I've gotten the urge to blog again, and was thinking of returning to xanga.

When I saw my page again, I had to cringe. What was I thinking when I chose this eye-hurting bright as a thousand suns background?

Now I've changed it. I have a yen for purple. (I also have a yen for the word "yen." It comes in so handily, and can establish a nice colloquial tone without losing precision in language). I like this color. It looks introspective.

Then, I spent the last 20 minutes trying to change my title. I even went to xanga help ... the navigation kinda sucks on this page. (Though I am grateful for this xanga service).

All in all, it sounds like it wasn't meant to be.

"Return to the world of real human beings" seems to be the message.

Nonetheless, I kinda dream about the day when I'll have an influential blog and feel like part of an "online community." While I acknowledge that the internet can distance us from people, I also think you can find out a lot about people's thought processes in such blogs. You can get to know people's views better on a host of things, and when you actually see them, you'll be prepared with an array of relevant topics. It's also a great way to hear the thoughts of people outside one's discourse community.

I admit that I fantasize about being part of an intellectual blogging community, one where we can actually intelligently dialogue on life about things like how the church should engage culture, and so forth, even though we may come from many different social communities. I did use wordpress for a little while, but none of my xanga readers appeared to follow me. I could have found some interesting blogs and built a virtual community that way, but I felt it more important to interact with the people AROUND me than to find new virtual people to interact with.

Ah, well ... maybe sometime in the future.

For the time being, I think I'm going to try to build connections in my church by playing games, karaoking, baking, and things like these ... real human things.

For such things do appeal to me.

I think what I really dream of is being part of a community where we all live together--a closely knit community. I've experienced this on missions trips. But I invariably want it to go on and on. Yeah, it kinda sucks at times. I get so emotional because God brings many issues to the surface. But overall I find that I really grow. I guess I'm just restless to get out of the house and stop studying ...

Even to move to a different country and start completely over. That sounds rather appealing.

But I'm going to try to enjoy school and living with my parents while I still can.

If your friend were an illegal immigrant who needed a place to hide, would you help him/her? 

Intellectually, everything within me opposes the idea of breaking the law.  If I thought of a hypothetical person with no name and face, it would be easy to quickly conclude: two wrongs don't make a right.

But as a human being, I am not so certain. 

If we say no, is that out of love, or because we want to limit our world, our investment and attention, to our comfort zone?  Is it because we want to pursue or maintain a comfortable and serene life, regardless of what happens to other people?  Is it because we're more concerned with people leading morally upright lives than knowing the efficacious grace and love of God?  ... in saying no, are we led by tenderhearted-compassion, or knowledge of the "right" thing to do? 

our goal shouldn't be to change people but to love them.  Period.  Our success is measured by our love, not how people respond. 

This question really makes me re-think the role the law should play in a Christian's life--both civic law and the law in the Bible.  I wonder whether I'm more pharisaical than I realized; I wonder how outrageous, preposterous, offensive, and subversive the ways of God might be to the foolish human mind.  But I come to no solid conclusion, and I wonder whether we might be called to act differently in different situations. 

What do you think?

I walked toward my dresser to find my exercise clothes, and many things come to mind at once--an invitation to a birthday party tonight (the bday person is a very witty/funny person whose company I really enjoy), the long stretch of a day ahead of me in which nothing is strictly scheduled, nothing must be done.  For a moment I feel like I'm in free fall, defying the laws of physics, lost, unestablished ... it is difficult to explain the exact feeling, but I think it's similar to a feeling of emptiness and a hunger for fullness.  Fullness of employment, fullness of people in my life (and I don't just mean being a crowd of people or knowing a lot of people).  But then, something strikes me ...

What I really need and hunger after is to love God.  Note that I did not say, "I really need to know God's love," even though that is true, and inextricably linked, perhaps even synonymous to what I just said.  I suddenly felt, at that moment, the importance and rightness of this: that everything I do would be out of pure love for God.  I also knew that loving God is the road to experiencing fullness--not just outside yourself, but within yourself.  Paul prays for the Ephesians that they would know Christ's love which surpasses knowledge, that they would be filled up with all the fullness of God.  Loving Him and, consequently, loving other people is the only way we can abide in His love. 

Love is the fulfillment of the law.  Knowledge without love equals arrogance (1 Cor.9).  Anything without love (including prophecy, the most desirable of the giftings 1 Cor.14:1) equals nothing (1 Cor.13).  Knowledge of the law without love equals the righteousness of pharisees, and unless your righteousness surpasses that of the pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of Heaven.  Matt. 5 reveals God's true righteousness. 

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness"-the pastor I heard yesterday said that this hungering and thirsting is not that we'd be righteous in some areas of our lives, but that we'd be fully and completely righteous, that every area of our lives would be submitted to God.