Today was sorta insane. It started out on a rather negative note - I forgot to set my alarm last night and thus slept until 6:01 am this morning when I was awoken by a phone call from my place of employment, asking me where I was. Oops. I got there at 6:11 - 26 minutes late...11 minutes late opening the doors. Luckily I wasn't fired...no one was even particularly angry. I was told not to worry about it, that stuff happens, and just to not let it happen again. Yay grace. :) Work itself was really slow. I think I sold $130 of food in the first 5 hours... it was rather disheartening. I still managed to make my normal $50, though, so it didn't end so poorly. We had a pretty significant lunch rush. I then went to the school to accompany the 5th grade brass soloists. Then I came home, and have been enjoying a very leisurely evening ever since. :) I read some from "Hitler's Willing Executioners," have been listening to Pandora, have been studying German, and have done a good deal of Facebook stalking as well. A very nice evening. :)
Today was made even better by my looking at the schedule for the coming weekend and realizing that I have both Friday and Saturday night off (I sub all day Friday but don't have to work the night shift at the restaurant (yay!) and work 8-2 on Saturday. Guess what this means? Marilee gets to visit college on Saturday night! :D That pretty much makes my week. :)
On a more introspective note, tonight I have been thinking about what it means to be a Christian...the battle I will fight for the rest of my life against my flesh. It's funny how I fluctuate between extremes. One day my faith will rest entirely on commitment and concrete choices/actions. The next day my faith is entirely based on emotion. Most of the time I find myself struggling with turning emotion into concrete action. I desire to follow God, I desire to serve God with my whole heart and with every choice I make and with my every action. However, this doesn't happen...not even close. I am reminded of Paul's letter to the Romans, when he says: "For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate...For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want..." (7:15,18-19) My pastor preached on this passage on Sunday, and what he said haunts me... basically what I got out of it is I will always struggle...my sinful nature will not be squelched until the Day when I am given a new body. I always have known this...and so on the one hand, it's not that surprising. I'm not perfect, never will be. Sadly enough, I can deal with the fact that I am not perfect. It's a lot harder, though, to deal with the thought that as long as I live I will need to be constantly vigilant, constantly fighting. I cannot allow myself to become complacent in this battle. That scares me, because complacency is always lurking.
I've watched friends fall away from God, leave their Christian upbringing behind in favor of the world's way...and I know just how easily that could be me, if once I allow myself to give in to complacency. It's like being insanely tired but knowing that a nap will be my undoing...so I am forced to keep myself awake at all costs. But sleep beckons...always it beckons.
I have so many questions about so many things...what does it mean to serve God? Is my faith supposed to find its source and fuel in emotion? Or is my faith supposed to be intellectual? Or practical? I have a feeling it's in an impossible combination of these three that the unachievable perfection is found. After all, in a perfect world, I would walk in perfect peace (emotionally speaking) with God, and from that joy and peace would spring perfection in deeds, and from that perfection in deeds would spring a wisdom that is otherwise clouded by sin.
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