Friday Thoughts

1) It's lookin' like rain! (Heard thunder)

2) Felt a wee under-the-weather yesterday - you know, more than normally (Ha, meteorology joke!).

3) If the answer to a short answer question has these requirements: 1-2 pages, Arial, Single-spaced, size 12 font can it really be called a "short answer?" No. No. It cannot.

4) Next week is fall break, but it feels like it should be Thanksgiving.

5) I carved a pumpkin for the first time on Monday. (I'll brag) It was a pretty awesome looking first-time-carving-pumpkin. I also got way too excited about it.

6) Imaging what each of the professors should be for Halloween, here's what I've got: The costume lady from the Incredibles, Franklin the Turtle, Crocodile Dun-Dee, and a witch.

7) Reading Man in the Iron Mask for my fiction book. It's good to be back in a Dumas.

8) Barth sums up unrighteousness and ungodliness like this, "We confound time with eternity." Essentially meaning, we supplant God with ourselves. Scougal would say it like this, "We feel not the truth which we pretend to believe."

9) Ordination is this weekend.

10) My first cup of coffee on Tuesday was at 7pm. Needless to say I paid attention really well in my last class. (The other class... well, I was there for it.)

Friday Thoughts!

1) Writing a series is fun, but it's nice to be done with it. Give 'em all a read would you?

2) There's another one coming up.

3) I turned on the sink thinking it'd turn on the lights... It's been a busy week.

4) I'm excited about tonight because of this.

5) Have you seen the What Nots page?

6) Dear Lord, I need coffee like a fat kid needs insulin. (Too much?)

7) Reading Harry Potter is like going on vacation in my brain.

8) My friends from India are coming to Wichita, Yay!

9) I got a Gandalf pipe.

10) Mission isn't safe, or is missin clean; don't expect to be the same.

Mid-Finals Thoughts (Spring '12)

Finals are here… again.

So! Here are mid-finals thoughts:

1) I’m naturally a cynic, but this time of year, I’m a die-hard the-world-is-dark-and-I-want-to-sleep-and-everyone-to-go-away cynic. Nifty, right?

2) Finals diet: comfort food, comfort drink, comfort food, comfort drink… repeat.

3) My two busiest weekends at the church fell during my two busiest weeks of school. Conspiracy.

4) I shall pass College Algebra, or I shall die.

5) I want to go to Nashville.

6) Jack White album, it’s beautiful. ‘Nough said.

7) My blood will run black with coffee by the end of the week.

8) Wait, you get awards for loving to talk? Take that every-teacher-who-said-I-talked-too-much-in-elementary-school.

9) Is it socially acceptable to fall asleep in public places only to be woken up by the loudness of your own snoring? Cause I don’t do that… my friend does.

10) This Friday night as I’m falling asleep, I’m going to turn my phone off. You know like completely and totally off. Then I’m gonna wake up on July 4^th.

Bonus:

11) My foot is asleep.

Papers & Professor

He sat across from me at my hiding place (the spot I go to rest while working). The table, admittedly, can accommodate more than one person, but I often times like to spread out and use it all, so when he asked if he could use it as well, the internal struggle began.

Quickly it was overcome.

He got his papers out, his pencils out, after setting his coffee down, and then came out the grade book. This white-haired, mustached teacher, or maybe professor, began diligently grading.

So naturally I had to change the music in my headphones to opera (don’t judge).

Business Communication class. Cover letters. Resumes.

The collar of his shirt was worn and discolored, the ring on his left hand once deeply engraved now dulled and scratched following every word written on every paper graded with the well sharpened pencil scribbling learned notes.

Having our papers graded is never fun. It’s a nervous business. We don’t want to fail, but we, in some way, want to learn (otherwise we wouldn’t have turned the paper in, in the first place).

This is how I feel about prayer.

I want to ask for help, but I’m scared of the reproving. Do you know what I mean?

When you know God is sufficient but you’re nervous of being answered? ‘Cause sometimes how could the answer be good? Yet we ask anyway. Trusting what’s to be done will be for our good.

Pre-Trip Thoughts

1) I hope I can post something to the blog somewhere in the trip.

2) I’ve bought so much music in the past 3 days that if I listen to it all before I get back it’ll be a miracle.

3) There will be a post-trip list of all the random thoughts had.

4) I won’t eat bacon for 6 days… it hurts just to say it.

5) Psalm 23

6) My travel partner has reserved some first class tickets for the trip home. That's. What's. Up.

7) If I can’t drink the water there then chances are I can’t drink the coffee there… poo.

8) Taylor Swift is comfort music. (Judge away judgers.)

9) I hope I packed everything.

10) The Kat is in good hands. Whew.

Bonus:

11) Let’s do this thing.

A Far Too Common Story

She walked into the bar. Tired, worn down and out. The bags under her eyes were obvious, the same clothes she had on yesterday cling to her skin. There’s a look of desperation in her face, of worry and torment.

Flopping into a seat near the bar she orders her drink. Huddling over it once it arrives she begins to gingerly milk it little sips here, little sips there. Tears, and possibly a scream seem to be close to bursting from her.

She’d been here last night, this bar. But then she was vibrant and happy, laughing at the stupid jokes and dancing the night away. But now she seems broken.

He’d been a nice enough guy. Seemed to genuinely care. He bought a few rounds for her and her friends and made polite small talk. After she’d denied his advances of becoming a little too physical he left. She thought nothing of it at all.

She’d parked too far away from the safety of the lights, she’d said goodbye to her friends, and she was alone.

He took her. He raped her.

Here she sits the next day weeping into a cup of coffee. Trying to find what she’d lost at the place she had it last.

It’s the story of far to many women.

It’s the fear they’ll never tell.

But it’s a travesty.

To believe the lie of being, ‘broken,’ and therefore unwanted. To remember the youth group teaching, “Who would want someone who’s not a virgin?” Yet that’s the lie.

God wants the broken. It’s the culmination of Christianity. That the destitute are redeemed, that the broken are made whole.

There’s a Redeemer who’s come to save. The righteous has no need of saving, it’s the sick that need the Doctor, and it’s the broken that need the Mender. It’s the raped that need the Healer.

So to Jesus she runs, to him, who'll treat her like the daughter she is, she clings. Away from the mire of the past and into the glory of the future. Because hope has come.

In all seriousness: If this story is you, don't let the boy who did this get away. There are many who will help. There are friends who'll listen. You, of all people, are not alone.

Thinking Thoughts

1) Found out my boy cat is a girl cat… Luther is now Katharina… Yup.

2) I got a lady friend (like a human lady, not a cat).

3) Bacon and coffee

4) If you’ve never read John17, or just haven’t done it in a while, then here

5) I’m reading The Hunger Games and trying to make them last

6) The Scarlet Letter

7) My thoughts on the whole Mars Hill discipline issue

8) Skittles are getting me through my College Algebra homework (the red pack, not some silly purple or blue pack).

9) Why is the sentence, “Go and sin no more,” not apart of our thoughts/words?

10) The trash truck that drives by my house every Monday might as well be a tank.

School's Started Thoughts

1) I have a professor with a bow tie (Prof. Bow tie), and another who looks like Dumbledore.

2) Last semester! (As long as college algebra behaves itself)

3) My classes have me writing 2-3 papers a week. Hello, Humidor

4) 24 hours = not enough

5) WSU should get a Starbucks… Or at least some good coffee

6) New bedtime: 9:30pm (So what, I’m an old man.)

7) This whole spring/fall thing in winter is lovely.

8) Bacon and orange juice is routinely breakfast.

9) Luther (the cat) goes nuts for bacon. Like try-to-climb-my-leg nuts.

10) I need a bigger music budget.

Sitting at Death's Door

There’s a chair, it’s a big soft one, sitting in the corner of the coffee shop. It’s inhabited by all kinds of folks throughout a day. Youngsters reveling with friends, older men reading the paper, a man receiving news of a relative’s death.

He’d probably just been to the hospital or nursing home, saying his final goodbye. Coming here to get away and, ‘work,’ which was really just an excuse to not be in the room at the same time as Death.

He’d probably met Death before in some dark alley a world away or in an open street fighting a war for someone else’s freedom explaining his reticence to be around it when it came knocking this close. Trying to forget the final gasps, trying to loose himself in something, anything else.

His phone rang, sounding like a funeral march in his ears. He answered. It was done. They were gone. There was nothing left for him to do but to marvel at the sun that shown on his back and feel the heat of the day, the warmth of life.

The same call had been made before, the call of death.

But instead of being made with a phone it was made with nails and a spear. The thud of the hammer and the thrust of the spear spilled and spelled certain seemingly unalterable death for its victim.

The family wept. The friends sat in their chairs and stared in unbelievable disbelief at some unfocused distant point.

But soon they would know what the man in the chair at the coffee shop knew death isn’t a vault anymore, it’s a revolving door. The one they wept for would shatter the vault’s door leaving alive and free to reign.

Weekend Thoughts

1) My cat uses echolocation to get around and likes coffee as much as I do.

2) Toys-R-Us has Twilight toys for preschoolers. Unacceptable America, unacceptable.

3) Christopher Hitchens died? Dang it. Read more here.

4) Sherlock Holmes 2 = success

5) Grace, grace, grace, it’s all grace.

6) I’m not sarcastic. Ever.

7) Do Christians really want to die on the hill of “Happy Holidays?”

8) The closer you are to a situation the less you see it.

9) I’d like to be in Bethlehem this time of year, or Scotland. Either one.

10) Grandma took me grocery shopping! Food, good food!

Bonus:

11) The Three Musketeers is teaching me a lot about myself. Read it.

10 Finals Thoughts

1) Wait. What? Where am I?

2) Brain = Fried

3) Since when were we studying the weather on other planets? Thanks meteorology class.

4) 3 papers over 10 pages. I have no words. Profreading? Watch this.

5) My heartrate is through the roof. Stress

6) College Algebra. *Sigh* 3rd times a charm?

7) Can I just give a persuasive speech in Algebra telling them why I don't need algebra? Point 1: COMMUNCATION MAJOR

8) On Monday The Three Muskeeters started getting really interesting... Today, I'll pick it back up.

9) Coffee.

10) I wrote a paper like a story & had to talk myself out of putting it on here.

A Coffee Shop Scene

Their chairs were moved close, their eyes and attention where at and with each other. He held her hand, gently, their knees were touching as they sipped their coffees and chatted, infatuated with each other. His camouflage was in stark contrast to her jeans, his tan boots were immovable near her feet.

One would speculate he’d just returned from a far land, a war-zone, protecting this woman whose hand he now held. Putting life and liberty, pain and suffering on the line for her, not for the others in the coffee shop, not for the baristas or the infant in his mother’s arms, but for her, his love. The businessman in his suit and the pastor reading his Bible sat doing their mutual duties, but this warrior sat holding his love’s hand.

Doing a duty he was glad to shoulder, doing an obligation with such gratitude and such joy that to call it a duty would be to do harm to the image, for his love was for this woman, for her and her alone. It is no duty, it is, indeed love in the most real sense of the word.

The quote on the board read, “As we express gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. J.F.K” Sure, this solider had told his love of his gratitude, sure he’d expressed it a million times as he approached the plane to take him to war, sure, he’d said the necessary, but he now lives the gratitude. Expressing it with unwavering attention and the gentleness of holding her hand.

This has happened for us.

The Warrior came and fought the forces of the foe. He crushed the serpent’s head. He put to death, death. And now, he unwaveringly intercedes on our behalf. The love with which he loved us was immense enough so as to take him to the worst possible death.

The love for His Church, his bride was a reason for the death he died and the life he now lives. The Warrior triumphed and will one day soon gently hold the hand of his bride.

A List for Monday

1) I want to watch/read ALL The Lord of the Rings again (really, mostly this is an all-the-time feeling).

2) Twilight fans: watch this he has better reasons for not liking it than me.

3) "How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes the only God?" John 5:44

4) As a single dude, I think being a loving father and loving one (1) woman for all of life is a thousand times more noble & honorable than gun fights, sword fights & church leading.

5) Thanksgiving! I will spend most of my days off reading this scary book... I have to read it when the sun is up.

6) I was bored half way through the latest Transformer movie. Like real bored.

7) New location for Journey the Way was *ahem* Saweet!

8) Literature is, for me, a gift of God to my over active mind.

9) I now have curtains at my house & if I do say so myself, they look wonderful. (I also steamed them to get the wrinkles out, does that make me odd?)

10) Coffee + pumkiny goodies with cream cheese iceing = heavenly.

Pre-Thanksgiving Thoughts:

1) We had Thanksgiving dinner at my community group last night.

2) Said dinner was wonderful & the 14lb bird was "decimated."

3) My house only holds so many people before it starts to feel like a sauna.

4) More turkey & stuffing next week? Yes, please.

5) Martin Luther is currently punching me in the face.

6) I think these are stupid cute.

7) The difference between Christianity & any other religion is Jesus. Read this.

8) NEEDTOBREATHE is always playing in my head.

9) Taylor Swift is usually right in the mix next to them (go ahead judge, I'm ok with it).

10) Coffee.

A Little Spilled Coffee

She had spilled a little of her coffee on his computer - but he was drunk so he could’ve cared less. He was more infatuated with the gospel music piping out of its speakers than the little bit of coffee on the corner.

Gingerly she cleared away the coffee with the sleeve of her yellow cardigan and went a little further to clean a portion of the screen where there was no coffee, just a smudge. He just sat there in his drunken stupor, seemingly unaware she was even there. She patted his knee and left. He remained intoxicated by both the alcohol and the music.

Everyone else walked by and stared, everyone else sat around and wished he’d turn down the sound. But she stopped and stooped to care just a little more than what was necessary.

She came back a little later, he still in his stupor, with a pair of headphones. Plugging them in and with the same gentleness she had cleaned his computer with handed the headphones to him. He took them, no gratitude or second thought; no hesitation or wonder, just took them.

As time wore on still more, a cup of coffee came and a breakfast sandwich appeared; this woman had bought him breakfast as well as given her headphones up and not a word of thanks was said just that he wanted to smoke a cigarette.

Compelled by who-knows-what she served a man who could’ve cared less. She loved one most considered unlovable, one whom most passed by and judged she considered and she stopped. To call her a believer or un-believer is not a judgment to be made, but to see her example and do similarly to the glory of God is no wrong thing.

The sick and destitute, the broken and forgotten of society are still creations of God, and still in need of being loved. Though it is not evangelism to clean a screen and spend a little money it is still loving to do so. Though it won’t save a man from drunken debauchery or hell it will, by the grace of God teach others to love those of the hideous underbelly of the world who live on our streets.

Fight to Love

“Fight the good fight of faith.” Paul said it; I use it at the end of e-mails, Facebook messages and letters. But what does it mean? Sure it means, fight the good fight of faith, but more than that simplistic definition what does it mean for our lives? Let me tell you how I think.

I like to romanticize things, it’s a way of coping, I suppose. You see, if I think about something in terms of a story than I am much more apt to be appreciative of them, it or whatever. So when I read, “Fight the good fight of faith,” my instant thought is, “God knows how to talk to my brain – Duh.”

Look at it like this, rather than the monotony of the drudge of simplistic life see it as war. Well, really, believers should be seeing every moment as a war.

In each corner of our lives we are struggling against an enemy who is very much apart of us. We cannot escape his ruse, for a part of us wants his ruse to win. Striving to push back the fall but failing all the while.

Fight the good fight of faith doesn’t mean strive to live perfectly. It means fight to believe. Fight to see Jesus as sufficient. Fight to see this life as war. Fight to see this war as won but not yet over. Fight to love your family. Fight to cherish your friends. Fight to see a sip of coffee as worship. Fight to believe.

All of everyday of each moment of our lives will be – as Christians – a battle to see any of this Jesus stuff as wonderful. Sure we believe it, but we simultaneously don’t. So to see this life, this belief as easy, is quite frankly, to not know Christ. For why else would it be called a fight if it was really a cake-walk?