Jesus Beat The Devil With A Big Wooden Stick

Today marks the end of the first week of the film festival.

I cannot express how blessed I am. 

Today, I had to host the film festival because I was not able to delegate the responsibility to one of the other French Club members. No biggie.

The shirt I'm wearing today I got on clearance from a christian clothing store in the mall.  It reads, you guessed it, Jesus beat the Devil with a big wooden stick.  It's one of my favorite shirts for obvious reasons.

Apparently, lots of other people liked it too.

Complements are always nice.  So are deeply entrenched Biblical discussions.

Both happened in abundance today.  Like, seriously.  I was reminded that there are more believers in my life than I am aware of, and that I need not feel alone, helpless, or like it's just God and me on a rowboat on the Atlantic, fishing for lost souls.

Today was a day of recognition of fellow believers, and recognition from fellow believers. Three times today, I saw the love of God surface in people talking to me, and I mean the real deal.

Recently, I've felt discouraged because it's hard to spot the Christians in the world.  God whispered in my ear today (by making it blatantly obvious) I am not alone in this city.

Day 2 of Film Festival

As the French Club prepares to show the second film of our film festival, "Le Beau Serge", I am amazed at God's obvious hand in the event.

Yesterday, Dr. Schulman more or less dropped an impromptu speech en français in my lap.  Because he would not be able to make it.  I was very calmly freaking out.

God worked it out though, so I only had to talk to one of the few French profs I've never personally had.  We had a great conversation in French.

I've learned something these past few days, about loving others.  God showed me that you've got to get past the "Ick!" first impression you might have for someone, and see them for who they are, a person who has their likes and dislikes, passions and pet peeves, and their future and life story.

There were these two guys whom I wasn't really sure of.  One was really quiet and seemed to need prodding up all the time, and the other seemed really obnoxious and loud.  I have since had a chance to talk to them and see their human side.

I was reminded about what the Bible says on favoritism.

There's also a certain conviction, from even considering being afraid of or uncertain around these two men.  They're just as much a living, breathing entity as I am.

Sunday of two long weeks

Starting tomorrow, the French Club will be hosting a two week film festival.  I'm the president of the club, so I'm going to be busy nonstop, but I'll get through this.  I'm worried about how my body will react during the festival, to the intense schedule. 

I'm praying about this a lot, and I'm going to use the French Club to do as much as I can.  However, I'm going to do my part as well.

I'm not going to promise an entry a day, lest I give myself another burden to stress over, but I'm going to try to keep you updated about the festival's progress. Pray for me.

L'amour et la Charité

One thing I like doing is reading the Bible in French.  I've been through the Bible so many times in English, I've usually got a pretty good grasp of what it's saying at any given moment. As such, reading La Bible both maintains and improves upon my fluency, but then other times, I realize French is capable of saying things English might not be able to.

The most obvious difference is that English does not assign a gender to its words, but both Hebrew and Greek did.  To some extent, English also lacks specificity in regards to certain pluralities.  Because French grammar is built around the gender and plurality of the words, sometimes I can understand a concept I would be left fuzzy on had I just read the English version.  The verb tenses in French tend to be more distinguishable than their English counter parts, unless you're a grad student in Linguistics.

Another reason I like reading the French is because sometimes French has a better way of defining something than English does.  It's not too common, but in some cases, English has too few words to describe too general a concept.

Take love for example.

While English just has the one all-encompassing word, French has at least two versions, l'amour and la charité.  The former is about liking and loving someone for who they are, (of course, it's also the hyper romantic version of love the French are known for), and the latter is about charity and servitude.

It kind of puts a new spin on it when you see when each is used.

1 Corinthians 13 is called the love chapter of the Bible, but interestingly enough, it's not so much about how to love your sweetheart as it is how to love everyone.  With la charité being the sole word used there, it reminds me of what Jesus did when he washed the disciples feet.

My point, to love someone is to serve them.

The importance of straight and level paths

For kicks, I used my blackberry's GPS to track my movements on a run this morning in my wheelchair. Apparently, I managed to get my chair moving at 11mph on the smoothest stretches of sidewalk.

I haven't had a whole lot of time to blog recently because I've been really busy with school work, tutoring, and trying to forge a social life. If you want something to pray for, pray that I might find the ability to blog as consistently as I used to, and also that Medicare will pull through and get me a new wheelchair like I'd been told they could.

In the meantime, I'm going to expand this entry as much as I can until Stacy gets out of the shower (my brother's girlfriend moved in last weekend, fyi).

But yeah, have you ever thought about the paths you walk? I bet if you started pushing yourself in a wheelchair, you'd stop and consider what abominations your Sketchers stomp through on a day to day basis. You never think of all the grime, grease, gum, and guts you go through until it's coating your gloved fingers and you go to push up your glasses.

Been there, done that.

So please, take my advice, watch your step.