a restless evening

Hmmm, what to say? what to say? I have been really bored as of late. Without school, I haven't much to do. I called my hometown friends, and most of them have long summer jobs to attend to. I've been lounging around watching all kinds of movies and reading The Fellowship of the Ring. I get some writing done every once in a while. Insomnia strikes me, and I often find myself lying awake for hours before finally falling asleep. For some reason, which I can't quite place, this... plague... of insomnia greets me with each summer. Perhaps it is the restlessness in my bones? I need something to throw myself into. A hobby of some sort that can truly occupy my time. I can't wait for my summer job to start; then I will have much to devote my energies to. Exciting news: every day at my job I'll teach once or twice a day. I can't wait.

I watched "One Night With The King" this evening. I give it a C+. The acting could have been much better, the plot more lucid and understandable, and the movie could have been more accurate with the biblical account found in the Book of Esther. I remember studying the story of Esther and learning that the "gallows" upon which Haman planned to execute Mordecai (but which ended up being his own demise in an ironic twist of events) was probably not the gallows as we understand them today (i.e., hanging), but something along the lines of a proto-crucifixion. Interesting, eh?

I do not have much to write this evening. I leave you with a quote from Paul Tillach in his famous work, The Shaking of the Foundations:

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life… It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: ‘You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not see for anything, do not perform anything, do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted.’ If that happens to us, we experience grace.