Thoughts on Friendship/Thanksgiving with the Holy Spirit/Translations

We recently went to our good friends' wedding; well, not just 'went to', my wife was the matron-of-honor. So we had our own part to play in it all. It was a beautiful wedding. The couple are both very much in love with God and are wonderful together and are two of the most Godly people we know. Rewinding 24 hours to the rehearsal dinner, we come into the theater where the dinner is being held and I immediately get a huge huge from the groom. [Insert huge guy] Where he picks me up into the air and starts shaking me. He being ~7 feet tall (his arm width twice the size of my neck; yeah, pretty sure he's done some bench presses in his lifetime) and me being ~5 foot 6 meant that I was hugging a kodiak bear. At the same time my wife immediately got caught in the torrent of bridesmaids and associated womenfolk and two seconds later I was left alone. But then I turned around to find the Christian brothers (Godly brothers, that is!) of the groom waiting to welcome me to their group discussion. They were all from Alabama and to make convo I told them how long it took me to drive from Oklahoma to Florida-it was all I could think of as I had to drive through Alabama to get to Florida. But, even after some awkward convo, it ended up being the first time in a long time that I've really felt "on the inside" with other brothers in this family of God. It was nice :)

It's worth mentioning, we all have had friendships gone awry. I've engineered too many friendships with people who never came through for me. And it's hurt my heart in the process. And through the healing from that, I've learned that it happens because of the sin of the world against the family and kingdom of God we are in and to just let forgiveness take the place of any bitterness in my heart. That was a hard task at times, but I'd like to say I'm close to being where God wants me with others. But oh how much we all want to have friendships, close fellowships, of which we can say, we are all "a chord of three strands [which] is not quickly broken" (Ecclesiastes 4:12). And irregardless of this world, the next promises a richness of friendships and brotherhood and sisterhood unmatched by what we have (or haven't had) here and now. To see new friendships with people we never knew blossom and our own friendships now be carried into the Kingdom of our God in eternity will be one of the many facets of love we will have in our future with our Prince. It is one of the (many) things our hearts can hope for in life with our beautiful Love, our Jesus.

Thanksgiving is only a couple days away. Today is the last day of class (thankfully!). It's getting colder as the week goes by. An arctic air mass is scheduled to arrive ~Wednesday night and will make Thanksgiving a cold one. And the thing that makes this time more special than anything, it's not the cold air, or the hot coffee, or the Fall comfort food, or the falling leaves, it's feeling Jesus' beautiful Holy Spirit around me, talking with me, listening and waiting for me to tell him how lovely I think he is, loving him, and spending time with him with my family. I so hate to live life as if God is not apart of our family. He is! It's why he is coming from Heaven down to earth to live forever, and why our very own bodies are his temple and not some church building with angels and choirs. He's the Leader of our family, but he's our Father, and he's my Beloved, my Friend, the One I sit around and talk to because I love being with him. I feel so out of place when I don't pursue him during the day. But I'm more thankful for God's Son as our own than anything else. For his love and his desire for me. To love me, to wed me, to pursue me, to make me his own and give me his heart and a life of worshiping him forever. How perfect! And it's the battle of our lives here, to never not stop worshiping him even though our minds forget him at the drop of a hat. And also to know one day, we never will have to fight that battle again when we do live with him forever and his lover and with all our brothers and sisters in our Father's house. It will be so great to take a walk one day with my Lover Jesus, my wife, my daughter, and my brothers and sisters on that road above ^ during an autumn afternoon; then go back to our Father's house and have some apple cider by the fireplace and have a wonderful dinner. Life with him is coming soon!

The other thing was I've been reading the Bible in the original Hebrew lately. Well, the Old Testament anyway. And it's incredible. I mean, the translations we've been given from the Hebrew to our English just utterly fail the richness of God's love letters to us and our story with him from the beginning. I applaud Eugene Peterson for attempting to bridge that attempt in his version The Message, but it really is worth it to read it in depth in the original language. I'm thinking we might start a sister blog on translating some original Hebrew and Greek passages with interpretation and discussion (with great props to my dad, who knows a lot of New Testament Greek). We'll see!