even the skrippers. Jesus walks with them.

Finals.

They are hard.



i'm realizing more and more each day just how much i need a Savior. It really isn't very easy for me, to be quite honest. Probably for most people it isn't very easy. We have this condition, this sickness that would try its hardest to keep us from realizing our need for Jesus. It's called sin. The problem with sin is not what we do through sin. The problem with sin is just its very existence that permeates the universe down to the very smallest atom and to infinitely smaller depths that we don't realize exist. That's why i need a Savior.

i'm really tired. i spend a lot of time studying and using my brain and learning, and i was really just discouraged today about accounting. When i say i spend a lot of time studying, that probably should be clarified, but i won't endeavor to do that now. just ask a close friend. most people think i'm crazy. maybe i am. i have no qualms with the fact that i am very driven to get good grades, because God gave me a brain and i enjoy using it. Anyways, i had an exam in the hardest class of my life last night, and i studied a long long time for it. i was well prepared and expected to do well. i went and took it and felt extremely good about it and it made my night. Well, today i looked and saw my grade and it was quite a bit lower than i expected. By now all of you are thinking about just how ridiculous i am for letting this affect me. i understand, but at the same time this is just me. i'm sorry if you think it's stupid, but it really is who i am. i am reallllly passionate about school, and especially this field of study known as accounting. i've come to realize that this quality or flaw, whatever it may be, makes it hard for some people to share their lives with mine, because they don't think i understand what real life is about. i apologize for seeming that way, but i also think those people are largely mistaken. here's the thing. i'm going to be really honest. If you think it's dumb for me to spend 20 hours studying for an exam, i can see your point and will give it to you free of charge. Now, my turn. i think it's dumb to pay for college (or go into debt for it, or have your parents pay for it) and spend all your time throwing frisbee and acting like life is too short to spend your time studying. Get real, please. Look at where you are. A university. A center for learning. If you call yourself a Christian and you aren't out there busting your ass to be the absolute best student you can be, then don't expect respect from students or professors when you start telling them that Jesus can change your life. If He changed your life, then start acting like it in the classroom. At no point in His 33 years on this messy planet did Jesus in any way insinuate that it would be okay to give a half-ass effort in anything in order that you might tell more people about Him. There are, quite simply, 24 hours in each persons day. We all can and should find, no make, the time to be diligent in the classroom and out of it being students and children of the Most High. And it should be seamless. You cannot have one without the other.

i feel like i get on that tangent every now and then, and i didn't even mean to. sorry.

Here's me, though. What i learned today with gusto was that there are just times when you can work as hard as you can, and give your absolute best and still fail by someone's standards. And that is what i did. Not only did that happen, but it about ruined my whole day. The biggest but, though, is that the someone is not the One. That is why i so need a Savior. i need Him to remind me that His standards are not A's only. His standards are not 4.0. i often make those His standards, and that is why it hit me so hard today. i couldn't understand why i could fail when i shouldn't have. Life is hard, though. Much harder than class. And we all will fail even when we are doing the right things. It's at those times when the Comforter makes His presence felt. It's in those times, like today, that i realized that He is the only thing that can complete me. Because everything and everyone else will inevitably fail. No woman on this earth can complete me. No job or any amount of wealth can complete me. I will even fail myself. But never, ever, ever will the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come, fail me. And He will not fail you, either. He promises to bear our burdens with us. He never said He'd take them away, but He'll shoulder them right along side of us, and His half is so much bigger than ours.

Here is Love, vast as the ocean, Lovingkindness as the flood.

In my bedroom in my apartment, i have a picture that is basically just to the left of my head when i am at my desk. This picture contains a group of guys which affectionately call themselves "The Bros." The picture was taken at one of our high school's football games our senior year. It's probably my favorite photo. I love those guys like brothers, and that is why we call ourselves by that name.

i typically am a person who really enjoys having things laid out in front of me. i have no patience for not knowing. This is not all bad, because being in the field of accounting requires this type of person to some extent. But i'm just so tired of being busy. i'm tired of feeling like God is an old friend from high school. i'm tired of remembering when talking was something we did all the time and knowing that it's now just something i do. i'm tired of feeling like worship isn't real. i'm tired of feeling calloused. i'm tired of carrying everything on my back like the huge textbooks i seem to be forever buried in. For Jesus is my first and only true love, and while i am continually seeing Him work in and around me every single day of my life, i have been feeling for some time now that i am putting up a wall in our relationship. David said in the Psalms that all God asks for is a broken heart. He doesn't want fancy sacrifices or cool prayers or memorized Bible verses all the time. He just wants my broken heart. A heart that longs for nothing else to fill it except the Love which has turned the world upside down forever. A heart that realizes that at the foundation of mankind is the same problem. The problem of sin. There is no good person or bad person at the bottom of it all.

Only God and sinners.

God calls for me to be broken over my sin and realize that the only thing that can bridge the chasm between sinners like myself and the holy God of the universe is the cross upon which His Son Jesus died. i know this is true and i have placed my deepest faith in His promise to all of us. But so often i forget from where it was that i was rescued. More importantly, i forget from whom i was rescued. i was rescued from my self. On an October night in 1993 i was made new, but how often i forget! Oh how often.

Christians in Rwanda and in poverty- and war-stricken places all over the world are praying for Americans right now. Even those of us who would call ourselves Christians. Why? Because we are never broken. We are always put together. At least we think so. But because nothing on the outside, nothing in our culture or society can break us, we refuse to allow ourselves to be broken so that God can refine us like gold. So we continue to live inside a huge lie that keeps many of us, even Christians, from tasting the abundant life that Christ offers. An abundant life that is peaceful and rich even if i have nothing to my name besides the clothes on my back and if i am living amidst civil unrest. That is what i want. i want a life the is so real that my circumstances cannot dictate it. i crave an existence that matters for eternity regardless of my reputation. i need to feel God surround me once more in the way that He so longs.