I Once Was Lost ...

I just want to refer you to a blog post that I just read. This is exactly what I needed to hear and it may be liberating to you, too. We all have our deserts, our dry spots - where we feel lost and a bit confused. We ask questions we never thought we would. Where is God? Why don't know Him like I used to? What's the point of this? Where'd my passion go? I'm learning that this is weakness, but God can use it. We need the desert, just like we need the oasis. The desert is where we learn who we really are, and where we are refined to be who God intended.

Find it here.

It's not about YOU.

What do people get for all their hard work under the sun?

Generations come and generations go, but the earth never changes.

The sun rises and the sun sets, then hurries around to rise again.

The wind blows south, and then turns north.

Around and around it goes, blowing in circles.

Rivers run into the sea, but the sea is never full.

Then the water returns again to the rivers and flows out again to the sea.

Everything is wearisome beyond description.

No matter how much we see, we are never satisfied.

No matter how much we hear, we are not content.

History merely repeats itself.

It has all been done before.

Nothing under the sun is truly new.

Sometimes people say, "Here is something new!"

But actually it is old;

nothing is ever truly new.

We don't remember what happened in the past,

and in future generations, no one will remember what we are doing now.

{Ecclesiastes 1:3-11}

I think we often forget that it's not about us. We go on doing our own work, when really, it will all fade when we die. Maybe even before that.

It's not about me and it's not about you. But we make it so. And we'll be left with nothing to show for it.

Historical Talents

It's been a while! I've been unmotivated to blog. I'm home for the holidays and am just enjoying being here. : )

But today I came across an amazing video of the winner of Ukraine's Got Talent, Kseniya Simonova. She's an artist who uses sand to draw a series of pictures about Ukrainian citizens who were affected by German invasion during World War II.

Here's an explanation of the series of pictures Kseniya creates:

"She begins by creating a scene showing a couple sitting holding hands on a bench under a starry sky, but then warplanes appear and the happy scene is obliterated.

It is replaced by a woman’s face crying, but then a baby arrives and the woman smiles again. Once again war returns and Miss Simonova throws the sand into chaos from which a young woman’s face appears.

She quickly becomes an old widow, her face wrinkled and sad, before the image turns into a monument to an Unknown Soldier.

This outdoor scene becomes framed by a window as if the viewer is looking out on the monument from within a house.

In the final scene, a mother and child appear inside and a man standing outside, with his hands pressed against the glass, saying goodbye.

The Great Patriotic War, as it is called in Ukraine , resulted in one in four of the population being killed with eight to 11 million deaths out of a population of 42 million."

Take a look.