written by: admin

-Perseverance as I am working in Chicago full-time in a room where I cannot see the sun. (This is for 3 weeks)

-Depedence upon God, while I am doing an internship with my home church youth group in Arkansas.

-Peace, about what the future holds in light of only having one year left at school.

written by: Beka

So, I have noticed that the longer people live the more analogies that we seem to come up with to describe life. I have yet another one. Have you ever played with the Rubik’s cube? You know the ones that seem impossible with all of the colors on the different square blocks that all make up on cube? This is a game for geniuses so they tell us, that is, it almost impossible. Maybe this is why so many people have tried to master this cube—to prove the statistic wrong. We like doing that. But anyways the point of this cube or game is to get all of the six sides of the cube containing the same color on only that side. Now you can usually get one side perfect, or maybe even two at a time, but we usually stop there because in order to strive to conquer the cube would have to mess up the beautiful matching sides that we have already worked so hard on. But secretly, we all believe that we can do it someday. Someday we will master the cube.

            I recently feel as if I have been playing my life similar to a Rubik’s cube. I look at it and think that I can put all of the pieces together, get all of the colors to match on the appropriate sides. Now given I can’t do all of this in one day, or even five years, but someday I think that I really believe I can solve this Rubik’s cube or my life without any help from a genius. But God has been teaching me some lessons as far as this understanding is concerned. I think so many times I present my life to God as a Rubik’s cube that has two or even three of the six sides solved. I say, “God, look at how beautiful it looks. The blue side and the white side and the orange side are all in order, aren’t they pretty?” Then he replies back to me, “But why are you neglecting the chaos of the red, yellow, and green sides? Let me be your genius and show you how it is done.”

            Then he begins to twist and turn and move all of the pieces around again, and my whole cube of life is affected by his touch. Every once and a while he shows me a side that is almost complete and make me smile. Then he goes back to work on the rest. So many times I grab the cube back from him and try to prove to him that I understand this cube.  I understand my life, and I want to do it in a way where I can look at the single side of perfection without worrying about the sides of utter confusion. But then again I become overwhelmed by those sides and place the cube back in the hands of my genius Father.

written by: Andy

A couple summers ago I was preparing for leading a men’s session on a summer program for Christian college students. During my preparation I happened to speak with two female friends of mine doing similar preparation for a women’s session while staffing other similar summer programs. I was preparing a discussion with 8 student men on how their relationships with their fathers effect who they are today. It was amazing but not surprising to me that to a man each of our students could quickly point out an area where they were wounded by their fathers. What did surprise me though is that as I talked to my female friends before and after their women’s session I found out that the women talked not about how they were wounded by their mothers, but their fathers as well.

I’m getting married in 19 days (probably the longest 19 days of my life) and as I think about the future in light of that, one of the most important things I’ll ever do is become a father. I have seen shortcomings in my own father and can trace back different shortcomings in my life to my relationship with him, however when I look at his father and probably his grandfather I see how far he carried the baton. He could have easily fallen into the same patterns of abuse that his father had, but he didn’t. If I can carry the baton the same distance my father did (especially if I should have a son), I can with God’s help see a healthy pattern of fatherhood for future generations of Brandt men. No father can be perfect, and every person in some way will be wounded by their parents shortcomings, but I want future generations of men and women to have a different experience when sitting in a men’s or women’s session.

written by: Rooster

aloha

Fruit is one of the most wonderful objects one can find on this Earth. They come in all shapes, sizes, and many tastes. I imagine Eden was full of multitudes of ripe, fresh fruit. Watermelon, strawberries, pineapples, oranges, green apples, and bananas are among the top of choice. (I want to apologize to any of my favorite fruits I forgot to list while writing this, please forgive me oh “forgotton fruit”.) If you mix some of these fruits with another fine gift of nature- chocolate (a la fondue)…then you have something really worth eating (and sharing with a special someone)!
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written by: nathan

Greetings:

This is an introduction to the new blog for LoyolaCru.org. Here everyone is free to post thoughts, articles, and comments on other people’s posts. There is also a category for prayer, where you can post requests. In addition, you leaders will place at least one thought provoking post here every week, so spark discussion. I thought it would be wise to include some instructions on how to use this beast.
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written by: nathan

This is where you can post your prayer requests, and allow people to comment on them, and you can post updates.