Tolkien and the Bible

After about seven years of trying to finish, I am 50 pages away from conquering "The Fellowship of the Ring". Oh yeah.....

I'm finding a new joy that I never found in it when I was 15 though. I never tried to track with Tolkien with the map on the cover. I never made sure I knew who everyone was that he would talk about (or at least 75% of them). He speaks with authority about a world no one has ever heard about and I was trying to read it like the life story of Cary Grant. Now that I have some grasp on things he mentions and goes into great depth on, I'm really enjoying it...and can't wait to finish.

This morning when I read about the "great and noble Osnapper" in Ezra, I couldn't help but see the comparison of the Bible and "The Lord of the Rings"(...besides the insane amount of parallels we could go on for hours about anyway). The Bible mentions thousands of names in genealogies, thousands of places (usually mentioned with which direction to go to get there), hundreds of rulers, and thousands of instruments. It is astonishing to me that the people that are bored by these "petty" details could say that the Bible is made up by man.

Here's what I've been thinking...

The God who wanted us to remember the Israelites crossing the Red Sea on dry ground also found it important to write down all the places they stopped in the desert, the stuff they ate, the way they belly-ached (haha). He wrote about David slaying Goliath but He also included how he slept with Bath-Sheba and killed Uzziah.

If it was only amazing, mind-blowing miracles written in the Word, then maybe it was made up by a prophet. If the leaders never did any wrong, then it was probably dictated by the King. If the people were constantly repressed and harassed by the king, it probably was the work of a few up and coming unionizers.

But it's a compilation...a full picture....taken from the One who sees it all. A glorious painting of history as a whole with the theme of Jesus Christ in every verse.

rainy days

I can get kinda depressed from the overcast weather up in this area. I don't like the rain but when it's just overcast, I feel down. I wish I wasn't so superficial but it really does affect my mood.

Anyway, I teach the wednesday night kid's class and we're going through Abraham's life right now. "And he believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness." I'm trying to figure out how to bring a life of faith to a kid's understanding and as I was driving on an overcast day I thought about how the sun is still shining above those awful clouds. it hasn't abandoned us entirely for the long winter ahead. it's still there, it's only hidden a little bit and it will come out to visit every once in a while....like today, thank God.

In the same way, we can look at Abraham's life in chapter 14 and see how he went through a drought and then threw his wife to the wolves pretty much in Egypt. God seems hidden. but He is still there. and He will fulfill His promises.

"Come, and let us return to the Lord; for He has torn, but He will heal us; He has stricken, but He will bind us up. After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, that we may live in His sight. Let us know, let us pursue the knowledge of the Lord. His going forth is established as the morning; He will come to us like the rain, like the latter and former rain to the earth." Hosea 6:1-3

For myself in Humboldt I think Him coming like the sunshine would be more comforting....but it's cool :)

thoughts running through my head on the way home from work

i have been reading a lot of g.k. chesterton lately.

he's amazing

what i like about him is he comes to the thing you always knew you believed about life and God from a totally different perspective. he's much like c.s. lewis (maybe initials are the way to go) but more difficult to read, haha. more difficult but i would say more rewarding. more british, more popular politics of his day, and more humor...awesome

but what he started me thinking........

he was talking about the materialistic view on the world and how it was created. being my father's daughter, this welled up in me the hatred of evolutionary theory all over again and i began my quest to formulate a few more arguments against it.

what came first the chicken or the egg?

i think both creationists and evolutionists would say the chicken. but when did the reptile from half a billion years ago form feathers? when was it half and half? how did it survive in that state? where is the evidence of this morbid creature?

when did it start developing so much muscle that it pretty much would keep itself tied to the ground? and how would that ever be evolutionarily beneficial?

the question that has bothered me for years but i feel like has never really been addressed...even if by magic an animal should have every bodily system intact but not have a functioning reproductive system...it would all be pointless. there would be one random and perfect generation and then nothing.

anyways...

i bought a cd by edison glass today and it's blowing my socks off as we speak....go get it...

delay or free time

back in Bible College we had an assignment to memorize a chapter of Romans. I chose Romans 8. It has blessed me more than a month of daily devotions. Although since then I have been slowly forgetting it. So, I'm refreshing my memory and I'm at verse 12 or so in the ESV (especially saved version :). So amazing.

"Those who are in the flesh cannot please God...BUT, you are not in the flesh but in the SPIRIT!" "To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace."

Life and peace.......

anyway, these passages have given me much comfort over the last few days since I learned that Humboldt State isn't accepting new students for a while...possibly a year and a half.

at first, it was quite the blow. i felt like i had to get out of town and fast. was gonna go to portland and finish school.
i'm still praying about what to do and where to go, but i know that the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace. that seems enough.

in the meantime, i have dreams of finally going to uganda....maybe :D

Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman

a remake of a childhood classic propaganda show ;)

the best policy

So, I've come to face-to-face to my greatest fears. Surprise, it's not jumping off high places....or public speaking....or even loneliness.

It's confrontation.

I'm standing dead in front of it. There are some girls in the youth group that need to be talked to about what's appropriate to where at youth group....which basically means just not bikinis. Poor guys :(

Anyway, there's also this other girl who I used to really get along with, then something happened and she won't even make eye-contact with me. Right now she's becoming a good source of turbulence in the youth group which ain't fun. So, Paul asked me if I could try to reconnect with her and just pour into her life. She's the kind of girl who pretty much only hangs out with the guys and has a rough time at home.

Gee whiz, I couldn't imagine being any more out of my comfort zone than all this...if I could get some serious prayer back-up, that would be swell.

cane spiders and dark rooms

Last night as I was about to go to sleep, a cane spider ran across my floor, throwing me into decision time. Frantically search for and kill said spider or seek another place for rest. The thought of simply abiding with a mini-tarantula under my bed was not brought up. I stood there, dumb-founded for quite a while-thinking through my options, staring at the bed hiding my little friend. In the end, I snuck into my friend Lynette's room and asked if I could sleep in her bed...yes, I definitely felt like a 4-year old but hey....I was a.o.k with that

So after living with limited electricity for a few months here I've mastered the art of doing many everyday things in almost complete darkness. Bathroom activities....shower, shave, brush teeth....I've walked along every path with nothing more than a cell-phone lighting the way...downhill....uphill...with friggin frogs moving around in the bushes scaring me into some desperate prayers ever now and again for safety :) I always chuckle to myself about a jike no one seems to get about it being a walk of faith.

Anyway, I wonder at the new girls here-not feeling comfortable doing much of anything without a lantern with them all the time. I'm realizing now that its because I KNOW this campus like I know just about anything. I've done it all so many times in light and dark that it hardly matters. I am fully familiar with the territory. I wonder it thats how it is when we go through trials-times of spiritual darkness when we can't see more than the two feet ahead God is letting us see. Can we trust Him because we have known Him faithful in brighter times....and even darker times? Will we stand upon the promises of His Word because we have seen them in the daylight? How diligent we should be with the mid-days of our walk with Christ-when everything is hunky-dorey :) For if we slack with the blessings, how can we hope to find our way out in the darkness: But He is faithful, praise the Lord!