Book Review and Newsy-Type Stuff

WARNING! This will be long, but there's a lot to share.

I'll start at the end of the weekend, since it's fun to think like that. I finished reading Sex God by Rob Bell on the bus ride home from church. I liked it better than Velvet Elvis. It even beat the catchy title of the first one. It doesn't rhyme, but if you put those words together, people will read it.

The gist is that people use sex as a search for a lost connection. Due to the Fall in the Garden of Eden, we are disconnected from everything-the world, God, each other. So even sex points to a need for more than what we have.

It was also helpful to hear many of the references God uses that are actually wedding language. Marriage is great, and should be an example of unity, but it is a temporary thing that points to something greater. Good book.

The best part is, a book entitled Sex God makes the point that we think too much about sex. Brilliant.

Before I finished the book, I enjoyed Bible study and lunch with the college group in our church. Beka and I talked about going to India this Saturday for Spring Break and answered "I don't know" to a dozen or so questions. We're going to find out information about a possible mission trip for our school to go on in the future. We'll have the answers in a couple of weeks.

In Bible study we interrupted our lesson about Moses to discuss the morning sermon. Our pastor mentioned the joy of the resurrection. I underlined the passage in Romans before he preached, and wondered why we seem to have more of the morbidity of the crucifixion in us minus the aforementioned joy of the resurrection. When I asked about prayer requests, one group member said she wanted the joy of the resurrection in her life. I hadn't yet mentioned it. I said that probably goes for all of us, so in the middle of the lesson we talked a bit about what that looks like. Eventually we got back to the water turning into blood. It waited patiently.

Saturday evening we saw a good show on the Discovery Channel about a maximum security prison in Utah. Neither the guards nor the prisoners milked the show for sympathy or publicity. I was shocked about how honest they all were. A prisoner was crying because he would be let out of prison eventually. He was literally covered in tattoos , showing loyalty to a gang for survival. He pleaded, "Who will accept me like this out there?"

Some prisoners calmly explained how they attacked guards. It's what they do. The guards explained some of those attacks with a flat, emotionless, "That wasn't pleasant."

The part that broke my heart was the silent acceptance they all seemed to have of their "roles" in life. I'm a violent criminal, so I have to be violent. I'm a guard, so I'm going to be attacked. The second one makes more sense, but it doesn't lessen the sadness.

It ended with a man being released. "(Bleep) this place", he cheerfully exclaimed as he strolled out, hoping he'd be able to "make it". I'm a sap, but I hoped he might.

That afternoon we went bowling and ate pizza with 20 people from a church, a handful of students from our school, and eleven kids ages six to fourteen from an orphanage. The younger ones enjoyed rolling the bowling balls, and once we got them to learn the concept of taking turns, the chaos was controlled. It was a lot of fun.

One older kid, about fourteen, didn't want to bowl. He watched some TV and got bored with that as well. I played rock, paper, scissors with him a few times, and he smiled. He kept winning.

At first he looked like he was going to wander out of the bowling alley. I tried talking to him a bit and reminded myself to bring some cards next time we do something like this.

The woman who runs the orphanage said the kids need help learning English. I asked if a group from our school would be any help. They would. Hopefully we can get some concrete dates worked out. I'll remember some games next time.