This is all beyond me...

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Things have been crazy these last few days. I am conflicted between my selfish desires and what someone else wants me to do. I am so torn because this involves something of serious importance to me. Now, I'm mad at this person, and this person is mad at me. I'm watching The Passion of the Christ at the moment. It's a the scene with the flogging of Christ. For me, this scene was somehow even harder to watch than the crucifixion scene. (By the way, is it just me, or does the head guard in this scene look like the spitting image of Paul McCartney?) As I watch it though, I find myself thinking about how Christ put us before Himself. When you read the following verses,

They went to a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to his disciples, "Sit here while I pray." He took Peter, James and John along with him, and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death," he said to them. "Stay here and keep watch."

Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. "Abba, Father," he said, "everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will."

Mark 14:32-36

it is clear that He didn't really want to suffer through it, but that He did it for our sake and because the Father wanted Him to. I find myself realizing that I should sacrifice my desire in this argument, but it is not easy for me. I'm so angry because this person should understand my point of view, but apparently does not.

On to a happier subject...

I've spoken a few times on here about my Musankisha, meine reisebegleiter, and I've even talked about how we've been using Skype to communicate some by video. Sunday afternoon (my time), I had the opportunity to "meet" her mom via Skype.



I was terrified. Maybe I got away lucky because her mom doesn't speak english. It was not as easy to make a fool of myself as normal. I did, however read a little bit of a german children's book over Skype. So, maybe I managed to look silly after all. My Musankisha keeps telling me that I don't need to worry, and that her parents are already liking me. That doesn't entirely keep me from being afraid though. hehe...

I feel sorry for the people in this world who seem to have everything under control. For them, it must not be easy to surrender everything to the Lord. It is surely more difficult for them to realize their need to do so! Everything in my life right now feels so far out of my control. I always find myself crying out more to Him for His help when things are like this. Maybe that's why He is allowing all of these mountains in my life to exist right now. So that it's not about me learning to work harder to make it through them, but, rather, that it's about me learning to depend entirely on Him for success.

"As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene....No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life."

- Albert Einstein, physicist and atheist (1879-1955)

I am trying to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him, 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the sort of thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or He would be the devil of hell. You must make a choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

- C.S. Lewis - Mere Christianity