catchin' up

It has been a week since I’ve posted, and—oh boy!—what a week it has been. My beautiful girlfriend took the bus from Cincinnati to Chicago, and then from Chicago to Minneapolis, and we spent the week together. We went to the Mall of America, visited a couple pubs and bars, went camping at William O’Brien State Park, went fishing in a storm and caught a good meal of croppies and sunfish, fixed up some deer cutlets… The list of things we did together goes on and on. I enjoyed every minute of it. I dropped her off at the bus station in Minneapolis late last night, and driving back to the house along the dark roads with nothing but the radio felt quite lonesome. I will see her again in about a month and a half. I guess I’ll just have to make do without her presence once more. 

 Mom and Dad are on their way up here right now. Busy week, eh? Yup. We don’t really have much planned. Dad is running/biking/canoing a triathlon at Worth Lake in Minneapolis, so Mom and I might go to the Mall of America. The Mall there is pretty exciting. They have an amazing Lego store with Lego sets that cost 500 dollars! I’m excited about seeing them, and I wish Amanda would be coming, but—alas!—she has to work. 

I just finished my sermon for this weekend. It’s entitled “The Swarm of the Locust” and focuses on the need for repentance and the coming Great Judgment, with the backdrop of Joel’s prophesies and the subsequent Fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians in 586 B.C. as the illustration. It should be pretty good. I won’t get to practice it very much, but that’s okay. I’d rather spend time with my family. Here is a picture I took while fishing with Karen on Martin Lake:

christianity for stupid people

Karen told me, “I’ve always wanted to read a book that makes Christianity easy to understand for stupid people.” The picture above, while extremely skeptical and possibly sacrilegious, speaks great volumes. A lot of people have great misunderstanding regarding Christianity, and seeing some of the practices in our churches—singing songs to an invisible deity, drinking wine and breaking bread, and reading apocalyptic books like Revelation—only makes this misunderstanding even greater. It would be fantastic if there existed a small book that explored Christianity and made it understandable and logical. There are many great books out there that do this—Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and Simply Christian by N.T. Wright—but, ultimately, there is a lot of language and concepts used in these works that are difficult to understand. Some people don’t have the desire to read these books and to really think about them. And so they are locked in a misunderstanding of Christianity. Karen challenged me to try and write something extremely simple that makes the plight of humanity and the redemption of the cross and our universe very understandable. I might do it sometime.

disturbing dreams

Disturbing dreams have been accosting me late at night. Not disturbing dreams in the sense of being creepy or perverted, but merely dreams of times in my past that I don’t really care to relive. I don’t think about these moments during the day, but oftentimes at night, they are so prominent, so vibrant, and even in the dreams I know that I’m dreaming and it’s not reality, but I’m glued to experience everything all over again. I complained to a friend about it, and she said, “Don’t think it’s something supernatural, and don’t look at them as visions. You’ve moved on past those events and conquered those demons. But those moments in your life were so emotionally chaotic, so stressful, so straining that they have embedded themselves in the neural passageways of your brain. You refuse to access those passageways during the day, because you have no desire nor any need to relive those experiences. But at night, your guard is down, and those neural pathways are activated, and the result is these dreams you’ve been having.” Is there really any way to get rid of them? No. I met a guy a few years back who served in Vietnam. He had gone on two tours as a grunt, and he would tell me about how he killed the Viet-Cong in pontoon boats, how they would blow up sacred temples where caches of enemy ammunition and arms were stored. He told me that when he came back, he refused to think about Vietnam during the day, but at night, he lived it out with every sleeping moment. As an older man now (obviously), the war doesn’t really bother him. But at night, when he sleeps, he relives it constantly, and oftentimes he will wake shouting, and his wife—a dear old lady—will hold him and calm him down. Those moments of terror and stress in the jungle cemented themselves in his neural pathway, and they still act within him today. I know there are ways to reconfigure your neural pathways, and I’ve been doing some mental exercises to help do this.

gone fishin'

Life has been good, really good. I have a fishing license now, and I’ve been spending lots of time fishing. After work yesterday, I went to Martin Lake for some shore fishing with my friend Mel. We caught some walleye, and we went back to his place. He taught me how to fillet them, and Paul is teaching me tonight how to beer-batter them. When Karen comes up next week, we are going to go fishing, catch some fish, then cook them for supper. She and I are both “closet outdoors people.” We live in Cincinnati, so there’s not a whole lot we can do, but we enjoy camping, fishing, rock-climbing, rappelling, hiking, swimming in creeks, hunting. She called me a few nights ago and informed me, “I just got a 20-gauge shotgun!” Yay. That’s my girl. 

Something I’ve always tried to do is reconcile my love for Christianity and my love for writing. I’ve thrown my love for teaching into the mix, and am currently working on a Bible Study for the general epistle of James. It is my dad’s favorite book of the New Testament, so once I get it complete (it will be a while), I’m going to give him a copy and let him use it. I really want to do Romans and Galatians, but those letters are so rich and complex that it’s nothing to throw yourself into. James is much easier, full of proverbs and wise sayings, lacking in intense, abstract doctrines, unlike Romans and Galatians. Larry and I have been leading a Romans study on Wednesday nights; we’re currently on Romans 6, and let me tell you, that is complicated Pauline literature. I’m still having a difficult time in understanding what Paul is saying, especially in relation to baptism.

on fishing, et al.

So I went fishing again. I told Mel, “There’s something so relaxing, so serene, so tranquil about fishing. It’s like, when I get out there, everything just fades away, and it’s just me, the rippling water, the cool breeze, and the birds singing and geese swimming.” It is nearly a romantic experience. Today is Father’s Day; I called Dad and told him, “When you guys come up here in July, we’re going to go fishing and fix us some fresh-caught fish.” He liked the sound of that. I’m slowly piecing together my sermon for not this week but next. It’s called “Cosmic Redemption” and is a topical sermon about the future of our planet and the human species, and it’s centered upon Colossians 1.15-20. Colossians is a fascinating letter to read; the Apostle Paul wrote it to the Christians in the city of Colossae, and it was written to combat Judaizing-Gnosticists that had begun to spread their false teaching throughout the church. It’s interesting that our concept of Heaven has more to do with Gnosticism than the Holy Scriptures (I will be sure to make that point in my sermon!). 

a minnesota sunset

of cats & sunsets

a minnesota sunset

Ten days, and I’ll be holding my baby Karen in my arms! Each day without her goes slower and slower, and as the day of her arrival on the bus in Minneapolis draws nearer, I find myself getting more and more excited. It will be so wonderful to hold her and kiss her and tell her all the things I want to tell her. 

Mel and I went fishing yesterday. We caught eight fish—just Sunfish and some Croppies— and decided to throw them back, cause we didn’t get anything worthy of keeping. We’re going to be going fishing again in about a week. He has a motorboat, and he told me that when Karen comes up, I can borrow it from him and take her out on the lake. That will be exciting! Mel is a good man and lots of fun to be around. 

I made some of the girls from youth group mad last night. They were chasing a cat around the church parking lot. I told them to stop. They didn’t listen, and the cat darted into the street, where it got hit by a car. It wasn’t dead, only badly injured. The girls wailed, “What should we do?!” My sarcasm (unfortunately) got the best of me, and I remarked: “Well, why don’t you throw it in front of another car and finish what you started?” One girl called me an ass. I deserved it. The cat later died.

she's beautiful

Isn’t she just absolutely beautiful! I miss her so much! She’s coming up from the 20th to the 26th of June. She’s coming via the bus, and I pick her up from the Minneapolis bus station at 2:45. That day will feel so long until I meet her, and then it will go so fast. We have been doing “premarital counseling.” That’s what I call it, but in reality, it’s something different. I don’t know. Gauge for yourself. I made a list of thirty questions about marriage that I sent her, and I filled it out and she filled it out. A lot of our questions are similar, but a lot are drastically different. It has certainly provided an ample amount of conversation, and we’ve been growing closer through it. Open communication and honesty and trust are huge for me when it comes to relationships. In all my other relationships, the girls have not been totally honest or have been absolutely distrusting (though, ironically, I’m the one who had reason to distrust!). Things with Karen are different. She is open and honest, and she trusts me with her secrets and skeletons in the closet, and I trust her with mine. Things are going really well between us, and time apart—it’s only been three weeks!—has taught me how much I truly value and care for her. I would not be surprised if one day she is the mother of my children.