If I can remember the way...

LongDistanceConversations

Andrew Osenga has a song called Broadway Bartender about a bar full of sad and lonely people. Andy's (I feel that he and I are so close that I can call him Andy) last line is that he's tired of the bar and wants to go home. Well, I'm not in a bar right now. I am in Ecuador though, and I'm tired of this country and I want to go home. I leave here on the eighth of next month. That's only a week from Friday, but it's not soon enough. I miss Laura the cats and I'm anxious to get home and take care of them and our unborm child (it's Laura's and mine, not the cats').

Don't get me wrong, please. This is not the worst place to be. I could be sitting in the desert with sand in everything, living in a tent. But I'm not, I am where I am. I got to stop in Quito for a night, it's a beautiful city. I only have to have one room mate, that's pretty nice. I just want to go home and not have to call or e-mail any more. It gets old when your only source of communicaton with the person you want to talk to is over the phone. At any rate, if you're looking for a good DVD, watch the HBO series Rome. It's a great look, throught the lives of individuals, at the civil war in Rome. They always manage to show how some personal conflict can shape a huge empire. Check it out.

Grace and Peace

Thoughts without conclusions II: More conclusive than the first

TheFarSideOfCrazy

Three months ago, to the day, I was talking about how many of Israel's stories (i.e. The Old Testament) are not their stories. But, it turns out, that they are. I read a book about early Israel by an archaeologist named William G. Dever; in it he lays out his belief (based on decades of research and field work) that Israel descended from a group of people indigenous to Canaan. These proto-Israelites probably formed a new community from their subversion of the old, pagan, monarchical order of Canaan. Many of the stories in the OT may actually be, historically, a part of their past, only numerically embellished.

This actually makes sense to me. I recently read a book review by Craig Blomberg about a topic realting to what I'm thining on right now: Inspiration. Was it a one time thing. Did YHWH only inspire one author for every book of the Bible, or did he inspire whole communities and generations of scribes in the transmission of stories and texts to form a gradually inspired scripture? In Blomberg's words: "It would have been a far greater miracle to supernaturally guide every copyist and translator throughout history than to inspire one set of original authors, and in the process it probably would have violated the delicate balance between the humanity and divinity of the Bible..."

While I think that the issue here is far greater than jsut texts, Blomberg's thoughts still resonate with me.

Grace and Peace,
Jared

Places for people

LongDistanceConversations: TheFarSideOfCrazy

I think that it's possible for someone to be miserable for losing a place that they couldn't earn or keep on their own. I know I have. When my mom and step-dad divorced I lost my home, and consequently my place in that home. I was a son one day and nothing the next. That's enough to make you miserable, or to make me miserable. And the fact that there are so many other people going through the same thing and still thinking that they're their own person is laughable. It could be said in two ways: Life's never so easy as to be just you. Life's never so hard as to be just you.

The only thing is that people with any amount of perspective will know that their lives are not in ruins when there are more people than just them. Or that they are when no one else is around.

Grace,
Jared