every now and then...

...i'm convinced that maybe i am the luckiest guy in the world ('luck,' right). 

so yesterday (sunday) jen and kristen came out to the OP to check out the scenery and hang out a little bit if we found the time. heh. we did. on sunday, they got here just in time to catch a ride on our founder's (ish) freakin 50-foot james bond speedboat. it was wicked. he took us around the bay and up to his house where we had kind of an introduction to him and to the academy's history, and jen and kristen seemed to enjoy hearing what we're up to. when we got home, we cooked chicken and veggies for us 3 and 2 of the fellows. it was really similar to being back at school. i mean, it really was the perfect way for us to eat. after dinner we walked out on the pier and looked at the stars and talked for a while. the night was really cool and there was a solid breeze, so we got our fill and headed back to the house. we had all missed calls from john in ni at some point during the night, so we checked skype to see if he was on. 2 hours later we finished talking to him. it was so good to catch up kind of and to just let it feel for a minute like we were all hanging out together. then we went to play music in the chapel. could it have been anything short of incredible? it only lacked the rest of the family crowded around.

jen left early in the morning to get to work, and kristen and i took the day to hang out.  we ran, ate lunch in st. michael's, sat next to a lot of water a lot of times, and had a lot of conversations. i think we kind of needed it. i just got back from dropping her at jen's and kind of saying the real goodbye, and those are always difficult and always leave something to be desired. but time with these two this weekend has been invaluable.

today was journal day after a heavy week last week that was mostly dealing with the problem of evil. God's allowing us to be vulnerable with each other, and honest, and he's providing the love between us that can catch that kind of letting oneself go. it's been great and hard. but from here, i'll let the journal do the talking. i love you all, and i still can't believe that God gives the kind of friends (and family) that would read someone's internet ramblings.

Journal:

This is not a Doctrinal Statement

 

            I can’t remember the last time in my life a class felt as heavy as Wednesday’s on the problem of evil did. And it is a problem. It made me think that this was maybe the one class where David asked us a question he didn’t already know the answer to (just kidding, I think). But after the arguments and impassioned defenses (sorry) I still felt mostly frustrated, and still unsure. I want you to know I only had one foot on the soapbox; the other was knee-deep in uncertainty.

            Am I more-or-less intellectually satisfied with all of the theological explanations I’ve heard, believed, and given for the problem of evil/pain? I think so; I wish you could’ve heard all the sermons and book quotes swirling chaotically in my head. Have I ever taken the time to let those conclusions bleed into encounters with real people and their real pain? Yea, when it’s convenient, or necessary. But have I ever loved hard enough to bring a case before God that says, “Please, please remove the hammer and cool the iron! We can’t take it. We’ll all perish! My brothers and sisters die all day long! WHY WON’T YOU END IT NOW?!”

            No, I’ve never loved quite like that. The problem of pain for me: only ever feeling my own.

            So maybe I’ll never be able to defend God’s allowing/willing/ordaining (call it what you will) evil and pain to enter the world; but I don’t think I need to. Because our pain is just a shadow, a weak glimpse, a reflection in dark sunglasses, of the pain that God feels in driving the nails through our record of debt and into his son’s hands and feet. I’m not holy enough to know pain on that level. I do not hate sin enough to know what kind of offense God would see in me were it not for Christ. “Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him,” Isaiah says. So that angry sense of futility at the existence of pain gets pushed out by the glory, the beauty, the awesomeness of a creator willing to subject himself to it on our behalf. For “surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows,” and it was all our fault.