i still haven't reconciled

i am increasingly confused by the dichotomy of making people "one of our own", ie, allowing them into my inner circle of friends, and understanding the wisdom of separating from thoes who are not of the same heart.

for example

when i go to a st patty's day party tonight, actually two, where there will be drinking, some of the 'excessive' drinking may occur among people who are within an inner circle of my friends.

someone else may not choose to go to the same party because they feel that it may be 'out of control.' granted that person perhaps does not know my friends in the same way that i do, but will they only see the drinking and not the people?

or will i only see my 'love' for my friends and not what is wisest for them or for myself?

(not that i particularly struggle with the issue of drinking)

Jesus says not to be unequally yoked (whatever that might mean), and the Bible has a consistent message of fleeing from foolishness. though i'm not sure that it means to refuse to be near people who exhibit some foolishness, since Jesus was the friend of sinners to the point of being closest to the scapegoats of society...

in regards to future and faith

i think i've been acting with a measure of foolishness.

busy-ness and injury

i have been busy.

school has been busy.

also i have been injured. that has made things even more busy, as being injured has slowed me down a lot (i have broken my tailbone, a suprisingly difficult thing to recover from).
and i have been tired.

so i apologize for my lack of involvement in your life. i apologize for my lack of involvement in my own life. i would say that it will change, but i have a feeling that over the next several weeks (8ish) it won't.

that is not to say that life has been bad. that is not to say that i have stopped learning or growing. and it is not to say that i have stopped thinking of you.

i didn't count the cost of this semester very well when i came here. after this semester it should be better. i look forward to summer when i will love people and be invoved in their lives again. until then... i will love from a distance and walk down this road.

i've always believed God had plans for me in injury or sickness in the past, and so i believe now. but i have yet to see what it might be this time...

spending time

in my last entry i wrote,
"i can't give much write now" (or something alone those lines)

i spent the next few days wondering what i had meant by that in the first place, realizing it was a simple outpouring of the attitude that i did not like, but kept finding in my heart. i realized that it had been there since december... a realization that there had been things i wanted to do this semester, but am not, nor do i know how i could be.

on the other side of this, this semester is the hardest one i will go through in my program... the most time-consuming one. i do not defend my previous sentiment that i couldn't give much, but this semester does leave me tired.

but i know that sentiment was in the first place not Godly, and in the second place betrayed my incorrect focus, which should not be on something so simple as how much time i can give, but on the quality of how i spend my time.

interestingly enough, small group turned out to be on this topic tonight as well.

trials of being a grad student

i've grown tired of empiricially deriving the consumption function and helping people with advanced calc as opposed to, well, doing something. i spend a lot of time crunching numbers these days and reading about other people's work on the same. while numbers are useful and all, even a mathematician/economist grows tired of relying on numbers. also i get tired of listening to people talk about numbers that have very real consequences for people... without really thinking of people. it's been a while since i've had time to read about anything enjoyable or felt as though i were learning about something i cared about.

i know i need certain tools, but... the consumption function? what could be more boring.

i think it's possible that that might be enough to send me back to camp carl this summer. i can't give much during the semester, but maybe i can give my summer.

the Old is enough

we've been reading out of the Old Testament.

this morning when i woke up, somehow i found myself unsatisfied with the reading i've been doing lately (mostly out of Exodus. though God does do some pretty cool things in Exodus.). i was craving the words of Jesus, the words of Paul; the words that i had been raised on in the faith. so i read most of the book of Ephesians and a bit of 1 Timothy to make myself feel better.

it made me think about what it must have been like to only have the O.T., to only have the Torah. people did for many years. and of course it was enough for them; that was what God had given, and our God is the God of Enough.

but i found it striking to consider how blesssed we were to have the words of the New Testament to add to those of the Old. and it made me think of how the Old is enough; and yet we find the picture more beautiful and more fulfilling with the New. we could live on the words of the O.T. alone, but that is not what God has ordained for us any longer. He has made things better.

praise Jesus for His words.

lessons from the O.T.

we've been reading out of the Old Testament, Exodus right now. There is always something refreshing about the OT stories that we seem to forget the details of. There is also something refreshing for me to hear, buried within the details of the law, brief glimpses that God gives for why His law is what it is and what it will mean for His people.

it is beautiful to read the details of the plans for the tabernacle, and think of how God would, unlike other gods, "tabernacle" with his people. it is beautiful to hear how God designs the robes of Aaron the high priest ("for glory and beauty") knowing that Aaron, in the beauty of his robes, was a symbol of what Jesus would be on our behalf. beautiful to see that our God, unlike other gods, gives His Son as the perfect mediator between ourselves and Him.

and it is wonderful to hear Moses plead to God on behalf of a people who completely misunderstand Who and What God is, and don't even really trust Him, and hear God choose to spare them, both for the sake of His own name, and because of Moses' plea.

it's beautiful to read of the time of the old covenant, the beginning of God's life with His own people, and think of how excited God must have been when the time came to finally set these plans of His in motion.

beautiful.