(xaris and shalom)

So, there's this video on youtube that I can't find right now. It was really cool. It was about how the world would look if we had special glasses that let us see what people were really thinking when they say things like, "I'm fine". The point being, of course, that we miss a lot of the needs around us because we don't look carefully enough to see. Today I've been thinking about what life would be like with a different kind of glasses. Ones that let us see God's grace. What would it be like if we could really see how good He is all the time? If we really grasped the depth and extent of His unmerited favor that He saturates us in? It makes getting to know people worth it. Because you generally have no idea of how they manifest God's glory until you know an awful lot about them, about where they have been, about what they have grown out of. I was thinking about it today during chapel as I was trying to figure out why I enjoy being with one o

As background to this post, my college is very fond of a book called The Outrageous Idea of Academic Faithfulness. I haven't read it yet, and maybe I should, but I keep seeing the title since my one roommate has it laying around. Today in Sunday School we were discussing prayer (also a staff focus at camp this summer) and how it works with being a college student and especially how it interfaces with being busy. And in the midst of this discussion, I began wondering if Christian schools shoot themselves in the foot at this point. You see, I understand that classwork is important. And academic integrity, yes, is important. And academic faithfulness also. But maybe, maybe, for some of us, the idea of academic faithfulness is no longer outrageous and sometimes it dances too close to idolatry and that is not faithfulness, not when it crams our minds and hearts and souls so that we feel that we do not have time for devotions and do not have time to truly rest because honestly some