from blue ash (II)

This past week with Mandy in town has been a whirlwind, and it went by way too fast. Already I'm missing her, and it's only *officially* been 24 hours since I last held her hand and looked into her eyes. It'll be so great to see her again at the beginning of March, and though I have to wait to see her in person, I'm no less excited about continuing to get to know her and share life with her in all the ways we can with the blessings of digital media. This "long distance relationship" is only temporary, and I'm praying for patience and wisdom as we continue on our journey 497 miles apart.

The chaos and elation of having her by my side for a week is giving way to normalcy yet again: lots of working, quiet nights at home, and a good deal of reading. My ambition to finish Shaara's The Final Storm by this past Sunday didn't quite come through, but I'm not mad about it: it'll give me something to shoot for this weekend. I'm also working on an essay of sorts charting developments and currents in 17th-18th century England and how they affected the American colonies. It's fascinating stuff, it really is. I'm trying to pick up an extra shift in Blue Ash per week, hoping to bolster my income and save, save, save. I have lots to save up for, and I've never been so motivated to do so. My "serving" at U.C.C. begins this weekend at Roh's Street Cafe, and I'm stoked about the Young Adult Group returning after its holiday hiatus. On top of all this, I haven't seen my closest friends for a while, and I look forward to "catching up" with Corey and Mandy, John and Brandy, Amos, Blake, everyone. I haven't even seen Ams in more than a week, and that's unheard of! She may come hang out with me and Ben Sunday, which would be pretty awesome. Ben loves her and is convinced that if he buys her jewelry, he's pretty much got her hand in marriage. To each his own, I suppose.

I've been making it a habit over the past several weeks to memorize scripture, and the effect it's had on my life has been surprising, to be honest. As I told Mandy last night, "When you read scripture, that's great. But when it's imprinted in your mind, it soaks into your heart, and meditating on passages throughout the day as I'm driving or working or before bed or in the morning really helps me keep centered on Christ and in the scriptures no matter what's going on all around me." The scripture really is living and breathing and active, and when we give it the space to seep into the marrow of our bones, the Spirit's at work, working in us and through us. I used to feel a sort of revulsion at memorizing scripture, as if it were some hangover from early Sunday School days I'd rather push out of my memory. Psalm 119 is an excursus on the beauties of scripture and of meditating on that scripture, and as I've been putting that into practice, I can't imagine my faith absent it. I'm not being legalistic or anything, and I don't think the quality of one's faith can be summed up by how much they memorize scripture, but I've seen and experienced the effects, and I'd rather have my faith with it than without it. This week's scripture is Ephesians 4.17-20: "You must no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart. They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned themselves to licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. That is not the way you learned Christ!" 

This has been a hodgepodge post, and I close with a quote from the venerable Thomas Jefferson: "Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing."