Storyline is amazing. I’ve taken pages of notes, and I’m sure my blog posts over the next few weeks will be filled with the things I am learning. Today we heard from Donald Miller, Jon Acuff, Mike Foster, Randall Wallace (Braveheart), Allison Vesterfelt, and a concert with Ben Rector. What a day! Tomorrow is even more exciting!

So many things stood out to me, but tonight before I crash into the bed, I wanted to sit on the balcony in the cool salt air and write. Share at least one thing with you. One nugget.

Mike Foster said this: ” Hope comes from putting your beauty and brokenness together.” This jumped out to me because conflicting ideas keep popping up in my life. A few years ago I went through a really hard time and the thing that comforted me was Job 23:10 “But he knows the way that I take; when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold.” (Job 23:10 ESV) and a song by Superchick, Beauty From Pain helped me to see that God can turn our negative turns into positive ones. That’s when I got the tattoo on my wrist that simply says beauty from pain.

Currently 2 Cor 12:9&10 is a verse that has been a huge comfort. In light of the bombing and all the pain that my family and so many others have been experiencing, I just love the promise these verses hold. “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:9, 10 ESV)

These opposing forces… Beauty from pain, strength in weakness, beauty and brokenness…

Hope.