redemption has come...

Lots of thoughts this morning, mostly revolving around Easter or things in some way affected by it. First of all, last night was Fusion, and it was mine and Rob's group's week to plan. (Our group includes seven or so of us, but last night's theme was something that God had really spoken to Rob, so he and I sort of led in putting the ideas for the night together.) The theme was the Stations of the Cross. In the planning process, our ideas went through many transformations before finally developing into what actually took place last night. Through all of this, I came to realize how humbling doing ministry can be because it really reveals the self-centeredness of our thought processes (for me, anyway). Ministry should be the last place where we're being self-centered, but for me, that's definitely something I have to keep in check. Even up until the beginning of the service last night, part of me was focused on selfish ideas, such as the fact that the plan for the evening had developed into something much different than what I had imagined, and quite frankly that annoyed me. How stupid. Even while I was having these thoughts, I was conscious of the fact that God was going to use the night to His glory no matter what, regardless of whether or not it went according to "Meg's plan." And He did, because He is faithful, and He is all about His glory. It turned out to be a really powerful night of worship.

On a related note, I almost ruined the night unintentionally. The entire night revolved around a powerpoint that we had put together about the stations of the cross, but the tricky issue was that the slides of the powerpoint had to be incorporated into our set of song lyrics for the evening. Rob had graciously broken down the one complete powerpoint into several smaller ones so that it would be easier for me to place the slides in the appropriate places between songs. But as we began to put it all together and run through some things, I realized the powerpoint realistically needed to be broken down even further, basically into individual slides. So I frantically opened, edited, and resaved the powerpoints into new ones that I assumed to be more useful. The idea was a good one, but the one flaw that I hadn't accounted for was that when I copied slides to input them into a new powerpoint, the colors didn't transfer. I realized the background color didn't transfer, but I was able to adjust that without too much trouble. The part I didn't notice was the text color. So in my newly saved powerpoints (14 in all) I soon realized that we now had black text ontop of a black image that was being used in the background. (The problem is evident.) I did not have time to redo the text color of all 14 files, so I had to resort to the origional files that Rob had provided, and just make them work, despite the slight inconvenience. My saving grace was that those files were burned to a CD, therefore hadn't been altered in my crazy editing frenzy. God bless CD burners! Anyway, in the end, the evening worked out fine. Aside from me being slow on a few lyrics when I was trying to figure out what came next, all was well.

In other news, today is Good Friday. If it works into my schedule today, I've decided I'd really like to do Stations (or whatever type of service they're having today) at the Cathedral. I need to check their mass schedule, though. (I miss Christina.) I'm really making it a personal goal this year to focus my heart and thoughts on the enormity of what Easter means. My quiet times and Bible study and Fusion and practically everything lately have focused on the idea of the cross and the sacrifice that Jesus made for us. I don't want it just to be a story though. I want it to be real to me. Really real. All-consuming. I want to stand in awe of God's huge love for me. Rob and I will be in Jacksonville for the weekend, and therefore will be attending church at Westside on Sunday. While I have never been to an official Easter service at Anastasia (only a sunrise service two years ago) and while I regret that a little, I am also rather looking forward to spending Easter at Westside. I love hearing Bro.Keith preach, and more than anything, I think I am really looking forward to singing hymns. No doubt that I love the type of worhip music we do at Anastasia--that's what made me love the church in the first place--I also crave hymns sometimes, and this is one of those times. There's just such a rich history of faith in them, if that makes sense.

Anyway, other events of the weekend include me and the room mates attending Erica's conservatory show at the theater tonight, which she has put incredible amounts of work into. Rob is hanging out with the guys, going camping on one of the little islands in the inlet. Tomorrow we'll head to Jacksonville where we will stain our bedframe (yay!) and hang with the parents. Sunday is church at Westside and then up to Fernandina for "big family" stuff. It should be a good time.

That's all for now. I hope everyone has a nice Easter weekend. Remember to focus on the redemption that is ours. Grace and Peace.