Adventuring {Day 1}

{WATERFORD to CORK}

     Today marks the first day of mine and Christy's travels for spring break all over Ireland! Yeee we're so excited!! Left this morning from our little home in Waterford to Cork via the bus. 

     When we got to Cork, we walked around a bit. Since it's Easter Monday here, mostly everything is closed. A bit later we met up with Christy's friend Eimear who I had met a few weeks ago. She took us to this vintage boutique that had so many grand things! In Christy's words: "I was born in the wrong era!" Haha...I got my brother Cory a sick souvenir (that no, Cory, I'm not going to tell you what it is 'till I just bring it home to you! HA!). Then we had some super sweet fellowship over coffee and hot chocolate talking about the Lord and getting to know each other. Grand time of encouragement :) [see picture above for my sick latte art. I just love coffee...haha. I got a "Cork Coffee Roasters" car sticker too]. Thank you Eimear for showing us around! Hopefully we'll get to see you again before we leave

{CORK to KILLARNEY}

        So I figured out that buses are a grand place to do devos and just have time to think. I mean, what else are you doing but sitting there? Ok, maybe I should be doing homework but...yeah. Anyways, I just had an awesome time of devos as I watched the gorgeous scenery of endless green fields go by.

For my devos I've been reading through the Bible, starting at the beginning and just going through. Last semester, I read through Genesis and this semester I've been going through Exodus. 

     {Funny side note} I just realized the other day that last semester I was really praying for great amounts of faith and just patience to go along with my faith of waiting for the Lord to do things in my life. Genesis is FILLED with some of the greatest examples of faith that I've ever read. And so much patience with their faith that God would do what He said! And this semester I have really been praying that the Lord would give me a patient and compassionate heart and I'm reading through Exodus, which is all about Moses and God's patience and compassion to the crazy Israelites. HA. I love how the Lord does that. And I didn't even realize it....
     Ok, back to where I was - I read one chapter a day and then choose one verse from that chapter to really dig into and be like the "chapter theme verse" I guess you could say.
*So today's verse:

"For you shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God"

 [Exodus 34:14]

     For those of you that know me, I'm not a really deep thinker most of the time. I don't really ponder every tiny little aspect and try to figure out every technical detail of everything. But I just really thought about this verse as I was sitting on the bus. And just was thinking about how we tend to think in our humans mind as jealously being a bad thing - so that would mean God is doing a bad thing by being jealous right? WRONG. God is jealous of our wholehearted devotion and worship not because of selfishness. God is jealous of our wholehearted devotion and worship because He loves us! Dirty, messed-up, dumb sinners. 

     Wait...so God is jealous for.....me? ME..........what? That's crazy!

      Just having Someone who loves and accepts us. Someone whose faithfulness and perfect love never fail no matter what we do. Dang. And how do I treat Him in response? Normally just like a routine part of my day. But I'm sooo special to Him - He takes care of me individually 24-7. 

     Seriously...I hate, HATE, how good Satan is at deceiving. Sure, I'm good at spotting some serious drop or pull towards something sinful, but he knows that just drifting me away slowly is what really gets me. Things become my gods without me even fully realizing it! I find small reasons to justify it (it's for a good thing, it's not horrible, etc.) that just snowball into something that ends up tearing me away. 

    But if I'm jealous for God like He's jealous for me, Satan is more hindered in his ability to fool me because I'm able to call victory through Christ. Satan has no power over any of us if we fight in the name of the Lord! And how amazing is that?!

See what gets accomplished on the bus whilst watching beautiful scenery? :)

Anyways, we're now at a cozy B&B (bed and breakfast) that I'm so happy to be at :) So excited for all the great adventures to come!

Oh, and if you're wondering why there are not more pictures on this post don't be concerned I am taking pictures (I am a photographer after all!). I'm just going to go through them probably after the trip so I'll post them all later probably next week. For now I'll just put my daily Instagram photo up [if you're a fellow Instagrammer and want to follow me my username is "micaelahilderbrand"]. I'll try to update my posts everyday while I'm travelling but wifi is sometimes sparse so no promises. Cheers!