LOVE IS BRILLIANT!

So the semester has been shaping up quite nicely, and I'm very excited about it. God is so cool. There are so many things that I started learning this summer that are finally beginning to make sense. Some of it is not so easy, and some of it is just good reminders that of God has already done for me, and things that I have already learned.
Coming back to something always brings special events, activities, and situations. There are the same people that were there last time, but some of them are gone and there are new people who we are often unsure of where they even came from. We quickly realize though that all of the people have been placed in our lives for a reason, and we are called to love them and care about them, we are simply called to be their friend. All of it is really really fun.
We also come back with new experiences. We all spent the summer apart, learning and experiencing different things, and we some how have to figure out how to live in old situations with new experiences... At this point many of us have done this over and over again, but it never really gets any easier.
I personally have been struggling with several things that God has been teaching me. Learning how to love new people while still loving the old ones isn't always easy, and not always something that I really want to do. Investing so much time into situations I won't be in for long is not something that really makes me excited. Fortunately, I have learned through experiences that running from the things that God has called you to will only get you chased by whales. SO lets just not do that right? Loving people is hard, people are messy and complicated, people have problems and lives and baggage, and its just not pretty. But people are beautiful. People are created by God IN HIS IMAGE! Everyone you know... think about even the crazy people. God wants people to know about his love and the abundant life that is found only in Him... We need to be willing, I need to be willing, to love people that are hard to love. God is working in me, God is working in my friends (the new ones and the old ones), God is moving on our campus, God is moving in our city and it is BRILLIANT!

"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." John 13:34-35