Revival

An awakening is just what I need.

So by way of mini-update.

• I started dating a guy who observed (read: stalked) me via this blog, Heh. I met him at church. He is amazing and I couldn't be happier, no one compares to him.. We've been together for 10 months now. Not long in the grand scheme of things. 
  
• I became a pastor and that responsibility/joy/challenge just keeps on growing.
  
• I entered my final year (hopefully) of my bachelor degree. It's that last leg, I feel so incredibly exhausted but am so grateful for the training.. it's a tension that I'm learning to walk.
  
• My little brother who can be the most annoying brat/dork on the planet got into ROCKET SCIENCE at RMIT. Rather, Aero-space engineering, but it's not rocket science.. oh wait it is.. I'm really proud of him. I'm going to miss him at the end of the year when he moves to the other side of the country.

So, my current thoughts are centering around this:

Prayer.

I'm starting to get it. I always understand personal and corporate communion with God, but the whole "asking for stuff" irked me ever since I started following Jesus..

It's been a long process. 8 years or so..

I guess it started two weeks ago when my friends Sarah and Ann became aunties for the first time. Baby Dominic has brought so much happiness, hope, purpose. It was around this new life that a family gathered to reconcile and dream together. A happy marriage started because he was about to arrive.

Baby Dominic went into emergency surgery last Thursday morning, 10 days old. He was bleeding internally and the surgeons didn't know why. Sarah sent me an sms in the morning and by 12pm all the classes at my Bible College were praying for this brave little guy. He's so amazing.

The surgeons were ready to give up at 12:30pm and Moses (Dominic's dad) said not to resuscitate him any more. I told that to my chapel service at college. I've never heard a room erupt in desperate prayer like I did in that moment. I didn't expect it, but the internal bleeding got under control. Dominic was fighting like a little trooper and he was only 10 days old. The night went on. I fasted and prayed for his little body. At least a hundred other people were praying (and that's just who I knew of). Sarah sent me an sms at 10pm saying that he was still really serious but stabilizing.

Dominic had a heart attack at 12:30am and another 5am the next morning.

At 5:30am he passed away.

Eleven days old, a beautiful little boy left his dad's arms and went into his heavenly Father's.

I think a lot of people wouldn't see this situation as a great example of why prayer is important, because to be brutally honest it looks like God has failed to listen/care/act. There are no answers that satisfy for the death of a child. But God has opened my blind eyes to the light of prayer. I don't know why I understand now of all times, but I do.

Maybe God is more interested in us involving Him in what's going on. No fatalism here, no deism.. concurrence.

Our hand joining His hand and living with each other.

I still don't think there will ever be a good enough reason for Dominic's death. We live in that tension between a fallen world and a renewed world. We're going to feel that tension until Jesus comes back and makes everything new. 

I know He'll wipe every tear from our eyes and we'll see everyone who we lost to death in this life - alive and new in the next.

And that's my hope. That's why I pray, to join God and commune with Him in this way.

To hold in my hand my doubts and hopes, fears and joy and then place my hand in His and share life with Him.

Amazing.