All Over Again

It's been three weeks now since my last post. It's amazing - for me time has just flown. Two weeks away on mission, then one week at home recovering from mission, and now here we are.

There are so many things I could like to share with you, that I learnt while I was away, but I'm going to save them for a while, to process them a bit better. One thing I will share is something that has come up since I have gotten back.

While I was in Lorne, I started reading through the book of Malachi. Chapter 1 focuses on the offering of sacrifices to God, and his anger at the Israelites for presenting him with imperfect sacrifices... and not just imperfect, but their off-casts - the animals they didn't want anymore!

In the same way, we need to ensure that we are offering God the best, not the leftovers. I know for me, this often means the sacrifice of my time. Time is very precious to me, as it is to many people in this world. If this doesn't make sense to you, come and try being a full-time student, having a part-time job, doing ministry on campus and being a daughter, sister and friend as well. And I know there are many out there who would say I have it easy! But what I am trying to say is that with all these things going on, I often leave God only the dregs of my time. Whatever is leftover at the end of the day, when I am too tired to study and too grumpy to socialise. Is that what I think God deserves? Me at my worst, when I'm half-asleep and irritable?! Surely I could offer him something better?

Strangely, this isn't the point of my post today.

This isn't the first time I've looked at Malachi 1 and written these things in my journal. I studied the same thing over a year ago and came to the same conclusions, which I read last night when I was flicking through last year's journal. There are going to be lessons that are going to come up again and again in your life, just as the way I use my time to honour God has come up again in mine. Maybe I'll take a bit more away from it this time, and it won't come up again for another few years. Or maybe I'll be looking at the same thing again in six months or a year. Some things are going to take a whole lifetime to conquer. But I'm okay with that, because I know Jesus will be walking with me every step of the way.