Currently Watching ATL (Widescreen Edition) By T.I., Evan Ross (III), Lauren London, Mykelti Williamson, Albert Daniels, Jackie Long, Jason Weaver, Keith David, Lonette McKee, Big Boi, Khadijah, Malika (II), Greg Andrews, Monica Arnold, Brandon Bernard Benton, Adam Boyer, April Clark, Steven R. Ewing, Alvin Lee Fleming, Cameron Gipp see related

you can't always get what you want

back at taylor for 5 days now...  it's really difficult to be away from the place i love.  i've decided though, its important to have something here that i can't have in the place i'd prefer to be.  softball is that thing... thank God for softball.

xariv

have you ever been overwhelmed by grace?  grace is the reward you recieve after you've come in last place.  it's working for an hour and getting an equivalent check as the man who worked 40.  it's having a party thrown for you after you've blown everything that was given to you on worthless junk.  it meets you exactly where you are and leads you into place you never knew in order to understand and give hope to a person that is where you once were.     

i've wondered lately if grace could exist without sin...  i'm sure it could exist, but would it be tasteless?  going beyond what grace is... it seems to be available, in its fullness, only to the sinner.  blessed are the poor in spirit... could these two be related?

i've sinned, i've been a slave to it at times.  even though i know in the end that Christ has victory, continued to lose the battles along the way (and still do) saying, "not yet, not yet, but soon..."  giving in, repenting, giving in, repenting and over and over.  because of the length of time my struggle lasted; because of how evident my sin became, denial of a eed for mercy presents itself as an impossibility.  at the same time, i taste the grace available to me more richly in a way because of the amount times i recognize when i've given into temptation... that might be grace in its essense.    

Currently Listening Beneath These Fireworks By Matt Nathanson see related

simplicity

i asked th staff here last monday to pray for simplicity in my life:

my bike got ripped off a week ago, at about the same time i'm writing this entry.  i stare at my helmet, water bottle and my u-lock key... and think, mockingly, "at least they didn't get this". 

welcome to urban ministry. 

ps. i don't really think the bike disappearance was a result of my desire to live a simple life.  

uptown to upland

so... i've been feeling sick for about a week now.  no fun.  but it isn't the kind of sick that puts you out of work or school.  it's that lingering sick that includes no appitite, always being tired and never feeling very good after eating anything.

regardless of sickness... i have exactly one 1 more week left in uptown, before i migrate back to upland.  that in a way makes me sick as well, again not the puts you out work or school or work sick (because i do want to return to taylor).   

i'm finally getting a style of my own at this ministry.  i'm finally getting used to the streets.  i'm learning how to know a little bit more of what's going on instead of just knowing what is happening.  just when i'm finding where i "fit",  i'm leaving. 

i think this is the first time i've served and never felt like i shouldn't be in this place at this time.  it will be difficult to leave the men that i have fallen in love with; the men that i've connected with and shared my life and my jesus with; the men i won't get to see before i leave.  they have changed me probably much more than i have changed them (if that's even the way to put it). 

pray for rico, i gave him my jacket on outreach and he came in today to get into treatment.  he said because we ran into him, it proved, "there is a god".  He said that "we helped save a voice that wouldn't have been heard otherwise".    

funny that i'm still awake, waiting for you're call when i don't even know you.  but i want to... that's just the problem. 

blasted two weeks left.  why is it you just showed up now?