A few thoughts

Aptly named I hope, because this shouldn't be an extremely long post.

This past week I had occasion to hear of a young girl who had a child out of wedlock. Now her mother is a grandmother at a very young age. This started me thinking on a rather lengthy and possibly random chain:
This older woman is a grandmother physically. She may or may not have wanted something like this but physically she is. Very similar to this, sometimes people may become grandparents in name and in actuality not be. Something of this nature requires more than just a physical relation.

Very similarly (and this ties back to the marriage study on Wednesday nights), the relationship between a husband and a wife is not purely physical. There cannot be merely a legal agreement or a contract that the two share the house together. That is not what a husband and a wife are supposed to be. For a male and a female to call themselves husband and wife merely on legal terms would be a complete mockery of God's institution of marriage. It goes so much deeper than that! It is indeed a picture of Christ's love for the Church, of God's love for His people, and how that ought to be reciprocated by our people. Christ gave of Himself freely and wholly. His disciples certainly didn't deserve it, they were just previously arguing as to who should be the greatest! Yet Christ never complained but gave Himself. How great a love was this!

It cannot be in name only, there is a bond much deeper than this, to a spiritual level. Oh I know this is not news to anyone but I've been rather saddened by the relations I've seen around.

Just this past week a former classmate of mine was talking to me when he got a text message. He said it was from his girlfriend in China where she was on a study abroad trip and she wanted to know if he could talk to her. He said that he was at school and they didn't have webcams there so he couldn't, besides that, he wanted to get something to eat. He was complaining about it to me and my first reaction was that it sure seemed that he was focusing on himself. True, they are not a husband and wife but there appears to be very little foundation for that to ever occur! My thought was that she was in China, where quite possibly there were very little people of her own language to interact with. His thought was that she was bugging him all the time and he wanted to just live his own life. Relationships require sacrifice and commitment, selfishness only destroys because selfishness is not about the other person, it's about me, and "me" is not part of "us."

Another thought I had this morning. I was thinking of the passage that talks about the wheat that must die before it can come to life and applying that to our spiritual lives. It struck me as quite amazing:

Our earthly bodies, as Henry says, continue to die as soon as we are born. Yet the amazing thing is that our spirits continue to grow in strength. I had this mental poetry of our flesh, or earthly man growing weaker and weaker with the ravages of time. He struggles against the spirit but in the end he must give way and die. The spirit grows stronger through this time, like a bird that is breaking free of its bonds and then soars heavenward. At last, the prison of the earthly man, the flesh, crumbles and the spirit is free and not only that, but because Christ has conquered death, our flesh is made renewed because it has been redeemed. Even our very bodies were purchased by Christ. Oh yes, we grow weaker but for the Christian, it only means that our flesh (and I use that in the biblical sense) is losing the battle! We shall be more than conquerors.

And not to say that the flesh is bad, I'm not proposing gnosticism by any means, but it does afford a spiritual allegory or picture.

That is all.

Ride in the breeze/Ridin' the breeze

I know it's been quite a while.

These past few weeks, and the next few have been and will be busy, with not a whole lot of time to do anything other than my school and work responsibilities.

I'm currently working on a new employee manual for one of my jobs, which should kill three birds with one stone: first it will be used as a report for one of my assignments. Second, it will be useful to Dan because that's what he's wanted me to do: basically condense all of the things I know and do for the company and write them up in a report for a new employee. Third, it will hopefully result in my replacement! I desperately need one :)

Today I took a bike ride out to see the Stillwater parade at 9:00 which they had for homecoming. It was fun to see all of the floats and vehicles they had. The "lawnmower" team was very funny (and impressive) to watch, and Joseph absolutely loved the tractors of course. When the first one came along, he was sitting near me and I said "Hey Joseph, there's a tractor" and his head snapped around so fast! Dan said "that got his attention!"

Later that afternoon, after having finished a report for my circuits lab, Jonathan was getting ready to leave for work and I decided on a whim to bike up there with him and continue on, trying to get to Dr Allison's house to collect his signature (he's never on campus). The wind was positively howling, going directly north, so the ride up there was a breeze! (if you'll pardon the pun).

According to weather.com, we had a steady average of 22 mph winds with gusts of 29 mph. I made it up to about airport road almost coasting the entire way. I needed to find Rogers street but though I had a general idea where it was, the only specifics I had was a recollection that it was somewhere past Lakeview.

So when I got near Airport road I turned back and peddled a bit south. It was nearly painful! I struggled to go past a jogging pace, right on that busy highway too, since there were no sidewalks! I backtracked for about half a mile, thinking it might be down Liberty, off of Perkins somewhere. I couldn't find anything but I did find a mailman and if anyone knew where Rogers street was, he would. He said that it was north a ways, before Airport road he thought. So I biked back north about 3/4 of a mile and didn't find it. So I headed south again. The wind had picked up and in that area where there were no trees and just a flat road going over a hill, man! It was hard peddling!

I saw a couple of guys outside the Stillwater radio station and stopped by to ask them if they knew where Rogers was. One had a map so we looked it up and it turned out that it was about 3/4 of a mile /past/ airport road. I again headed north. Going north was easy but I was dreading the return trip.

"Oh well, I'll have a good story to tell about getting Dr Allison's signature" I thought. I pulled into his driveway, which looked rather vacant. There were a couple of old newspapers on the doorstep and the mailbox was full of mail. I knocked on the door but didn't get any answer. I nearly shed a tear....

So then for the return trip. ARGH, UMMNGH, EEEPH, OORF.
I felt I could almost have made it faster walking back! Lots of people zooming past me, going to the big football game. Plump people wearing orange and driving big, shiny trucks with OSU flags. I almost flagged one down to give me a lift ;)

Traffic was worse today and several people made an attempt to run me over, though I clearly had the right-of-way or even a crosswalk signal! In the end, I made it down to OnCue, ordered a big Dr Pepper flavoured Icee and then biked the rest of the way home. Golly the wind was strong! I know I'll sleep well tonight ;)

upposedly, according to Google maps, I biked about 10 miles in about an hour. It took about 15 minutes to get up there, and 35 to get back :) Woowhee!

Until next time... whenever that may be, this is The Shadow.