Posts tagged Reflection

Current Tunage: Emery – By All Accounts (Today Was A Disaster)
Yeah, as much as I love Copeland, they don’t really fit a day at Trent too well. So, I have my PDA doing the playlist shuffle right now, and it’s been good to me: Project 86 followed by mewithoutYou followed by Further Seems Forever followed by Norma Jean and so on. Who needs an iPod? Down with DRM!

1 Peter 4:19
“Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.”

Well, I’m going to do my best to keep this as brief as possible, in part because I’ve been getting sick of how verbose and bloated much of what I say and write is. Too often the stuff I’m trying to communicate doesn’t have a complexity that merits the length of explanation I give it. Here goes:

This past weekend was fantastic. I had a fairly quiet Friday, spent first helping out Jim & Geri at the foodbank, then enjoying lupper/sunch with Noah (lattice fries are “the win”). Paul/Erika, Dan/Rachel, and I hit the road for Cambridge/Kitchener/Waterloo around 5PM. Google Earth promised a ~233k trip of about two and a half hours, but thanks to a startling combination of bad weather and bad traffic, it took us five hours.

We stayed at the home of the intrepid Mr. Anderson and his dear wife. Our time there was marked by many thorough and challenging conversations, some excellent gaming (non electronic, of course), and good food and drink. It was intimate, meaningful fellowship for an entire weekend and was, I believe, truly profitable for all of us. It could have been a bit strange living amidst two married couples my own age… however, any strangeness was negated by the friendship I share with all of them. It ended up being in many ways an excellent opportunity to learn a great deal of information which will largely be useless for quite some time… but beneficial nevertheless.

The conference Saturday was excellent. Kirk Wellum from Toronto Baptist Seminary did a fantastic job not only describing and constructing for us exactly what “Post-Modernism” is, both as a worldview and in terms of the manner in which the worldview is manifest in the actions, practices, and attitudes of those around us (and in us). From this basis, he clearly laid out the nature of our response to it, basing it biblically on Paul’s approach to the Areopagus in Acts 17. It was thorough, and the applications he drew apply not only to our interactions with Post-modern thinkers, but also to ourselves and to evangelism and missions in a more general sense. The core, root point to draw from it is that one of the most vital things we can do today is to sacrificially (give expecting nothing in return) develop meaningful relationships with those we are reaching out to. We do this in order that we can then speak life into them and build up a foundation of truth; dealing with the roots which must be in place for the gospel to be planted.

So, as I sit in Bata, listening to… Underoath now… and thinking back over the weekend, I’m awash with a few dominating thoughts and feelings:

I’m extremely thankful for good friends who not only listen and discuss, but also seek to refine conversation by becoming better speakers and listeners. I love the freedom we have to critique each other with relative impunity, in love, because it means I am made aware of flaws in my social interaction, listening abilities, and my presentation of thoughts and ideas verbally.

I’m thankful for having friends who not only have healthy marriages, but also seek to improve and build those marriages according to the principles of scripture and the Spirit of Christ. You guys are an example to me, through which I find myself increasingly brought into a state of praise before the Lord. Keep it up.

I’m thankful for a weekend away from the usual. It was a fantastic opportunity to step back from life, dredge up a bunch of stuff I’d had on the back burner, process freely, and come to some conclusions, closure, and confidence about things. Thanks especially to Todd for sharpening my thoughts and intentions for the next few months with piercing questions.

In conclusion: Great weekend… now get back to work, Jer.

“My tongue has become tied, I’m fighting back my insides
I’m dancing with an angel under pale moonlight
I’m waiting for the day when you will come to me and say
I’m here to stay, so let’s run away”
-Kids in the Way “This Seed We’ve Sown”