A Psalm of Joy

Praise God Who daily pours forth grace

My broken heart restored

His work is done yet carries on

In joy I call Him Lord!

O Lord You reign o'er mind and heart

The whole of self is Thine.

In awe I humbly bow my knee

Before Your name divine.

Divine, that Name above all Names

Is none but Jesus Christ,

Who loved before I drew first breath

Or knew His sacrifice.

Such sacrifice can not be found

In other time or space.

Come join the chorus of the saints:

Praise God who pours forth grace!

Midnight ramblings

The family is gone until August 12th. I kinda think I know how they feel when I leave for college. Except they are ALL gone. I miss them. A lot. I'm actually fairly lonely right now, though I've been filling my schedule fairly well so far. Sigh.

I'm having a bit of an episode with books right now. I started reading Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo. I was aware that it was an abridged version, but was ok with it at the time. I absolutely LOVED the book. Hugo was, on an almost by the page basis, becoming one of my favorite authors. Then I posted on my facebook that I was reading the book, and someone asked me if I was reading an unabridged version, to which I responded in the negative. The ensuing disparaging comments brought me to the point of actually pulling my bookmark out of the book and returning it to the shelf, opting instead to locate a full version of the book. My next title to read was Charles Dicken's David Copperfield. I carefully searched every page on both ends of the book to make sure that it was unabridged, and finding no declaration of its being condensed, I commenced with the story. I was about 65 pages in, and it just wasn't grabbing me nearly the way that Oliver Twist did this spring. I was a bit disappointed, but the book was beginning to get better, so I was far from giving it up. But that night, when I was hanging out with a friend, we were in Barnes and Noble, and I found a copy of David Copperfield in their classics section. I noticed that it was considerably thicker than my own copy, so I turned to an early chapter to read a segment I was familiar with to see if it was the same. Low and behold, there, staring back at me in black and white, was the beautiful prose and beautifully orchestrated acrobatic language that I had fallen in love with, but was nowhere to be found in my own copy at home. So, immediately upon coming home, my copy of David Copperfield fell to the same fate as Les Miserables, and was returned to the shelf. Except with far more disdain, because I believe I was tricked into reading a book which I had expected to be unabridged, later to discover otherwise. Hmph. So I'm not reading anything at the moment. I think I'm going to try and get into one or two or the books I picked up at the International Christian Retail Show in St. Louis in June.

Thinking about books and stuff, I just read (on an Apple news web site, amusingly enough) that the new Amazon Kindle is priced at $139. You know what? At that price point, I am considering myself interested. Sure, it'd be awesome to have an iPad, but realistically, I'm due for a new computer after I graduate next spring, and I'm gonna get a macbook pro. I'd like to have an e-reader though, and something with limited function might actually encourage me to do more reading on it, since I won't be able to be distracted by a fully functioning web browser the way I would with an iPad. We'll see. Maybe a Christmas present for myself?

I'm starting to get into trance and electronica music more than any other time that I can remember. I owe this joy to the band Cinnamon Chasers, an indie electronica/techno band from the UK. They are great, particularly the songs "Luv Deluxe" and "Jetstreams." I've got a couple friends at school who have been into this type of music for several years, so I'm excited to go back to school and discover some of the great stuff they have.

T minus 13 days until I move back to school. 18 days til all students return, 22 days until classes start, and 277 days until graduation, Lord willing.

Untitled.

Today was a good day. Got up at 6:30 and and had a very leisurely morning. As in, I literally just laid on my bed with a blank mind for the first half hour or 45 minutes. No reading. No web surfing. Nothing.
At 8:30 I left the house and drove down to K-Mart where I parked for free (as opposed to the ramps downtown) and walked the 10 minutes to the office. At work yesterday I was invited to sit in on a board of directors meeting as a team of urban designers went over a powerpoint presentation of the latest and greatest Master Plan for downtown Rochester. It's pretty interesting, and I think they have some good ideas, but a LOT of it is based on the idea of less motor vehicles coming into the downtown area. The words "bicycles" and "cyclists" were used roughly 490 times in the hour long presentation. I was wondering why nobody was asking questions like "what about during the 7 months out of the year when the weather is too cruddy to use a bike in Rochester?" or "With the Mayo Clinic as a medical destination where sick and disabled people come, shouldn't we be taking into consideration the needs of their patients?"
I have a little bit more to say, but its highly unlikely that anybody actually cares to read about it (in fact it seems like nobody really reads this, period). So I'll move on.
After the meeting was out at 10:30 I walked back to K-Mart and bough myself a new leather-bound journal, which I am excited to start using! Keeping a daily journal is something I've been hit and miss with the last year or so, but I'm hoping to make more of a point to do it now that I have a fresh journal. I especially want to do it through the school year, writing out my thoughts on classes, relationships, being an RA, what God is teaching me, etc. Is there something ironic about blogging electronically about keeping an old school pen-and-paper journal? Hmm.
This afternoon I went on an invigorating and sweat-inducing 14 mile bike ride, covering a lot of southeast Rochester via streets, neighborhoods and bike paths. I stopped by the post office to mail a textbook I sold online, and then swung by Crossroads and said hi to my friends who are living and working there over the summer, and then got an email on my phone reminding me that I needed to take care of some things for Thursdays on First for tomorrow, so I came back home and did that. I was gone from 1:30 until about 4, and from 4-7 I relaxed and split time between Facebook, online news stuff (this story is particularly interesting) and the Bible. Read through the Old Testament prophet of Zephaniah and LOVED these verses.
Ultimate Frisbee is on Wednesday nights, so around 7 I drove down to East Park. Unfortunately we didn't have enough people to play until about 7:45. Unfortunately we only got to play for about a half hour before two of the 7 folks playing went down with injuries! Nothing super serious I don't think (a hamstring and something in another guy's side), but it was a bummer to have to stop because of that. Praying they're alright.
Tomorrow is another Thursday! I'm excited! Unfortunately the weather looks like it could potentially get kinda nasty later in the afternoon (as opposed to the morning, like last week, heh), so we'll see. :/ I'm optimistic it will be a great day though. You should come on down!

This is a happy blog post.

This weekend has been good. Spent Friday night at the mall with Anders, mostly perusing Barnes and Noble. It made me want to buy books and books and books and books and books. Especially that whole shelf stocked with classics by Dickens, Austen, Poe, Kipling, Dickenson, Twain and more. Ahhh!

Speaking of reading, I'm currently one chapter through Ann Graham Lotz's best seller, The Magnificent Obsession. It was given to me a couple weeks ago by my mentor Bob. It's had some good things to say, so far. It pulls from Abraham's example of faith. The one thing that kinda bugs me though is that when she goes into "I wonder what his peers were thinking at this point in time?" mode, she makes them all think distinctly modern-day, western-style thoughts, which then distract me and make me say to myself "actually, I'm almost positive that's nothing like what they actually thought." Oh well. Like I said, I'm only one chapter in.

Post-mall hanging, I went back to Anders house and was pleasantly surprised to discover Austin was home for the weekend, so I got to see him. The three of us, plus Scott, James and True David all played this (admittedly nerdy) roll-playing game called "We're All Gonna Die!" (click link to see rules). I was pretty skeptical that I'd enjoy myself heading into it, since RPG's of any sort are definitely not my usual cup of tea, but it was actually pretty fun. Mostly because Anders and True David are hilarious.

Today I slept in until about 10:30, an event which has occurred with a fair amount of regularity since school got out. I am most pleased about this. For the most part, today was fairly lethargic, physically, mentally, etc. I read a bit and then plaid some super slacker tennis with Johanna and Cassia. After they left to go wherever they went, I chilled in my room and watched this video lecture about the fashion industry and its relationship with Intellectual Property. Interesting stuff.

Then I headed to a friend's grad party, where I chilled for a couple hours and enjoyed the food and conversation. It was a PSEO student from Crossroads, so I got to see a lot of my college friends there, including Levi and Jerod, which was awesome.

Picking up Matt and heading for church followed the grad party. Steer gave a great sermon on the joy of prayer. Prayer is one of those topics which has come up in several different places in my life recently. It's definitely prompted me to take a closer look at my prayer life and re-examine the frequency, duration, variety and nature of my prayers.

One of the highlights of the service was definitely the SEPTUPLE BABY DEDICATION! Six parents had seven children dedicated to the Lord during the service. I love baby dedications, it's so cool to see parents taking such a public step and saying "Hey, we love our kid, and we care about his/her upbringing, and we want to show the world that we are going to strive to be intentional about how we raise our child." Love it, love it, love it. Plus the baby pictures they show on the screen are always adorable. :-)

Post-church, Matt and I drove over to Crossroads and walked from there, all the way around the southern portion of the Zumbro trail, from school out to Mayowood Road down by the closed bridge. We then walked along the road back to school. Total trip covered probably 5 miles at least. We had a great conversation covering life, relationships, politics, false religion and true religion that didn't stop until I dropped him off at his house a bit before 11pm. It was a great night!

I just checked my calendar a bit ago, and saw that I have absolutely NOTHING on it for tomorrow OR Monday. Sweet. Feeling some reading coming on, and possibly an attempt at finishing my mammoth goal of organizing the family library. Weee shall seee.