Blessed

Couple of blessings and random musings in my life this week:

- Man I wish I had an audio recording of the sermon this morning. Pastor Huffman is doing a series on Lament and Suffering and he's using the Psalms. Today's was Psalm 88. Oh it was so good. This Psalm is the only lament psalm that has no resolution. It doesn't go from low back up to high. It's dissonant all the way through. It is in a sense, the "screaming room" of the bible. I, for one, firmly believe that every place (especially hospitals) should have a room where people can be alone with their pain and just scream. I have needed that multiple times in my life. And the screaming isn't against faith, doctrine, or even against God. This "screaming room" is provided by God just by the inclusion of Psalm 88 in the bible. The screaming is FOR God and AT Him. It's what Pastor Huffman referred to as "dark belief"...In my short lifetime, I've had some times where my screaming was like that...I would like to write down ALL of my notes for this morning sermon but I shall stop there. If people would like more, email me.

- Then I went to this workshop-like series about the Quran and Muslim beliefs (about the Quran and bout Christianity). It was given by a Sudanese pastor, Pastor Ishmael, who had grown up with a muslim background. He has witnessed and baptised hundreds of muslims back in Egypt, Sudan, etc. This man and his experiences amazed me. I had never met anyone who knew the Quran and muslim belief so well. I was completely blown away and felt like a sponge that was definitely insufficient and unprepared to soak up all the wisdom that flowed from him...

- God made me take a sabbath starting last night until this afternoon. He has just given me these little joys throughout this week that touch me so much. I was talking to Him last night and I told Him, "God, I know your heart. You have a heart so big it includes every tribe, tongue, and nation. Your love is so great it encompasses everyone. You alone see the big picture and more. And there are so many things happening every second all over this world that are way more important than my petty stresses. And so because we humans cannot multitask like that (caring about the whole entire world as well as caring about the people around us), I sometimes think that you are just too busy to care about the petty things in my life. I mean, I'll make it through finals week of course and you know that I will still love You before and after. Things that really don't need God's special attention...But yet you go out of your way to touch every day of my life, to make your presence known to me. I am truly very blessed and loved."

- Have you ever noticed how we like to use negative adjectives to describe something in a positive light? For instance, "sick" (which I used in the previous post...which is what spawned this question), "wicked" (that's a western coast slang word), "hella" (another western slang word), "messed up", "whack", etc. The list could go on...and I'm not even getting into the curse words that some people use to describe things positively.

- Do you every wonder how many people get married just because that's what everybody else is doing?

- I think the tongue is one of the most disgusting things I've ever studied. It's true appearance is mainly what disgusts me I think...Ick!

- Do you ever think of important things or lessons that you would like to say/teach to your children? I do. Mostly I think of things that I would say...things that I would definitely want them to remember me saying to them that would apply for their whole lives. Universal truths and lessons I suppose. Things that I might have learned from life, things that I might have messed up on in life, things that I learned from the bible...I think of these things occasionally (more often as I get older). I should start documenting them and making a list. There are also things that I would never say to my children...
Anyways, I'm not saying that I want children right now or want to get married or anything like that. Perhaps it's just a maternal instinct turning on every so often, preparing me for what lies ahead (whether its my children or other people's children).