meanings

Well, I don't quite know how watching the UFC moved me forward in my pursuit of God, but that's what I spent most of my morning doing. Mr. and I enjoyed it together, although some of the fights were over quickly and rather disappointing.

I battled a bit of guilt over such a frivolous pastime, but I also kept telling myself I needed to lighten up. Stop being so serious all the time. It is OK to just relax and do nothing very significant once in a while.

In my defense, I DID spend time reading the Bible today. I decided, since I'm trying to know God better, I would look for every time it mentioned something about God or what He is like, and underline that. It was a very interesting exercise. As I was doing it, I realized that I usually read the Bible looking for application; for what I am supposed to DO. (Again—that tired, familiar theme.) I look for what I can get out of it, what it means for MY life. I never thought of reading it purely to find out what God is like before. Why? I have no idea.

I am rather disappointed, the deeper I get into this thing. The old familiar terms that we throw around seem so dissatisfying now. So empty. What exactly do they even mean?? Seeking the kingdom of God. Loving others. Even knowing God. I need to figure what these things actually mean. What do they look like in every-day practice?

My first inkling that these words were not as straight-forward as I always thought they were, was this word "love". Do you know that we and some other people we worked with here had a falling out because we were all trying to love the nationals we worked with, and we were going about it in completely opposite ways? We thought their form of love was demeaning and patronizing, they thought we were being harsh and demanding. What does it really look like to love a brother, really?

No one here can agree. There are so many people working in this country—some doing very similar things, some doing extremely different—even conflicting—work. All in the name of love. It's confusing. How can there be so many differing definitions of love?

None of this is as black and white as I once thought. Or as some people try to make it out to be. I need to get down to the essence of these terms. I need to really understand. I need to start at square one again, and re-learn everything.