Monthly Archives: February 2009

I’m not gonna lie, the band in chapel today was horrible.  I was also running on about 2 hours and 45 of sleep, so that put my nerves on the edge.  Then, as their last song, they played “Here is our King” by David Crowder Band and butchered it.  As a musician, it was honestly angering me how bad they were.  Obviously, since I was so focused on the band, none of my focus was on God.  But then my eyes caught somebody who was sitting about 4 rows up from me.  There was a guy who was singing in sign language, and it was the coolest thing I’ve ever heard.  I don’t know if he was actually deaf or just new sign language, but his actions really convicted my heart.  The fact that he could still worship God with as much sincerity as it looked like made me feel horrible.  I had spent the last few minutes complaining in my head about how horrible the band was and telling myself I could do so much better.  Then I saw the guy signing, and it changed my heart.  It was amazing.

So it turns out all those little notes in your Bible aren’t actually part of the biblical text.  Who would have thought that Paul didn’t label the beginning of his letters with “Introduction” and the end with “Benediction”?  The things you learn in a Christian school…

For Inductive Bible Study this week, I was given an assignment on the book of Amos.  I quickly realized something:  I had never read the book of Amos.  To be completely honest, I had to look it up in the Index of my Bible.  It dawned on me that I haven’t really read any of the prophets.  Then, as I was reading through Amos and Micah (during class this morning) I realized that there is actually a large amount of relevant information inside of the prophetic books.

Since Micah is still fresh in my mind, I want to take a closer look at it.  It opens with a harsh prophecy against Israel, but then moves into this weird section that’s talking about the “End Times.”  After studying this for a little while, I realized that Micah is kind of providing a pick-me-up.  He had been talking about all the horrible things that were going to happen to Israel because of their sin.  But then, almost out of no where, he starts talking about the days when God is going to bring together all of the nations and how much joy is going to be involved in that.  He also talks about the coming birth of the Messiah.  Both of these prophecies show glimpses of hope among the rest of the depression in Micah.

In my own life, I think God likes to give me little glimpses of hope among a lot of depressing things.  Take this weekend for example.  Ana and I have spent the last month apart while we’re at school but this weekend we get to see  each other and spend the whole weekend together.  Even though the past month has had its ups and downs with a lot of sadness mixed in, I know that God has provided us with a wonderful weekend to regain some hope and remind ourselves of what the future is going to be like.  Either way, I’m incredibly excited for this weekend, and I can’t wait to be up there!  I love you babe!!!