Well, Hello!

It's been a while, hasn't it?

In my last post, I described the day I was told I had to move.  Things since then have been a bit crazy.  I began a thorough search of every home for sale and for rent in this city.  I went to open houses, I went to private showings with my realtor, I looked up information on the county assessor's website, I met with a mortgage broker, I made an offer (followed by several counter-offers), and I did a lot of praying.

In the midst of all of this, I had two nights of parent-teacher conferences, more meetings than I care to count, and a minor pet emergency which involved an a trip to vet and a week of prescription food and pills.

I thoroughly believe that this whole ordeal is a God thing, and He has really come through for me, just as He always does.  I met my realtor through a girl in my Sunday school class - it's her boyfriend.  He has been great to work with, and has been so flexible and understanding given my timeline.  I submitted my mortgage paperwork online, and God sent me to Noelle, a wonderful woman at WellsFargo.  She stayed after hours one Wednesday night to answer all of my questions and to go over in detail with me all that a mortgage would entail.

After all of the searching and paperwork and meetings, I am finally a homeowner!  Joe, my realtor, brought the paperwork to church this morning for me to sign.  I don't know of many people who sign their home ownership paperwork in church, but I can't think of a better place for it to have been done.

That was the easy part, I'm afraid.  Now, I have to order an inspection, wait for an appraisor to visit, complete all of the mortgage paperwork, and beg Angie, the manager of my apartment complex, to let me and Harper stay here an extra two weeks.  Apparently, banks don't think it's possible to close on a home in fourteen days.

Whatever.

Then, after all of that, I have to actually do the moving.  I hate moving, and I'm not very good at it.  And, since I won't be able to close before my Spring Break, I'll probably have to take some time off of work in order to get it done.  Unfortunately, April is a big testing month, so the timing on all of this is going to have to be just right.  And I trust that it will be.

So, that was the chaos update of my life.  Luckily, I have wonderful friends who have kept my spirits up in the midst of all of this.

Harper is doing better with potty training, and she loves visits from her Aunt Ashley and Uncle Jeremy.

Harper looks so small in these pictures!  She must be growing.  Which means I must start taking more pictures of her.

~~~

Saturday night was a bit of an adventure.  My friend Kelli called at 5:30 to see what I was doing at 6:00.  I thought maybe she wanted to go to dinner.

Nope.  Her nephew got into some trouble, so she inherited his tickets to the "Blizzard Tour," which was a concert featuring artists Cali Swag District, Sick Puppies, 3OH!3, and Nelly.  So, I agreed to go with her, despite the fact that my grad school homework wasn't done and I hadn't yet showered for the day.

There were tons of people there, and it wasn't really my type of crowd.  This kind of music isn't what I typically listen to, but it was free entertainment.  These people were loving it, though:

It was general admission seating, so we decided to sit fairly high up and out of the way.  Once we found some open seats, I realized that I was sitting next to a girl who I used to babysit.  She's fifteen years old now, which makes me feel old.  At one point, she and her friend decided to go to the bathroom and asked if I would save their seats.  I agreed, but in doing so, I had to shoo away a herd of former students who asked if they could have the seats.

Awkward.

Attention, former students:  Please don't judge me for having gone to this concert.  I assure you, I am not nearly cool enough to have done so.  Also, this music is far too inappropriate for you (and me) to be listening to.  Let's just keep listening to Bieber, who won't corrupt us.  Furthermore, I hope you didn't inhale too deeply where you were sitting.  And I hope you're too naive to know what that smell actually was.

Kelli was mostly interested in seeing Cali Swag District because she is a huge fan of "The Dougie."  In fact, she referred to this event as the Cali Swag District concert, even though they were the least well-known earliest performance of the night.

Can you see how excited she was?

Sick Puppies performed next, but I only knew one of their songs from the radio.  Also, they swore an awful lot, so I was ready for them to be done.

Then came 3OH!3, who had a few songs that I recognized.  They, too, swore a lot, which I didn't think was necessary.

Finally, at nearly 10:00 (way past my bedtime), Nelly came on with his St. Lounatics.

He was actually a pretty good performer.  I recognized most of his songs from the radio... he's been performing since I was in middle school.

By 11:30, Kelli and I were yawning pretty heavily, so we left.  Also, we wanted to beat the crowd out of downtown.  All-in-all, it was a pretty fun night!  Much better than grading papers, which I should have done.

Sigh.

Galactic Blast

This past week, I spent every morning from 9-noon teaching Vacation Bible School at my church.  This is the first summer in many years that I have been able to make it work with my schedule, and I was reminded of how much I have missed Bible School.  Our theme this year was Galactic Blast.  It provided students the opportunity to learn about outer space as well as about God's love.

I was "Arts and Crafts lady" for the week, which was definitely an exercise of patience.  I am neither artsy nor craftsy, but thankfully, I had enough skills and resources to be able to fake it.

We did sand art,

we painted,

we made picture frames (of which I do not have a picture),

and we made color-changing cross necklaces, which were a big hit.

Although working with elementary school students always reminds me of why I teach middle school, I did engage in some precious conversations like these:

Kindergarten Boy:  (looking at the 10 Commandments poster) "What does K-I-L-L spell?"
Me: "It spells kill."
Kindergarten Boy:  "What does that mean?  Does it mean to make somebody die?"
Me:  "Yes.  Why do you think God commanded us not to kill other people?"
Kindergarten Boy:  "Because God loves us and doesn't want His children to die too soon.  Want to see how my shoes light up?"

I love how easily satisfied young kids are with regard to answers to questions and how quickly they can move on to another subject.  My students?  Not so much.

Different Kindergarten Boy:  "I can't wait for the Science center.  Science is my favorite subject."
Me:  "What kind of science do you like to learn about?"
Different Kindergarten Boy:  "I like to compare properties of solids, liquids, and gases."
Me: (jaw drops as I wonder whether or not my 6th graders could compare properties of solids, liquids, and gases).

This week took me back to my Rousseau days when I worked with grades K-5.  To be honest, I kind of miss those days.  These kids are innocent.  They do what they are told.  Their hearts and minds are wide open to whatever it is that you would like to share with them.  They voice their love and appreciation for you.  They can get excited about anything.  Although I know I am better suited to work with older students, this was a fun vacation for me.

In addition to working with the younger kids, I got to know some other people from my church whom I didn't know before.  I had some insightful conversations with the adults, and I enjoyed getting to know the teenage shepherds (helpers) who were volunteering their time.  There are some really amazing people at my church, and I hope to get to work with them again someday.

Now if you'll excuse me, I must go try to get all of those catchy VBS songs out of my head.

Some of the Questions

As I mentioned yesterday, I've been reading a book which has shaken up all that I thought I had known or understood about my religion - about Christianity.

Again, I will say that I've never felt that I knew it all.  In fact, the thing about which I am most insecure is how little knowledge I feel like I have about the Bible.  I haven't memorized the Biblical family lineages, I can't readily quote scripture, and I certainly don't have the background knowledge that an ordained clergy does.  I will admit, however, that I had gotten into somewhat of a routine.  I go to church every Sunday.  I pray.  I read a daily devotional.  I read the Bible.  I do my best to do good works in attempt of "living the life of service."  I regularly give to the church.  I attend a Bible study of sorts.  In my mind, I was going through the "right" motions of being a good Christian.  I most certainly never felt perfect - I know that perfection isn't possible.  I did, however, feel comfortable with the things I was doing.  And I feel very guilty for experiencing that feeling of comfort.

A few weeks ago, my "Bible Study" (I will call it that for lack of a better phrase - we don't always just study the Bible, although it is always used as a point of reference) began reading a book by Philip Gulley called If the Church Were Christian: Rediscovering the Values of Jesus.  I will tell you that I am a skeptic by nature, so I take everything I read or hear with a grain of salt.  As we began to read and discuss this book, however, I felt overwhelmingly that this guy had a point in what he was saying.

The book is broken down into chapters that complete the phrase, "If the Church Were Christian..."  They are as follows:

If the Church were Christian,
-Jesus would be a model for living rather than an object of worship
-Affirming our potential would be more important than condemning our brokenness
-Reconciliation would be valued over judgment
-Gracious behavior would be more important than right belief
-Inviting questions would be valued more than supplying answers
-Encouraging personal exploration would be more important than communal uniformity
-Meeting needs would be more important than maintaining institutions
-Peace would be more important than power
-It would care more about love and less about sex
-This life would be more important than the afterlife

So far, I've only read the first two chapters because that's as far as my group has been assigned.  I can not read ahead in books which I discuss with other people.  If I do, I get myself lost and mix up what I read in which chapter.

Chapter 1
In the first chapter, Gulley questions how Jesus would feel about his divine status.  He even suggests that Jesus, as a monotheistic Jew, would have "interpereted such reverence as idolatrous."  This makes sense to me.  In Mark 10: 17-18,  Jesus scolded a man for calling him "Good Teacher."  Jesus asked why he called him good and stated that "no one is good but God alone."  This leads a reader to infer that Jesus wasn't comfortable with divine status.

Gully later explains that Jesus exemplified the priorities of God - mercy, forgiveness, hospitality, and compassion.  Through Jesus' example, he urged others to exceed the things he was doing.  Gully claims that instead of accepting that Jesus was a man committed to faithfully living out the priorities of God, we made Jesus God.  Gulley suggests that, "The Christian gospel ought not be that Jesus was God and we can find life in his death.  Our good news is that we can find life in his example - accepting the excluded, healing the sick, strengthening the weak, loving the despised, and challenging the powerful to use their influence redemptively."

This, for me, has been a lot to take in.  It does, however, make a lot of sense.  I can't find anything in the Bible that tells me that Jesus wanted to be worshiped for his good doings.  It seems to me that Jesus did everything that he did in order to please God.  I also have to keep in mind that the divinity of Christ is result of what was voted upon by the Council of Nicea.

Chapter 2
In Chapter 2, Gulley talks about the tendency of many modern-day churches to condemning the brokenness of its members rather than affirming their potential.  Gulley suggests that, perhaps, people are being turned away from churches because of the message that is being delivered to them week after week.  Gully seems to look down upon churches which have developed a "shame-based culture," using "weapons of manipulation, shame, embarrassment, and disgrace" in order to "gain followers, power, influence, and obedience."

I should say that I know several people who attend churches with such messages who get a lot out of that message.  I do not attend a church that delivers such messages, so I can't speak positively or negatively about them.  It's just a different concept than what I am used to.  What I do know is that, when trying to instigate a conversation with a friend who attends a "shame-based" church, I realized that I wasn't able to even discuss the topic because she has fundamentally different ideas of Christianity than I do.  Her ideas differ because of what she is told week after week.  I'm not saying that my church is right and her church is wrong.  Frankly, if any religion was "right," wouldn't it be Judiaism?  If Jesus was a Jew, why shouldn't I be?  I digress...

Gulley's whole point here is to "no longer view ourselves as wretched sinners, deserving of damnation" and instead "see ourselves and others as God does - beloved, accepted, valued, cherished, of infinite worth and potential."  Gulley desires a church that would motivate its congregation to use its God-given talents to go out into the world and do good works.  To live a life like the one Jesus modeled to us.

This has certainly been rich food for thought for me.  As are the questions my "Bible study" leader gave to us this week.  He ensured us that these were not given to us so that we may find answers but rather to stretch our thinking:

1.  If we are required to love our enemies, can we safely say God loves God's enemies?  If God loves his enemies, will he doom them to endless punishment (hell)?  Matthew 5:43-44

2.  If God loves only those who love Him, how is he any better than us sinners?  Luke 6:32-33

3.  If "love works no ill," how can God, who IS love, inflict or allow us to be inflicted eternal doom?  Romans 13:10

4.  If man does wrong in returning evil for evil, would not God be doing wrong if He were to do the same? (condemning evil-doers to hell).  Would not endless doom (hell) be the return of evil for evil?

5.  As we are commanded to overcome evil with good, may we safely infer that God will do the same?  How does the infliction of eternal doom (hell) overcome evil with good?  Romans 12:21

6.  If the demands of "divine justice" are opposed to the requirements of "divine mercy," is not God divided against Himself?  Mark 3:24

7.  Does God desire the salvation of all people?  1 Timothy 2:3-4

8.  If God can save all people but will not, is he infinite in goodness?  And if God desires to save all people but can not, is he infinie in power?

Like I said yesterday, I'm completely lost here.  Penny for your thoughts?