Let's get smitten

Well, it’s been one month since the last blog, but I’M BACK!

Since I last wrote, I took a trip to Nashville to shoot Christian and Brooke Freeman’s wedding at picturesque Cheekwood Botanical Gardens on a perfect southern spring day. I’m SO excited to share that video soon…working on finishing touches tomorrow.

Other highlights from the last 30 days:

--Ranger also visited Nashville from the DR!!! God's hand was apparent throughout the entire trip as he made it safely through JFK airport down to Nashville! (Jenny and I may have taught him to drive stick shift [in a parking lot])

--Track at Lynnwood: PR’s GALORE for these guys (personally, I’ve PR’d my cross-field sprint time in cheering for the distance races). I love watching them work so hard every day. Primed and ready for big things as we head into championship season.

Girls DMR 8th @ Eason Invite WOOHOO

--Brianne visited Seattle for 10 hours on a layover from China :)

--Visit to sunny San Diego: toured my grandparents’ new digs (basically, they’re at college except there are no grades associated with any classes they choose to take and there’s a pool and hot tub at their disposal every hour of every day.

--Prep to pace Snohomish Women’s Run Half Marathon: race training this round looks way different than any past training I’ve done…feeling good and able to run daily :) COME RUN WITH ME ON MAY 5th! Use discount code KatieB19 for 15% off entry! #SRCambassador

Quite a wild month.

Amid the travel and other activities, I’ve enjoyed the simplicity and routine of subbing. (Remember that time I started writing a blog and I was like, “hmmm, I don’t know if I want to be a teacher…I guess we’ll see.” Well, now’s the part where we see. And I’m thinking, “hmmm, I think I like this teaching gig.” To be continued…)

One day last week in middle school science, the teacher left a TED talk about a microbe called prochlorococcus, which of course, as is probably the case with many of you, I had never heard of.

Let me tell you how the start of these lessons went.

Fortunately, when middle schoolers hear the word “pro-chloro-coccus,” they spend between 37 seconds and 5 minutes repeating it to each other slowly (I assume this is because they really want to make sure they know how to say it for future academic conversations…).

Soon, a ripple of snickers breaks out across the room, developing quickly into a full blown tidal wave of laughter. Then, I must spend 3 minutes bailing the shrieks and exclamations of overjoyed thirteen-year-olds out of the boat.

Finally, we start the TED talk.

Oceanographer Penny Chisholm. Click the photo to watch her TED Talk.

A quirky oceanographer named Penny Chisholm fills the screen, telling the story of the discovery of prochlorococcus (which I’ll now abbreviate to PCS because it actually takes me a good 10-seconds to type on account of having to remember where to place all the “c’s”) and proclaiming her love for the microscopic marine cyanobacteria.

She and her team of scientists accidentally found PCS in the ocean gyres when they were pouring seawater through a flow cytometer. Apparently, at first they thought PCS was just “noise,” but then realized it was basically the most important bacteria of all time (no big deal).

At 1/100th of the width of a human hair, if we grouped all the PCS in the world together and put it on a scale, it would weigh more than the entire human population.

So yeah, there's a whole lot of these little green guys floating around in the ocean.

While that’s inspiring, Chisholm fell in love with PCS for a much more enviro-centric reason: the way PCS gathers energy through photosynthesis could teach us how to harness power from the sun to reduce (/eventually stop) use of fossil fuels. (*At this point, I pause the TED Talk to ask the seventh graders, "what are fossil fuels?" and at least one kid in every class astutely replies that "they're ground up dinosaur bones, right?")

Chisholm explains that after her initial assessment of PCS, she became “smitten” with the bacteria to the point that she redirected her entire lab to drop all other projects to focus fully on it. She blissfully admits that because of the way she’s devoted her life to its study, she daydreams about PCS “probably more than is healthy.”

The sub day ended, but after watching the video about PCS six times, the facts were embroidered on the fabric of my brain. (Irony of ironies here is that the last time I took a science class was junior year of high school, so I walked into the classroom that morning feeling absolutely inept even though it was "only" seventh grade science...yet the impact of the lesson has stuck with me more than any other sub day!)

Fast forward a few days and I’m in California, going to church with my grandparents.

As it was Palm Sunday, the first day of Passion Week leading up to Easter, the pastor gave a sermon about the Greek word “paradidomi” or “to hand over.”

Bob Goff quote I read and loved!

He shared portions of the crucifixion story, highlighting how we, just like the Pharisees, Pontius Pilate, and even Jesus’ disciples, take part in “handing over” Christ to death on the cross.

Yet at the same time, he noted that Jesus gave himself over—paradidomi—on our behalf. (In John 10:17-18 Jesus says, “The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”)

He has the authority to lay down his life and he did so willingly because of his passionate love for us.

Then the pastor directed us to Isaiah 53:4-5:

“Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.

There was that same word—smitten—that Chisholm had used to describe her relationship with prochlorococcus.

Prochlorococcus under a microscope

While Chisholm meant “strongly attracted to” when she said “smitten with,” “smitten by” in Isaiah means “struck with a firm blow.”

God struck his own son with the firmest blow—total separation from the Father—when He died on the cross to save us.

YET because Jesus was “smitten with God”—absolutely devoted to Him—He gave His life over for God’s purpose.

We’ve got both “smitten by” and “smitten with” at play here.

What does it look like on a day-to-day basis to be “smitten with God” like Jesus?

It looks like wholeheartedly living out our passions as Chisholm demonstrates in her study of PCS. She turns her attention from “ancillary projects” to full focus on the one, most significant project. She loves PCS so deeply that everything else falls into the background; she daydreams about it and studies it so well that she can explain it in laymen’s terms on a TED Talk; she can’t help but tell others just how life-changing PCS could be for them, too.

So, what has your full attention? What do your daily activities and priorities say about what you love the most?

We know that over the course of Passion Week, Christ not only died for us, defeating sin and hanging in our place, but also rose from the grave, allowing us to share in new life with Him! His passion for God and love for us clearly directed his actions. How can you use your passions to demonstrate resurrected living that points to Him throughout the year?

Get smitten ;)

With whom will you share the life-changing news of the gospel this Easter?