stuff

In keeping with my strident "at least one update a month" policy, here we are. A lot has happened. I'm moving forward on a condo, to close on Feb. 13th. I've got a creative writing class starting a week from Wednesday. We're also getting closer and closer to the mission trip to Panama mid-March. Oh, and work is crazy busy too. It's kind of overwhelming when I think about it. No, strike the "kind of." It's just plain overwhelming.

Still, inexplicably I find myself musing on other things. So here's a few stray throughts:

1. Wanting what we can't or shouldn't have possesses a special kind of bitterness, for we seem to cherish it. Seems like pining and tragic-romantic dreams are built into our DNA. Mine, anyway.
2. I want a Bible translation providing me with as many different possible meanings as possible. No "amplified" alternate words intended to give fuller meaning but really just contributing to the meaning the translators want me to derive, no adding words to make sure I interpret properly, none of that. Give me The Ambiguity Bible.
3. Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? Then why does the standard interpretation of much of the judgment parts of the New Testament make me doubt this point? Predestination used to bug me because I worried if I was in that number. I don't worry about that anymore. I worry about the whole concept, the lack of justice of it. How can God choose some to be saved and some not? Work on some hearts and not others? The idea is appalling to me. The fear that it might be true churns my stomach and steals away my peace. I can't bear that God would choose me and not another. Doesn't it seem to contradict His own egalitarian teaching in handling the affairs of justice in this world? To choose arbitrarily...I can't understand it. I can believe He chose this or that life for us, prepared this or that work for us to do, but to choose with finality to create a creature He knows will never be saved, no matter what; I ... in the end I just can't believe it.
4. This world keeps us busy, this world keeps us distracted, and I wonder how much beauty of the kingdom passes by us unseen, neither cherished nor enjoyed.