"Everything happens for a reason!" Um, no it doesn't. People make dumb choices because we live in a messed up world. And then we have to live with the consequences of those choices, whether they were ours or not, even though God forgives us--it's called cause and effect.
But even our idiocy doesn't keep our powerful God from redeeming those situations, from creating beauty out of flawed or even horrendous elements.
So does God cause the ugliness and pain? I am thoroughly convinced that he does not. But he loves to take those very circumstances and turn them upside down; just take a look at Mark.
I'm currently working through a study which starts out each day with meditating on a short pericope, while asking God to speak to me through his word.
What?! Ask the author to help me understand what he's trying to say? What a novel idea!
Philip Yancey is speaking at Point Loma this Friday, and since I waited too long to get my ducks in a row, the tickets sold out before I could procure one. But on Saturday I'm going to Encinitas with Paddy to hear Jon Foreman! Woohoo!
Gudymente better memorize everything Yancey says, so he can give me a word-for-word account.
My business class got canceled. But I love my architecture class. We've been looking at how each major civilization pours their time into creating structures which portray what matters most in their culture. Sumerian ziggurats, Egyptian pyramids, Grecian acropolises, US skyscrapers--all with practical uses, yet also symbolic of where the power lies.
And somehow it is odd to my professor that almost all civilizations before the modern era tied that power to some sort of religious practice. More on this in Eclipse of Heaven. (Read it.)
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