Lyon Week 2

Hebrews 10:31-39. It says, "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God... But we are not of them that draw back into perdition, but of them that believe to the saving of the soul." It is terrifying to fall into the hands of God: we are confronted with our own inadequacy and with our own powerlessness to change a single h air on our head. Then we realize that if we let go and give in to Him and let Him do things with us , that we'll turn into huge, brilliant, magnificent creatures. The terrifying part is that we realize what that will entail--it will mean always loving, always being outside our comfort zone, always being bigger than the miserly smallness inside of us that prefers a dim and quiet corner to be left alone in. It means we have to do things we don't want to do. It means we have to stand on the cliff of all our deepest fears and confront the dragon of the devils we love inside of us. And when we come upon this moment, we have two options: to give ourselves over to this "living God" and live by faith, or to draw back, into the comfortable shadows of mediocrity. The latter is perdition, ruin, and destruction. The former is life eternal. And the difference is believing not just "in" the saving of the soul, but "to" the saving of the soul. Cast not away therefore your confidence!

Other news:

I get eaten alive by mosquitoes every night. Not kidding. At first I thought they were bedbugs. I'm pretty sure they are mosquitoes now though. Which is a relief. But still.

I ate my first kebab this week. it was delicious and i woke up feeling not too sick the next morning. this is probably because we bought the ritzier kebabs. we heard anything under 6 euros is too sketchy to eat. thank goodness the elders are experts in the kebab field and can give us advice like how much money to spend on kebabs to ensure their sanitariness.

We're off to Switzerland tonight for a week of exchanges!