Jesus & the Arab Spring

At church tonight our speaker, a missionary to North Africa, talked to us about Jesus and the Arab Spring. He began by historically and culturally contextualizing Jesus words on retaliation in the Sermon on the Mount and connecting them to the twentieth century tradition of nonviolent resistance epitomized by Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. These practices have not been what the Arab world has been known for, especially not so in the tumultuous almost-century since the Ottoman Empire collapsed and the European powers divided up North Africa and West Asia as they saw fit. However, the political revolutions in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia last year--collectively known as “The Arab Spring”--represented a high profile introduction of this concept to pan-Arab culture.

On December 17th, 2010, a Tunisian street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi lit himself on fire in front of the governor’s office. This tragic event, instigated as it was by economic despair and humiliation at the hands of public officials, electrified the nation of Tunisia leading to the nation-wide protests which eventually ousted the reigning dictator of multiple decades. The revolutions in Libya and Egypt followed--history in the making, as they say.

What filled me with hope while listening to this story tonight was the contrast between these events and those of many American and Christian imaginations this past decade. I recently came across a tape series that somehow ended up on the dirt cheap book rack in the seminary by a prominent and shrill televangelist. Shortsightedly titled “Iraq: The Final War” (it is dated to 2003), its flames and fury iconography succinctly captures the fear-mongering and hate-mongering I am thinking of, positing armed conflicts in Arab nations as harbingers of an apocalyptic end-time scenario in which the barbarous and demonic Muslims do their best to kill every Christian and Jew on the planet. Turns out God had something different in mind.

“He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him.” ~ Acts 17:26-27

 
Many conservative Western Christians have imagined the Muslim world as a demonic horde, but as the first decade of the century came to a close we found that political destabilization had revealed our common humanity and even some of the politics of Jesus. Instead of tribalistic warfare or Islamic terrorism, the Arab world’s greatest political change of the last century was wrought (or at least sparked) via nonviolent resistance. This gives us hope, and it should give tired Christian workers hope, because it says that despite our debased fears and despite our conviction of humanity’s potential for brutality, we find that the words and politics of Jesus have a potent traction that can dramatically affect an entire region.

Though the tragic events in Syria this past year are a somewhat of a stinging rebuke to this line of thought, the Arab spring nonetheless testifies of Muslim nations capability for self-initiated and progressive reform. It teaches the church that we cannot get by with reductive demonizations of Arabs and Muslims, and that the wisdom of Christ penetrates and transforms hearts, cultures and countries in surprising and exciting and unpredictable moments and movements. God finds a way.

Part of the story about gospel work in North Africa is that many people needed to experience an existentially shaking event in order to be more open to the message of Jesus. Whatever sociopolitical analysis these events bear out, we should stay mindful and prayerful of their potential for being the basis of a stable and just society where the word of God can spread rapidly and Christ’s church can take root.

“I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.” ~ 1 Timothy 2:1-2

Preaching to Myself

"Take delight in Yahweh, and he will give you the desires of your heart." ~ Psalm 37:4

How is it that this verse consistently shows up in the office and lectionary when my heart is restless? Rhetorical question. It's a verse that gets quoted a lot in some circles, with good reason, although sometimes it seems to be ascribed a kind of magical quality as though having more quiet times or enthusiastic worship experiences was the key to getting the things you want from God. As I've been reading in the Anglican theologian Richard Hooker this week, we've gotta recognize that God is The Thing that we want. The highest good that all other goods point us to, that all desires for good things ultimately have their meaning in.

That's not to say, of course, that God doesn't give us the lesser goods we desire. I think there is an intentional ambiguity in the phrasing: God gives those delighted in him both the objects of their desires as well as redeemed desires in place of broken ones. I've heard some people talk about about the latter reading as the primary one, a little too self-satisfied in their cleverness for reading it differently than most, but read in context the former reading has to take precedence. You can't read Psalm 37 as part of the whole canon without hearing its very clear reliance on the Deuteronomic promise of blessing and cursing (Deuteronomy 11) especially as it pertains to the land.

The psalmist is setting up an active attitude of the heart becoming of God's people, who walk in humility before God rather than worry about all the power and wealth that the wicked have. Psalm 37 recapitulates God's covenant with Israel by saying, "Live in this way and you will be bearer's of Yahweh's blessing and promise", and by downplaying the success of people who do evil, "Better is a little that the righteous person has than the abundance of many wicked" (v16). It's not our goal to have all the stuff possessed by those who live without reference to the God of Israel, but to be possessed by him and delight in what we do have, trusting the Lord to meet our needs and bring us joy.

And this heart attitude has been adopted by Jesus as part of the core of the way of life he teaches us: "The meek shall inherit the land" (v11) could not be a clearer antecedent to "The meek shall inherit the earth" (Matthew 5:5), which includes Christ's subtle indication that Yahweh's claim is on the whole earth and not just the tiny Palestinian strip between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. It's so tempting, especially as one discerning a call to the ministry, to look at what is had by "the world" and covet it and disdain the narrow path of God. God, the psalmist and Jesus, however, are reassuring me this morning that the relatively little that I have is better, given that God himself is the ultimate compensation.

Billy Graham on Compassion, Suffering & Happiness

"Abraham Lincoln once said, characteristically, 'I am sorry for the man who can't feel the whip when it is laid on the other man's back.'

Much of the world is callous and indifferent toward mankind's poverty and distress. This is due largely to the fact that for many people there has never been a rebirth. The love of God has never been shed abroad in their hearts.

Many people speak of the social gospel as though it were separate and apart from the redemptive gospel. The truth is: There is only one gospel. Divine love, like a reflected sunbeam, shines down before it radiates out. Unless our hearts are conditioned by the Holy Spirit to receive and reflect the warmth of God's compassion, we cannot love our fellow-men as we ought.

Jesus wept tears of compassion at the graveside of a friend. He mourned over Jerusalem because as a city it had lost its appreciation of the things of the spirit. His great heart was sensitive to the needs of others.

To emphasize the importance of people's love for each other, He revised an old commandment to make it read: 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart... and thy neighbor as thyself' (Luke 10:27).

St. Francis of Assisi had discovered the secret of happiness when he prayed:

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love;
     For it is in giving that we receive;
     It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
     It is in dying that we are born to eternal life!'"

~Billy Graham, The Secret of Happiness (BGEA, 2002), 35.

Cartograms

You can click these to enlarge them.

A contemporary world population cartogram:

A contemporary world GDP cartogram:  

No comment.

God, Darwin & Poverty

The following is a transcript of my homily preached Monday morning, 2/7/2011, during chapel at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, PA. It is based on the office reading from Isaiah 58:1-12.

Some Christians spend a lot of energy debunking Darwin. It’s not surprising—the debate between the theory of evolution and the biblical account of creation often plays out as a struggle between competing origin stories both making tacit claims to the ultimate source of human knowledge. It makes ripe fodder for the apologists, the New Atheists, the Veritas Forum; for those looking for to draw clear boundary lines in the Culture War. This morning I suggest, however, that we lay aside Darwin’s black box, the language of God, questions of inerrancy and genre, and whether we might one day find the frog whose DNA will allow me the pet velociraptor I’ve always wanted. This morning I want to suggest that Evangelicals ought to admit that Darwin got it right. At least on the issue of competition. 

Here’s what I’m thinking. Human history is not a happy story. It’s not a list of great men’s exploits, as some would have it, but rather an ancient and all-encompassing narrative of people behaving badly. Pessimistic? Maybe. But I think the biblical witness to original sin suggests otherwise. “There is no one who does good,” quoth the psalmist. And, if you remember your Romans Road to Salvation from Sunday School, you know that Paul once declared, “There is no one who is righteous, not even one.” 

Darwin’s postulation of the “survival of the fittest” accords with this little theo-historical construction. The strong prosper, the weak suffer, and every man does what is right in his own eyes. It’s a dog eat dog world, as they say. Darwin made his observations based on the world as he found it. That majestic circle of life where Simba eats us and we have the privelege of eating the grass growing on his grave. That enlightened post-industrial society where the boss is comfortable and the worker chokes down coal dust. The world where, as Thomas Hobbes put it, “Life in a state of nature is poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Darwin was right. And in the pyramid scheme of human ecology, the majority of humans who have ever lived or are currently living have been poor. 

Our reading this morning from the prophet Isaiah issues a clarion call to the people of God: “Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins.” And what was their sin? Mistreating the poor. Not only the “poor in spirit,” but the materially poor—the worker, the hungry, the afflicted. God calls special attention to this problem, giving Isaiah the added charge not to hold back on this point. So forgive me this morning if I don’t mince words. 

“You only seem to be a nation who does what is right,” God says to Israel. They’re praying—even fasting—yet things aren’t going well. God seems distant. Their prayers are not being answered. “Look,” God says, “you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress al your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.” It’s tantamount to saying, “If you’re not loving and serving the poor, I’m not listening to you.”

Why is it that the evangelical church has been bleeding numbers, as people such as Bishop Todd Hunter have reported? We might suggest any number of reasons. Hostile culture. Bad economy. There’s a war on. And so on. But the timely reason for us this morning is the need for a socially and economically uncomfortable stewardship for the weak and marginalized.

God says that the fast he has chosen is to loose the bonds of injustice, to break yokes, feed the hungry, “to bring the homeless into your house,” to clothe the naked (If we start bringing the homeless into our homes, I promise, we will be uncomfortable). God is in effect saying, “You want to honor me with your piety? Serve the poor!” We can no longer delude ourselves into thinking that we’ll dedicate our ministries to proclaiming “evangelical truth” while we leave the so-called “social gospel” up to the liberals. We ought not to leave the serving of tables to others whilst we dedicate ourselves to the word and prayer. We must bring all together in a holistic expression of right thought and right action. A gospel of word and deed. 

James asks, “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” God’s heart beats for poor of the earth, and when Christians ignore their fundamental calling to love and serve the weak we cause him anguish. When Christians love those from whom they can gain no gold or glory from in return, we bring him delight. God practically gushes at the thought of it: “If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom will be like the noonday.” It’s virtually the key to his heart, it would seem. God loves the vast mass of humanity, and most of them are poor. 

In conclusion, let us consider verse 12 of Isaiah 58: “Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt: you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.” This suggests to me that the people who both “delight to draw near to God” and “offer food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted” will be key architects for the city of God. They will build and shape kingdom communities that sanctify the name of the one God as well as thrive as extended spiritual families able to serve as the basis for a spiritually vital Christian society. They will by their word and deed, by their love and grace, by their healing and holiness proclaim that “survival of the fittest” has died, long live the king of glory, Jesus Christ. 

Let us follow him, proclaiming his truth and emulating his socially transgressive love. Amen.

"34,000 children died today."

Shouting Through Pain

The following is a transcript of my homily preached Friday morning, 12/3/2010, at Shepherd's Heart Fellowship in Pittsburgh, PA. The lectionary readings were as follows: Psalms 16, 17 & 22; Isaiah 3:8-15; I Thessalonians 4:1-12; Luke 20:27-40.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus cried these words on the cross right before he died. They are the pained cry of a man who has known great suffering. But even on the cross, Jesus had scripture in mind. He understood that his death has meaning, that even at his most forsaken, the Father is working to bring redemption to mankind.

Psalm 22 begins with that same cry we hear on the cross—“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” God, why? Why did you let this happen? Why do bad things happen to good people? The psalmist felt that question. Jesus felt that question. “I cry by day,” he says, “but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest.” This is no brief spell of depression. The psalmist is in major crisis—otherwise, his song would not have been appropriate for history’s greatest crisis, the cross of Jesus Christ.

We see the tension between suffering and faith right away, because the psalmist turns around and says, “Yet you are holy… In you our ancestors trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them…” He’s remembering the stories he’s heard, the scripture preached to him, the faith he received from those who came before him. We do and we ought to do the same when hard times are upon us. As the great Christian author C.S. Lewis once said, “God shouts through our pain.”

But then the psalmist takes another right turn. He complains, “But I am a worm, and not human.” “Surely these stories, these truths don’t apply to me!” he seems to be thinking. We wonder the same. How can mere words measure up against the reality of starvation or betrayal or the unforgiving bitter cold of a Pittsburgh winter? It’s all fine and well to talk about what God did with those people back then—a long time ago and far, far away—but what about where I live? What about the boundary line between my life and death? What about my pain? We’re aching for God to answer us.

“But,” he says, turning again, “it was you who took me from the womb; you kept me safe on my mother’s breast. On you I was cast from my birth, and since my mother bore me you have been my God.” He remembers. He says, this God wasn’t just around in these old stories. He’s creator God. He saw me through my youth. Now I face hardship, suffering, death—but I remember when God got me through.

I’m going to tell you a story about God getting a family through tough times. Years ago, a young couple in their thirties had one child, a four year old boy. One day the mom walked into the room only to find her one and only son writhing on the floor, his muscles spasming and body contorted in the frightening throes of a full on seizure. He’s rushed to the doctor. The parents are waiting, terrified of what the news might be. The word comes in: your son has a bacterial brain disease, and he’s in a coma. “My God,” they must have thought, “why have you forsaken us?” How could this have happened to our son? How could you take him from us?

Imagine them, sitting up late at night by the hospital bed, worried and grieved to the point of nausea. Then the doctor, a Christian, comes into to talk to them. “I’m sorry,” he says, “but there’s nothing more I can do for your son. We’ve exhausted what medicine has to offer him.” End of story—except, he quickly adds, “But there is one thing I can do—pray.” And they pray fervently in the name of Jesus for the health of this child, and then the doctor leaves. My mom fell asleep by the bed that night, not knowing whether she would ever see her son alive again. The next morning I woke up, healed, unaware anything had gone wrong.

God got me through. I praise him and thank him because if it weren’t for the resurrection power of Jesus, I wouldn’t be standing before you this morning. My parents knew the sharp pang of fear and terror that their son would probably die, knew what forsaken felt like. But God turned it around. The psalmist knew what forsaken felt like, yet he concludes his song proclaiming, “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him.” And Jesus knew what forsaken felt like, yet God raised him from the dead on the third day.

My good news for you today is that you may know what forsaken feels like, but we worship the true God who raises men from the dead. You may know what the long and hard journey feels like, but Jesus is walking that road with you. You may know that place of pain and bitterness, of isolation and danger, but Jesus knew that place, too. He’s all we’ve got--all any of us have.

Have mercy on us, Lord! We need you! We’re nothing without you! We can’t make it down this road on our own! We’re tired—help! Lord Jesus, have mercy on your people. Protect us from all our adversaries, spiritual or physical, and keep us safe in this life and the next. Fill us with hope and joy, with the light of life, with the peace the passes all understanding, because we’re utterly dependent on you and we’ve nowhere else to go. Thank you, Jesus, for the breath you give us, for the death you died, for the salvation you bring. Amen.

A Heaping Plate of Life

It's the beginning of the semester and I'm full sprint out of the gate, you might say. Second year at seminary, and I'm feeling secure about many things that felt insecure last year. Primarily the question "What am I even doing here?" feels a great deal more settled, because of the friendships I've made at school, because of the church relationships I've built and am building in the diocese, because of the various ministry engagements I've had this summer and will continue to have this year.

I've only recently completed my clinical hours at my summer internship at the Beaver County Jail. What an experience it has been. I found myself running from the responsibility the first part of the summer, maybe afraid that I would realize I wasn't up to the task of full-schedule pastoral ministry. It came to the point, however, where I had to decide whether my trepidation outweighed my desire to complete the internship successfully and I had to say to myself, "Do whatever it takes." That in itself was formational moment.

I began leading morning prayer with a group of inmates in the "toughest" of the housing units, including one man facing murder charges. Their response to my availability and persistence became both blessing and motivation, and I was able to grow into the notion of other men identifying me and relating to me as a pastor. I had to push through those days I didn't want to be there, to get out of bed and go represent Christ to these incarcerated men. I think I learned, in a way I hadn't fully before, how to "just do it" whether my internal psycho-emotional-spiritual composition was conducive to the task. I will continuing spending several hours a week at the jail as part of my mentored ministry class for school, but it will be a significant reduction from the number of days I was present there during July and August.

In addition the life at the jail, my other major development has been at the parish level. This past year I have been attending Church of the Ascension and have loved participating in their worship services and receiving the benefits of their Christian education program (I attended confirmation classes there and was confirmed this past May). It's a great church, and I hope to stay involved in the prayer ministry there as much as I can. But the combination of spending time with the "down and out" at the jail and several spiritual direction meetings with the rector of a homeless church in Pittsburgh lead me to wonder whether a charismatic church for the poor wouldn't be a better fit for my home parish as well as my potential ordination discernment process. So, as of the past month, Shepherd's Heart Fellowship has become my home church.

My friend Justin and I will be serving there on Friday mornings, taking turns officiating morning prayer and delivering homilies (he is serving for his mentored ministry), and attending/serving on Sunday evenings (yesterday we helped set the altar and administer the Eucharist as chalice bearers). My service there is my way of really serving the body that will more than likely sponsor me for ordination, which I am glad to do. And beyond that, I am excited to be spending my energies on ministry commitments to the poor--both the homeless and the incarcerated--because I really get life from doing it and I believe God has called me to it.

The other place I know God has called me to, prayer, prompted my volunteering to be the Middler class representative for Trinity Healing Fellowship, the campus group that organizes prayer teams for Wednesday morning Eucharist as well as a monthly healing service. I am excited to continue praying for people in this way, and I hope to, as much as I can, continue serving in prayer with the teams at Church of the Ascension, at Shepherd's Heart, and attend the House of His Presence Friday prayer meetings at Shepherd's Heart as often as my sanity and gas tank allow.

Academically, this will be a language heavy semester, as half of my classes are deal with either grammar or exegesis in the biblical languages. My other class (besides Mentored Ministry) is homiletics, a subject I am eager to learn more of since I so enjoy writing and delivering sermons as many of my friends acquainted with my tendency to pontificate could have told me.

That's my heaping plate, then: Pastoring the poor, prayer, doing language work and preaching. Maybe this adds some context to the homily I gave last week: Lord, help me not forget Jesus in all of this!!

You Always Have the Poor With You

The following is a transcript of my homily preached Monday, September 13th in chapel at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, PA. The office readings for Monday were as follows: Psalms 56, 57, 58; Job 40:1-24; John 11:55-12:8. The sermon refers to the reading from John.

“You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”[1]

This verse has become, in some circles, an excuse to brush off the poor—to brush off attempts to point out the social radicalism essential to gospel announcement that was and is the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Why bother with the homeless? The disadvantaged? Those people on the other side of the tracks? Jesus said they’ll always be with us, shouldn’t we just focus on getting people saved?

We, as seminarians, may or may not hold this view. We ought, though, as bible students to already know of God’s preference for the poor which runs straight through the heart of scripture and the gospel. The announcement of a king who lives among and serves the very outcasts of society. A message of grace that has little room for CV’s, resumes and other catalogues of human achievement. Even at Trinity, as some of your own poets have said, C equals Mdiv.

We, as kingdom servants in training, will always have the poor with us. We will be called, no doubt, to many different offices, peoples and locations, but everywhere we go we will encounter the poverty and barrenness of this world. Some will be called to the materially poor directly, others indirectly. All of us, though, will somehow be affected by their plight. As Paul reported of the church leaders in Jerusalem, “They asked only one thing, that we remember the poor, which was actually what I was eager to do.”[2]

In another sense, however, the poor is anyone and everyone. All of us fated to live and die in this cursed world and suffer the consequences. Our future gospel ministries will take us face to face with the spiritually, emotionally, relationally and psychologically poor. A question will then press upon us: in the midst of serving the poor, will we forget Jesus? Like this homily’s content so far, will Jesus be lost in the fray of worrying about the broken?

“You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”[1]

But how can this be relevant to us? Jesus promised, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.”[3] I’m afraid I must venture to something somewhat mystical to answer—my apologies to any intuitive thinkers in the room. There is a kind of being present with Christ which goes beyond acknowledging the fact of his omnipresence, an ineffable experience of spiritual immediacy familiar to charismatics and contemplatives alike. I think of it when I read Christ’s words about abiding in him, or when the psalmist obtusely commends me to “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”[4] Bernard of Clairvaux wrote, “Let those who are versed in the mystery revel in it; let all others burn with desire rather to attain to this experience than merely learn about it.”[5]

But, how can pouring oil on the feet of a man about to die be relevant to us? I take the oil to represent resources—the text emphasizes its costliness—and being present with Christ in this way requires our most coveted asset: time. It takes minutes, hours and days to be alone, quiet and prayerful before God. To comprehend the word not only as narrative, theology and instruction, but also as the word of God which the Holy Spirit illumines in our hearts, “like fire… and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces.”[6] Practices like lectio divina help us encounter the Bible as a living text, and we hear not only the textual reconstruction of ancient kerygma but also the living God speaking to us today.

Spiritual disciplines such as these are not so-called “works of the law” by which we accrue merit before God. But, rather, these are practices experientially verified by a long history of church testimony. As Richard Foster has written, “The path does not produce the change; it only places us where the change can occur.”[7] We earn no new status before God, but the healing presence of Christ restores and redeems our selves to become the divinely fashioned images we were always intended to be. As Paul has written, “For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”[8]

How then is Judas’s protest relevant to us? Because we will commit our resources to serving those in need and forget cultivating a life of spiritual immediacy with Christ. Because we will commit our resources to being trained to serve those in need above a life of intimacy with Christ. When our minds, hearts and bodies are cluttered with chaos and sin, we experience a temporal distancing from God where there is less love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control. I should point out that these are the final measure of Christ’s closeness, not gently electrifying experiences of the transcendent (however rapturous they may be).

And if nothing I have said here was compelling or convincing to you, set aside time for divine solitude just for the sheer glory of God. To honor our creator and redeemer. Because the answer to the question “How do I love God with all my heart?” is not “By loving my neighbor as myself.” Because just as Paul says the worship of creation dehumanizes us in Romans one, the worship of, contemplation of, praise of, supplication to and tangible experience of the creator re-humanizes us. As the apostle says, “All of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.”[9]

concluding prayer:
“I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."[10]

[1] John 12:8.
[2] Galatians 2:10.
[3] Matthew 28:20.
[4] Psalm 34:8.
[5] Quoted in Thomas Dubay, Fire Within (Ignatius, 1989), 212.
[6] Jeremiah 23:29.
[7] Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline (1998), 8.
[8] Ephesians 2:10.
[9] 2 Corinthians 3:18.
[10] Ephesians 3:16-19.

Off Schedule

I am up too late and staring with trepidation at the "Submit Order" button on the HP Direct website. I am nervous about using my loan funds to purchase a new laptop, but my old one is falling apart (after 7 years of loyal service, I don't blame it) and I do need a computer for school.

This past week was my first week of combined work and education responsibilities. Disaster. Turns out that the guy I've been assigned to work with four days per week lives 25 miles away--fifty miles roundtrip each workday on top of whatever driving I do taking him around. I can't complain at all about him--he's sharp, funny, happy, energetic--but the extra time spent driving and the wear on my tired car are killer. The compensation is simply to meager to account for the driving and inconvenience to my school schedule, so I've decided to quit; end of story.

You can maybe see why I wrote no new posts last week; I'm taking this next week off as well. I really want to keep this twice-weekly habit; both so my curious friends and family can keep up with my happenings and so my penchant for theological soapboxing can have a release valve.

Today was my second time attending Shepherd's Heart church, an Anglican, charismatic congregation of mostly homeless people in downtown Pittsburgh (which is different from the church I am regularly attending on Sunday mornings. SH meets @ 5:15 Sunday afternoons). All of my spirit-filled friends in Florida who love the poor (you know who you are), I have found a reason for you not to live so far away from me any more. I am excited about somehow being a part of what they're doing, even if my part is trivial at first.