Black Ink on Yellow Paper

Favorite Things As of This Moment (Idea taken from you, Jaymin because I assume that you are the only person reading this...mahahaher...)

• The printout over the desk in the extra Church office that says: "YOU ARE LOVED! THERE IS HOPE!"
• Honey Wheat Bread...well...what it stands for at least.
• Boy Meets Girl, by Joshua Harris
• Cotton Candy Icecream
• Mystery Science Theater 3000, as pathetic as it is.

Last night FUSION was used as practice for our upcoming Family Nite Live productions. Its a cute idea, and whenever you see the promo videos that KidStuf puts on it looks amazing, but I still have some reservations. Mostly because we are a small church that tries to do big church things and bring people in that way, but all that seems to be happening is that we use our same small group of leaders for almost everything and the only people that come to our programs are the people that already go to North Hills, and not even all of them come. Programs just arent really working, and when they do work, they dont pull people in who have never been to church (which I think is the real point), we get people from other churches that werent happy there (and wont be happy here after a few months). I dont know, maybe Im being too critical, but everytime I think about going to church now I get this sinking feeling in my stomach that something isnt right. That something big is missing.

Oh well. Onto other things.

I read Josh Harris' Boy Meets Girl the other day, and in the very begining of it he tells a story about Adam and Eve. He tells it from several years after their getting kicked out of the garden, and they have kids and grandkids and great grand kids and great great super mega ultra fantastic grandkids and so on. In it Adam is walking with one those grandkids--called Elanna, and she is asking about the first time he met Eve, and how it felt, and so on--lots of questions. Here's what Adam says to her and some of the dialogue from that point:

"You ask these questions because you yourself long to meet your soul's match. Dont pretend I dont know you, child. You have [Eve's] eyes. They looked just like yours do now whend she was longing for the Garden. But you miss someone you've never met [or that you have met and are just waiting...hint hint]. You want to run through time and glimpse that first meeting. You want to know how you'll know him. But you need not fret.

"But it doesnt seem fair to me," Elanna said, the words born of frustration tumbling out. "It was so easy for you. The Maker brought Grandmother to you. She was the only woman for you. She was the only woman!"..."But here, now, its so different--so confusing."

"Its not more confusing," he said gently. "it only seems that way. Our meating was 'easy' as you put it, not because we were the only humankind, but because in those sweet days before we disobeyed, we implicitly trusted the Maker to bring what was good."

Yeah, its kind of cheesey or whatever, but I really liked its point. Its not that things are any harder now, but we make them harder. Its not that God doesnt have something good planned, its that we are too impatient to let him bring what is good. Its like what Julie said at FUEL, sometimes the best answer is "wait." But its also the hardest. You are loved! There is hope! I like it. It frees me up from worrying about it and half wishing that there were still arranged marriages (I guess in a sense, there are). So now I can focus on really big issues, like whether to watch Colossus Versus the Headhunters, or Squirm on MST3k. Yeah.

Dont laugh. Thats a serious dillema.

I would like a tarp coated with crushed wheat, a gallon of honey, and a razor.

:)