My Help Comes from the Lord

Psalm 121

I lift up my eyes to the hills.

From where does my help come?

My help comes from the Lord,

who made heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot be moved;

he who keeps you will not slumber.

Behold, he who keeps Israel

will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is your keeper;

the Lord is your share on your right hand.

The sun shall not strike you by day,

nor the moon by night.

The Lord will keep you from all evil;

he will keep your life.

The Lord will keep

your going out and your coming in

from this time forth and forevermore.

Summer Setting

This is it. The last official weekend of summer. Can you believe it's already here? Me neither. I've always looked forward to the fall. A fresh start. New school supplies. New beginnings. This year autumn brings with it the biggest new beginning of my life - our marriage.

Our wedding is just a few short weeks away. I'm unbelievably excited. I can't wait to wear the gorgeous dress that's hanging ready and waiting in my closet. I can't wait to stand in front at the front of our church and vow to live my whole life before God with my husband. That's amazing. Sometimes when I think about it I can't breathe from the sheer wonder of it all. I mean, marriage seems a pretty daunting task when I forget that the glory of Jesus is the point, the Holy Spirit will be always with us and that God is out for our good always. This isn't about two people making a marriage work. It's about the most incredible picture of God and his church and his faithfulness towards us.

Carried Along

Upon our engagement, a lovely friend sent us this beautiful passage from Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry along with her congratulations. I'm so glad that she shared it with us, this description of the beauty of this moment and all those that led us here. I am reminded of the overwhelming truth that we are caught up in God's story and not our own. It is by His faithfulness alone that we find ourselves in the middle of such joy and on the road to a new chapter in our lives.

I have made plans enough, but I see now that I have never lived by a plan. Any more than if I had been a bystander watching me live my life, I don't feel that I ever have been quite sure what was going on. Nearly everything that has happened to me has happened by surprise. All the important things have happened by surprise. And whatever has been happening usually has already happened before I have had time to expect it. The world doesn't stop because you are in love or in mourning or in the need of time to think. And so when I have though I was in my story or in charge of it, I really have been only on the edge of it, carried along. Is this because we are in an eternal story that is happening partly in time?