Joel

Joel is my brother's name. In his house they have a Bible open up to Joel on a table near the kitchen. That is what I always think about when I hear about the book Joel. That has nothing to do with the book of Joel. I just thought I would share anyway.

One thing that kinda struck me was where he says, "For the day of the LORD is coming; Surely it is near," It made me think of how we are today, and have been for decades, possibly even centuries. In fact, it may have even started after Jesus left this earth and went back up to heaven. We say that the day of the Lord is near. How long have we been saying that though? Is it really near? Or will there be many more generations before Jesus comes back to take His saints? After all, we do not know when this will take place. I just find it interesting that we have been saying this for so long, yet we really have no idea if He will be coming back soon or not. It's something to mull over, I think.

Another thing I liked was when he said, "Now return to the LORD your God, For He is gracious and compassionate, Slow to anger, abounding in loving kindness And relenting of evil." Living in a completely imperfect world with plenty of imperfect people, it is kind of hard to imagine perfect. So, I think this verse is just a good reminder for me personally that God really IS perfect. Completely perfect. There is nothing wrong with him. He has no flaws. And He created me. He loves me. It's a crazy thought, yet completely true. It is definitely a comfort.

As a side note: I have heard the scripture "That I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; And your sons and daughters will prophesy, Your old men will dream dreams, Your young men will see visions."  over and over, but I never actually knew where it was located. Now I do.

Hope in the darkness.

"We face darkness, then, in order to keep our peace and joy." by Paul Corrigan

This is a quote that particularly stuck out to me. Typically, when you think darkness or pain you don't equate peace and joy with it. That may be what you are praying for while you are going through that rough time, but you usually don't feel peace or joy until the healing process begins. Hope, however, is something that is possible to experience while in times of darkness. In a way, I guess that is the only time you really need hope. Whenever your life is all fine and dandy, what is really the point of having hope?

I understand the pain of losing a grandfather. I lost mine a few years back. With my grandfather, he went through a long process of illness and pain before the illness over took him. The doctors never could find out what was wrong, and up to his dying days did they try to figure it out. They probably would have still been doing tests the day of his death if my grandma hadn't stopped them. Sometimes we hear of people who are relieved when their relatives died after they were ill for a long time. They wanted their suffering to stop.
Well, when my grandfather passed away, I was not yet to that stage. I was still in the selfish stage. Sure, I was relieved that he wasn't suffering anymore but I still wanted God to heal him, not take him away. Maybe that's what everyone really wants. Who knows?

The last paragraph was the perfect ender, I think. It really topped off the whole thing. Kinda like the hope in the darkness.

Monday, September 13th.

C.S. Lewis is an artist, in my opinion. He definitely has a way with words that I am quite jealous of. Anytime someone is suffering in a way that cannot be consoled, it is hard. You long to be able to help that person, but unfortunately the heart has to go through a process, and sometimes people cannot really do anything to further that process along or make it happen quicker. Most times, the only thing of real value we can do for someone is pray for them.

Well, in A Grief Observed it is obvious he is experienceing pain like he's never experienced before. I think it was really brave of him to write down all the questions he had. It's hard having questions and no answers. And maybe it's even harder fessing up to some of the questions we have. I heard it said around the classroom multiple times about maybe some of the questions he had being heinous. Part of me wants to say that it is completely wrong to question God in any way, shape, or form. After all, the only reason we are here is because God was gracious enough to create us. Another part of me, however, says that we should be able to question God. After all, He did create us and put us on this earth. So, I think I wrestle with the guilt I feel after questioning God and also with just wanting some of my questions answered. I don't really know what I'm trying to say.

I feel like this blog has become something that I just use to get all of my ramblings out. Like the words I'm typing aren't actually making any real sense. But I guess technically, anything written down, whether coherently or incoherently, is literature, right? It may not be good literature, but it's literature none the less. That is the whole point of this class. To dialogue with literature.

Cemetery

I went to the Lakeview, Roselawn and Tiger Flowers cemetery complex for this fieldtrip, and I stayed there for at least 40 minutes.

No suprise, I found the cemetery to be sad. It makes you wonder who these people were and how they lived their life. It also makes you think about where they are now. Only God knows, I suppose.

Blog number four!

So, as we all know, this past Tuesday was the meeting in the restaurant to discuss literature for an hour. I'm not sure I have actually ever fully discussed literature for that length of time. It wasn't too hard, and I think we kept the conversation alive well enough. We all brought pretty different stuff, which I thought was cool. That gave us a variety of things to talk about. I do have to say though, we might have been lost if there had not been a guideline to help us along. It was fun though, definitely a nice break away from the actual classroom.

Here soon, I believe we are going to be reading Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis. I read most of that book recently, actually. I'm not sure how much I should say about it, for fear of giving it away to those who have not read it. But I will say that it did make me think. He expressed a few interesting ways of looking at God, that I guess he came up with because of his grief. Grief can do crazy things to a person. I am not sure I would have ever pictured God the way Lewis portrayed Him at one point. Maybe, I would have if I ever was grieved as much as Lewis was. Another thing I found interesting about the book is that he wasn't even married to her for very long. In fact, if I recall correctly, he hadn't even known her for a long period of time. Compared to people who are married their whole lives to someone, they were married for a very small season of his life.

I am interested to read it again, and see what all I missed the first go around. And actually, I didn't even get to finish it the first time I read it, so this time I will be able to read the whole thing. And with it being such a small book, I'll even be able to read it quickly and possibly in one sitting.. That's good to me.

So that's all I have to say about literature for the moment. Maybe after this Thursday's class, I'll have more ammunition :)

Love

"What We Talk about When We Talk about Love"  was slightly depressing and even a little bit confusing, in my opinion. It was pretty obvious that the more seasoned couple did not have that spark or passion that the other couple still had, and I almost felt that they were getting annoyed with each other more than anything. Who's to say if either couple were really in love though?

What is the definition of love?
Upon looking it up the definition ranged from things like tender, passionate affection for someone to sexual intercourse to concern for others well-being.

I guess we could consider this the world's definition of love. But what is God's definition of love? After all, He is the inventor of love, is He not? I would really like to just have a one on one chat with God. I mean, who doesn't? To be able to have all our questions answered, sounds so good. What would be the point of life then?

Anyway, enough meaningless banter.. back to the story. Mel aggravated me a bit, by the way he talked sometimes. In fact, I feel like the whole story was kind of made to put you on edge. Make you just a little bit frustrated. I mean, they practically opened the story with Terri describing how her ex husband used to abuse her, and then with her and Mel arguing about if it was really love or not. I'm more of a peaceful person by nature, so antagonist don't appeal to me much.

Something else to think about. What is the point of discussing suffering? Does it change the fact that people suffer? Does it make their suffering any less or make them better capable of enduring it? When talking, I like there to be a point at the end of the discussion. I like there to be an action plan to change the suffering we are talking about. I've suffered. Not near as much as others have suffered, and I'm grateful for that. But I'm not foolish in thinking that I will never suffer again either. However, for now, while I'm not suffering, why can't I just enjoy the fact that I'm going through a good season in my life? I'm not saying that just because I'm not suffering at the moment, I don't care about others who are suffering, and wouldn't help them in any way I could. I'm simply saying that I don't want to dwell on the fact that I will suffer again. Is that selfish? Possibly, yes it is.

My birthday blog.

So in class on Tuesday, we did two things that I thought were very fun! The first thing being listening to an old song, and then analyzing and dissecting it. Being as, I have never really analyzed a song before, this was a new experience. It made me learn that I do not observe things maybe as much as I should. For instance, as I am going through life maybe I should pay more attention to how people act and why they are acting that way. Another thing that connects with that is discernment. Being more observant has never hurt anyone, right? Unless I got to the point where I actually over analyzed everything. That might be a problem. Those types of people actually bother me sometimes. Just when they read into every little thing. They make meaning out of something with no meaning. That is completely off topic though, so let me move on.

The second thing we did which I found to be very enjoyable, was reading through the skit. Sometimes I wonder where Proffesor Corrigan finds some of these things, but hey! they are interesting. This exercise too showed me that I am not very observant. For instance, if I had come across that skit by myself and read through it, I would have thought nothing of it when I finished. I would not have gone on to think about it further, and to try and figure out what I think the ulterior motive is. The skit would have just been a funny skit for my enjoyment at that place in time. One thing I think I will end up learning from this class is how to be more keen to paying attention to little things, or just things of importance in general.

Now this may seem like rambling for some, and since I'm not good with words, this probably is considered just rambling. However, I fully know what I was intending to say while I was writing this, and hopefully I will eventually become more fluent with my words making it easier for people to read. :)