If you're looking for a way to contribute and help me get back to Hillsong College in July, check out marymoscoso.bandcamp.com, where you can download my song, "Isaiah 40," for just $1! All proceeds go directly to my Paypal account. The recording is not perfect, the song is not perfect, but it is an honest and raw reflection of where I am right now, so if you're curious have a listen.

Trusting God is much easier said than done.

I'm only off $1,700 now. So close, yet so far.

Over these next two months I am praying for:

1) The money required to get back to AU (I am about $3K off at this point).

2) A new laptop for college (my iBook G4 is on its last leg).

You know the great thing about being changed by Jesus?

Being able to give grace to people because we have been given grace. It's like: I sucked, I was forgiven; I still suck a lot of the time, I'm still forgiven; you suck, I can forgive you and keep forgiving you because I sucked and still suck a lot of the time...etc. See the beautiful cycle of grace we're caught up in?

"The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love." Psalm 145:8

"The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit." Psalm 34:18

Such sweet, sweet words--such a precious promise. One to cling to in times of upheaval, uncertainty; trial or pain. It is comforting to be reminded that he's near.

Today I am importing, storing, and deleting all the photos from my iPhone that were taken over the past two and a bit years. My life is literally flashing before my eyes and I am struck by the vast range of emotions I am experiencing as I watch the photos flick by on the screen. So much has happened since I left for Australia! Probably the greatest highs I have ever experienced and most definitely the deepest lows I have ever experienced. Honestly, and I'm sure you reading this can relate, it leaves me asking, "why me?" Why did those things happen to me? What did I do to deserve those incredible joys and those terrible lows? I don't suppose I'll ever fully know. Not in this life, anyway.

Paul says in Romans 8:28 that all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose. I am sure that "those" is me and I pray that it is you, too.

At the end of the day, as I reflect on both hardships and blessings, I know I can rest and trust in my Heavenly Father. All I have to do (as it says in Deuteronomy 13:4) is simply "Obey his commands, listen to his voice, and cling to him."

A little "Surprised by Hope" as Easter rapidly approaches...

"Thy kingdom come, on earth as in heaven."

That remains one of the most powerful and revolutionary sentences we can ever say. As I see it, the prayer was powerfully answered at the first Easter and will finally be answered fully when heaven and earth are joined in the new Jerusalem. Easter was when Hope in person surprised the whole world by coming forward from the future into the present. The ultimate future hope remains a surprise, partly because we don't know when it will arrive and partly because at present we have only images and metaphors for it, leaving us to guess that the reality will be far greater, and more surprising, still. And the intermediate hope--the things that happen in the present time to implement Easter and anticipate the final day--are always surprising because, left to ourselves, we lapse into a kind of collusion with entropy, acquiescing in the general belief that things may be getting worse but that there's nothing much we can do about them. And we are wrong. Our task in the present is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day, with our Christian life, corporate and individual, in both worship and mission, as a sign of the first and a foretaste of the second.