amazing people

many like to believe that people are, deep down inside, truly good. today, however, i witnessed quite the contrary. oh what sin does to a person -

i drove up to church today at around 12 or so to be greeted in the parking lot by a huge black truck - you know the type: enormous wicked-looking wheels, bright n shiny shocks - hitched to the back of it was an even bigger boat. it must have been about 30ft long. if you know anything about gmc, parking is tough as it is - now try to imagine where in the world this thing could fit in our tiny little lot. it was parked sideways taking up about 8 spaces. there was no apology in it.

one of our staff placed a note on the truck saying not to park here like that. the day went on - it was around 3:30 in the afternoon, i was walking my dog and saw that the owner of the truck had returned and had stopped in front of the front door of our church. the guy came out of his car, looking left then right, then he taped the sign onto the front door. by the time i got to the door, he had already turned around the church building to exit up sunset crossing rd. i watched as he sped up the hill. leaning his elbow out of the window, he turned his head to me and we made eye contact. the jerk.

i looked in uneasy anticipation at the sign he had taped to our church door - i wondered what he wrote on it. the red sharpie screamed out to me: "f--k off." he had heard it in a movie, for certain, or perhaps from a friend of his.

what gets me is that he must have known that we were doing him a favor by not calling the towing company to his rig out of our lot - which would have certainly cost him hundreds, perhaps even more than a thousand - the thing took up 8 spaces. what does one do with such foolishness? the world is full of it. when i had a little ebay business going a few years back, i was shocked by the kinds of people that were out in the world. some were courteous and very friendly, but of course i'm not thinking about them - others were total jerks. to such people, i was not even a person; i had no face, no family, no feelings, no worth. to such people, the only thing that is important is the bottom line: what they want.

this is the problem with all, christian and non, the desire for ones own will to be done; the right to do as one sees fit, apart from God. this is a big problem.

finding it hard to focus

I'm at this moment sitting in a lecture at school - 8:30am-4pm. It's a bit boring. It's a lecture about how we can be transformed by God, but it seems like what we're getting can be summed up in a 20min sermon. In the end, it's about relationship with God...

It seems so elementary. It's a necessary reminder for every Christian, but this presentation is so...verbose.

finally

after months of searching, I've finally ordered a 40D. pictures to come

life at church

I'm here at GMC quite a bit. It's nice to come here and know that someone's always here. Our pastoral staff is awesome. They work so hard and give so much of themselves for the church. We really should have a fulltime nurse on staff because it seems like some of the staff here never sleep, and I can only imagine what that does to the body.

Leaving Fountain of Life Mission Church was very painful for me, but my parents always told me God would make things right. I've grown to know that, truly, God does always make things right. I'm so blessed to have God place me in such a wonderful church. There is still so much for me to learn and I think I'm in a good place to do so.

I'm here now, wishing one of the pastors would take a break to play pingpong with me! But otherwise, I'll be preparing for tonight's worship and Sunday's sermon. This Sunday will be the finale of the Noah sermon series (I've been taking my kids through the book of Genesis), and I'm so excited! Genesis 9 takes us through God's covenant with Noah and the whole earth, symbolized by the rainbow. It is so amazing to look upon a rainbow and know that at that instant, God is remembering his promise with his precious creation. Thank you Lord for loving us.

I'll probably talk about this more in the future, but when you compare every other religion and deity of the Ancient Near East, none of them were like our God. None of them sought relationship with us; none would ever even think about making covenants with us, but our God..

Truly, David shared this sentiment in Psalm 8:

"O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens...When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?..."

And Hannah once prayed (1 Samuel 2:2:

"There is none holy like the Lord; there is none besides you; there is no rock like our God."

There is none like our God. He does not have to do what He does for us, yet He does, and He does so with Love.

here we go again

I thought I'd start this thing up again. I was really into blogging in college but for some reason stopped as I approached graduation. I suppose I ran out of things to say, or I lost my muse. It's now been about 3 or 4 years since my last entry, and now I feel like i have so many things to say. To whom? I have no idea. In any case, I'm glad you've found yourself here.

btw, I'm so sick of facebook! I think i might just convert that thing to Angel's facebook. She lives a very interesting life.

So, here we go.