mid-finals thoughts...

[tripping out on Italian coffee, King Lear, Bacon's Of Studies, Robinson's Gilead, and some Flannery O'Connor]

I love that the Jesus I love, the God who made me, is big enough to explore.

He infused us with His passion for life [he is life and love, we experience life and love]. We love because we are loved. We long for something greater because we have the capacity for more. We are complete in Christ, we have arrived, but we are also chasing the difficult journey and the prize to come. We are pursuing because we are pursued.

God gave us a variety of ways to experience Himself: through our senses and the natural world, through His Word, through the story of history and redemption, through our hearts, through silence, through shouts of praise, through the arts, through the development of our minds. We can pursue this world and love this world because He is inseparable from the excitement of a new baby's wrinkled little face and the works of Shakespeare.

You for sure can't learn it all in high school, despite how much your parents pour into your education. I'm four exams from being done with my Junior year, and I'm pretty certain that I can't learn it all in college, either. Graduate school doesn't really look all that full of answers either. But the people I've learned with and from are irreplaceable. To live, to suffer, to learn, to laugh, to be human...a thousand catchy phrases or billboards can't explain the depth of these "to do's."

Right now I'm obviously pretty excited about this whole studying thing, but I need to temper my passions with the knowledge that my God who is big enough for this is also big enough to have different plans for other people. I think that college is an experience most people should have. Imagine what you've learned in high school [spiritually, socially, and mentally], and then multiply that by a kajillion. Education should never be reduced to something that will get you a good job. Study a lot of what you love, enough of what you don't love to keep you humble, but mostly, enjoy the experience of being. No matter what you're doing with your life, there's no better way to pursue Him than listening and reading and studying and living.

To be a human created in the image of God is the most weighty and exciting thing in the world.