All is Gift

How shameful and deep my sin before a holy God.
How utterly debase and without remedy my circumstances before Him.
On what grounds could I possibly approach Him?

Only because I know that His Son has already suffered everything that stands between us.
It cannot be, it must not ever be, anything more or less than precisely that.
I may approach the Father because the Son has made a way.

My life I doubly owe to Him; both the breath of life within me and the Spirit within me are willing and unilateral gifts from Him. My life is simply and totally a gift; therefore I cannot see how I can lay any claim to it whatsoever. And so I must be a living sacrifice, yet even that is impossible to me without Him.

Why would a perfect God create such a situation, with creatures who can give Him nothing, and rely on Him for everything, then pay an unimaginably great price to make a way back to Himself when they rejected Him? It could only be because of His love. No other motive can explain it.

So I am given life, and am loved. The only suitable response can be to live life, and to love. And to do both well. May this coming year be a year in which I learn how.

-Joseph

Fall Semester's End - A Poem

Somehow it got here, the very last class
The end of an era, has now come to pass
Exams now, and papers, these few final tests
My sleep swiftly steal, as my eyes will attest
My brain is a numbness, my social life dies
But cups of caffeine clear the mist from my eyes
Now vocab, and method, and reading, and such
Have stolen my time and not left me with much
Yet drenching my mind with these faithful conceptions
Is starting me next year with heightened perceptions

Forgive me, my friends, if I seem to sequester
Myself at the end of this fruitful semester
But failing to reach those high marks which I've struggled
To reach leaves me questioning all that I've juggled
My time and my habits are all in debate
Until these dread deadlines begin to abate
And reaching a place where I find I can rest
I can put from my mind every thought of a test
And quizzes and papers and protestant movements
And yes those turabian format improvements

For now that the break time has finally come
I can get back my sleep and my mind and then some
Yet resting and chatting and eating my fill
I can't rid my brain of a daunting thought still
Which is namely that all this has been only one
Of the numerous laps before this race is run
I'll need more endurance to get to the end
Of all this, and so I most surely intend
To make resolutions which prove efficacious
At saving my wits in a schedule less gracious

So gratefully Lord now I thank You at last
That a worthwhile semester is finally past
And I read my devotions for worship and pleasure
Not just hermeneutical value to measure
For of making of books there is no end in sight
As Solomon noted, and he was quite right
Now we pack up our things and drive home for a while
For good times with loved ones we'll greet with a smile
But with all that we're doing, it's best to remember:
New classes come quickly when it's late December

-Michael Joseph Swanson