Salmon Loaf and Sex Trafficing.

I should write more often.

The days are being eaten up with schoolwork, though. It's straight up ridiculous!

Any-dang-way, I just felt like sharing some thoughts on my hero.
Mr. Rogers was a man of genius. "You make every day such a special day, just by being yourself." He would tell children this every weekday at the end of his show.
Profound.
Imagine that, we don't have to do anything to be special.
Not that we deserve anything, but that what we have, or what we were given, has no bearing on our worth as a human being. When I take into account the millions of tiny weird quirks one person has, and multiply it by 8 billion, I realize that there are tons of amazing little oddities that make people special.

I was talking to a friend recently about perfection. When perfection comes, and we take on the likeness of Christ, we will by no means look the same. Some call them imperfections, but the weird little quirks in our personalities are no more flaws than the color of our eyes are, unless of course you are of the opinion that Jesus was white and had blue eyes. It's the strange twists in our personalities that make us beautiful. As Five Iron Frenzy once said, our strength comes in our unity, not in our uniformity.

The Wizard of Oz.

I love the story of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It says so many things about the human condition.

The Wizard of Oz also has important things to say about faith.
Everyone believes something. Christians believe in Jesus, atheists believe there is no God, even people who say they don't believe anything believe that their life will be fine if they don't believe anything. We all follow what seems to be the correct path during our childhood, or follow what has been told to us by a group of innocent munchkins. Dorothy follows the yellow brick road in search of a Wizard who is rumored to have almighty power. The Wizard here doesn't necessarily represent God, but just what we consider the truth about the world, told to us by society or our parents or whatnot. There comes a point in life where everyone, Christians, atheists, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, agnostics, all must take a look behind the curtain to see if what we have been believing all along has meat to it. As you step toward the curtain, you remember what the munchkins said. A Wonderful Wizard. That's what they called him. "Surely they all couldn't have lied," you say to yourself. "Surely the all powerful wizard couldn't be just a bumbling man behind a curtain. Surely what I consider the truth isn't just some fairy tale."

I believe I have looked behind the curtain and have found Christ Jesus to be the real thing. I believe he is the Son of God and far exceeds everything the church tried to sell him as.

Have you looked behind the curtain? Have you examined eveything you believe?
Perhaps it's time you did.



"I am Oz, the Great and Terrible," spoke the Beast, in a voice that was one great roar. "Who are you, and why do you seek me?" - L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Girls, and whatnot.

In my life recently I've been talking to a girl. She's really quite amazing, the kind of woman you'd like to marry.
But the more and more we talk, the more I realize that neither of us have any remote idea of how the human mind really works.

When talking about this issue with people, I feel embarrassed, simply because I feel like I'm in college now, and I should be able to have a healthy relationship with a girl, however things seem to be more "high school" than ever before. We both still have no idea what the other one is thinking, and there's always the emotions that fly all over the place, which in retrospect make me seem very foolish.
I suppose that this is the way it's meant to be, though. After getting advice from people I trust, it seems that even when adulthood rolls around, you almost always seem foolish when dealing with the opposite sex.

This is because we are fools, is most respects. Apparently God knew that, for when it came time for Adam to have a wife, God had to put him to sleep to keep him from getting in the way.
That seems to be the trend in my life; God showing me just how foolish I am...

But nevertheless, that's whats been going on in my life recently.

Books I've been reading, in case you want to know: Preacher and Prayer, written in 1907 by E.M. Bounds. Our library here at school had a sale recently, one dollar for every book. I bought it because it was thin. It is really packed with good stuff to chew on, spiritually. "Men are God's method," says Bounds. "The church is constantly looking for better methods. God is looking for better men." Brilliant.

Homecoming is finally over with here at school, which means much more time for me, and fall break is coming up soon, which is when I'll be taking a trip up to Pennsylvania for the first time. Wish me luck!

Lets see if I can keep up with a blog, shall we?

Whoever you are, thank you for taking a chance on reading what I have to say. I have never considered myself a writer, or even "hip" enough to have a blog, but I say that if people can blog about cats, or turtles, or something like that, then I might as well give it a shot, in case anyone should find my life interesting enough to read about.
Do we agree?
Fantastic!
I used to hate writing about my life, or my experiences. When I would get the urge and start a journal, I usually would write a few things, read over it, then give up, simply because what I wrote wasn't how I really felt, but what I thought would sound good written in a journal. But now, having written in a journal religiously for about a year, I wonder how exactly I got from writing what "sounds good" to writing my heart out on paper.
I would have to say that it really stems from my extremely nostalgic heart. I am nineteen years old, as of the time I write this, however if you asked anyone who knows me, they might tell you I'm actually eighty seven, only trapped in a nineteen year old's body. When I sit down and start thinking about my life and the things I've felt and experienced, I have a tendency to really start to tear up. I can sit and think about the things I've experienced and felt and done for hours on end, and never get tired. "Why does the past have to keep getting ripped away from me," I ask God sometimes. Often, I find that God has to drag me into the future, kicking and screaming, even though I know it's for my own good. I suppose I journal, just to remember what my days were like, to remember what God did and when and where he did them, lest I ever forget, which would be the biggest tragedy I've ever committed.

Don't get me wrong, I love the future, I guess I just get to consumed in the past and where God's brought me.

But through all of that, perhaps I just have to remind myself that life is an adventure, and God still has greater things to show me.