Now Playing: Chris Thile, "Stealing Second", "Ah, Spring".

I didn't expect today to be as eventful as it turned out to be.

Before sitting down to breakfast, I hunted in the laundry room for the box of books Aunt Lisa loaned us. It has been sequestered behind the set of box springs from my apartment, and I had to dig to find the one I wanted: Mystery Mile by Margery Allingham, the first of her Albert Campion mysteries. Laura and I had our usual reading party while we ate breakfast. She's working on The Silmarillion.

After breakfast, I did my quiet time and then went for a bike ride. A strong southeast wind was feeding into a big storm system to the northwest, which was hovering ominously along the horizon. I flew with the wind at my back, then labored along the other side of the lake. Listened to the sermon Pastor D preached at the MWPCY retreat at the end of May. An excellent portrait of Christ from John 1:1-18.

At home, I showered. Both the sink and shower drains in the girls' bathroom have become unaccountably blocked, so Laura and I spent the rest of the morning slogging away at them. The shower drain did absolutely nothing, neither better nor worse. The sink drain, however, spat disgusting clouds of black flakes into the water and reeked of sewage.

We ate an early lunch because a woman was coming at one o'clock to give Laura a Mary Kay makeup consultation. She spent about an hour-and-a-half dabbing spots of products onto sample trays and helping us put on makeup. Laura pulled disgusted faces at me the whole time whenever Mrs. W wasn't looking.

After Mrs. W left, I went upstairs to clean the bathroom. When that was done, I sat down with my laptop to finish registering for GRE exams, buying preparation materials, reading e-mails, and so forth. The mere mention of the GRE makes me tremble from head to toe. I also looked at the NOC website to see if they have any job openings.

At about five o'clock, I settled down for a break with Mystery Mile. A storm was beginning to blow over. All afternoon there had been thunder, but so far the storm had been too small and too far away. Stephen was playing with miniatures in the green attic, and he and Laura kept a fanatic eye on the radar. Laura was ecstatic. The sky became darker and darker. The wind veered around to the northwest and began to tear at the trees. I sat down on my bed, turned on the lamp, and started to read. Laura bounced in with her laptop to join me.

The wind roared in the maple trees, silvering the leaves, pale backs the color of the summer sky. For a long time there was just a gale, but then it started to rain. Sheets and sheets of rain poured down the street and rattled on the windows like artillery fire. The thunder, which had disappeared during the windstorm, returned with renewed fury. Stephen, Laura, and I all watched the storm through the windows. The lamplight made my small room feel like the cabin of a ship reeling through a storm.

My mother called us downstairs for an early tea. Just as my father finished giving thanks (and I in my head praying for God to protect us), the electricity flickered, and the house went dark. Rain pounded on the windows, lightning blazed in the darkness, and thunder cracked overhead. We scrounged candles from the living room and put them in among the dishes on the table. Laura lit them. We ate our leftovers by candlelight.

Laura's laptop had battery power, so she obligingly brought it downstairs so that we could watch The Dick Van Dyke show while we ate dessert. Nothing must be allowed to stand in the way of the nightly episode.... Outside, the storm was beginning to move away.

The sun came out suddenly, turning the rain to gold. Across the dark east, a double rainbow emerged, and the lower arc rippled into iridescence, adding a third crescent. The colors stood out vividly against the grey sheet of cloud in the east. All around us the golden rain fell shining. Green leaves and branches were scattered everywhere.

When the rainbows disappeared, we went inside. Laura played Ravel on the piano. I read Mystery Mile sitting on the floor in the sunshine streaming through the open front door. My mother, Laura, and I went for a walk. The whole neighborhood was out of power. People were outside cleaning up the debris from the storm. A man down the street had started up a backyard generator. My mother stopped to say hello to everyone, of course.

At the end of the street, we paused to look at the northwest. Another storm was blowing in, dark all over the northwestern sky, hiding the sunset. We walked home again. Laura bounced along, thrilled at the prospect of another storm. My father was reading to Stephen in the living room. Outside, my mother went up and down the yard, calling Annie. The silly cat had crawled through Philip's bedroom window and was running around on the roof in the gloaming.

We did family worship. Now my mother is reading a book about third culture kids. Sandy sits at the front door, looking out into the darkness. The white bell-shaped flowers on the hostas shimmer wetly in the porch light. The other storm is blowing in on a cold north wind that rushes in the maple trees. Annie sits beside me on a chair, bathing herself. The wind eddies through the front door.

Now Playing: The Decemberists, "The Picaresque", "Eli, The Barrow Boy".

Yesterday evening was Noah B.'s ordination service in Enid.

Because delegates from presbytery were coming down early to interview a candidate for the pastorate in Sterling, we planned to leave for Enid at a quarter past twelve. In the afternoon, while my parents were sitting in on the interview, Missy and I went to a coffee shop together. We arrived back at the Christian highschool where the service was to be held "just in time to do nothing". When the meeting with the candidate ended, the delegates came out, and we served them tea.

The ordination service began at half six. It was a very formal service, with plenty of steps to go through, but everyone seemed very happy. Afterward, Noah cut the cake with wee Katie's help, and everyone stayed for the session. Some of the guys immediately took Noah's new frisbee outside to play a game, though the evening was very windy. The big red moon was rising quickly over the trees as we carried the leftover food to the car.

Photos from the event are here.

Lovely evening yesterday! Laura, Sarah, me, Elizabeth, Rachel, and Anna.

Now Playing: Nick Drake, "River Man".

The McCs are staying with us this week, which means that a holiday atmosphere has overtaken the house. I came downstairs at about nine o'clock. Of course, the adults had already eaten, so I proceeded to eat my breakfast quietly. I got about halfway through a P.G. Wodehouse story when Abe came sauntering down, yawning, and poked at the cereal.

After breakfast, the morning drifted by quietly. I think Abe, Peter, my mother, Laura, Stephen, and Lydia watched a Dr. Who episode. Uncle Scott ensconced himself in the living room with an enormous stack of my father's books on theology, while I sat on the sofa and worked on editing a friend's book manuscript. Lunchtime came along, and we had a picnic meal of leftovers and sandwiches.

We got lunch cleared away quickly. The afternoon was wonderfully cool and clear for Oklahoma at the end of July, just barely breaking 80 F. So Uncle Scott, who has a twisted knee from playing ultimate frisbee, and some of the boys piled into the minivan and drove over to Boomer Lake, while Laura and I collected Moochy, and we walked over to the lake.

The guys (Uncle Scott, Abe, Peter, and Stephen) decided to play frisbee golf, while my mother, Aunt Anna, Lydia, Laura, Moochy, and I walked around the lake. Lydia had never been to a wetland area before, and she and Aunt Anna were full of questions about the lake and its flora and fauna. We walked past a gaggle of geese, saw a green heron perched on a tree stump, heard a turtle plop off a log into the lake, and watched a pair of white terns (very far from the ocean!) zip over the water.

We walked around the northern end of the lake to the peninsula where the veterans' memorial is. Laura and Lydia ran out onto the peninsula with Moochy, who had to be coaxed by Laura to chase sticks into the water.

We turned around and walked back to the house. Laura ran next door and got a brush and shampoo from Mrs. O while my mother filled the wading pool in the back yard. Lydia ran and put on a swimsuit, and we all gave Moochy a bath in the wading pool. The dog put up with the process. We scrubbed away, and Lydia brushed her vigorously. Fur scummed the water. After two shampoos, Laura took the dog next door.

I took a cold shower, then came downstairs to bake a chocolate cake for tonight. The Bs were coming over for tea: Noah, Lydia, and their three small children.

My mother had organized an ultimate frisbee match at the OSU track at seven o'clock for the CY, and since we were running a little late on the meal, the youth and the Bs drove over shortly after the meal.

Once the dishes were washed, we drove over to the OSU track, where the match was already in full swing. As we walked towards the green grassy oval inset in the track, I prompted Aunt Anna on the names of the players: Sam, J.D., Elizabeth, Anna, Hannah, Logan, Jonathan, Stephen, Laura, and of course Abe, Peter, and Lydia, as well as Noah. Uncle Scott, my parents, Lydia B., and the three small ones set up camp chairs at one end of the track to watch. Aunt Anna joined Sarah and me, perched on a big tractor tyre that was sitting on its side near the long jump pads.

Sarah and I sat and chatted with Aunt Anna for awhile, with each other, and with Elizabeth when she took a break from the game. The huge blue sky opened above us. OSU's bulky brick buildings looked diminutive under the enormous evening sky as they caught the level rays of the sun. Other people were walking or jogging around the track.

Dusk deepened overhead. Wee Katie scampered over to show us her pink teddy bear. As it began to grow dark, my mother brought out the chocolate cake and served it to everyone. We all sat around on the long jump pads in front of the adults' chairs. Uncle Scott bounced Julia, the littlest B., on his knee and hummed the Purdue fight song to her. Anna and Elizabeth joked around with J.D. Sarah and I dozed on each other's shoulders. Aunt Anna and Lydia lay on their backs and looked at the stars.

We stayed there a long time, talking. People began to leave slowly. It was nearly dark, and the stars were beginning to flash like jewels in a hydrangea-colored sky, when my father started to move toward the car. Everyone lingered in the car park. We were home by a quarter to ten.

Photos from today are here.

One very good book I've been reading lately is Lloyd-Jones's Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure. Lloyd-Jones's prose could be condensed to about half its length, but his work is very valuable on a topic I find seldom addressed anywhere else.

One quote, which I found particularly appropriate to some of the things I've posted here in the last month.

"Would you like to be rid of this spiritual depression? The first thing you have to do is to say farewell now once and for ever to your past. Realize that it has been covered and blotted out in Christ. Never look back at your sins again. Say: 'It is finished, it is covered by the Blood of Christ'. That is your first step. Take that and finish with yourself and all this talk about goodness, and look to the Lord Jesus Christ. It is only then that true happiness and joy are possible for you.... Blessed be the Name of God for such a wondrous salvation for desperate sinners."

You'd think it would be so simple: make a choice and stick with it.

But no.

Why is decision making always so hard? Does it have to be so hard? It seems as though every time I try to make up my mind about some big part of life, I agonize for weeks, choose the wrong things, agonize some more, and make another choice, which also turns out to be "wrong". If "what-ifs" were monsters that hid under my bed, I'd have been gobbled up in my sleep long ago.

I hate waking up in the morning and feeling vaguely as though I've stumbled into a nightmare. An endless, pointless succession of days, unrelieved by freedom from care. Unrelieved by certainty. I keep saying to myself, "If I could just be sure...." Or, if I am really ambitious, "If I could just be happy...."

Sometimes I begin to despair. This whole business of "knowing God's will" and "glorifying God" is rather terrifying if one looks at it in an unbalanced way (which is usually how my brain works). I begin to labor under the delusion that God's will is completely impossible, a waste of time. Burdened by His command to use one's talents well, I become pinned down by fear that I will choose the option that glorifies Him the least.

And then what? A year of unmitigated sinfulness, being separate from Him because I didn't follow His will for me? Losing some of the joy I could have had in Heaven because I wasn't faithful in small things? Paul says that some people will be saved by the skin of their teeth, their works burned up, their souls barely saved. The fears mock me.

So I try to choose the thing that looks as though it will honor God most. But what if that option is not the thing that I prefer? Or love?

The more I consider the question of making decisions and knowing God's will, the more conscious I become of my sinfulness. Every motive is shot through with sin. Warped, no matter how righteous it seemed when it first occurred to me. Even when I think I have right motives, they are polluted with self-righteousness! Oh, the sweet, sweet, poisonous irony.

As soon as I am confronted with a decision, I plunge back into a prison of doubt and fear. Confronted more vividly than ever by my sinfulness, I am driven even more to despair. How can someone like this ever hope to choose what will glorify God most? Or glorify Him once they have made the decision? How can I ever be sure that He is pleased with me?

The need to rest in Christ's righteousness presses upon me as the answer to some of these questions. If every way I turn, I am confronted by sinfulness, I must remember that He is the one who has taken away those sins. For me to claim them as my own is, in an odd sense, stealing: they are His, and His righteousness is mine. That is what substitutionary atonement means.

Our assistant pastor preached a good message today about how those who recognize their lack of righteousness are those who are declared righteous by God. Some hope for me, anyway. No matter which direction life ends up heading, I will carry my sin into it. But Christ has already forgiven that sin and given me the power to overcome it. Because of Him, God is eternally pleased, well-pleased, delighted by me.

He is alive in me.

I still don't know how all of this will help me make right choices--or do a better job of entering the process of making decisions. Decisions are an enormous stumbling block for me, an area of sin that I need to recognize and deal with. But at least there is hope. I'm not walking into it alone. Far from it. The sovereign God is on my side, holding my hand, gently leading me. Whatever way I go, it will have been the way where His love could most clearly be shown to me and through me.

Anna and I were laughing last night about the end of the world coming in 2012, according to some people. Emily remarked dryly at one point that people are much more ready to believe Mayan calendars than the Bible. And I am amazed that we so quickly scoff at them for not trusting God with the end of the world, but we do not trust God with our own lives.

He promises that the righteous person shall be like a tree, planted by streams of living water, a tree that never fades, and that gives fruit in its season. He is the God of peace.

Now Playing: Brahms, A German Requiem, Track 7, "Blessed Are the Dead".

We came back from the Midwest Presbytery family camp at Horn Creek, Colorado, on Thursday. Since we used to go to Horn Creek nearly every year for family camp until about six years ago, I have very good childhood memories of the campground. It's probably one of my favorite places in the world, and this year it was especially beautiful. The Sangre de Christo mountains in southern Colorado have had unusually heavy rainfall this year, so the whole valley on the approach to the mountains was green. The mountains marched along the western edge of the valley, green to their peaks. Awesomely beautiful, yet vaguely menacing.

We arrived at camp in the early afternoon. Horn Creek Christian Camp is split into three campsites: Mountain Meadows, which has a lodge, a gym, a large dining hall with an upstairs meeting room, and a big circle of cabins; the Ranch, which has a couple of big meeting spaces, cabins, two small lodges, and a dining hall; and another resort area. We had the use of Mountain Meadows and the Ranch this year. About two hundred people from the midwest came to attend the camp, which was very encouraging since in past years attendance at the Colorado camp has been dwindling.

Philip, Laura, Stephen, Anna, and I started out the conference with one typical Horn Creek activity, a visit to the horse barn up near the Ranch. It was just the same as I remembered it, and, fittingly enough, an afternoon thunderstorm blew in, forcing us to take refuge in the barn. It always storms in the afternoon in the mountains. We watched the horses eating their hay and teased Anna after one of the horses sneezed on her feet.

Saturday evening, we had our first meeting with the entire camp, and afterwards, campfire in the meeting room above Mountain Meadows dining hall. The usual ridiculous songs and a pillowfight. Campfire used to be restricted to the CY, but these last few years, even the adults and small children have started to participate.

On Sabbath day in the afternoon, we had a Psalm sing in the arena at the Ranch--a long building, set into the ground, covered with a metal roof. When the requisite afternoon thunderstorm blew in, the noise of the rain drumming on the roof nearly drowned out the sound of a hundred fifty people singing.

Monday was pancake breakfast day, a Horn Creek tradition. It's always funny to watch the wee kids trying to catch pancakes on their plates as the chef flips them. Usually some pancakes end up on the ground, and the manager joked that if we get hit in the head by a falling pancake later in the week, it's probably because some squirrel tried to hide the extra ones in a tree.

In the afternoon, Laura, Philip, Stephen, and I went to the water slide with Will and Buck. Horn Creek has a really good set of three water slides, one short one for small children, and two long, fast ones that stretch down the mountainside. Walking up to the top of the hill from the pool at the bottom of the waterslide is very, very chilly work, and by the end of an hour-long stint, Laura was practically blue in the face. So she and I went down to the hot tub and soaked ourselves in there for awhile. We were joined by about ten small children, who'd all had the same idea and were cavorting in the bubble jets.

Tuesday, my parents, Philip, Laura, Stephen, Keith, Carla, and I went hiking up to a waterfall about ten minutes north of camp. It was a very steep climb, and my parents turned around about halfway up. The mosquitoes were absolutely awful on the trail. The wildflowers, though, were beautiful. So many different colors and shapes. For some reason, many of the flowers up here seem to have more vivid colors, seem to be more graceful and elongated, even though the climate can be much harsher. The waterfall was well worth seeing: a series of steep cascades over dark rocks into a black gorge, with pine trees growing stiff and straight up the sides. As we turned to hike back down, it began to storm on us. The trees were thick enough that we didn't get too wet, but down at the car park where my parents were, it hailed.

On Wednesday, Amelia, Laura, and I went for a horseback ride together for a couple of hours in the afternoon. That was probably one of the best parts of camp for me. I've always loved horseback riding, and we couldn't have had a more perfect afternoon. Just the three of us and the wrangler. Laura's horse was very sleepy and kept trying to graze while she was riding it. We rode through a big meadow with a spectacular view of Horn Peak on one side and the valley on the other. The sunshine rippled in lush grass and wildflowers, up to the horses' knees. We splashed through clear creeks and saw strip marks on pine trees where porcupines had eaten the bark.

Each day, Dr. G, from College Hill RPC, would give a talk in the morning to the entire camp. The theme selected this year was the church, so all of his messages were about some aspect of the church and our work in it. After the main message, we split up into age groups either for classes (for the smaller children) or for discussion times (for CY and adults). Then came lunch, followed by an afternoon of recreation. Usually there was some sort of program in the evening: New Song performed on Monday night; Tuesday night was the consecration service and CY skit night; Wednesday night was western night with square dancing and music.

With such a full schedule, I found it difficult to find time to spend by myself with the Lord. Quiet times are enriched in the mountains, though. When I sat outside in the early mornings, the woods were full of birds and big grey squirrels. Hummingbirds buzzed past my ears. At night, the stars were stunning. One night, Amelia and I walked out into the woods, found a clearing, and lay on our backs in the grass. So many stars that the constellations were lost in the blaze.

So Horn Creek was good this year: all the traditional activities, teaching, and fellowship. A lot of people didn't recognize me, and when I was introduced to them, they'd say, "Oh, yes, I think I know you! You used to have long hair, right?" Nice to know that the entire presbytery notices one's haircut!

And the week ended with one more traditional activity: getting sick to my stomach Thursday morning. At least it was at the end!

On the whole, though, very refreshing.

Photos from Horn Creek are here.

Now Playing: Flook, "Haven", Track 7, "Padraig's".

Tonight Sarah and I were looking through my mother's photo albums from 2003 and 2006. It was funny to see the photos of music recitals, drama club performances, and back yard escapades. Chubby Philip, Stephen, Sam, and J.D.; Laura with her long hair; Dani and Ben much, much shorter than they are now.

I'm always bothered by what I see of myself in old pictures. Ridiculous skinny kid with rebellious hair and dark shadows under her eyes. Afraid, worrying, self-pitying. Not, of course, that those things have changed, but I've become better at hiding them. I hate being forced to remember because I inevitably remember all the things I did wrong: not only the things that were obvious to everyone, but all the secret mean childish mistakes that no one else knows about, that persist.

Mistakes? Or sins? It strikes me that the main reason remembering disturbs me is because it reminds me that I'm not perfect. Sins are mistakes, are the foolish slip-ups that betrayed my deep dark secrets to my family and friends. To me, they look like mistakes, flaws in the flawless mask I try to build for myself.

I am always hiding my imperfections to win the approval of the people around me. Because underneath this skin, I desperately need to be loved. Because underneath whatever poise I manage to present, I'm insecure. I don't believe that I am loved.

This attitude toward sin is wrong in the first place. Sins are mistakes--the uncomfortable reminders that I'm not perfect and can't hide that imperfection from other people or from myself. But sin ought to be sin--offenses against the eternally holy God. Acts of rebellion that anger Him and mock the sacrifice of His Son. Not accidents that need to be smoothed over but flagrant acts of defiance against my Creator.

In the second place, this desperate need for approval is also wrong. Born from the knowledge of true evil living in me, it is itself a marker of my sinfulness. It betrays the fact that I know I am not worthy of being loved. I become willing to go to any lengths to hide that fact.

But: 1 John 2:1, "If anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." Such a precious name of Christ! He is the righteous one, the one who loves perfectly, faithfully, patiently. His righteousness presents me to God. It pleads my need for forgiveness. It pleads my need for love, my need for approval, my need for security.

The righteousness of the Son cannot be denied by the Father. By His sacrifice, Christ has brought me into the eternal fellowship of the Trinity so that I share in the love of the Father, Son, and Spirit for one another. My Advocate establishes peace for me. Peace with the holy God, peace with myself, peace with people.

So now I have freedom to obey God. I am required to let my shame go: my mistakes are not mistakes, but sins against God. If He has forgiven them, I cannot hold onto them. I am required to let the guilt go because Christ has taken it. And I have freedom to love people without fear.

All very easy to write.... Now to live it out!

Now Playing: Flook, "Haven", Track 6, "Wrong Foot Forward".

Stolen posts! For more of these two writers, visit the links on the sidebar.

Peter, 7 July 2009:

Being lazy and being bored. Two things that should never be an issue by themselves, much less together. However, the society of "more now" has brought the idea that 1) I need to be entertained (boredom) and 2) I shouldn't have to work very hard to get it (laziness). Now what is immediately apparent in that? (the obvious questions are often the most enlightening)

Consider for a moment man's purpose. The Westminster confession/catechism says "Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever". Now tell me, what part of that says anything about enjoying myself? At what point in life am I supposed to glorify God by, say, attempting to get the most out of my satellite tv subscription? Boredom is not to be taken lightly, by anybody involved. Chances are whoever it is needs to be doing something, and is merely avoiding it.

God said there would be toil. From the day that Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, from the day that the ground was accursed because of our fallen nature, man has had to work to bring forth food from the ground (and by implication, any source of nourishment). Sorry guys, no free lunch.
Proverbs 10:4 "He becomes poor who works with a lazy hand, but the hand of the diligent brings wealth."

Ok, you knew that already, didn't you. And if you didn't, read it again. It'll be important someday.

But what is more imminent for the believer is the trap of apathy. When a man simply doesn't care enough to carry out God's will on earth, he's already sunk deep in. The intermediate temptations are rather obscure, making them easier to fall into than ever before.

So often there comes a time when our time becomes a daily drag -- get through the day, make it to the next. One day down, another to come. While many of us (this I freely admit) are quite willing and able to carry out God's will in some big adventure, in traveling to Mexico to minister, even just getting on the road again, it's the typical, the ordinary, routine, that our adversary can use against us -- unless we guard against him. (Be sober and self-controlled. Be watchful. Your adversary the devil, walks around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. -1Peter5:8)

What has become of us if we are no longer passionate for the gospel? People, pay attention.
"Do I have any pleasure in the death of the wicked," declares the Lord GOD, "rather than that he should turn from his ways and live? ~Ezekiel 18:23

The wicked are many in number, and it brings glory to the Lord that they "turn from their ways and live"!

(My note: Reading C.S. Lewis's essay "The Weight of Glory" would be an excellent follow-up to this one.)

~

Anna, 29 June 2009:

Sometimes what we need from the Bible is not the fulfillment of our dream, but the swallowing up of our failed dream in the all-satisfying glory of Christ. We do not always know the path of deepest joy. But all Scripture is inspired by God to take us there. Therefore Scripture is worth more than all this world can offer.

-John Piper

While I was in Cyprus, I was thinking a lot about Christ as our Mediator since as a team we were studying Hebrews.

"But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet."

Hebrews 10:12-13

Christ came at God's command, so His work, His sacrifice, is completely pleasing to God. He gives God joy by His obedience, and because He is my Mediator, God sees me through Him. Thus, God is pleased by my obedience, though it is the obedience of Christ.

Christ offered Himself in my place as one final, complete, perfect sacrifice. God's anger is fully satisfied, and my sins are fully paid. He is so precious that He only needed to offer Himself once, and that one death was enough to pay for all the sins of all His people.

Christ then entered the eternal, immediate presence of God and sits there reigning. He presents us continuously before God because He lives continuously. Because God is pleased with Him, He welcomes us into His presence.

So the fruit of Christ's work includes acceptance with God for me. My sins are erased, covered with the eternally pleasing blood of the Son.

And I can obey God as Christ did. The author of Hebrews quotes Jeremiah, "I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds." My heart and mind are being remade to match Christ's, remade in His image. This enables me to obey as He obeyed.

Photos at long last from the last six weeks!

Some here.

And more here.

And even more here.

Christ is our Priest.

"We do have such a high priest, who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, and who serves in the sanctuary, the true tabernacle set up by the Lord, not by man." Hebrews 8:1-2.

No earthly priest would have dared to sit down in the temple or the tabernacle, but Christ is seated at God's right hand. He is so honored and so pure, so precious and so beloved to the Father that He can minister for us even as He rests in God's presence.

He has entered Heaven itself for us. Instead of ministering in a shadow, He ministers in the real thing, God's own presence, not a symbol of God's presence. Because of His human nature, He knows our needs exactly and knows how to pray for God on our behalf. His prayers for us are immediate, wise, faithful. He never pauses or stops in His ministry.

What does that mean for me? That He knows what I need before I need it. That His prayers are accepted by the Father, even are pleasing to the Father. I am welcomed there because He is the one who has invited me, even into the presence of the holy Creator.

Also, that whatever sins and mistakes I make, they are covered by His faithful ministry. God can never cast me out because His Son prays for me continuously. Peace.

The Cyprus team has been going well. It's been an intense three weeks, though.

Our first week was spent mostly painting the church hall. Technically, we were staining it, since it's covered in wooden siding. That was our first introduction to the blazing Cyprus sun, at least for Andrew and me. We would spend most mornings and at least part of most afternoons working on the building. For lunch, members of the Greek church brought us food, so we got to try Cypriot cooking. We also went to Finikoudes, the beach in Larnaca, one afternoon.

Every evening, we ran youth club for young people ages 12-18 at the church hall. The young people here are a wonderful bunch. Not very mature in their faith, perhaps, but full of energy and life. No cliques; everyone is friends with everyone else. They're all very talented, too, an artsy bunch. They love to act and ham it up, which makes youth club a lot of fun. We played games with them for about an hour-and-a-half each evening, followed by a talk or testimony by one of the team members.

During our second week, we ran Bible club for kids ages 5-12 at the church. On the day when we had the most, there were forty-five; on the day when we had the least, there were twenty-four. We began each day with opening exercises--singing, a story from the life of Joseph, and memory verse. Then half of the kids played games outside while the other half worked on a craft, and then they traded places. The kids had loads and loads of energy. Even after running around in the sun all morning, most of them were still active enough to chase Andrew all over the church property, laughing and screaming, while we cleaned up.

We continued to run youth club in the evenings during that week, which made the week quite intense. We would eat lunch at the house of someone in the church after Bible club, usually at about two o'clock in the afternoon. We'd get back to our house at about four o'clock, sleep for a little while, then go to youth club at about six o'clock. We wouldn't get back from youth club until at least half ten, sometimes later. But it was well worth it. We did activities with the youth: a photo scavenger hunt, a film night, a games night, a beach night, etc. They were up for the silliest things. For the photo scavenger hunt, one of the guys pretended to eat a live pigeon.

Last weekend, on Saturday afternoon, we went with fourteen of the young people (ages 16-18) up into the Troodos Mountains for youth camp. We stayed there until late Tuesday afternoon. The mountains aren't anything like the Rockies, but they smelled and felt the same. Pine trees thick on steep rocky slopes, blue ridges marching away into the distance. Our camp was on top of one of the mountains, and from the back of the kitchen, where we washed dishes, we had a lovely view of a long blue valley.

John George from Northern Ireland was our speaker for the weekend. He gave three talks on Ecclesiastes, which were really challenging. A call to put God at the centre of our lives: not to waste life, but to spend it pursuing Him. The young people were very responsive, and we had good discussion times after each talk.

Our days during camp were pretty free. We spent a lot of time just hanging out, playing games, going for walks, stargazing, sitting around talking, etc. A woman from the church and her daughter cooked for us, and we all helped with the chores. The tents were canvas pavilions set up on concrete pads with proper beds inside. We spent most of our time outside, though, sitting in the warm sunshine.

Yesterday, the youth group went on a trip to Waterworld, a water park about half-an-hour from Larnaca. Since it was the day after camp, the team and the young people who'd gone to camp were all still really tired. There were about thirty of us in the group, and we had a lot of fun. The water park was small enough that we could do most of the rides before lunch and then spend the afternoon either going back on ones we'd done or just relaxing. Lorna worked on her tan. I swam in some of the pools reserved for swimming and watched the young people go down the rides again.

Today we've been resting. It's been good to have some time to ourselves. Andrew has spent most of the day up in his room on his laptop, and Lorna, Kait, and I have spent most of it sitting in the living area, reading or on the internet, and listening to Lorna's iPod (she has an apparently inexhaustible music collection). Kait is making pizza for us tonight, and Chris and some of his friends are coming over to watch a film with us.

Cyprus is a lot like Oklahoma in many ways. Flat, with some big hills, and extremely dry. The fields are already brown, round haybales trundled untidily to bake in the sun. The houses are all white blocks, very square, with water tanks on top. Here, though, they can grow rhododendrons and bouganvillea, and there are palm trees everywhere.

Today I went for a walk along the big salt lake near the Mastris' house (we're staying with Adam and Jeanette Mastris, who are away in the States for their son's wedding at the minute). It's so barren. The salt lake is mostly empty at this time of year, one dead flat sheet of salt sparkling in the sun, stretching away with a tiny sheen of water in the middle. To the west, there are houses--square and white with red roofs--, and beyond them the vague blue bulk of the foothills rising against a bleached blue sky. Dead eucalyptus trees grew along the path with their bark hanging in shreds, and thick stands of bamboo grew ten or twelve feet high where the land was lower. I saw a fluffy cat playing with an enormous black snake that must've been four or five feet long--very surreal.

Tomorrow we're going to a nicer beach for the day with Chris and company (Alisia Burgess, Martha, a girl from youth club, and Alex, her college-aged brother), and then on Saturday to Paphos. Sabbath day will be another day of double church--first the English church, then the Greek--and on Monday I assume we'll be packing up.

Church here is quite an experience. Both the English and the Greek groups are small, though the Greek group is slightly larger. During Greek church, we sit at the back, and one of the elders interprets for us. Thus there's a constant low muttering undercurrent during the service of Greek being turned into English. Both churches, however, sing Psalms, so when the Greek church sings a Psalm to a familiar tune, we just sing that same Psalm in English.

Andrew and I fly back to the States on Tuesday. Our flights leave at the joyous time of 5:00 a.m. We go from Larnaca to Heathrow, where he takes a plane to Kansas, and I take a plane to Houston, and then to Oklahoma City. It's going to be a long, long day.

This poor blog is in a sad state of neglect....

Monday and Tuesday were Catherine days over here. She and I met up in Belfast as already mentioned and spent the two days together. Tuesday afternoon, we went to the beach. Both of us just lay in the sand in the sunshine and dozed before she took me to the McCollums' house.

Thanks to an endless succession of social activities and Emmaline's small Volkswagen, we've been driving all over everywhere: to Lisburn for a funeral on Wednesday, then to Cloughmills for a meeting of synod; to Belfast for a CU small group reunion on Thursday, then to Newtownards on Friday to drop off a wedding present. In between times we chased cows up and down roads, changed fences, and worked on various lessons for our separate mission teams.

Saturday was running errands around Coleraine day, and the Glenmanus RP Go Team arrived Saturday evening. Yesterday, we went for a soaking wet walk on the beach after church, and today we handed out leaflets all morning. This afternoon we had a Bible study and raided the church loft for games equipment.

I said good-bye to almost everyone this evening. If nothing else, it's simply strange not to be here, not to be able to meet up with Emmaline and Catherine and Rachel and Daphne and Amy and everyone. Unnatural. I hate the string of good-byes, leaving people behind one after the other, not knowing when I'll see them again. I already miss them, missing part of my body, and I haven't even left the country yet.

None of this is particularly newsworthy, though. Second verse, same as the first (almost, anyway). I want to be in one place with the people I love. Nothing new or different.

But that desire isn't enough. Trying to satisfy oneself on one's friends is dangerous. For one thing, it imperils the friendship, I think. Expecting too much puts pressure on everyone and diminishes the existence of Christlike grace in the relationship. Even simply wanting to be happy isn't enough. Happiness lasts for five minutes and ends as soon as the conversation or meal or afternoon is over. Despite that, I go to these things for satisfaction. I go to them again and again, like the Samaritan woman in John 4, trying to quench my thirst without ever having rest.

Somehow it sounds proud to say, 'I'll settle for nothing less than God Himself!' As though I'm so high-and-mighty that nothing else is good enough. Yet since our greatest act of pride was to decide that we would be the ones to choose what satisfied us, not God, perhaps it is actually an act of humility to set everything else aside. To lay aside all my attempts to make everything play out perfectly, all my attempts to please everyone. To say that none of that matters, only God and obeying His revealed will.

But that's very hard. My habits refuse to die. I'd much rather be pleased right here, right now, rather than pursuing some far-off, invisible satisfaction.

To that question it would be so easy to give the pat answer, 'Aha! Your satisfaction has been made visible! Christ was incarnate, and now He reigns in Heaven!' It is true, truth of truths, but the fact that my mind spits that answer out so easily reflects a lack of real understanding--of how deep my sin runs, of how much agony results from seeking satisfaction in other places, of how painful it is to pursue Christ, of how much Christ's incarnation cost for Him.

The truth is that I probably won't ever be at peace on this earth. Tiredness, loneliness, and despair will probably be an ingredient of most days here because I am sinful and so are the people around me.

On Saturday night, Emmaline chose James 1:2-5 as the Holiday Bible Club memory verse. God gives generously. And 'He rewards those who seek Him' (Hebrews 11:6). I need to devote myself so much more to learning about Him, to thinking about what He has done and what His will in the Scriptures means. So that when I am thirsty like this and dead tired, I can have real comfort, not just in 'Oh, you'll see them again,' or even 'Oh, you're going to Heaven,' but in the Lord Himself, who is the centre of every friendship and the crown of Heaven's glory.

Now Playing: Indelible Grace, 'Pilgrim Days', 'Psalm 73'.

Nicole and I arrived safely in Belfast on May 22, took the bus, and got to Renwick at about one o'clock in the afternoon. We spent the weekend with Rachel and Daphne in their house up the Stranmillis Road. Everyone was revising for exams, so Nicole and I spent most of the time either sleeping or wandering around the city. The spring continental market was on in front of city hall, so we went down there and tried some of the exotic foods one lunchtime. The roses were just beginning to bloom in the gardens. We went to church at Shaftesbury Square on Sabbath day, and Rosemary cooked lunch for a whole bunch of us at her house afterward.

On Tuesday, Nicole and I flew over to Edinburgh, where we met Alyson. She gave us both enormous hugs. We walked the Royal Mile and, purely by accident, chose the most American restaurant on the Mile for lunch. Then took the bus to St. Andrew's, where we spent a couple of nights, helping Alyson pack, eating fish-and-chips, and going to the beach.

On Thursday, the three of us flew from Edinburgh to Pisa. Most of Europe was covered in cloud, but as we left England, I saw the white cliffs of Dover. Later, we saw the Alps, rearing massive and terrifying toward the plane. When we stepped off the plane in Pisa, the air was warm and smelled of jasmine. Blue Appenines in the distance.

Our week in Florence was lovely. We stayed in a convent in the city centre for four nights and then in a hostel on the edge of the city for three nights. The people in the convent were very kind, and the people in the hostel were entertaining (thirty French girls in the bathroom all getting ready at six o'clock one morning; a drunk Spanish guy shouting at Alyson and me one evening; a Chinese girl describing her Spanish lessons to a German girl in English at breakfast).

The city itself was very beautiful. Rich colors, warm terra cotta, gold, brown, umber, green, red. The churches and the gardens were my favorite parts, although the Accademia and Uffizi art galleries were spectacular in their own way. Santa Croce, San Maria Novella, and Orsanmichele, the three churches we saw properly, were all so beautiful. Full of frescoes by famous Renaissance and medieval painters, forests of arched columns, tombs of famous thinkers and artists. We went to mass in the Duomo on Sabbath day, which was quite an experience. At the moment when the priest elevated the host, not only was the organ playing, but suddenly the bells began to ring in the campanile far overhead, and the noise filled the enormous space, magnificent echoes rippling through the massive domes.

The food was also good. Our best meals were actually the ones we scraped together in grocery stores: bread, strange cheese, and whatever meat looked good. Nicole usually chose the cheese, and it was always something none of us had seen before (except the first day, when we ate gorgonzola). The fresh peaches, strawberries, and grapes were absolutely delicious.

We spent all of one day walking around gardens on one of the hilltops. Of course that was the one day it rained, but still, the gardens were quite lovely. Not much was blooming, but it was refreshing to wander down long aisles of trees after spending several days trying to navigate on the city streets.

On Thursday, we flew from Pisa to Edinburgh, and the three of us spent the night in a hostel just off the Mile. Alyson left early in the morning to return to the States. Strange to have our trip over and our threesome split up. Nicole and I flew to Belfast that day, and the Wilsons met us at the airport. We spent the weekend with them and went to Trinity on Sabbath day. Everyone welcomed us back. The Flemings and Officers each have a beautiful new baby girl. The Flemings' girl shares my middle name, and the Officers' girl just couldn't stop smiling at Nicole.

Sabbath evening, Mr. and Mrs. W took us back to Rachel and Daphne's house in Belfast, where we spent the night. At a quarter past four Monday morning, Nicole and I walked down to the Europa station, where she got the bus to the airport. Strange and sad to say good-bye, to have all our planning and sightseeing and fellowship over for the moment.

I spent Monday and Tuesday with Catherine mostly. We went up to Ballymoney on Tuesday, and from there we drove to Portstewart Strand Tuesday afternoon. The day was beautiful, light rippling over the small green hills as over water, vibrant, living colors. The sea was rich cobalt, very calm, sailboats on the water. Clouds were coming up over the cliffs of Donegal to the south, but Catherine and I spent a couple of restful hours lying on the sand dunes in the sunshine.

Then she left me at the McCollums' house in time for tea. It was as though I'd never been away. This morning Mr. M had Emmaline and me both up to chase cows into the fields after they'd been milked, and then Emmaline and I drove to Lisburn. I'm spending the afternoon in her uncle's house while she and their family go to a funeral, and then we're going to a meeting of the Northern Irish Reformed Presbyterian synod this evening.

On Monday I met Catherine at Queen's gates at half nine. Or rather, was supposed to. She came running across the road at ten o'clock, breathless, and told me the following tale.

She woke up at a quarter past six Monday morning to get the bus from Ballymoney to the train in Ballymena to Belfast. But when she got on the bus to get the train, the driver asked her for eight pounds for the ticket. She only had four.

So she got off the bus, went home, and drove down to get the train from Antrim to Belfast. Having arrived in Belfast, she walked to the house on the Donegal Road where she and Amy will live next year. As soon as she opened the door, the alarm went off. For five minutes at least she was standing in the front hallway, with the door open and the alarm blasting, shouting, 'I can't hear you!' to Amy down the phone while Amy tried to tell her the code for the alarm, and a group of interested people lounged outside and watched.

When the alarm finally turned off, she dragged her suitcase up the three or four flights of steep stairs to Amy's room, dumped it down on Amy's bed, glanced down at her jeans, and realized that there was dirt all over her jeans. That happened to be the only pair of jeans she owns. As she took them off to put them in the wash, she realized that the dirt was also all over Amy's duvet cover and blanket, and then all the way up the stairs and across the kitchen floor. So she put things into the wash, mopped the floor, and at long last ran to meet me outside Queen's.

On our way down to city centre, we stopped so that she could take money out. When she opened her wallet, there was a twenty pound note tucked into one of the creases.

At the moment I am sitting in Rachel M's house in Belfast, attempting to use her housemate Estelle's computer.

The flight from Houston to London Heathrow left on time, at half four in the afternoon, Texas time. It was a packed flight. I sat between a husband and wife, and Nicole was three rows behind me, beside a mother and son on their way to South Africa. We handed a couple of notes to each other. The flight was nine hours and ten minutes long. I watched The Tale of Despereaux during tea (chicken and rice--I was so nervous that I could hardly bear to eat it), tried to sleep while listening to the FOTR soundtrack on my MP3 player, listened to 'Indelible Grace: Pilgrim Days' while reading Sophie's World, and watched the first half of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring while I ate breakfast.

We had a long slow descent to Heathrow. The weather in London was actually good, mostly sunny. Finding our way out was a little confusing, but we ended up in the right line for going through customs together. We found our bags no problem and began the trek to the Aer Lingus check-in. This involved asking directions of two polite British women, trundling down the main hallway of one terminal, descending into the bowels of the subway system underneath the airport, riding a crowded train, then getting off the train, taking the lift up, and walking 300 metres (though it seemed like a lot farther) through cold tiled passageways. We found the check-in eventually, checked in, went through security again, and traipsed through the airport to the gate. Five minutes after we arrived (in typical lackadaisical style) the flight began to board.

Touchdown in Belfast was smooth. It was chilly and raining only very slightly. It took ages for Nicole and me to get our luggage, and then we caught the bus to Europa. The ride took a long time, too. Green fields, hawthorn and furze in bloom, young sheep and baby horses, brown cows. The windmills on the Antrim hills, the fields in their crazy patchwork, huddles of grey sheds around farmhouses. The outskirts of Belfast, the familiar hulking shape of Cave Hill. Nicole pointed excitedly at Belfast Castle. I pointed out the H&W cranes to her. She stared in amazement at the ruined church on the M2 as we entered the city. The bus trundled through city centre, past Marks & Spencer, Castlecourt, City Hall. There's a spring market on. The Belfast Eye is still in operation, and a gilded carousel had been set up among the wee white booths on the lawn.

We got off at Europa and made the long walk up to Renwick. Paused at the garden by the Moravian church because Nicole was drawn to the smell of green. Admired the dresses in the bt9 window. A few of the shops along the way has changed, but not much is different. We trundled our suitcases down Elmwood Avenue. The ivy growing on the chapel was pale green, and the elm trees were lush with leaves.

As we approached Renwick, I glimpsed Emmaline through the window and pulled a face at her. I saw her jump up and run for the door, so I dropped my bag and ran for the door, and then she and Rachel came spilling out on top of us. A very noisy happy reunion. The three of us were laughing so hard. It seemed like a dream. We hauled our suitcases up into the hall. Phil and Ian were standing in the door of Room 1 (Phil is Warden now) and said hello. Catherine came running down the stairs to spring a huge hug on me. We went into the common room. Linsey was there, and so were Catherine L. and Heather. I sat in the window with Nicole and Rachel, beside Emmaline and Catherine.

Emmaline had a French exam at half two, so when she went to get lunch from the kitchen, Rachel, Linsey, and Heather took Nicole and me down the street to Oasis. It's a Friday, so not many people are up, and the cafe wasn't very busy. We had hardly stepped in when who should come running up to me but Sarah W. It was lovely to see her since I hadn't expected that until another couple of weeks. She has braces now. After we ordered our food, we sat down. When I went to pick up my sandwich, I shouted Calvin's name: there he was standing at the counter, and he turned around and gawked at me as though I were a ghost. 'What're you doin' here?' he asked, and I chatted with him a little.

After lunch, we went back to Renwick. Picked up our luggage, and then Rachel walked us over to her house. It's in St. Ives Gardens off Stranmilis Road. Rachel's house is on the left side of the road, blue door, frosted glass panes. Nicole was nearly dropping with exhaustion. Rachel's roommate Estelle greeted us when we stepped from the narrow entry hall into the living area. It's a very nice apartment. Six girls share it. It's tall and narrow, with odd flights of stairs up and down leading to the bedrooms. The big room on the ground floor has sofas at one end and a kitchen at the other. White and yellow and cream, welcoming. Estelle and Rachel made us at home immediatey. Estelle made tea, and she and Rachel found a ridiculous video of Daphne on their 'house computer'. Rachel helped us carry our bags upstairs. Nicola, one of her housemates, has mostly moved out of her room, so we're staying there on her double bed. It's a nice wee room, tucked under the roof, with a window. Skylights in this house. Back downstairs, Nicole fell asleep on the sofa. Estelle left with a friend, and Rachel eventually left to revise.

So I've been sitting quietly on the living room sofa, typing this and chatting with my mother on Google. Nicole is still asleep. I've drunk my tea. The sun has begun to come out a little through the skylight, showing a deep blue sky behind.

Thank God for His mercy, which lasts forever.

Summer Conference was refreshing and good fun, as I hope you can tell from the pictures.

Tomorrow Nicole and I leave for Belfast. Pray for us! I'll try to update in the next six weeks as I have opportunity.

Photos!

Here.

And here.

Moved out today.

Woke up at seven o'clock and lay in bed, too tired to move, for awhile. Rachel was sound asleep. When I finally did get up and dress, I noted gloomily that the pavement outside was wet. I ate breakfast while reading Flannery O'Connor, suitably depressing.

After Rachel went out to meet with a professor, I put on headphones and spent all morning listening to sermons while I packed up almost all of my possessions. Listening to the riches of God's grace, His effectual invitation to us, the wonderful promises that we will be like Christ, the truth that the commandments are in themselves promises of our future Christ-likeness, and so forth, took some of the sting out of the melancholy work. I hate saying good-bye to places.

I started to carry things down to the Tank: boxes of kitchen supplies, mostly, and the lamps, baskets, and a few other odds and ends. The rain was sprinkling the pavement, misting the cardboard as I shoved the boxes into place in the trunk of the car.

Once I had packed everything I could on my own, I went to the caf and picked up lunch. It was half twelve. Back in the apartment, Rachel was there. She got lunch from the caf, too, and we sat and chatted while we ate on the floor. Talked about economics and writing parodies of the Austrian school in the vein of Lewis Carroll's "Walrus and the Carpenter". Rain rattled against the windows, and the afternoon gloaming stretched chill and dreary over blank walls.

Rachel spent the afternoon working; I spent it reading O'Connor. The stories were so depressing, though, that I really ought to have worked instead.

At half two, my father and Stephen arrived from Stillwater with the minivan. They loaded the mattress and box springs into the minivan, and then it began to rain again in earnest. While they loaded the rest of the furniture, Rachel and I carried more things down to the Tank. We managed to fit almost everything into the Tank until my father realized that my desk wasn't going to fit into the minivan. So we rearranged everything--but by the time he was finished, everything had a place, stowed away in some nook or cranny of one of the two cars.

Once the cars were loaded, we went up to the apartment to regroup. Rachel had been helping us valiantly. I opened the wee box my father had brought from home: a necklace, my parents' graduation present to me. Lovely. My father had a gift for Rachel, too, a book about George Whitefield. Then we said good-bye to Rachel and headed out. Stephen rode with me in the Tank. We left before my father, but we got stuck in a traffic jam just after we merged onto the highway. So when we arrived at the first toll booth, there was the minivan right ahead of us--I have no idea how he did it. It made Stephen and me laugh, though.

We talked most of the time. I kept awake by asking Stephen random questions. We watched patches of vivid red Indian paintbrush slide through on the road embankments, and I saw a tiny black hummingbird in one of them. It rained the whole way.

In Stillwater, my mother welcomed us in the kitchen. She was making chili and cornbread for tea. Laura came bouncing downstairs. While she and I emptied the smaller things out of the cars, my father and Stephen carried the furniture into the entryway. Laura and I filled my room with boxes, suitcases, lamps, baskets, etc. Then she left to take a final exam. I spent half-an-hour or so tidying the place up.

My parents, Stephen, and I sat down to tea together at six o'clock. We had chili, brown rice, and cornbread. Stared at the sodden lawn with the rain steadily falling. We talked about moving, about Laura's graduation next week, about birds (I saw a goldfinch outside), about OSU and finals. It was good to sit and talk for awhile about things.

At seven o'clock I drove downtown for a haircut. The Greenery was open unusually late. Mrs. H was just putting the finishing touches on the styles of two women, one older and one middle aged, while a large middle aged man sat and watched. When I sat down, he immediately started to ask me questions, which I answered as politely as I could.

After the trio left, and Mrs. H had shampooed my hair, she cut it, laughing and laughing about her three guests. She and the other stylist told some pretty sad stories about their family and the family feuds that they've heard about. "It always makes me thankful that my daughters are healthy and walking with the Lord and living reasonably normal lifestyles," Mrs. H declared.

I drove home through persistent mizzle. Laura, Stephen, and my parents were watching "Loony Tunes". Then my father read a Sherlock Holmes mystery. I sat in the living room with everyone. My mother was ironing and Laura and Stephen were eating dried cranberries. The mystery was long and convoluted and not finished until nine o'clock. Then we did family worship. Psalm 139B tonight, so good, "If I say, 'Darkness covers me', the darkness hides not from Thee. To Thee both night and day are bright; the darkness shines as the light."

After family worship, I said good-bye to everyone. Laura bounced all over me. They stood on the front porch and waved good-bye through the rain.

Back on campus, I went up to the apartment. RCS was talking on the phone with her family. The apartment seems large and bare, cold, lit by the fluorescent lights. Not too unbearable, though. Both the sofas are still here, and Rachel's photos and posters on the walls. Rachel and I chatted for awhile. Told each other about our afternoons, laughed about our families. Then she gave me a poster as a gift, a beautiful map of Middle Earth. I was so delighted.

I'm sleepy.... Rachel sits on the floor by the red sofa, working on History of Economic Thought, her enormous binder spread beside her. Rain patters on the windows, and the lights hum monotonously.

All the

WHITE RABBITS

got flooded out by the rain.

Now Playing: J.S. Bach, "Passacaille and Fugue BWV 582", "Prelude & Fugue in A Minor BWV 543", from his organ works.

Writing for ENGL 4863 all evening. Ecstatic.

More pictures here.

Now Playing: Blavet, Vivaldi, and Bach.

Today.

At half seven, Mrs. S came to take Rachel and me to breakfast at Panera. We met Mrs. P there: she's one of Rachel's good friends from Grace Bible Church, an older woman. Panera was crowded at breakfast, of course. The four of us sat at a small high table in a corner by a window. The ladies were very kind and friendly.

After, Mrs. S dropped me off at the apartment, taking Rachel on to her class in Chapman at half nine. I finished my devotions, sitting in a patch of sunshine. I love noticing the way the light falls differently in different seasons. On winter afternoons, the sunshine slanted through the south-facing window, making an oblong behind my desk. On spring mornings, it slants from the north, long over the blue armchair.

The verse today: "Light is sown for the righteous, and joy for the upright in heart." God has planted gladness for me, even if I do not reap the fruit yet.

I walked to Tyrrell to practice before HON at eleven o'clock. As I walked to HON, I stared at the day. Glorious day, peerless sunshine, blue skies. In HON today, we discussed the crisis in Darfur and whether the U.S. should be involved. I picked up a salad in the food court, then drove to Woodward Park to meet Tara for lunch. Lunchtime traffic around Utica Square was heavy, so it wasn't until nearly one o'clock that I got to the park.

The park was a little bit crowded. Tara had spread herself out on the lawn near the rose gardens. The roses aren't blooming yet, though the dogwoods and azaleas on the hillside facing 21st Street are making a luscious display of red, magenta, and white against the dark oak trees. Tara and I ate our lunches in the warm sunshine. We watched people walking dogs, notably a pair of very cheerful beagles and an enormous imperturbable Husky, behind us.

I left at about a quarter to two in order to meet Dr. E at two o'clock for another independent study. Then I practiced for another hour in Tyrrell, playing through the pieces slowly with the metronome. That helped ease the nerves a little. All day long I'd been telling myself to relax, relax, relax. As I stepped out of Tyrrell, the sunshine engulfed me. I flopped down on the U, firm cool grass under my back, and spread my arms out to the sunshine.

As I lay there, Jenny M. joined me. Rachel joined us, and then Hannah came strolling insouciantly across the grass. The four of us sprawled together in the sunshine. Conversation trailed off into comfortable silence. We all just lay there in the sunshine on our stomachs, listening to cardinals singing around campus.

Jenny went to choir at five o'clock. At half five, Hannah went to work. Then Rachel and I went back to the apartment. We opened all the windows. I washed dishes, then made a sandwich for myself for tea, and wrote e-mails.

I left for Tyrrell at ten to seven. I felt small and incongruous: pink brocade dress, flip-flops, and enormous black backpack. At Tyrrell, Professor R had already set up the stage. Michele joined us. We ran through a few spots in some of the pieces, getting used to the hall again and to the rhythms. Now that the time had finally come, I was actually not as nervous as I'd expected. Not paralyzed, anyway. My parents and Stephen arrived. I stepped outside with my mother. Abby was perched on the stone steps outside Tyrrell, watching Annabelle running over the grass, collecting sweet gum balls. Rachel Jr. and Nicole showed up, then Stephen N., then the Hs. I stood outside joking around with them for awhile.

Finally I went indoors, slipped into the cool musty recital hall and into the strange space backstage. All sorts of odds and ends are stored back there, and the ventilation system makes weird noises. I sat on an old wooden chair under a partially-boarded window and was quiet.

Michele came backstage. Took a few minutes to breathe--the dress restricts that a little--before we went onstage. There were perhaps twenty-five people present, mostly from RUF. And so we launched into the recital. The Blavet was a wee bit stunted. Not too dreadful, but not perfect. I was glad when it was over. All those repeats make me nervous. Michele and I went backstage, I shook out my tight muscles, she took a drink, and then we went back on again for the Vivaldi. Joy and delight. Then, at last, came the Bach. It's a weighty ordeal, like trying to muster a cathedral out of a flute and a keyboard. It went off fairly well. We bowed, then went backstage, so I went on again, and bowed, and everyone stood and applauded, which made me very happy.

After the recital was over, I went down to say hello to everyone. Even Dr. S was there. Everyone was so kind. My mother had brought fruit and cake, which everyone enjoyed in the hallway afterward. Stood around chatting. Crystal approved of my outfit; Annabelle kept running up to give me hugs. Abby laughed that she had heard the word "Princess" several times during the evening. Gradually people began to leave. RUF was at nine o'clock. Philip and I stayed with my family, cleared away the leftover food, chatted. Then we said good-night. They left. Philip went to an ultimate frisbee game.

I walked back to my apartment with the strange sense of pointlessness that comes after a performance of any sort. I changed clothes, then walked to RUF. Marc was just starting his sermon. Last RUF.

Afterward, I put things away in the apartment. Rachel and I chatted for a wee while about the recital and her mother's visit. Then I settled down to write this. The windows are open. Chilly evening air seeps through the screen. And noises, noises, noises. Cars driving through the car park; an Iranian chap on his mobile phone; people talking. The train whistles blowing, as they always do at night. Emergency sirens. The buzz of air conditioners. I'm tired.

Pictures here.

Now Playing: Handel, Messiah, "I Know That My Redeemer Liveth".

Our call to worship today was Hosea 6:1-3:

"Come, and let us return to the LORD; for He has torn, but He will heal us; He has stricken, but He will bind us up. After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, that we may live in His sight. Let us know, let us pursue the knowledge of the LORD. His going forth is established as the morning; He will come to us like the rain, like the latter and former rain to the earth."

Something beautifully appropriate about these verses, especially today. As we worshipped, it poured outside, a long gentle soaking rain. After the huge wildfires in Oklahoma this past week, the rain was a welcome change.

I love the way this passage demonstrates the union of Christ and His people. Christ is stricken with us, and as He was raised up, so we will be. The passage talks about God reviving His people on the third day--what appears to apply specifically only to Christ applies to us, too, as His body.

I was just reading Rachel's and Leslie's posts, which are also appropriate to today. There has been so much hurt and pain, so much dying over this past term, over this past year. I, too, need the reminder that my Redeemer lives, and that in my flesh I shall see God, I myself will see Him with my own eyes, I and not another. (Job 19:26-27)

That truth stands under and above and around all the chaos and fragmentation and alienation, all the despair and helplessness and fear. Christ lives. He rules now over all of this. And the leaves of the Tree in Heaven will be for the healing of the nations, for our healing.

"How my heart yearns within me!"

Now Playing: Chris Thile, "Stealing Second", Track 3, "Kneel Before Him".

I've been noticing how loudly I'm being told to go elsewhere for safety. For meaning, for security.

In HON, we're reading The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future, Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30. You can guess the whole book from the title. Perhaps the author has a point. But my main concern emerged as I read his endless lists of cultural icons that have been forgotten by young Americans (supposedly). What a Marxist critic would call "cultural capital": the Mona Lisa, Michelangelo, Beethoven, Bach, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Jane Austen, Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky, and the rest.

The author seems to think that if you don't know who these people and ideas are, then you're not a complete person. Somehow being without these great philosophical trends of Western civilization diminishes your humanity. Therefore, be liberal arts majors, everyone!

Or, if you'd rather be rich than cultured, listen to the President of the university. He quoted the father of an alumnus who has made millions on starting car rental agencies: "The only way to be successful is to work twelve hours a day, seven days a week." Work hard, make lots of money, donate to the university, and you'll be a successful person.

Or, if you'd rather spend that money than make it, listen to the shops in the mall. Glossy photos of models sporting the latest fashions. Enticing smells from food kiosks. Glamorous posters on the wall of the cinema and the pervasive smell of stale popcorn. Buy! Be entertained! Watch Brad Pitt, wear American Eagle or Fossil, patronize Victoria's Secret! Define yourself by your possessions, by your consumption!

Tacitly accompanying this message: Be popular. If you don't dress right, don't laugh at the jokes, don't use the language, don't listen to the music, then you're "out". Not wanted. Not worth much.

Or, if you'd rather not make money or spend it, or know anything either, then be a bohemian. Listen to Sarah Bareilles and Augustana, who told the crowd over and over again, "All you need is love! Love, love, love!" Shout it to the world and listen to the world shout it back to you. And if you aren't satisfied with your latest partner, write an angry song that blasts vitriol and electric guitar so loudly that it breaks everyone else's eardrums with your broken heart.

One more thing: Don't think that if you're a Christian, you're immune. We still have the propensity toward idolatry even after we're redeemed. We may try to satisfy ourselves with our spouse's love, our children, our friends, our service opportunities, our tithing, our doctrine, or whatever, but if it replaces God, then it is as hollow as any of the "bad" things listed above.

With so many enemies, enemies outside and enemies within, I wonder sometimes how any of us can ever leave this world and enter Heaven safely.

"Do not fear, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name; you are Mine."

Now Playing: Chris Thile, "Not All Who Wander Are Lost", Track 1, "Song for a Young Princess".

10 April 2009.

Rachel was away yesterday evening to Colorado for the weekend, so I woke this morning in an empty apartment. It was a cold, grey day outside. At half eight I was supposed to go to a breakfast for scholarship students. Accordingly I dressed up in business casual and hunched my way over to Collins Hall, the new administration building.

On the upper level outside a very posh meeting room, we were greeted by the President of the University and his staffr. They treated us as though we were royalty, nudged us first towards the food, seated us at an enormous sleek table, and entertained us for an hour with conversation.

As soon as it was over, I went back to the apartment, put on jeans, and went to the library to work on a HIST paper. At one o'clock, I went to HIST. Back in the apartment, I ate crackers, carrots, and peanut butter for lunch. The apartment was small, quiet, and grey, silent, the still, colorless light of the grey day outside lingering on empty furniture and pale walls. After I ate, I finished The Age of Innocence, which I've been reading for pleasure.

The book ended with a quiet poignance, somehow fitting the still, empty room. I curled up on the sofa and fell asleep.

I worked for an hour or so until Crystal rang me. The two of us met down in the car park at five o'clock and drove to Woodland Mall to shop for "accessories" to go with my senior recital dress. Emmaline complained that she hates shopping with me because I always know exactly what I want, and the unfortunate Crystal had to put up with the same thing. We spent two-and-a-half hours wandering around the mall. We weren't in a particular hurry, and Crystal enjoys shopping, and I enjoyed being with her.

We were back on campus by eight o'clock. I retreated to my apartment, ate leftovers for tea, and watched darkness fill the sky.

At half eight, Philip rang me to say that he and DMac were heading over to the basketball stadium for the concert. Every year, the university puts on a week of activities for students called Springfest, and the activities always culminate in a free Friday night concert.

So Philip, DMac, and I joined DMo, Kathryn, Nick, and Amy Sf. in the stands. The stage was in the centre of the floor with about a third of the court roped off for the audience and the rest of the court off limits behind barricades. It was set up, but the band hadn't started to perform yet. I sat with Philip and some of his engineering friends in the row in front of the others. Sarah Bareilles was the first act we saw. When the bass began, DMac shouted, "I can feel the air hitting me!", and Philip and I nodded back--could feel it pounding in my torso. Also there were spotlights, ostensibly to add to the hype, but really to blind all of us, DMac thought.

Sarah B. was a pop singer, fluttery and flirty. Like a pink butterfly. "She's a female musician," Philip laughed at me when I was laughing at her. All her songs were love songs. A couple of them were alright; they were all fluff. She played piano and ukelele and had guitar, bass, and drums (all guys). There was a small crowd on the floor around the stage, but almost everyone was sitting in the stands. Joanna and Nicole showed up for the last two songs.

After her band, there was a very long intermission in which the stage was rearranged three or four different times. I perched on the back of my chair and talked to Joanna and Nicole. Philip disappeared.

When Augustana finally came onstage, Philip reappeared on the bleacher steps, shouting at all of us to come down. Joanna, Nicole, and I ran down the steps onto the court. More and more people were making a crowd on the court. As Augustana started their first song, Philip got down on his hands and knees, and I climbed onto his shoulders. I found myself suddenly way above the rest of the crowd, fairly close to the stage. At first we were both nervous, Philip holding tightly to my legs and me swaying tensely, but then we both loosened up and started to dance a little bit. Nicole and Joanna were laughing at us. The adrenaline rush was pretty incredible. Unfortunately, when he put me back down, poor Philip got his hand stepped on, which made me feel awful.

Augustana was an all-guys band. The phrase "effeminate Greeks!" kept trickling into my mind from (Roman) HIST this afternoon. The lead singer, as I said earlier, was high, and somehow appeared to become more and more high over the course of the concert. His mannerisms, his face, the way he sang all reminded everyone of Captain Jack Sparrow. It was fun to watch the band, though--they all seemed to be enjoying themselves thoroughly, and enjoying one another.

In the middle of the concert, I suddenly found myself surrounded by a bunch of guys I didn't know but whose voices were vaguely familiar. It took me a moment to realize that they were pointing at the Queen's crest on my hoodie and to recognize their accents. Philip, DMac, Joanna, and Nicole turned around and stared. It was very hard to talk in the middle of the crowd with the band playing right above us, but there was something wonderfully surreal about discussing Coleraine and Belfast in shouts.

So the rest of the concert I stood a little behind everyone else, standing on tiptoe to try to see the stage, my head in a blur of sound. The lead singer rattled off the usual derisive comments about Tulsa, Oklahoma, and our school spirit (or lack thereof).

The concert ended at a quarter past eleven. I ran up to my apartment. It was quiet and dark.

It's been a surreal day. I shall post more tomorrow. For now:

Tonight I went to my first concert, consisting of Sarah Bareilles and Augustana.

The lead singer of Augustana was extremely high, became more so over the course of the concert (if that's possible), and reminded everyone of Johnny Depp. (*cough*)

In the middle of the concert, I was suddenly surrounded by four Northern Irish guys. (Only knew one of them, Ciaran.) All of them were amazed at the QUB hoodie, and we all pulled out our QUB ID cards with the horrendous photos to show each other as though we were wee kids showing off the latest toys. Philip slagged me off for "breaking out the Northern Irish accent", and before they left, they all gave me enormous hugs--!

Oh, yes, and I also spent the entire first Augustana song sitting on Philip's shoulders, way above the crowd, practically in the band's faces (it seemed at the time), trying to keep my balance while we both danced.

And now I'm thankful for peace and quiet.

Now Playing: Bach, "Sonata in B Minor", "Andante." Two weeks until my recital! Augh!

Burroughs on discontentment and using God's mercies now to fight discontentment:

“To be discontented in any afflicted condition is sinful and evil, but to be discontented when we are in the midst of God’s mercies, when we are not able to count the mercies of God, still to be discontented because we have not got all we would have, this is a greater evil.” (Ch. 10)

“… Job helped himself against all murmuring thoughts against the ways of God, with this consideration, that he had received so much good from the Lord.” (Ch. 10)

“If you do not make the mercies of God help you against your murmuring, you will make them aggravations of the sin of murmuring.” (Ch. 10)

Burroughs comparing us to old horses--old horses don't do much work, so they are turned out to pasture and not fed as much: “… when our consciences tell us we live and do but little service for God, why, what if God should turn us upon the commons? We are being fed according to our work.” (Ch. 10)

“[Of walking with God like Enoch] To observe what work God is now about, and to join with God in that work of his; so that, according as God turns this way or that way, the heart should turn with God, and have workings suitable to the workings of God toward him.” (Ch. 10)

Now Playing: Chris Thile, "Stealing Second", Track 7, "Leaves Fall".

“[Discontent] takes away the present comfort of what you have, because you have not something that you would have.” (Ch. 9)

“Do you think that the Lord will come in mercy a whit the sooner because of the murmuring of your spirits? …. And this is the very reason why many mercies are denied to you, because of your discontent.” (Ch. 9)

“So when we are content with our conditions, and what God disposes of us to be in, there is a blessing in it, then it is sweet to us, but if we must needs have more, and keep it longer than God would have us to have it, then there will be worms in it and it will be no good at all..” (Ch. 9)

(Burroughs is comparing God's blessings to manna in the quote above. As the manna that the Israelites collected went bad the next day if they collected too much, so God's blessings will go bad if we cling to them instead of to Him.)

“God may justly withdraw his care of you, and his protection over you, seeing God cannot please you in his administrations.” (Ch. 9)

(Burroughs)

Sobering and a little terrifying. Not that God will ever remove His love from us, but even loving discipline appears frightening, especially when one is in the middle of it.

Now Playing: Beethoven, Symphony No. 6, "Allegro Ma Non Troppo", which is usually on the playlist on cool days when the windows are open.

My poor sad lonely blog needs something to cheer it up, so I'll give it the story of today.

At a quarter to nine, I drove to Brady Heights for a community garden workday.

At the Ps' house, everyone was still praying. I stood upstairs on the threshold of the dining room while the group around the table finished praying through Psalm 51. After prayer, Tara beckoned me into the room. I sat at the dining room table, and Leah put a steaming piece of spinach quiche in front of me. Justin fed Augie pieces of very soft banana; Ellie and Ian rattled around the house with plastic trucks, and so forth.

It was about ten o'clock when people began to leave. Tara and I walked down to the garden together. The morning was cool and very, very windy from all directions at once. An intensely blue sky behind budding trees. The wind whirled maple helicopters everywhere, rough yellowing seed wings twirling through the air. Tara and I showed Ellie and Anna how to throw them up in the air so that they spun.

Jeremy and Justin were both working on pulling up weeds and sod between the beds, so Tara and I found shovels and joined in. When we got tired of yanking up dandelions and henbit (that tufted stuff with the wee purple flowers that comes up so enchantingly every spring over every available inch of ground), Tara showed me her garden. She has a nice crop of kale right now, as well as chamomile and curry bushes. Anna and Ellie were riding their bicycles up and down the neighbor's driveway and helping us feed grubs to the chickens.

Tara and I started to haul mulch from the foot of the garden to the cleared places between the beds. We had a couple of wheelbarrows and a pitchfork between us. It wasn't until after we had both gotten splinters in our hands that Justin mentioned casually that he had a bag of gloves we could use...!

The morning became warmer as it went on. Tara and I worked away. David B. came over from his house to help, with a wee baby strapped to his chest. Jenna came out to say hello, carrying Autumn. When she came out, we all stopped working and gathered around the picnic tables for a drink of water. Ian, Ellie, and Anna started to fish the ice cubes out of the pitcher, and after that no one particularly wanted a drink.

At about half twelve, Tara and I walked back to her house. I sat at the dining room table while Tara made lunch. Tara boiled pasta and sauteed onions, mushrooms, and the kale in a saucepan. We ate that for lunch along with homemade bread, real butter, and raspberry jam. Tara was doing her best to be a good conversationalist, but I was too dozy.

Driving back toward campus after lunch, I realized with some surprise that I feel guilty being happy. I've forgotten how it's done. Happiness seems like a strange trick, trying to loosen muscles that are always tense.

On campus, Rachel was studying in our apartment. I wrote a HIST paper, rang my family, and sent out invitations to my senior recital. After RCS went running, I walked to the library to print off my paper, then lay in the grass on the new U for awhile, reading for ENGL 4863. While I was lying on the grass, the afternoon was beginning to be overcast. Long clouds coming up from the west, blowing over the sun.

At six o'clock, Rachel and I walked over to ACAC for the Indian Student Association evening. The festival was being held upstairs in the great hall. We found an empty table and sat down. The main part of the evening was dancing, of course: Bollywood, "classical", and hip-hop/classical/Bollywood fusion. Katie danced with one of the groups. It was all flashy colorful costumes, jangling jewelry, and loud pumping music.

Towards the end of the program, tea was served. Everyone got up to eat at once, probably between a hundred and fifty and two hundred people. Indian students, of course, dressed in brightly-colored clothes with gold embroidery. Asian students, too, and then a fair number of other TU students.

Rachel and I waited in line for ages. The food was delicious, of course--spiced rice, naan bread, chicken tikka massala, and other dishes I didn't recognize--reminded me of getting Indian food with Emmaline and Rachel during exams last year.

While we ate, there was more dancing. The last dance was an impressive traditional dance, including both men and women (all the other dances had been women only). Highly choreographed, concentric circles weaving in and out of each other, each dancer holding sticks that they banged rhythmically against one another. Jumping, twirling, kneeling, leaping up again.

Rachel and I went back to our apartment. I curled up in the blue armchair to finish Castle in the Sky. Rachel has been working on her laptop most of the evening. I read "The Physician's Tale" and "The Pardoner's Tale" and ought to write a paper about them before I go to bed. The evening outside is cool.

Now Playing: Brahms, Piano Concerto No. 2, "Andante".

Burroughs:

“By murmuring you undo your prayers, for it is exceedingly contrary to the prayers that you make to God. When you come to pray to God, you acknowledge his sovereignty over you, you come there to profess yourselves to be at God’s disposal… Unless you will stand, as it were, at his disposal, never come to petition him.” (Ch. 9)

“When you are alone, you should spend your time in holy meditation, but you are spending your time in discontented thoughts.” (Ch. 9)

“… for this is the vile nature of discontent, to lessen every mercy of God…. For you say that what God gives you is nothing and only common gifts… when they are the precious graces of God’s Spirit and worth more than thousands of worlds—how ungrateful it is!” (Ch. 9)

“… if a cross comes to make the cross but little, but if there is a mercy to make the mercy great…. Thus, a godly man wonders at his cross that it is not more, a wicked man wonders his cross is so much.” (Ch. 9)

Now Playing: The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Track 1, "Prince Caspian Flees". It's been one of those days as far as music goes: LOTR soundtracks and now Narnia soundtracks. Some people who (used to) read this would be shocked.... *grin*

On Wednesday morning, which would be yesterday, at least that's what the calendar says, I woke up at half five. (Nice long run-on sentence there.) For some reason, my brain was unusually perceptive at that hour of the morning, at least that's the way it seemed. I had to wake up early to see Laura S. safely on her way to Indiana. Until I ate breakfast, my mind was full of all sorts of intriguing overlapping and intertwining ideas, but as soon as I ate, they all disappeared.

Perhaps it's for the best.

Nevertheless....

Life seems to be a perpetual waiting game right now. I feel as though I'm staring at a wall, trying to see through it, not realizing that the wall is actually a window through which I could see if I understood--the way it is at night sometimes when you look out of a lighted room or a car window.

Psalm 90 has been my fare this week, thanks to Matthew Henry and the (stilted) Heart Aflame translation of his commentary.

This Psalm is sobering. It makes human life sound futile in some sense. We are like a passing watch by night, like grass that is thrown into a fire, like yesterday. Everything we do is transient. Nothing appears to matter or have significance.

Even worse, we cling so easily to the things that aren't significant in order to find significance. Looking back on the past year, I find it so full of evil that it's discouraging. Every time I tried to do something that I thought was right, it turned out to be wrong. Half the time I wasn't even trying to do what was right but just trying to survive. It all looks very futile.

Back to Psalm 90. The end of the Psalm, vs. 17, has always terrified me a wee bit. The Psalmist prays for God to "establish the work of our hands on us". I have never particularly wanted my work to be established on me. But Calvin says this about that verse:

"Although God converts to good in the end whatever Satan and the reprobate plot and practise against Him or His people; yet the Church, in which God rules with undisturbed sway, has in this respect a special privilege. By His providence, which to us is incomprehensible, He directs His work in regard to the reprobate externally; but He governs His believing people internally by His Holy Spirit; and therefore He is properly said to order or direct the work of their hands.

"The repetition shows that a continual course of perseverance in the grace of God is required. It would not be enough for us to be brought to the midst of our journey. He must enable us to complete the whole course."

I've been praying for God to redeem the past year. Though I still think that prayer is a proper one to pray, Calvin here seems to suggest something more powerful--that God has "undisturbed sway" over His church (see the end of Ephesians 1) internally, that He is directing us from the inside despite our sin.

Also, it is not we that must persevere in the grace of God. Calvin means (unclear translation here, I think) that the grace of God is the "thing" doing the perseverance, not us.

I return to the metaphor of the believer being like a tree in Psalm 1. I want to be doing, to be adding, to be working hard, exerting all my effort. Though obedience is necessary and good, I wonder if it wouldn't be better sometimes to remember that it's not the obedience that saves.

Simply existing for God's glory, like a tree, is far better than working like a gerbil on a treadmill to be perfect. Crystal pointed out one afternoon while we were walking past the chapel that trees grow with their branches constantly spread to the sun, always in a posture of prayer--like the stability believers should have, constantly waiting on God.

Now Playing: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe soundtrack, credits song by Imogen Heap, "Can't Take It In".

It's been awhile since I've posted any Burroughs, so here's some for this evening.

“How unseemly it is that you should be a slave to every cross, that every affliction shall be able to say to your soul, ‘Bow down to us’!” (Ch. 8)

“We are of one spirit with God and with Christ, and one spirit with the Holy Ghost; therefore, we should have a spirit that might manifest the glory of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in our spirits: that is, the spirit of a Christian. The spirit of a Christian should be a lion-like spirit….” (Ch. 8)

“A Christian’s profession is to be dead to the world and to be alive to God, that is his profession, to have his life hid with Christ in God, to satisfy himself in God. What! Is this your profession? And yet if you have not everything you want, you murmur and are discontented.” (Ch. 8)

“A Christian should be satisfied with what God has made the object of his faith. The object of his faith is high enough to satisfy his soul, were it capable of a thousand times more than it is…. God never promised me that I should have these comforts, at this time, and in such a way as I would have. I am discontented because I have not these things which God never yet promised me, and therefore I sin much against the Gospel, and against the grace of faith.” (Ch. 8)

Mr. C was talking to me the last time I was in Stillwater, and he said that a friend of his had compared reading The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment to a story he'd heard. Apparently a shop somewhere employs people who are disabled mentally or physically. The employees do a good job at the simple work they're given, but every few months, they forget how to do their job because of whatever disability they have. The people who own the shop have to retrain the employees several times a year to remind them what they're supposed to be doing.

That just about perfectly sums up my relationship to this book. I especially like the first and second quotes here, the second because it mentions having a "lion-like spirit". That phrase reminds me of the passage in Prince Caspian when Lucy is complaining to Aslan about having to wake her sleeping companions and Aslan must breathe on her, making her a lioness, before she can obey willingly.

I woke up so early this morning that I saw

WHITE RABBITS!