Saturday night there was another show at Freebird Live right next door, so the streets were filled with the sounds of music and also with homeless people and everyone drunk, high and wasted. A group called "Crucial Ministries" came to the cafe and did a program for saturday night ministry in there. They had worship music going and one guy was doing a mime. That was cool. It was pretty stormy here over the weekend, the winds were so high it was ridiculous and it poured sometimes. On Sunday a bunch of us went murfing (air mattress surfing) and later that night I went swimming with some people. Although apparently that wasn't safe and the beach was closed because the waves were so crazy that it was dangerous. Oops. But thankfully none of us died or anything, so I guess it's all good...:)
Yeah, so that was the weekend. There is seriously football on the screen all weekend here. It should really be replaced with some hockey sometime.
This week we have a speaker who is teaching us the inductive method of studying the Bible. We're studying the book of Acts. We have double classes this week plus homework, which changes up our schedule and makes us pretty busy. It's a pretty intense way to study the bible with 3 steps: observation, interpretation and application. We started by reading the whole book of Acts out loud while colorcoding geographical places. That took one whole class (3 hours). Then in the afternoon class we started with dividing up the book into paragraphs with paragraph titles, then sections with titles, then divisions, etc. Moving on from there we've started with the interpretation step, which is alot of reading and studying and colorcoding. We also split up into 3 groups and for the afternoon class today we were supposed to as a group write a paper on the topic we were given and also prepare a 10-minute presentation for tomorrow. My group got the topic of "the Jews' attitude and relation to unclean animals" (because of Paul's vision of the sheet with unclean animals in it, right before he goes to Cornelius' house). We found it to be a bit of a difficult topic, and i had no idea how hard it is to try to write a paper with a group of about 7 or 8 people, but we finally got the paper written and the presentation is gonna be pretty funny. So that's class this week! We also have a bunch of memorizing and a book report to get done by Friday, so that plus class homework and work duties is keeping us on our toes. Next week I have no idea off the top of my head who's teaching, or what the topic is.
One quick thing, I was reading The Message version of the Bible during my quiet time today. I don't always read that, infact i usually read my NIV bible, but sometimes I like to read the message or compare it to my NIV. I like the Message sometimes, because it's the Bible put into such modern day language that I can understand it super easily. Anyways, the Bible reading plan on my iPod landed on Psalm 88 today in The Message. I guess it just struck me that even people in the Bible had such negative emotions at times, and that even in this example although David was a king and wrote alot of extolling and happy psalms, he didn't always feel that way. Here it is...Psalm 88, The Message
God, you're my last chance of the day.
I spend the night on my knees before you.
Put me on your salvation agenda;
take notes on the trouble I'm in.
I've had my fill of trouble;
I'm camped on the edge of hell.
I'm written off as a lost cause,
one more statistic, a hopeless case.
Abandoned as already dead,
one more body in a stack of corpses,
And not so much as a gravestone—
I'm a black hole in oblivion.
You've dropped me into a bottomless pit,
sunk me in a pitch-black abyss.
I'm battered senseless by your rage,
relentlessly pounded by your waves of anger.
You turned my friends against me,
made me horrible to them.
I'm caught in a maze and can't find my way out,
blinded by tears of pain and frustration.
9-12 I call to you, God; all day I call.
I wring my hands, I plead for help.
Are the dead a live audience for your miracles?
Do ghosts ever join the choirs that praise you?
Does your love make any difference in a graveyard?
Is your faithful presence noticed in the corridors of hell?
Are your marvelous wonders ever seen in the dark,
your righteous ways noticed in the Land of No Memory?
13-18 I'm standing my ground, God, shouting for help,
at my prayers every morning, on my knees each daybreak.
Why, God, do you turn a deaf ear?
Why do you make yourself scarce?
For as long as I remember I've been hurting;
I've taken the worst you can hand out, and I've had it.
Your wildfire anger has blazed through my life;
I'm bleeding, black-and-blue.
You've attacked me fiercely from every side,
raining down blows till I'm nearly dead.
You made lover and neighbor alike dump me;
the only friend I have left is Darkness.
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| The group I wrote the paper and did a presentation with. This is one of the pictures for the presentation. And yes, the girl in the bikini and the guy with the longboard are statues :P |
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