My half-life...

Home has been so strange. Strangely wonderful, actually. A lot of good things have happened, and some completely odd things too. Like I lost our trash bags at home. They are in my room somewhere, but I've yet to find them after searching for four days. I have also become addicted to yet another show... I'm sue it is slowly killing me. But I'm really into Veronica Mars, my big sis bought the first season on dvd and I fell in love with the character not because she is necessarily real, but because she is fearless. She kicks butt on a daily basis, and sometimes that is just fun to watch.

But my last week here hasn't really felt like my life. I haven't seen any of my home friends, not counting my church peeps. I haven't been on any deadlines, which I always am at school with the paper and journalism classes. I've sepent a lot of time with my lil sis and my mom, both of whom I have begun to build real, non-familial relationships with. I don't feel the obligation to spend time with them anymore, when I'm at school I find myself longing for it. So I'm not going to label this last week as my summer self yet... I kind of feel like Hugh Grant in "Notting Hill," like I "live a strange sort of half-life." But its been very enjoyable, I do admit... and God and I have been spending some much-needed, uninterrupted time together.

I re-reading Donald Miller's Searching For God Knows What, and a passage resonated with me that I hadn't thought about before--

My friend Penny's dad says he thinks God was angry for a while after the Fall, then got over it, sent His Son, and now is pretty well adjusted and forgiving. And of course I don't think that is exactly how it is, but I can understand why Penny's dad would read the Bible this way. But my other friend John MacMurray says that every time he gives the Bible to a person to read for the first time, even if they don't agree with it, they see God as a Person who is incredibly patient with humanity. John pointed out that it takes God hundreds of years to finally get angry enough to lay any sort of punishment on His enemies. He's like France in this way.

When I read that yesterday I thought about Michael and my junior year in Spanish class. Michael, out of the blue one day turned to me and said that the he can't stand the Bible because it contradicts itself. Now, my sixteen year-old self was utterly offended that Michael would bash my God's very own word right in front of me. I told him that I absolutely believed everything the Bible said, but thinking back I'm not sure how much of the Bible I actually had studied. But I can relate to him now. On the surface, Yahweh has two polar sides, there is no consistency at all. He is completely just in how he writes off his people-- "If you do not carefully follow all the words of this law, which are written in this book, and do not revere this glorious and awesome name--the Lord your God--the Lord will send fearful plagues on you and your descendants, harsh and prolonged disasters, and severe and lingering illnesses" (Deut. 28:58-59). He warned us, and we broke his trust. But then comes the beautiful injustice of God, which is embodied in Christ's birth, death and resurrection. We disobey, and God's takes on our punishment for us.

So yes Michael, the Bible is pretty inconsistent, but I'm personally thankful that I'm not held accountable for the payment of my sins. I used to get peeved when my parents grounded me from the television... what would it be like to get punished for every crappy thing I did, and the things I just can't seem to stop doing?