a while, I find a door that I never expected to find. For instance, I went to college to be a music major, but now I am graduating with a degree in Youth Ministry. And even my degree may not be used in the way that I expect. I may become a teacher, a youth minister, a mother, or I may end up in a foreign country. The thing is, I must open myself to the gifts of the Holy Spirit and to the grace that God is pouring into my heart. This way, I can begin to see my life plan more clearly and I can trust God even more. We should all strive to do this, to open our hearts to the overflowing of graces that God is showering us with every moment.