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I am only creating a possible scenario here, but maybe the original builders of this property started this house with exciting dreams of a life in the country.  Maybe they wanted a home overlooking the sunset.  Maybe they wanted to be able to see the stars every night, and smell the grass when they walked out their front door. 

But then, maybe their dreams began to fade when the harsh reality of life set in.  Finances, job loss, other shiny things that begged for them to purchase instead.  Maybe they found a fancy condo in New York and decided that city life would be better suited for their lifestyles. 

Whatever happened, this family must have begun the home with excitement, and then the excitement somehow faded away, until the home was nothing but an aging, unfinished structure, something that will sit on the face of a cliff until it crumbles away into nothing.  The stairs, the house, all of it has become worthless, unfruitful.

Sometimes our walk with Christ may become just like the staircase.  We start out excited, following His every command with pure joy.  We build our relationship with God a little more each day and we're happy about it.  But then other things come along- finances, a hectic life, a tragedy- and Christianity doesn't seem to suit our life the way we want it to... it seems much easier to focus on something else.  We don't have enough time for Him.  We find ourselves taking a break from a lifestyle that used to be lived out with eagerness and excitement.  We keep moving farther away until our relationship with Him is nothing but a crumbling structure on the face of a hill, fading a little bit more each day. 

I encourage you, don't let your relationship with Christ become like these stairs.  Don't let it be unfruitful.  Don't let it lead to nothing in the end.  Even when the excitement wears away, stay strong.  Continue the plan God has for you.  Don't let your life end up completely pointless, like useless stairs that will never help anyone.

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This year for me, and I don't know why, seems to be more exhausting than exhilarating.  I am finding myself wearied about things that used to thrill me.  Even getting up and going to church is starting to turn into a monotonous, repetitive task- something that I do every single week without fail.  When my alarm clock rings for the morning, I can barely open my eyes.  I read a chapter or two of the Bible every night.  I used to feel eager about it.  Now I just feel... blah.  You may feel the same way.

And why is that, I wonder?

Is this holiday season stocked so full with commercialization and the hustle and bustle of everyday life to the point that it is wearying us beyond excitement?  Are we forgetting the real reason behind why we should be excited about life?  About God? 

The apostles in the Bible were absolutely stoked about Christ.  They wanted everybody to know that they were happy.  I mean, read about them.  They sang and rejoiced while they were being flogged with whips.  They weren't satisfied with their lives, but not in the same way that we might be now.  They weren't feeling bored... no, they weren't satisfied because they wanted to do more for Christ, to tell more people about Him, to share until the whole world heard. 

Who have you told about Jesus lately?  Seriously, when was the last time you witnessed to someone?

Over the summer, I have a lot of free time, and because of that, I enjoy going on mission trips and going to the park to witness to kids and volunteering at mission-based organizations.  I get to see the work of Christ unfolding before my very eyes.  It's so easy to become excited about something that is so tangible, something that you are experiencing every single day.

Now, life is so busy.  Many of us may not see God in the same way as we did four or five months ago.  We might not be as focused on serving solely Him anymore.  And that needs to change.

I'm not quite sure yet what it's going to take.  Maybe we need to make ourselves be over exuberant during worship time at church until we start to feel true excitement about praising Him.  Maybe we need to volunteer our spare time more.  Maybe we need to be out there, witnessing to the world, even during the school year, because there are still too many people who do not know Him.

I am going to try and write more about this in a few days, but until then, I want to strongly encourage you to fight against the December blah-ness.  Don't let yourself become apathetic and world-weary.  Find excitement and joy in simple things.  And most of all, shine like a spotlight until Jesus can be openly seen wherever you are.  Shine through the apathy, shine through the commercialism, shine through the lazy contentment, shine through everything until everyone can see Him inside of you.

This is Amy.  She is my thirteen year old sister... and if the photo is too small or too blurry for you to understand what is going on, she is in a hospital bed with an IV in her wrist and a contrast dye drink in her hands.  Yuck.  But I'll start from the very beginning...

We drove to church this morning all stuffed into my dad's pick up because it's our only vehicle with 4 wheel drive.  Amy was complaining of a tummy ache, but everyone pretty much said, "Sorry, that's not a good enough excuse not to go to church."  After church, we went out to eat at a Mexican food place.  On our way home, Amy made us stop the car, and she went outside and threw up.  After that, her stomach continued to hurt, until my parents drove her into town to visit the doctor and make sure everything was okay.

I called my mom to talk to her about something else that's going on, and I suddenly hear loud voices in the background, and she said, "Oh no, I gotta go help.  Bye!" and hung up the phone.  I stared at the blank screen, stunned.  I texted my mother, asking what was going on, and she simply replied, "The surgeon is here."  After that, nothing. 

About half an hour later, my mother called me and said that Amy has an extremely high WBC count of about 18,000 (white blood cell count, for the people who aren't doctor's kids like I am), and they were admitting her into the hospital overnight for testing.  A high WBC count is indicative of either an infection of some sort or appendicitis. 

Luke (my brother), my dad, and I gathered Amy's stuff together and went back up to the hospital to visit her.  I gotta admit, it was a strange feeling, seeing my sister looking frail and ashen in her hospital bed, curled up into a ball to fight off the stomach pain.  But then the nurse came in and told her she had to drink a special contrast dye so that they could see what's going on in the CT scan, and she didn't look so feeble and weak anymore... she seemed loud enough to me... loud enough to throw a fit and make the nurses and everyone else beg her to drink the nasty thing.  Sigh...

The suddenness of this hospitalization was startling.  We were going through our normal day.  Church, food, shopping, nap time... bam, you gotta go to the hospital.  What's scariest is that nobody knows what is wrong.  Hopefully they will find what is going on in my sister's body and fix it... soon. 

This all reminds me of a Bible verse:

James 4:14-15
Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow.  What is your life?  You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.  Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that."

We honestly do not know what is going to happen in our lives.  Whether you're spending a family Sunday together and someone ends up in the hospital, or you're arguing in the car with someone and you get into an accident that will change your life forever... we don't know what is going to happen.  Only God knows that.  That's why it's pointless to put your trust in anyone but Him.  The doctors can't say for sure what will happen.  The weatherman can't say for sure what will happen.  Only God can.

I'm going to keep my heart and my eyes open, to see what He has in store for us.  I trust Him fully.