Regular Blog Entry, 1 day late
So, what to say?
Well, I suppose I could start about by just saying a formal welcome. We don’t have a whole lot of content up here at this point and we really haven’t advertised the site but the meta informations all there so if you have some how found us through the internet then, WELCOME!
Our hearts here (that’s Timmy and Jessie’s heart) are to do 3 things.
- Keep everyone up to date with our life, which has become hopeless to do in any sort of a true person to person way because of how busy we are and how many people we want to keep in touch with.
- Provide information about our ministry in Norristown and the Greater Philadelphia area.
- Provide resources that we think are useful to have to everyone that we can.
In keeping with that, I suppose I’ll just go ahead and start off with a brief update about my life. Just as an aside, the way it looks like we’re trying to do this is to have me (Timmy) update the main blog once a week on Wednesday. Jessie would then come along and update the main log every Sunday (or Saturday, she’s not really sure which one yet). As you can see, so far that’s not been what’s happening so far. At the moment, I’ve done a bunch of mini-enries (which should happen all along as I make small changes to the site and such) and Jess did one really-teeny-weeny-small entry because it was like midnight when she started to write it (I was there, I know!). Anyway, back to what this paragraph started with next paragraph.
My life… So, in this past week, a few different things have happened. Probably the most important thing that happened is that my rat, Nibs, has officially died. We’re going to get a photo gallery of him up here before too long (hopefully I’ll be able to work some PHP magic or use iPhoto’s HTML generator, but we’ll see) so you can all see his adorable little face and amazing achievements. He lived a good life of around 2 and 1/2 years but in the end was getting progressively older (as we creatures do). In the past 2 and 1/2 weeks he suffered 3 strokes, the last one being fatal.
It was pretty scary in the beginning just because we woke up that morning hearing what sounded like someone sawing wood out in the garage and we didn’t realize till we walked over to his cage but it was actually Nibs breathing. He couldn’t move on his own and he was bleeding around his eyes and nose so we were pretty sure that he had a few hours tops. I actually went out and dug his grave and everything that morning and then Jess went about her day and I actually sat in the room doing my Sabbath deal and just kind of waited for him to die. He slowly began to get quieter and quieter and I just kind of assumed that he was slowly giving up. Until he started Moving!. He couldn’t move that well but he was up and about again. The one thing that makes us feel better about ourselves is that we probably took better care of him than we ever had in his last 2 and 1/2 weeks. But, now he’s gone. I guess we can be thankful because it wasn’t as much of a shock to find him dead than it would have to just kind of wake and, boom, it hits you! So, since I don’t believe that animals are spiritual beings Nibs’ little existence is over and he is no more. It was fun having him though. :)
The Global Bridegroom fast just ended yesterday as well. I’m struggling with the idea of fasting and how you’re supposed to do it and why exactly you’re supposed to do it. I’m way past the question of whether or not you’re “supposed” to do it. I believe that it is an integral part of any Christians 101 walk with God. However, I’m just honestly not sure where in the Bible that is concretely backed up and where in the Bible it prescribes how and when to fast. It seems that things like the Daniel fast and water fasts and all that kind of stuff are more things that people have made extrapolations about over the years, which were then built upon by others and then on and on until you have what the usual fasting believer might think about the subject. But when you actually look at the text that the people are saying they are going off of, it’s really general and unclear. So, in light of that, I’ve just been trying to get leading from God on this. I want to fast because I believe that it will help me to increase my spiritual hunger, but I’m just not sure how.
I guess my main contention would be that it seems like the fasts of the Bible (the ones that were recorded, not the ones that seem to be actually spelled out) were all spontaneous expressions of the real spiritual hunger that was already there. It wasn’t something that was taught and then just done. It was the product of a man or woman of God being desperate to see his face. So what does that mean today? When the disciples of John and the Pharisees had the dispute about fasting, they wanted to know why Jesus’ disciples didn’t fast and Jesus said, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?.” (Matthew 9:14-17) So in this text, it wasn’t as if Jesus and his disciples were actively fasting on a schedule or anything like that, because there was no reason to mourn yet. In fact, as far as I can tell, the Pharisees and the Disciples of John were fasting on a schedule because they just thought that they were supposed to (and they had an issue with pride, obviously, but I’m not sure that was it). The fact is that I’m not sure if fasting just to fast really does anything. I think that the authentic fast is merely a product of a deep longing for God, not the root of that longing or even truly an element of that longing. Does that make sense to anyone else? We’ll see where all this goes.
In other news. I’m officially done school for this semester. I’ve got no idea how I’m doing except that I don’t think I did horribly well on my Spanish final this time around. There was one section that I just drew an absolutely complete blank on. Couple that with an altogether disappointing semester in Spanish and I’m gunning for a low C/high D. That’s fairly awkward! :) But my other classes went well, as far as I know, so that’s good. However, since success in life isn’t defined by my grades I’m not too worried. We’ll stand back up next semester, lord willing, and go at it again.
In general, me and Jess are really just trying to go for God with everything we’ve got. We don’t want any part of our lives to be off-limits to him, or any passion of ours to be more important than him, or any act of ours to be without honor to him. It’s been a really awesome journey so far, and we’re really just out of the gate as far as we’re concerned. I have no idea where life with him will go, but I’m absolutely assured that it will be where I’m supposed to be. I’m absolutely confident that absolute and total satisfaction lies in God. I’m hungry, and when you strip away all the theological definitions and Biblical quotations and religious veils, that’s what it comes down to for all of us. Hunger. God has blessed me with a hunger that I know can’t be satisfied with anything but him. So I’m going to go for him, weakly but in his grace I’m going to reach him. He is good.
Youth Group in Norristown is going very well. I still feel very confident that me and Jess are where God wants us in regards to that. We had what me and Jess both feel was our best event yet this past month, which was our second lock-in held at the Ark at Jarretown UMC. We had about 15 kids show up this time, and all but two of them were out by around 5 am. Me and Jess made it the whole night as usual (none of the other adults did). This time around we decided to have a midnight Bible Study and Worship time which I thought went really well. I talked about John 9, which at this point is probably my favorite passage in John, which is the book I’m studying and we’ve been studying in the youth group lately. I’ve just begun to realize that so much of leadership is about constantly offering opportunities to act like Christ, do the things that Christ tells us to do, or just to be with Christ. It’s not so much about checking up on the follow through until later on. In the beginning, it’s just seeing who’s hungry.
It’s so interesting knowing that in around 2 months, our partner in ministry and life for nearly 7 years and his new wife who has been partnering with us for around 3 years now will be gone, and with them all of the things they added to our ministry. I guess the most rocking part of the whole deal is that Alex has always been the somewhat de-facto leader of our group and with him gone it’s going to be a major transition from doing things many times under where he felt God was leading us to doing things mainly without any direction from Alex. However, God has already been moving us in that direction as Alex and Jaclyn both have not felt any leading to work with us in the Youth Group and both of them have stepped down from most of their more prominent leadership roles at Open Arms. So, the transition has already begun and I’m excited to see where God is going to take us all over the next few years. I’m really proud of them for having stuck through their decision to go to Kansas City under the leading of the Lord. It should be a huge growth experience and I’m looking forward to be jealous of all that the Lord is doing in their lives.
Well, I think that’s enough for this week. I’ll try to get some more back end work done on the actual site as I go along.
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