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What do you do when someone dislikes/resents you? Do you ask for forgiveness...or pray for God to allow you to forgive them for disliking you? Or both? I think usually we just stop associating with that person and move on.

What if it's a close family member?

Maybe this is just practice for if I ever have teenage children of my own; if it is, I don't think I do well with family disliking & resenting me, and I'll be in trouble then.

Jesus declared new siblings and parents for himself; somehow I don't think that's the model he had in mind for us.

So what do we do? How do we reconcile within ourselves an irreconcilable relationship?

Wheeeee!

In a more-complete update on the last post and some previous ones:

I've found an awesome church where lots of people I know go (which I didn't know before I go'ed), and I'm very much looking forward to getting to know them and getting closer to God again and not having to carry things myself as much anymore. Definitely feel like it was God's doing that I ended up at that specific church.

After being turned down from jobs again and again and severely moping on Monday because of getting turned down again because no one wanted a short-term hire, I resigned myself to retail and working weekends (no dis on retail, and it's a pride fault that makes me see it as less, but also because I just don't want to work Sundays). So I printed off a stack of resumes and was about to go knocking on doors, when my mom suggested I take a look at this aquarium store about a half an hour away. So I printed off my "aquatic husbandry" resume and went down there. And, though they said they had no openings, we got to talking, I got to interview with the store owner and...hired! It was amazing. And they've got all kinds of delightful aquatic creatures there, including a 9' diameter tank with sharks! I think they'll probably have me primarily work with turtles, but hopefully I'll get well-versed in lots of aquatic creatures and how to care for them.

And then...I got the doc's ok to get my SCUBA certification this weekend! Wooooooooooooo! I've been studying like whoa, and start tomorrow evening.

And then...all my grad apps are done (except one mysteriously missing set of GRE scores). AND I heard back from a potential grad school about interviews. YAY!

I'm pretty incredulous over it all. So much tohu bohu before, so many grace-given surprising resolutions to it all within this week. There aren't really words for it, just sitting here grinning like a little kid who got a plesiosaur in the swimming pool for Christmas.

And really, this was deserved even amidst the tohu-bohu (it's just much easier to see when the darkness is lifted):

Praise the LORD!
Praise, O servants of the LORD, praise the name of the LORD!

Blessed be the name of the LORD
from this time forth and for evermore!
From the rising of the sun to its setting
the name of the LORD is to be praised!
The LORD is high above all nations,
and His glory above the heavens!
Who is like the LORD our God,
who is seated on high,
who looks far down
upon the heavens and the earth?
He raises the poor from the dust,
and lifts the needy from the ash heap,
to make them sit with princes,
with the princes of his people.
He gives the barren woman a home,
making her the joyous mother of children.
Praise the LORD!

Ps 113.

Stagnancy

So things back here in the ol' homestead have been fairly dull and stagnant of late, and so many things are still up in the air. We usually think of stagnancy as being in a rut of activity, but I'm in a stagnancy of uncertainty. It's like being stuck in Limbo (see: Rasputin in "Anastasia"). Nothing is certain, there is no direction, yet the lack of direction and solidity is unchanging.

I'm hoping, though, that something, anything, will change soon.

- I'm still looking for a job and had some interviews before Christmas. One seemed very promising but I still haven't heard. I hate applying for jobs, too, and have pretty much been constantly looking for a job since leaving college. Now that I've got an end time limit on my availability due to grad school, it's hard to find anything above retail. Pray for a job, any job, to work out, and for God's direction (and my listening, and for me not to be too proud about what kind of work I do).

- Even if I get a job in downtown Philly, I may just try to carpool with my dad rather than get a new apartment for just 3-5 months. Need direction with that one, too. And if I do live at home, lots of prayer for sanity and flexibility and humility. Living at home is something else entirely after having lived on one's own.

- I had been waiting to find a new church until I knew where I was living, but the job/housing stuff is taking too long and I'm going to seriously start looking tomorrow. I'd like to find a place solidly rooted in the Word and that has a welcoming community. I'm also hoping to find someplace with a young adults ministry or Bible study, because being out here in the suburbs is lonely as all get out, and I'd like to make a few friends. It's been a long time since I felt connected to a church. So yeah, prayer for that would be super.

- And, of course, grad school. I still have no idea where I'm headed, if anywhere. If I don't get in, the current idea is to just move back to Savannah and start over from there. Definitely need prayer for God's will to be evident in grad school decisions.

Oh yeah, and I'm incredibly bored, as evidenced by the carrot creations.

>{EDIT 1/6/08: God found me a church this morning, and surprised me with lots of people I know well and the potential to make friends of some folks my age. God is a good God, yes He is, wu-hoo!}<

>{EDIT 1/8/08: I got a job today at an aquarium supply store with fish and herps and inverts and sharks! They said they weren't hiring, but then there was a shift change with a new manager, and he liked my resume (which I just happened to have with me and it piqued their interest), and then he took me back to meet the store manager and they hired me then and there and they'll let me have Sunday mornings off and WUHOO!}<

Decline and Fall of an Empire

After standing guard over the kitchen and my sanity for a week, fending off assailants and irritants of both, Mr. Carrot Zombie fell into ill health and descended into the depths, to return circuitously to the ground from whence he came.








(**After this send-off of my tuber friend, if I ever have an apartment/house where I have a garbage disposal, I am seriously considering naming it "Sheol" because I could giggle any time any unsuspecting vegetable descended into it. Plus, have you ever looked inside a garbage disposal? Nasty place.**)

Mr. Carrot Zombie.

Merry Christmas!

a treatise on the effects of snow

I got to go for a walk in the woods while it was snowing today. It was charming, delightful, beautiful, serene. I had lots of lovely descriptions of it in my head, but I'm not going to write them out now - maybe later.

Snow makes me feel very impish - childlike, playful, mischievous, joyful. Impish. It makes me bite my lip and smile and stick my tongue between my teeth in sheer delight. It makes me want to skip and slide and sled and jump and draw in the snow and throw it. I was a good little girl today and kept my hands in the pockets so as to not ruin the snow for other people because I was on a public trail, but that was very hard to do. I don't think I'm the only person for whom snow is like this, or at least I hope not. Not that I need validation in numbers, but I need playmates.

I also sincerely hope that I never become so deplorably or hopelessely grown up as to dislike snow. I think that day would mark the utter destruction of my inner child and would be a day of great mourning. Somehow I doubt I'm at serious risk of that, though, knowing me and knowing snow.

I don't know what day God created snow, but praise Him that He did!

Governmental law vs. Grace

This is something that I have idly pondered before, thought fairly hard about this summer due to some events and some reading, and am fully wrestling with now due to circumstances I'm not going to post about here:

What exactly is the intersection between government legality/justice and grace? How do we as Christians legally respond when we are victimized?

We pray for God to help us "forgive us our debts/trespasses as we forgive our debtors/those who trespass against us." We are also told to submit to the ruling powers and authorities. So when we are victimized or witness a crime - what do we do?

We could go for justice and demand what is "rightfully ours", whether it be time, money, posessions, peace of mind, or revenge. Submit to the authorities, demand legal observance. Send them to jail or court, sue if we must. That sounds harsh, of course, but we do it every day, when we submit insurance claims or report a crime that we see.

Or we could turn the other cheek, let the perpetrator go. We do that too, but often out of fear of getting involved rather than out of charity and care.

So which do we strive for? If we don't turn in a theif, murderer, fraud, whatever they've done, don't persecute them - we serve them. Maybe, like Jean ValJean in Les Miserables, they learn their lesson, see Christ, and spend their lives serving others. But maybe we only set them free to recidivism, and maybe they go on to cheat and steal and rape other people - then we've not only failed to serve them, but we've failed to serve those around us whom they vicitmize next, and the authorities. Theoretically only God can know that answer. But that still leaves the quandary - what do we do?

It may be my non-confrontational attitude speaking, but I can't help but think that as Christians we should be leaning more towards forgiveness, especially when it comes to grievances against ourselves. Often this is characterized as being a "doormat", particularly when the victim themselves refuses to take action, a name that strips it of its dignity. But didn't Christ lay down His life for those who hated Him and even killed Him? Those who trespass against us become our adversaries - but aren't they the ones we are to love the most? And how are we to do so? Does Christ really mean to forgive - really? Even criminals?

The Sunday school answer seems obvious, but wrapped up in our judicial system and sense of "right and wrong", it's not. Even practically, we would cringe at the mere ideas of being wrongly fired, getting cheated out of insurance, or any other such thing without recompense.

So where do forgiveness and governmental justice intersect? And is that intersection that we see the one that God desires, or the one that we construct to be convenient in our lives?