I’m back on the Five Points for the duration of the semester. Thanksgiving break was kind of a teaser… you go home, eat amazing food, spend time with family, start the Christmas music, start putting up the Christmas decorations, and make plans for the Christmas festivities… and then BAM! You get to go back to school for a lousy two and a half more weeks. Ok, I’m not that bitter, but still. I have a week and a half more of classes, followed by two reading days, and then four days of exams. I just looked up my exam schedule, and it’s actually really nice. I have four finals, but they’re all spread out… one on every day – Monday through Thursday. Click to continue »

My sister Bets and I are reading through C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed right now. I cannot describe to you how moving it is.. I said to Bets after reading over half the book outloud – It’s like everyone has experienced what he is saying but no one has ever known how to describe it or to accurately put it into words.. C.S. Lewis very simply and beautifully describes what it’s like to experience a loss and to doubt God because of it.

One thing in particular that I identified with was how C.S. Lewis described what it’s like to have someone close to you experience a loss… We empathize with them and we pray for them, but we don’t really experience that loss as they are experiencing it. I know for me, when one of my close friend’s brother died, I hurt for her… I prayed for her and was there for her. But it seemed distant. I wasn’t the one experiencing it..

It’s the same with faith. We believe and trust in God so long as things are going well in life… only when we are tested do we find out what we really believe.

You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted it? …Only a real risk tests the reality of a belief.

Those are just a few thoughts from the book… read it. It’s short, personal, and so deep. It’s one of the best books I’ve read.

I’m home now… currently sitting in front of the fire typing away on my sister’s dinosaur of a laptop… I’ve got a book next to me that I should be reading – In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz. I’ll get to it in a little while. I haven’t been able to write in a while so I thought I would take the time to write a little update. The family is scattered around the house.. a few downstairs playing the piano, a few in the kitchen baking bread and making broccoli-cheese soup for dinner, and a few upstairs.. watching 24 no doubt.

It’s been so good to be home. Relaxing and restful… School has been busy and somewhat discouraging the last few weeks. Studying and writing papers has all but consumed my time, and yet, I don’t seem to be doing as well in my classes as I would like to be. It’s frustrating and very discouraging to spend four solid days studying for a single test.. and to scrape by with a C- (cost accounting). But i’m learning, and I guess that is what really matters… I’m trying to remind myself of that anyway. As my accounting professor has so often reminded me – failures and how you deal with them are what really determine a person’s character. Failures present the opportunity to either give up altogether or to persevere and learn from your mistakes. All that to say, it’s been a humbling and learning experience… and a character-building experience, no doubt.

A few more weeks of the semester.. and then Christmas!

I’m heading to Atlanta in a few hours to see OneRepublic! I’m excited… exams are done, papers are done, and I’m pretty much cruising until Thanksgiving break. I’m so ready to be home. It’s going to be amazing.

These are some thoughts my dad shared with me about marriage… I’ve been sitting here trying to think of some words to add to this, but I got nothing… so here it is.

Marriage is a reenactment of the Gospel – God loving us when we didn’t deserve it, when we were still sinful and broken. God delights in us in spite of all our unpleasantness. Acceptance includes being brave enough to enter the chaos of a broken life; being kind enough to sustain the disappointments; being big enough to resolve to love another broken sinner as Christ loves me; being wise enough to face difficult situations with firmness and hope. (Accept one another. Romans 15:7) I am contributing to the beauty or the ugliness of my marriage moment by moment by how I live. As a spouse, I am moving toward either ministry or manipulation. A commitment to live as a servant in marriage must be formed and fueled by a reverence for and understanding of who Jesus is.

It’s cold here. 

Cost Accounting is ruling my life right now. I have a test in it tomorrow, and I’ve been studying for it nonstop this whole week. Literally, other than eating, sleeping and class, I have had my cost accounting textbook on me… and have been studying it relentlessly. I finally crashed into bed at 1:00 a.m. last night after working problem after problem for the previous six or seven hours. I “slept” until 7:00 a.m. and then went to the Great Hall to read, study, and work problems again… I didn’t really sleep though. My brain never got the memo to shut down, so I spent the whole night tossing and turning… the only thoughts and dreams I had were of cost accounting equations, variances, FIFO, LIFO, weighted average, budgeting…

I have this test tomorrow at 2:30 p.m., and then will go straight to my room to work on my business research paper (15 pages) that’s due Monday. Then tomorrow night, i’m leaving for Atlanta to go to a pastor’s conference until late Friday night… then that leaves all of Saturday and Sunday to write my 15 page paper and study for my Intermediate Accounting test on Tuesday.

This week has been and will continue to be overwhelming. Psalm 119:33-40 uplifted me over breakfast as I was getting ready to hit the books again.

Teach me, O LORD, to follow your decrees;
       then I will keep them to the end.
Give me understanding, and I will keep your law
       and obey it with all my heart.
Direct me in the path of your commands,
       for there I find delight.
Turn my heart toward your statutes
       and not toward selfish gain.
Turn my eyes away from worthless things;
       preserve my life according to your word.
Fulfill your promise to your servant,
       so that you may be feared.
Take away the disgrace I dread,
       for your laws are good.
How I long for your precepts!
       Preserve my life in your righteousness.

One of the brothers on my hall shared this with me and the rest of the guys today…

Let’s take this challenge to heart and let this position of the heart come through in all that we do: in our studies, in our worship, in our interactions with other people, in our conversation.  Keep Christ first!  This is our mortal struggle.

“Now if man was created so that by his highest faculty he might attain to the highest of all realities, that is, to the one, true and supreme God, apart from whom no nature exists, no teaching is true, no conduct is good, then let us seek Him in whom all we find is real, know Him in whom all we contemplate is true, love Him in whom all things for us are good.”

Augustine – City of God

I read an article earlier that I thought might be of interest to some of you. We’re so quick to judge and find someone to blame when things go wrong in our nation, yet we forget the “undying” loyalty we had for President Bush seven years ago when terrorists attacked our nation. Maybe I’m saying a radical statement here, but I dare believe that we should be grateful to our current President for his loyalty and service to us… despite the countless times we have scorned his name and torn him apart for things that have gone wrong in our nation. A perfect president won’t save our nation, and neither will Barack Obama. We, the people of the United States, must look and remember what originally made us a great nation – one people and one nation, indivisible, united under God.

According to recent Gallup polls, the president’s average approval rating is below 30% — down from his 90% approval in the wake of 9/11. Mr. Bush has endured relentless attacks from the left while facing abandonment from the right.

This is the price Mr. Bush is paying for trying to work with both Democrats and Republicans. During his 2004 victory speech, the president reached out to voters who supported his opponent, John Kerry, and said, “Today, I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent. To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust.” Those bipartisan efforts have been met with crushing resistance from both political parties.

It seems that no matter what Mr. Bush does, he is blamed for everything. He remains despised by the left while continuously disappointing the right. Yet it should seem obvious that many of our country’s current problems either existed long before Mr. Bush ever came to office, or are beyond his control. Perhaps if Americans stopped being so divisive, and congressional leaders came together to work with the president on some of these problems, he would actually have had a fighting chance of solving them.

November 4th. It’s election day… talk around campus has been nothing but the election. Who’s going to win? Obama or McCain? It seems like the vast majority on campus voted for McCain. A ton of students gathered together in Mills tonight to watch the live news on the election. All of campus seems to be talking, giving their opinions, and waiting in anticipation for what’s going to happen.

A little exciting, a little scary…