Update...

Well I figured it was time to give a little update on my 101 list. I have recently been able to cross some things out.

First, #20-Send my sponsor child a package is done.
Second, #51-Take a camping trip was completed in Pennsylvania.
Third, #101- Take another road trip was also completed by Pennsylvania. The Elizabethtown book did not quite come together, however the music was well mapped out, which I figured was close enough to my goal.

Also, advances have been made with my ten documentaries and my reading of "Mere Christianity." Hopefully those will be crossed off within the next month.

Oh, 101 list. I think everyone needs one.

Get rid of the table...

I have always disliked the fire and brimstone preachers. Or the people that stand on the corner with bullhorns and signs about sin and death and hell. Or the impersonal one minute evangelists with tracks and hook speeches.

It just all seems impersonal and ungracious. It makes Jesus seems like the object of a salesman. And I think it communicates that Christians care more about numbers than people.

It makes me wonder too how upset Jesus must get about the things done in his name when I myself can hardly stomach such poor representations of Christianity.

I mean, there is nothing about Jesus that is supposed to be impersonal and ungracious. There is nothing about his life that demonstrates that he stands at a distance from the people that need him the most. There is nothing that shows he just wanted to sell himself to people like a perfume at the Macy's counter.

No Jesus was involved in life. He was eating meals and taking trips with people. He was knees deep in the messes that we humans so quickly make in our lives.

And Jesus did not sit behind a table at the temple. He did not sit and wait for people to come and ask him questions. He understood that at the core of God is community and relationships and so he went about building them.

I like that about Jesus.

I like community and relationships and the idea that people are more important than numbers. I like that Jesus did not and does not use damnation and bullhorns and tracks.

When I see people that do, I need to turn away less I say something terrible. For a man like this, I want to say, "Just stay sleeping. You do less damage that way anyhow."

The question is though, what would Jesus say about this?

I think he would first tell the man to get rid of the table.

Fine line...

I went to a Christian high school and graduated with an incredibly small class. During our senior year we had this English teacher who we all wanted to strangle. Very Christian, I know.

Anyway, this teacher somehow got my class into a debate involving Christian theology- primarily the concept of predestination. And prior to my senior year, I had not given the theological concept much thought.

My teacher played the devil's advocate well and managed to get my entire class in an uproar over predestination. We were tearing through our Bibles looking for anything that would prove her wrong.

I got hyped up. But my zeal for predestination died pretty shortly after I graduated.

And then for some reason, my theological mind, especially in relationship to predestination, reawakened after my freshman year of college. This happened during the August before my sophomore year, a time I consider to be the beginning of my faith.

So I have these memories from sophomore year of standing in my kitchen with friends from high school where we were just railing each other about predestination. We were still stuck on the idea, with some of us believing God chooses his followers and others believing that people choose to follow God.

I tended to lean more towards people being entirely chosen by God. And I may have been known to have Scripture memorized in order to support my view.

So I was thinking about my whole entrance into the realm of theology because I just ended taking an online theology class. It was a good class. Biblical theology can be pretty interesting.

But here is the thing that I realized recently- to make the Bible, to make God, to make Jesus about theology- that is to walk a fine line.

It becomes this balancing act between theological theory and real life application. Because sometimes the two do not line up. Sometimes theology is not enough. And sometimes application does not work.

Like with my brother, he does not know Jesus and I desperately want him to. And I believe that God wants to love him and I believe that my brother does not want to be loved by him.

So when I pray for my brother, I often find myself praying that he would allow himself to choose Christ, that he would finally say yes to the call that has been beckoning his life.

And so my prayers are the prime example of how theology can fail, how it cannot be enough or explain everything.

Because if I truly believed in predestination, I would not be praying that my brother would say yes. Instead, I would be begging God to choose my brother as someone worthy of saving.

And to be honest, I cannot conceive of God not wanting to save my brother.

That is the other thing about theology- it is all good and well until it becomes personal. My brother is personal and thus that is where my theological stance on predestination ends and my prayers begin.

So I leave my theology course with more theological enlightenment, more knowledge, and more doctrines.

But I also leave realizing that theology alone is not enough in and of itself. Instead life happens. People happen. Love happens. And what good is theology if it cannot be applied to such things?

No, Christianity is more than theory and formula. There is a degree of application.

And sometimes I forget that until people like my brother cause me to loss my balance and fall off the fine line of theology.

Titus...

Number one thing that makes my best friend and fellow Kenya returnee awesome... She is crazy, even when my back is turned!

Oh Titus.

The right place...

I think I always have this fear that I am going to end up in the wrong place. It is like dreading that I will wake up one day and realize that I made twenty wrong decisions and am now stuck somewhere. I think my fear of this began when I started going out on my own.

So basically it began after high school when I decided to stay in Pennsylvania for school. I was terrified that I would be there and feel like I was supposed to be somewhere else.

It is a funny thing to fear that when it has never happened. I mean, I have never felt like I have ended up in the wrong place. Pennsylvania was right. Georgia was right. Kenya was right.

And I am not sure whether I always end up in the right place or whether there is no such thing as the wrong place- maybe God makes every place the right place for me.

I do not know. But I tend to lean more towards thinking that every place can be right and this perhaps have something to do with God's sovereignty.

Regardless, when I moved to South Carolina for this summer- or longer depending on fund raising- I felt that fear rise up in me a little bit again. I found myself a little anxious about leaving Atlanta, wondering if it was really time to move on from there, the place I wanted to be for so many years.

But then I was standing by a field in Pennsylvania. And I was just standing there and seeing the colors comes alive. The blue sky. The green stalks. The yellow seeds.

And I just had this sense while standing there that I was in the right place, not just on my road trip but in my life.

So this field was some form of confirmation, really my entire road trip was confirmation. I know I am not supposed to be in Pennsylvania anymore. I know that I am not supposed to be in Atlanta anymore.

Instead, I am right where I should be.

And I know that there is a field waiting for me in Kenya where I can stand and again feel like I am in the right place.

Oddly I am always looking for the right place.

Identity...

Well I am home from my road trip and in my final week as far as my online classes go. Yes that is right, come Friday, I am a free woman. A graduate.

Praise God.

But I have come to realize that finishing school is different than I ever imagined. I thought that graduating would be all joy and yes while there is much joy in it, there is also sadness.

And maybe sadness is not the right word. Perhaps the appropriate word to describe the feeling is loss.

There is this loss of identity that is associated with being a college student, because being one has an entire lifestyle surrounding it. You know, cheapness and half adulthood and stuff like that.

So I find myself coming to the edge of no longer being a college student and in doing so I am losing that part of my identity. But I am gaining a new identity, this after college adult identity.

And I gotta say, the adult identity is pretty intense. I think that if I was not planning on going to Kenya for a year I would be at a loss as to what to do next.

Instead I am finding that Kenya is my escape from the life of a traditional college graduate. It gets me out of more school and settling down and becoming a slave "to the man."

So I think that adds more to the joy and takes away more from the loss of finishing school.

But either way, come on Friday!

I have a new identity to gain.

Road trip...

Road trip good. Camp good. Titus good. Brakes bad. Road trip still good.

One more week of summer classes... extra good.

We are almost on our journey home. Until then...