Friday's Thoughts

1) It's nice to have a game plan.

2) Really want to see Cloud Atlas (perhaps tonight?).

3) WSU president Dr. John Bardo taught my class last night. It was stupid cool. We got out early.

4) My family is the best.

5) Had a chat with my advisor on Wednesday, she laid out some handy things for next semester.

6) Went to jail yesterday - they let me leave like 45mins later.

7) Sometimes, sooner or later, you just got to ask for help.

8) "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us."

9) Found a CD of bagpip hymns. Talk about inspiring and soul music and good - allatthesametime.

10) There is but one thing to do when one doesn't know where to go or what to say - it is to drop to kneel and let the groaning of one's inward being (that being one truly is) come forth. For in that moment words are not enough and would merely cheapen the depth of the brokenness one feels. To let, as it were, God, though knowing all, see in one's groans the pains of sin, the depravity of the world, and the utter reality of it all which is now seen itself within the unveiled eyes of the one who groans. It is to confer with the almighty in a way, which is nearest to how it was in the garden - that is to say it is a deeper understanding of what the Other in the relationship sees and knows.

Yet it does not end there, for while one is capable of seeing and knowing - in part - the sin which besets one's soul God has not left him there. Though at the point of rock bottom, though unable to stand because of the shattering effects of the fall, though the groans communicate revilement and the understanding of just damnation, though one feels like anything else in all of creation should seperate one from the love Christ Jesus, He - the One from the cool of the garden, the One from the firey bush, the One from the cross, the One who indwells us says, while picking us up from our stupor,

"Who shall seperate you from my love? Shall tribulation? No. Shall distress? No. Shall persecution? No. Shall famine? No. Shall nakedness? No. Shall danger? No. Shall sword? No. No, in all these things you are more than a conqueror in me, because I love you. Be sure of this: neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate you from my love. Nothing."

Them There Thoughts

1) The goodness of God draws us to repentance. I think our definition of 'good' is too small, too shallow, too flimsy.

2) Enrolled in grad-school. Classes start in 2 weeks. WSU didn't waste one minute in telling me I was accepted. Not one.

3) While enrolling I was sent to four different locations before 1) being sent to the right place and 2) being told the person I needed to see wasn't there.

4) Made fried chicken the other night, like my momma makes it! The gravy sucked, but the fried chicken was good!

5) Stared at the stars a few times this week.

6) The Head and The Heart

7) Vacation next week!

8) When your fears a dismissed one by one.

9) Almost had a major slip of the tongue while preaching... I blushed at the thought. Still.

10) Going to start calling my tattoo a freckle.

11) Here's a quote for you: "... When once the soul is fixed on that supreme and all-sufficient good, it finds so much perfection and goodness as doth not only answer and satisfy its affection, but master and overpower it too: it finds all its love to be too faint and languid for such a noble object, and is only sorry that it can command no more. It wisheth for the flames of a seraph, and longs for the time when it shall be wholly melted and dissolved into love: and because it can do so little itslef, it desires the assistance of the whole creation, that angels and men would concur with it in the admiration and love of those infinite perfections." Henry Scougal

Laugh

The New Year… So Far

1) Reading The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien and geeking out about it.

2) My cat, Luther, is no longer echolocation-kitty – he’s falls-in-the-toilet-kitty.

3) When I heard Boeing was closing its Wichita plant I thought of the song “Further Along” by Josh Garrels

4) 2012 has started off with a furry.

5) I’m taking a pre-session Earth Science class. Yesterday's lesson was about Mars. Thank you, WSU.

6) Colossians 3:12-17 is good stuff and Romans 7:24-25 still defines me.

7) My Christmas tree is still up.

8) This years reading list (so far): The Lord of the Rings, The Hunger Games, The Arabian Nights…

9) Where’s a place that works on record players?

10) Scotland. I wanna see Scotland.