Classes are hard right now. I’m trying to keep my head above water with tax and intermediate accounting 2. It’s been frustrating not getting the grades that I feel like I’ve been working for. My dad reminded me of an important truth yesterday -

God doesn’t make mistakes. We learn our best lessons through disappointments and failures… Persistence is key – not necessarily making all A’s.

It was encouraging to hear.. and reminded me that my responsibility is to work to the best of the abilities and skills that God has given me. That is what I am to be held accountable for. And that’s what I’m striving for.. to be all that I can be and do all that I can do with what God has given me and with where He has placed me.

It’s Easter Sunday! I came home to Franklin this morning with my mom and Betsy. We left around 7:00 a.m. and got back to Franklin by 8:30 a.m. Then we went to church at Christ Community Church. It’s nice being home with the family.

If you’re anything like me, than you find it SO easy to get caught up in this world – new technology, cars, books, DVDs, cell phones, internet, people, traveling, hunting, and doing anything and everything to satisfy myself. I forget what God did for me through his Son… I become complacent. I become numb to the incredible story of God’s saving grace. I take it for granted.

I reread this passage about the Resurrection. It seemed appropriate considering it’s Easter Sunday. Read through it.. don’t take it for granted or let yourself become numb to the amazing truth of God’s love and grace through His Son.

Matthew 28:1-10

After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.

The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.”

So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

It’s been a long day. Having intermediate accounting 2 and tax in the same day is rough… not to mention a 3-hour business law class tonight. I’ll be ready for bed when 10:00 p.m. rolls around.

I’m still searching for summer jobs.. and trying to figure out how exactly i’m going to fit two summer classes in on top of a job. Prayer for all of that would be greatly appreciated. It’s hard not to worry and stress about it sometimes, especially with the way the economy is right now. I’m trying to have faith that God knows what He’s doing.

Some thoughts from my dad… from Mike Mason :)

Contrary to what the secular media tell us…this is what Mike Mason (The Mystery of Marriage) says about the perfect institution:

“There is no other means of getting closer to another human being than in marriage. Such extraordinary closeness is bought at a cost, and the cost is nothing more nor less than one’s own self. No one has ever been married without being shocked at the enormity of this price and at the monstrous inconvenience of this thing called intimacy which suddenly invades one’s life. There is nothing like the experience of being humbled by another person, and by the same person day in and day out. It can be exhausting, unnerving, infuriating, disintegrating. There is no suffering like the suffering involved in being close to another person. But neither is there any joy nor any real comfort at all outside of intimacy, outside the joy and the comfort that are wrung out like wine from the crush and ferment of two lives being pressed together. What happens to a couple when they fall in love, when they pitch headlong into this wine press of intimacy, is not simply that they are swept off their feet: more than that, it is the very ground they are standing on, the whole world and ground of their own separate selves, that is swept away.”

My dad passed these words on to me this morning. I thought I’d share them.

I love the way Eugene Peterson expresses things… “The whole law is fulfilled in one word, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” Gal. 5:14

“The whole law is fulfilled,” says Paul, “through love.” Grammatically, the word fulfilled is in the prefect tense. As such it means the whole law has been fulfilled every time one person loves another as himself. To love my neighbors as less than myself is to treat them as a means to my ends.”  (A sobering thought…)

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!

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.

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’m finding that coffee is one of my new favorite comforts in life. Strange because a little over three years ago I couldn’t even stomach drinking the stuff after it had been diluted with creamer and four spoonfulls of sugar. My Opa drinks coffee like it is nobody’s business… always has. My parents have always had their special times each day when they drink coffee together – every morning over the Bible and every afternoon around 4:30-5:00 p.m. when they wind down the day together. I finally started drinking it just so that I could sit at the table with the “grown-ups” and talk with them after dinner… though the first couple years I drank it, it could hardly be considered coffee once I was done with it. My sisters would always tease me say, “Would you like some coffee with your sugar?” Click to continue »

Death is such a morbid word. I almost hesitate in beginning to write on this topic… as one of my respected professors said in class one day, “One should only write on a topic that he or she is both intellectually curious about and intellectually capable of writing about.” I would say that I am, without a doubt, curious about it.. but whether or not I am intellectually capable of writing about this topic is not for me to decide.

I used to fear death far more than anything else I could ever imagine. Something about being in a state of complete non-existence scared me “to death.” Now, I knew about heaven… and I knew that if I believed in God that I would one day go there. But still, the fear of death in my mind was all too real. I’m not sure if it was the thought of great pain (my pain tolerance is not that high) or simply the thought of passing on into a realm that I had no knowledge or experience of. I was told that heaven was magnificent and far beyond all comparison to life on earth… but I still could not wrap my head around what that meant. Death still scared me.

As I’ve grown and learned more and been challenged more in my faith, I’ve come to a point where I no longer fear death. This summer, I had a good friend and fellow student pass away from a bacterial infection on his heart. For the first time, I did not fear the presence of death in my life. Rather, it was Ben Entwistle’s life that had a profound affect in my mind and on my life. Ben was in a better place… I say that almost casually. Ben was in HEAVEN! He was with His Father… my Father. And he no longer had to endure the pain, the weight, and the sin that corrupts this life. For the first time in my mind, Heaven completely and utterly outweighed all thoughts and fears of death.

I read this passage from John 11:21-27 the other morning.

“Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”
Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”
Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
“Yes, Lord,” she told him, “I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.”

It again assured me of the peace I can find in death… or life, rather… knowing that in my belief and faith in Christ, I no longer need to fear death or think of it as a morbid word. If I have Christ, what can I stand to lose? As Jim Elliot once said, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”