Dream Big

Hi friends,

Today I completed a couple challenges from a few days ago.  The September 28th challenge was to find a way to serve one person who would be among the forgotten in my town.  I really didn't have to look any further than an elderly lady next door.  I've never met her before, but seen her go in and out of her garage with her car.  I don't see any family or anyone come over, except her son every once in a while to mow the yard or fix something.  Our elderly neighbor lady appears to be forgotten.  So...I decided to go over to her house with Janna and bring her a gift basket and say hello.  Here's what the gift basket looked like:

So we took the gift basket over to our neighbor's house, but she wasn't home so we left a note with the basket saying hello.  I'm hoping we can say hello in person sometime soon. 

Yesterday...I mentioned that my challenge was to restore something.  I chose to restore a corner of a wall in my house that had been damaged when I moved the couch a while ago.  But...I got out the spackling to repair the wall and it was hard and moldy.  So...today I got some new spackling at the store to tackle this challenge.  Here is what the wall looked like before:

It was a pretty nice hole in the wall.  So tonight I attempted to restore and here's what it looked like when I was done:

It looks much, much better.  It was a kind of messy job with the spackling and paint.  Restoring this wall got me thinking about how God restores us.  Jesus Christ came to the earth and got "messy" and lived among us, died for our sins and rose to new life.  I'm always amazed how much God loves us and all of His creation.  I'm so glad Jesus Christ fills all the holes in my life as I'm in a relationship with him.  What hole are you experiencing that the Lord could fill?

Finally, today's challenge is the last challenge of the month.  All month the theme of each challenge has been centered around discovering "restoration" that God brings through various daily tasks and challenges.  The final challenge today was to think about how I could bring restoration to my neighborhood, my school and even the world.  Then to think about who could help me make these dreams a reality.

This is a challenging subject...even daunting at times.  I guess a simple answer to bringing restoration to any of these areas for me is to open my eyes to people around me.  One thing that the Credo Challenge has helped me to do this month is open my eyes to small, ordinary ways I can "be the change."  The challenge has also helped me create space in my life to "be the change."  Often times I'm so busy running from here to there that I miss the small ways I can "be the change."  Creating space to "be the change" has been a very restorative thing in my life this month.  It's given me more time to reflect on my relationship with the Lord and I've had to pray about some of these challenges because...they were tough at times and I knew I couldn't do it in my own strength. 

I also realized that the people who could help me bring restoration to the world in Jesus Christ are...

...the people around me.

Tomorrow is October...but this past month of September has been a special time growing in small ways spiritually taking the Credo challenge.  Tomorrow I'd like to share a few ways it's helped me grow spiritually.

Till Tomorrow...Tom