Thank God For Wednesdays

Dear Wednesday,

I think we need to talk. Knowing you all this time has been great. You're a blast, and you've always been there for me. I treasure your friendship.

But lately I can't help but find myself attracted to you.

Okay, I was planning on riding that joke out longer, but I think its had its time, let's move on and explain.

Yesterday was a pretty great day. I got up butt early and dragged myself to a gym I don't usually go to, because there was a weapons instructor teaching Eskrima knife techniques. Sweet right?!

Blah blah skip time to meeting with Jenn at 1:30. We ended up spending about 10 minutes covering what happened with my old job and all that ridiculous crap, and then spent the rest of the two hours talking theology and ministry. Oh how I wish I got to do stuff like that more often.

We talked a little about the future of CAKE, and possibilities of what's happening there. She lamented about the decline in numbers from a year ago. She said that at the Thanksgiving celebration last year they had 120 people. That's huge.

At some point while Jenn was talking, I had the sudden urge to be more involved in CAKE. I just felt it as this sudden draw, which I decided to ask her about since I'd never really felt the urge to do much more there than go on Wednesday nights and hang out with people. So I asked her about it and we both agreed to be in prayer. We'll see where that goes. She also asked me to lead at least two Wednesday nights coming up in the next little while. One will be on H. R. Niebhur's Christ and culture types, and the other will be on the Wesleyan Quadralateral. I'm very excited about it, and have already started looking for my books, all three of which have been lent and dissappeared, so I'll be getting new copies.

Similarly, I still don't know where God wants me, but I'm getting ideas. This place still does not feel like home, but I'm thinking of chilling and putting in for Vandy div, 'cause that's still pretty snobby right? It could work. And they have some program.

I also sometimes think of just trying to move places where I know people I love are. Like moving wherever dear Glenn is, because he's great. Or others.

So what this kind of looks like is me going ahead and starting down the road of teaching, even though I'm not sure I'm ready yet, in terms of actually being able to get hired. But hey, community colleges suck, so maybe I could teach at one of those. I've also become fairly enamored with my big writing idea. Like to the point I'm looking over old papers to see what I can submit to certain magazines (Christianity Today and . . . what else I'm not sure).

So then last night I showed up at CAKE, and as soon as I'm in the door Adam grabs me and pulls me out in the hall. He invites me to be an iguide. Godwhy does this thing called the icampus, which is a way for people to be involved in the church, without being there. While there are some obvious glaring problems with that, it does have a lot to offer. It begins with a 30 minute show before the services, and then the services are run streaming online. During all this there is a chat room up and running. The iguide is the Godwhy representative there to help moderate the discussion and answer any questions that people have. Needless to say I'm very excited about being a part of that.

Then last night Luke grabs me after CAKE and invites me to go with him and Tyler, after our first venture dead ended due to an early closing, we decided to go to a local coffeehouse. Earlier in the night Luke told me how he'd recently met someone I'd gone to high school with. Luke mentioned that he knew me from church, which surprised the guy. He said I'd never seemed like the church type, and always seemed like a "smart-ass" in high school. So true.

Anyhow, turns out this guy, whom we'll call Brice, was there last night. He and I got started talking and almost immediately he said he'd heard I had become "a big Christian bible guy." Luke turns and laughs and says, "hey, I just told him you and I went to church together." So I knew it was going to be an interesting conversation.

His first question was to ask me what had happened. I'm fairly sure already this guy is not a Christian, and so I've got a choice about how I handle it. How much do I say? How religious do I talk? And then I just went for it.

I told him about having gotten hooked up with a church my freshman year, but how it didn't mean anything to me. And then the summer before my senior year of high school I was on a trip and I heard God speak to me and call my name. And I just said it like it was nothing. To this presumably hostile atheist. Word freaking up for the big brass ones eh?

So we end up talking for at least an hour or so. Talking about how he lost his faith, and what had happened in his life. He reminisced over what I was like in high school, and I had to inform him that bad as it was, it wasn't even everything. Told him what all that was too.

It was so good to connect with this guy. To talk to him and just let him see something different, in so many ways. It was good to get him laughing and to hear about where he'd been and how it effected him. Mostly it was good to know he was seeing something he hadn't seen before. And to really mean it.

And that, my friends, is what awesome Wednesdays are made of.

So what now? Well, lots of stuff. I feel great, but I still have areas where I'm waiting on God to reveal Himself and call me and say "come here, go there, do this". But I'm happy. I'm practicing spiritual discipline in terms of private study and worship. Things are good.

Heads up, I'm going to start doing some of those academic posts I promised. I promise.