Your best conversationalists.

During the Great Awakening, Edwards took the time to write a lengthy letter--full of intense counsel yet gentle personal concern--to a young Christian woman from a Suffield congregation he had visited.

Always consider your best conversations... to be the ones that produce the following two effects: first, those conversations and experiences that make you least, lowest, and most like a child; and, second, those that do most engage and fix your heart in a full and firm disposition to deny yourself for God and to spend and be spent for him.

It's remarkable how he receives and responds to a young convert's request for pastoral guidance with not less urgency than the other Great Awakening duties he must have been swamped with at the time... like drafting "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" which he would deliver a month later, or corresponding with ministry colleagues, or shepherding someone from his own Northampton congregation. What humble obedience it takes to walk joyfully alongside our people!

Although this story I tell, sifting through the dates and writings like souvenirs that aren't mine and lending significance here and there, may be more the story I've chosen to imagine than the one they actually tell... I can praise the same patient precious discipling in someone else who might have in reading Edwards unwittingly molded his past to her own ends on a sentimental search for the man in shining orthodox armor--I mean, she was reading his biography in the rain under a tree when our paths crossed.

O hai der.

I didn't know then just how dear a gift it was that she would draw up her chair or pick up an oar or a pen to attend to my grief and fear, to refix my sights so "earnestly, affectionately, and thoroughly." She is precious to me. Happy birthday, soul-friend.

Tell Me A Story / Dan Taylor

We are created to be creatures who live in story and understand story.

The Significance of Stoires:

How Stories Shape People:

Transferring Values through Story:

Story in the Bible:

How Stories and Faith Relate:

Onward, forward, upward, homeward.

great is Thy faithfulness, Lord unto me

morning by morning... You help me to see

Your guiding presence tells me that good/better/best are ahead rather than irrecoverably past.

strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow

OMG IM DYING lol

lol

is the new sos

Kevin: is it weird that when I see
  lol
  I think of a man
  drowning
  waving his arms around
  for help
Sent at 1:00 PM on Wednesday
me: hahah
Kevin: I hope that has changed your life
me: it has
  now i will say things like
  OMG IM DYING lol
Kevin: hahaha
  lol is secretly the call of help of a culture which finds it neccessary to shorten the phrase "laugh out loud" into 3 letters

Little Brother

what else can i do?

cuz You cut to the place where i hide away
and You're breaking the stones in my wall.

never thought i'd ever be caught by surprise...
look at me fall.

so lead me on now cuz i don't remember this road

but the place we're going feels a lot like coming Home

we'll be there before long

i was so sure i'd never be here again; i thought i had tasted it all

never thought i'd ever be caught by surprise

but look at me fall, look at me fall

// KG - Fall

Big Brother

Always looking out for me with his rape prevention plans... =P

One winter break when he came home from college we killed a fifth because he insisted I build up my tolerance.

Tonight he surprised me with goshin jutsu class--fun times!!

He always was protective. He always stayed around...

Until he left. In six years the most time we've spent consecutively together was the month we traveled to Honduras, Hawaii, Taiwan.

When he started college we knew it to be the start of seeing each other only a couple times a year. He would not always be around for me.

In the coming weeks, he'll be moving to Seattle for work.

The protection he models, far-reaching, works toward its own abdication. It equips. And it loves. Enough to let me go. I have much to learn.

Weekend Soundbites

I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me... By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you... 

"I like us. We make me happy. :D" KH

Right back atcha, dear friend.

We'll make it through!

Thanks for being safe

for allowing me, by voicing it to you,

to confess what I hadn't yet admitted to myself.

You always keep it real.

In this and all things, I've never walked alone.

Friends remind each other not to give up and of reasons for hope,

of which at the end of the day, there is only One.

By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you... What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. 

Even when confronted

with the truth of 長痛不如短痛.

with the sliminess of my deceitful heart.

with how jealous/possessive/covetous my "love" is.

Think over... for the Lord will give you understanding in everything. 

"Your mother is emotionally... special." EK

O boy.

On account of Friday PM to Sunday AM's absurdities, I was... so preoccupied the rest of the weekend. Too much to really make the effort to socialize and knit the group together even though I organized.

Rame. Why ever half-ass anything?! Your mercy... I need it so.

No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules.  It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. 

"... [unintelligible]... confused ...[unintelligible]..." FC

Me too.

But God's firm foundation stands... “Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.” ... Be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work. So flee youthful passions.

"You have a way of bringing random people together =) fun fun!" JL

I can think of few things I enjoy more.

I want this "way" to be only from You.

Madison Yelpers have low standards.

Or is it that NYC has imprisoned my palate to its city limits?

Pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies... The Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil... 

"[cannot-be-repeated-should-be-forgotten/forgiven]" AL
Ma, what do I do with you?

How do I love you rightly?

There will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self... proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.


Avoid such people. For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.