Out of Towner

A strange feeling enveloped me this Christmas season: I am now an out of towner in my home town. I am the relative that people see at Christmas parties, special occasions, and few other times in between. I am the person that has to stand up when people at church welcome those that "aren't always with us." I will spent the next six months in Guatemala, and I won't return to MI after that time! Bring on the transitions from college to the 'real world' I guess.

These emotions give me small, small bit of insight into what Christ felt during his time on earth. Not at home or welcome (ok, I can't identify with that one) in the world that he created. But he persisted anyway. That dynamic, that healing of relationships broken, that reconciling creation to God, is what Christmas is about.

Grandville will always be my home as much as anyplace can be. I guess none of us are really at home in the nostalgic sense. There will always be a part of us feeling a little uncomfortable, a little off, because we live in a world that does not align with what it was created to be.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Years--start reclaiming some of our home and looking for ways we, as God's chosen people, can continue the story and move things toward the way they were meant to be in preparation for an eventual homecoming.

Three Weeks

Three weeks until "annetteinguatemala" will once again be written from Guatemala!

If you can't see it...

Bear with my ramblings on this one please, but I've been thinking a lot the past few days about something I talked about with my cooperating teacher. She has been teaching in Chicago Public Schools for a while now, and we've had a lot of really interesting conversations about the reality of inner city education. How do students break out of the molds? What's holding them back? How do we effectively educate the students we have in the situation we're in?

She shared a story with me about a student whose comment in response to some of those questions was, "if you can't see it, you can't be it." Think about that. For these students, if they don't have the examples in their lives, they have nothing to work for. That's heartbreaking in itself, but those words challenged me on a different level as well.

If you can't see it, you can't be it.

We are called to follow Christ, to be like him, "your attitude should be the very same as that of Christ Jesus." But, there are so many things in our lives that hinder us from seeing him clearly; and, if we can't see him, we can't be like him.

As Christmas approaches, I am caught up in the joy of this season, but more importantly, I have been thinking about what changes I need to make in my life in order to see Christ more clearly.