The Jesus Project Week 1

It's amazing how appropriate the first week's verse was for my armor today.

Armor I bear with a smile;
excitement to return to my favorite college in the world reacts with the first day of school jitters and bubbles up with some stresses and wake-up calls, assignments and syllabi, the hour-long wait in line to get textbooks and the deadlines pile high.
But still, as stress tempts to steal the hope I have in Christ, it is this armor I repeat on my breath constantly like furiously gripping to a lifeline.

He is my lifeline.
And He was there in the beginning.

I memorized it and wrote it a little deeper on my heart by deeply engraving it with the rough edges of letting it live in my life's storms
.

"In the beginning was the Word,

and the Word was with God,

and the Word was God."

-John 1:1

Because when eyelids flipped open to the yank of an alarm ringing in my dorm room, I realized my only chance at anything this semester was to place the Word, my Savior Himself, at the beginning.

This Word through which everything was created and for which all things were created.
This Word who is the Mighty God of gods.
This Word who is able to keep me from falling, brings me faultless and joyful before His glorious before His presence.
The Word who holds all things together.

His glory, knowing Him and grasping at more of who He is, it's really all that matters.

Even when you didn't read the syllabus saying you had a chapter due tomorrow.
Even when you're missing friends and family, and the chill of academia seems too cold after a warm three weeks at that place called home.
No matter what, the one who knit me together in my beginning,
He is my beginning,
and if I don't make Him that every day,
I am missing out on the greatest gift of God.

And I often tire at these cliche messages to make time for God.
But it's more than that, He tells me:

It's making His glory the highest priority in the midst of the mundane.

It's staying joyously praising no matter what because you understand and simultaneously do not understand the greatness of the gift that dwells within your heart: the gift of God.

It's having the very breath of God flowing through the lungs and filling the words that exit the lips and singing the lullabies in a head frantic for peace by holding His scripture high in new light and deep devotion.

And so, I ask you friend, what did the beginning and the Word and the Word being God mean to you as you soaked in it this week?

Also, here's next week's verse. I can already see it's power, but I know God will exceed any expectation I might have for these words.