Contrast

I spoke a message today in student chapel on contrast and I was a little rushed since student chapel doesn't have a lot of time and we always have tons of announcements. I still really enjoyed talking about it even if I wasn't able to be as clear or as thorough as I would have liked.

We see contrast all around. Simple things like hot and cold, dirty and clean, and old and new. The contrast of light and darkness is a biblical contrast since it refers to our life as believers in a crooked and perverse generation (Phil 2:15). We live in a dark world and as Christians we are to be in sharp contrast to the world in which we live. We are not to separate ourselves from the world nor to blend with the world. Both of these would eliminate the contrast. One by isolating the light and the other by extinguishing it.

My problem is that I let the world in and the thinking of the world begins to dim my light. So i am not shining but merely glowing or worse I am blending with the world all together. I would prefer it not to be this way but the world is a strong force to someone who is not correct in his view of shining. 

I would argue that our shining is not an end or a means but rather a result. It is a result of a deep relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. E M Bounds in his book Essentials of Prayer put it better than I can:

“The flower and fruit of a holy life, abounding in good works, must be seen. It cannot be otherwise. But the surface growth must be based on a vigorous growth of unseen life and hidden roots. Deep down in the renewed nature must the roots of religion go which is seen on the outside. The external must have a deep internal groundwork. There must be much of the invisible and the underground growth, or else the life will be feeble and short-lived and the external growth sickly and fruitless.
He goes on to say,
  “…Activity is often at the expense of more solid, useful elements, and generally to the total neglect of prayer. To be too busy with God’s work to commune with God, to be busy with doing Church work without taking time to talk to God about His work, is the highway to backsliding, and many people have walked therein to the hurt of their immortal souls.

Notwithstanding great activity, great enthusiasm, and much hurrah for the work, the work and the activity will be but blindness without the cultivation and the maturity of the graces of prayer.”

I often think that serving Christ is the end but just serving Christ is no good without a deep relationship with him. It is from this relationship that we are able to shine forth.

Surprise

My girlfriend Kara surprised me today! I thought that she was going to come on thursday but she came today. My friend David sent me a text "call me 911" so I called thinking there was a big problem and he said that he needed help carrying something up in the Emmaus storage room. So I went up and when I got to the thing he wanted help with it was a cardboard banner and I was really confused. Just then Kara and Joanie jumped out and hit me with couch cussions. It was really a good surprise.

School starts in a week

I have been thinking about a lot of things these days and I am having a hard time coming to a conclusion on a lot of them. 

One thing I have been thinking about is the value of the education that I am receiving and how I should be more involved in my classes and less involved in things outside of school. This goes against what I have felt for the past two years. I always felt that there was a great need to get out and put into practice what I am learning. While that is valid I think there is something to be said of spending time preparing for ministry and not letting ministry get in the way of the preparation.

Look at Paul he spent 3 years in Arabia being trained by God (Galatians 1:17) and Moses spent 40 herding sheep before God called him to ministry. David was a shepherd and Jesus spent 3 years with the apostles teaching them before he left. I feel this is the Mary time of my life when I have lots of time to sit at the feet of the Lord and learn from him. There will be other times to do the Martha work and I feel that I will be better prepared for it by being a Mary right now. 

This is not an easy thing since there is an atmosphere of service here at Emmaus. I don't want to put that down since I feel different. Yet I don't want to be a monk and never go out of my room either. So I am going to prioritize my time, putting more emphasis on my study of the word and less on ministry.

I am at my brother's house now hanging with his family.  I just started reading a lot of blogs and decided to blog but not for a few weeks once camp is over and school starts.

Israel

Perhaps some of you have not heard that I am planning on going to Isreal in the summer. It will be a two week trip with one of my teachers. I am getting really excited. I am planning on spending my Christmas working to save for the trip. I am actually looking forward to that because I will be working with my brother James in St Louis.

I along with 14 other students will be traveling together. When we leave for Israel we will fly to London where we will visit the British Museum. That is going to be a real nice bonus to the trip since there is a lot of artifacts in the musem that were taken from Israel. Then we will leave for Israel itself and spend 14 days traveling around visiting the sites. We visit tels from Dan to Beersheba, we will tube down the Jordan River, and we will get to walk the hills and
valleys where David walked.

I really cant wait. I need to do some research on the different places that we will visit so I may post them to the blog when I type them up.

Mazal Tov

I have always known that the english language yet I didn't realize how much of our slang comes from Yiddish. Yiddish is a mix of German and Hebrew. It is actually more than just a mix of the two but for my understanding that is what I have reduced it to. Yiddish was a very common language before the two world wars since then it has decreased significantly.

In my search I found that I have been speaking yiddish all my life and I didn't even realize it, and for some words I feel a slight embarrassment now that I know the root. Some of the common words that I use are: tush, tuchus, schnook, schmo (I knew a girl who called herself this, it means stupid person), putz, glitch (a common computer term), klutz and even bagel is yiddish.

It is not all that thrilling to find out that words that you know are from another language, since almost all the words I know are from another language. What I like is learning new words from that language. So here is what I found
boychik : boy, young man.
noodge : to pester, nag, whine;
nosh : snack
nudnik : a pest, "pain in the neck";
nu : multipurpose interjection often analogous to "well?" or "so?"
zaftig : plump, chubby, full-figured, as a woman

Well there is my yiddish lesson for the day. I find that most of the yiddish words we took mean something along the lines of a stupid person. I guess we never have enough words to describe stupid people and to laugh at them in our turn. 
Yet on closer inspection I would suggest avoiding the word schmuck.

Today is greet your friends in Yiddish day. Mazal Tov! 

phobia

Today I came accross lalophobia which is the fear of speaking. There are a few people who I am convinced have this but I am not naming any names. This is not to be confused with glossophobia which is the fear of public speaking and this the quite common in my opinion. These sent me on spiral into the world of phobias and I fear I shall never return.

We have androphobia the fear of men and Venustraphobia the fear of pretty women. The Ephebiphobiacs are afraid of youth while the Gerontophobiacs fear old people in return.

My personal favorites are:
Aibohphobia — a joke term for the fear of palindromes, which is a palindrome itself.
Arachibutyrophobia — fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth.
Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia — fear of long words.

This sent me on a quest to come up with my own phobias and so I declare this to be make up your own phobia day.

Here is what I got:
Mordwixedophobia- the fear of spoonerisms.
Enderophobia- the fear of being a third.
Comeuppancemasticagumaphobia- the fear that if one throws their gum on the ground they will inevitably step on gum in the near future.

There you have it. If you happen to come up with some clever phobias send me a letter because I have come down with a sever case of technophobia.

Johnny Bloom
2570 Asbury Rd
Dubuque, IA
52001