It's amazing how easily I lose interest in this thing. Sorry for all of you who think I should do better, and by that I mean my brother.

I'm about ready to go home for Christmas, and I have never been so excited to see Maine in my whole life! I'm so ready to be away from here for a week, away from all the needless drama, away from work and school...just away.

There are of course some things that I'll miss while I'm home, but I'm not gonna tell you what those are...gotta keep the suspense alive. Ok fine, I"ll miss ZAch and Rachel. They are two of the small handful of friends I'll miss being around while I'm gone. For the most part I'm not gonna miss anything. A week of family and friends that I haven't seen since August!!!!!!! What better Christmas present could I ask for?

Anyone who knows me knows that I love The Christmas holiday. I love the decorations, the lights, giving gifts, getting gifts, but most especially I love Christmas music. Well, this year has been a little bit different for me in terms of how I celebrate Christmas. I've been thinking and talking a lot about Advent with some friends and the thing I realize is that for years I've tried to experience the real meaning of Christmas, but not thinking much at all about anticipating the coming of the Messiah. Then I wonder why realizing that Christmas isn't about presents and decorations and such just isn't enough for me to really experience it. We can't really experience Christmas until we experience Advent. We can't celebrate the birth of Christ without celebrating the hope and anticipation that precedes His birth.

Having said that, I must still say that I love Christmas music, even though most of it is about Christ's birth. Here's one of my new favorite Christmas songs...which will be more appropriate once the Christmas season starts.

Rose of Bethlehem

There's a Rose in Bethlehem

With a beauty quite divine

Perfect in this world of sin

On this silent holy night

There's a fragrance much like hope

That it sends upon the wind

Reaching out to every soul

From a lowly manger's crib

Oh, Rose of Bethlehem

How lovely, pure and sweet

Born to glorify the Father

Born to wear the thorns for me

There's a Rose in Bethlehem

Colored red like mercy's blood

Tis the flower of our faith

Tis the blossom of God's love

Though its bloom is fresh with youth

Surely what will be he knows He knows

For a tear of morning dew

Is rolling down the Rose

I especially love the verse that talks about hope and sending it out to every soul. That's what Christ did...everything about him brought hope, his birth, his life, his death, his resurrection. So let's not forget that we celebrate the coming of the Messiah, and when we celebrate that he's arrived we also celebrate the hope he brought to each of us.

Currently Reading Eventide By Cindy Martinusen see related

Job 9:1-20

So in the first part of chapter 9 of the book of Job, we see the character of Job in the midst of a conversation with is buddies. They are talking about why God has allowed Job to suffer so much pain and loss. Chapter 9 is one of Job's responses to his friends. He wonders how any mortal could stand before God and demand answers. He asks who has ever done that and come out unscathed. He doesn't feel worthy enough to take his pain to God and demand to know why. Job says that he could not dispute with God; that all he could do is stand before God and plead mercy...

I think we feel like that sometimes about our communication with God. My small group is reading Soul Feast by Marjorie Thompson. The last chapter we read was about prayer, and one section talked about how we are taught, usually unconciously, that we can't express anger at God; that that is somehow disrespectful; that we should only come to God with praises and our needs. Marjorie said, and I agree, that in our human relationships when feelings are suppressed and not brought out, authentic relationship is not possible. Why should the same be any different with God, whose relationship to us is the model for all other relationships? It is ok to go to God and say "What are you doing!" It's ok to yell and scream at God in the midst of stress, pain, suffering, etc. It's ok to look at God and say "I'm angry with you." Job eventually did it, later in the story.

Another thing we talked about, however, is that even though it's ok for us to rail at God, we need to understand that God will rail at us too. Relationships are two-way interactions. Therefore, what is ok for us to do at God is definitely ok for God to do at us. That also happened in the story of Job. When Job got upset, God got upset right back, but the good part of the story is that neither Job nor God actually won the arguement. God didn't really have an excuse for what he had allowed and Job didn't give in and say he shouldn't have been upset with God. They brought each other to a standstill, which I actually think was really healthy in terms of relationship. Not every arguement we ever have is going to come out with a winner. Sometimes saying what we need to say only serves to clear the air and then we move on. This relationship we share with God is not about coming out the winner when we're upset. It's not about what God can give us. This relationship is about giving of ourselves and taking what God is offering...whatever that may be.

" It is a mystery of God's reign over the world that this very cross, the sign of Christ's failure in the world, can in turn lead to historical success."

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

I cannot believe I never read the Count Monte Cristo before now. What an amazing book! It was seriously so good I couldn't put it down. I actually thought it was going to be a difficult book to understand, because a lot of the classics are hard to folow. Not so this one, but I was reading a translated version that was abridged so that might have had something to do with it.

The most recent movie of this book is really good, and encompasses the character of Edmond Dantes extremely well, but it still doesn't do justice to the book. A lot is left out and changed around, and I almost wish they had left it the same.

Edmond Dantes is one of the most amazing characters I've ever read. He goes from being innocent, naive and good to hard, calous, vengeful, believing he's doing the will of God for the evil done to him. By the end, however, after traveling this road of hardness and revenge he realizes that he took things a little too far and is plagued by doubt; doubt that he wasn't right to take such revenge. He ends up a more loving and good man than he ever was before he was sent to prison. It's a book ultimately about his salvation in a way. He comes to realize that thinking he had the right to mete out justice was no better than thinking he was God, which makes him no better than Satan...the Accuser. The last lines in the book state something a long the lines of a person cannot know what true happiness is unless they first experience profound unhappiness. He says that there isn't really happiness or inhappiness...there is just a comparison of circumstances, which I'm not sure I agree with, but it still made me think. Then the last line says that there are two things a person can do in this life: wait and hope. So a man who had traveled a road of hate finds redemption. It's such a good book.

People don't write like that anymore. We write trash now compared to the way people wrote a century or two ago. I feel as though those are the people who really knew how to love; who really knew how to experience life. Not all of them, sure, but a vast majority of them. Maybe I'm just to fanciful. And maybe I"m entirely wrong, but I still think everyone should read that book.