Yesterday I got an email from a friend across the world; he asked for a blog post filled with excitement, life and a hope for the future. I'm asking for the same thing, though I'm hoping it manifests in my life before I put it in a blog post. But he's right for asking and I appreciate that. Today, from the stirrings of the morning until now, sitting on a friend of a friend's couch while they shop for dinner, I try to plan what this year could look like. Without my fettering, without my strings, without my school-debt, without my lease, without my fear: What does two-thousand-ten look like?

I voice it to my friend tonight, over coffee at The Fields. We're both near to tears and tears are near to us recently. I'm grateful for a friend who cries with those who cry. She says even my weeping brings her peace. For me, peace just comes from the partnership of sorrow. We're sharing this, this expectation, this fear, this hope, this life. We're doing it together and for that I'm grateful.

Someone said today that they are learning that it's not so much about doing, it's about grace and receiving and I agree with him, I do. But my sin is the sin of getting and never giving, receiving and never putting out. I stumble in fear. I read about the trees clapping their hands and hills breaking forth and I am reminded of the -ingness of the gospel. That ever moving, ever present, ever blowing spiritual wind. It's moving, it's breaking, it's clapping because it is its nature to do so. Stagnancy is not the sign of the redeemed.

I read over the email again, he's afraid of offending me with his challenges and forthrightness. But the only offense here is what I'm doing to the gospel by denying that it has the power to change 2009 The Year of Questions into 2010 The Year of Answers (Or At The Very Least Hope). I write back to him about the glimmer of Couldness, the flame of Possibility, it feels dim to me right now and it feels in question, but it is seen. To see is to hope. And to hope is to know. God help me know.

Cursed is the one who trusts in man,
who depends on flesh for his strength
and whose heart turns away from the LORD.

He will be like a bush in the wastelands;
he will not see prosperity when it comes.
He will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
in a salt land where no one lives.

But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,
whose confidence is in him.

He will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit."