Life

Published by Aundre | Filed under student life

thats a bold name isnt it?

well I got it from a girl named Ashley Akinns. Her story was a very large part of camp. And it was centrally focused around the third night, which is what todays blog is about.

you can find her complete story here:

*I advise reading the email from Ashley to Louie Giglio before continuing on this blog*

so as you saw, ashley used the expression,

‘I am sorry this is kinda rambling but I just had to tell you that I now know about the Grace of God, and I have life for the first time in my 22 years.’

Man how crazy is what she said? How many of us can say something like that, i have life and really mean it?

Life, this fragile speck along the timeline of history, this entertaining masquerade, this matrix, this gritty and real place, actually isnt life at all. True life that is.

I mean, I know alot of times, when I hear the world life, I am tempted to refer to the rat race that I partake in everyday in a foolish attempt to validate myself, or the good times ive had, or whatever.

But heres the thing,

the thing that Ashley got.

Life is more than you are.

Life is huge, life is beautiful, life is imaginative, life is created, life is like a canvas, life is lovely, life is breathtaking, life is so many other things beyond the box we place it in in order to justify our sorrows. We say things like, life isnt fair, well thats life, or whatever. But in actually true life, real life at its core is eternal, everlasting, powerful, worshipful, beautiful.

Jesus said it himself, I have come that you can have life to the full( John 10:10)

And we have had glimpses of true life havent we?

In my journal I have a list of some of the greatest experiences of my life (very unupdated) well anyway, each and every single one of those experiences is overflowing with love and that to me is the essence of true life.

If its cool with you ill tell you two really quickly, one is a car ride i took with jeff down to the beach and the other was volunteering at a trailer park during centrifuge(sophomore year). One because, Jeff has a great way of truly cutting to the heart of the matter and loving on me a ridiculous amount. The other because, the people in that trailer park, the children we worked with and some of the other people on the m-fuge team with me, were some of the most loving people Ive ever met. By no exaggeration of the expression, it was like heaven. Those children ate up whatever attention and love you would give them, whether it was a high five or faking that they hit us in dodgeball, and then flipped it around on us in the most amazing way.

I say all this to say, sometimes in all of the noise, we forget that life, true life isnt something that just happens. True life is love, and love requires work.

So as you sit like me and gaze up at your ceiling wondering why the world spins the way it does, its really all about love,(Like that song from RENT).

And Ashley got that, the real question is. Do I?

Do you?