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Contents : Rain 001 Things don t always work out the way we want them to or the way we think they will. Sometimes we don t even see it coming. We get hit with some form of pain out of nowhere leaving us feeling desperate and helpless. That s the way life is. Still it makes us wonder how God can let these things happen to us. How God can just stand by and watch us suffer. Where is God when it really hurts Maybe God is actually closer to us than we think. Maybe it s when we re in these situations where everything seems to be falling apart that God gets an opportunity to remind us of how much he really loves us. Flame 002 Love those shoes. Really The same way I love my wife What s up with the word love It doesn t have much meaning when we use it so loosely. Maybe we don t really get it. Maybe we don t understand what real love is. What it involves to really love somebody. What it means to give yourself to someone else. We mistake things like friendship commitment or lust for love but God wired us a certain way to experience all that love was really meant to be. Not to hold us back or to make us miss out on the best that life has to offer. God created love and wants us to feel it all in the way it s meant to be felt. Trees 003 We want to know why we are here. If our lives really matter. How our religion is relevant to this life. Today. We want to understand what significance this minute hour week month and year has to our lives. To our world. We need a God who cares about this life in this world right now. We want to understand why everything we think everything we say and everything we do matters. We don t want to just sit back and wait for something to happen or someday to come. We want to know if all the choices we make now will shape our world and lives for eternity. Because we want our lives to have meaning today and our lives today to have meaning forever. Sunday 004 Why do we do the things we do Why do we go to church or give money away Because we re supposed to or because we think God needs it Do we honestly put on our best clothes for an hour once a week stand and sit at all the right times and sing all the appropriate songs for God s sake or because it ll make us look better to the world around us We re tired of all the empty rituals and routines. And so is God. God hates it when we call ourselves Christians but ignore all the things he really cares about. He hates it when we go through hollow religious routines out of some feeling of duty or obligation. God doesn t want the meaningless rituals. God wants our hearts. Noise 005 Why is silence so hard to deal with Why is it so much easier for us to live our lives with a lot of things going on all the time than to just be in silence We re constantly surrounded with voices that are influencing us on how to think feel and behave. Movies music TV Internet cell phones and a never-ending barrage of advertising. There s always something going on. Always noise in our lives. But maybe there s a connection between the amount of noise in our lives and our inability to hear God. If God sometimes feels distant to us maybe it s not because he s not talking to us but simply because we aren t really listening. Kickball 006 We always think we know what s missing from our lives in order to really make us happy don t we If only I had that car or that job or if only I could lose those 15 lbs then I d be happy. Really How often do we want something only to find out that it wasn t that great after all Sometimes we ask God for things and if he doesn t deliver right away we start questioning whether God really understands or even cares. Do we really trust God Do we trust that God is good and sees a bigger picture than we ever could It s easy to want what s right in front of us but maybe God knows what s better for us and sometimes we just can t see it. Luggage 007 Maybe a friend turned their back on you. Maybe someone you loved betrayed you. We all have wounds and we end up carrying around these things that people have done to us for weeks months and sometimes even years. It isn t always easy to forgive these people and after a while these hurts can get really heavy. So the only way to feel better seems to be somehow getting back at the people that hurt us to get revenge. But does revenge ever truly satisfy Maybe forgiving isn t something you do for someone else to let them off the hook. Maybe forgiveness is about you. God didn t create you to carry these wounds around. God created you to be free. Dust 008 Believing in God is important but what about God believing in us Believing that we can actually be the kind of people we were meant to be. People of love compassion peace forgiveness and hope. People who try to do the right thing all of the time. Who act on the endless opportunities around us every day for good beauty and truth. It s easy for

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