Moleskine

One thing I miss doing in travel is having the opportunity to sit somewhere relaxing and write in my Moleskine. I started one last summer when I left for California and almost completed it before Thailand. Then Matty gave me the best token of friendship ever in the "This Is Your Thailand" brand spankin new Moleskine for Christmas. I wrote it in, I glued pictures and ticket stubs inside of it... I wrote to Jesus, I wrote letters to you, and I wrote letters to myself. After I stopped going so fast I continued to use that journal and recently have seen the last page, and I have avoided it. In the gift Matt wrote that I had the last page to sum up the experience, and to finish it off on one last single piece of paper bound in the book. I have not been able to sum up everything the book means, and I find great peace in the idea no one will ever read it. I know like many letters I need to write, the one to US Airways telling them of a poor experience, or one of four other consumer related letters I have said I would write- this one page in the last Moleskine is the one I continue to find a lack of words to complete.

I started a new Moleskine this summer, and I expected that I would write it in, reflect in it, dream and pray in it much like the other two black books I poured my heart into. Instead, it stayed in my bag next the bible that I always take to church on Sundays. The newest book is not filled with thoughts of my own, and by this point should already be more then a quarter completed. Instead it has a few pages filled with the insight of those I was ministered by this summer and their thoughts I found to be worth noting. I have gone back recently to read through them and have found the things I took down to be that I should have continued to think more about, and not surprisingly written more about on my own.

So as to care and share, here are some of my favorite things written in the newest and most unused Moleskine from this summer. I like questions, and so its no surprise I wrote a lot of questions I heard:

a) "Am I going to love Jesus more than the acclaim of people I know?"
b) "How will you walk? Will you have a Faith that works?
c) Challenge: go where violence is spoken, and speak Peace there.
d) "I am not here to tell you their story. I am here to tell you, yours"
e) "The word SAVE, can mean HEAL."
f) "Community is connectivity, not activity"
g) "Will our confession be met with acceptance and love? You will never know how loved by another you are, until you know how broken you are before them."
h) Jesus didn't come for souls. He came for people.
i) When praying and not seeing answers: "Just because we don't know, doesn't mean we stop praying. God will make situation whole. We just may not see it until God makes us whole".
j) "What kind of wisdom defines us? Proof is in the heart."
k) "God does not take away hard circumstances. It's not our circumstances that grow us spiritually. God does."
l) "You can't protect yourself and trust God at the same time."
m) "Center of God's will is always the safest place to be"