And so begins another semester

Wow, so much to talk about. And at the same time, I have a couple hundred pages to read by tomorrow. To add insult to injury, that's not even all my books, because I couldn't afford all of them right now. What a racket text book publishers have going for them...

But a bit of context for the above rant: I'm down in blacksburg now. Classes started yesterday. So far, everything's going well, but then I've only had a couple days for things to go otherwise. :) Looks like about half of my classes will be time-consuming, and the other half will be time-consuming and tough. Ah, the joys of a CS major.

I've been slowing trying to email those of you not in Blacksburg. Emphesis on slow, but don't worry, I will eventually write to you. I've also been asking for mailing addresses, because I have photos from the last couple nights I was in Heidelberg. So if you want prints, I need to get your information so I can send them to you. All in all, I'm very pleased with how they came out. Hopefully you will be too. :)

But like I said, I have around 200 pages of text to read for tomorrow, so I need to get down to that. Rest assured, though, I have a lot of stuff to write about. I just don't want to be like Jason and work on the same post for three days before I publish it. So little by little of the next couple days I'm going to be publishing much more.

No time for a real post

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang, but a whimper

- Excerpt from The Hollow Men, T.S. Eliot, 1925

+20 points for me. I heartily recommend reading some Eliot; dark and heavy, but very good.

Post on Ocracoke coming when I get a chance. Now it's off to bed, because I head to Blacksburg early in the morning.

Edit: If you're curious about the poem, the complete text can be found at http://www.cs.umbc.edu/~evans/hollow.html

Not with a bang, but a whimper...

Ten points to the first person who can tell me the original author of the above line without looking it up. Double points if you can name the work it's in. No cheating, now. You're on your honor.

Anyway, I'm back in the U.S., safe and sound. The title doesn't really have much to do with the my day, except maybe that none of the planes I rode in ended in a bang. Though they didn't really end in a whimper either. Oh well, it's been a long day. I hate flights going west across the Atlantic.

I go down to Ocracoke Island in the Outer Banks of North Carolina tomorrow. Unless things have drastically changed, I don't expect to have internet access while I'm down there. So no hearing from me until later in the week. I know you're all heartbroken, but I'm sure you'll survive.

One final note: post times are now in EDT, not CET.

PS - Just wanted to share that in barely seven weeks, I managed to forget about sales tax. Stupid sales tax!

End of the Heidelberg Chapter of my Summer

It's 0130 as I sit down to write this. In six hours I'll leave my house in Leimen to travel to Frankfurt, where I'll catch a plane to Philadelphia. God willing, 9 hrs after that I'll be in the United States of America. I'm finished packing; my suitcase it loaded, my guitar is sitting by the front door. The only thing left to put into my backpack is the laptop I'm typing on. The only thing left for me to do is try to sum up my time in Heidelberg.

This summer hasn't gone nearly the way I had imagined. I came over with the memory of last year's wasted summer fresh in my mind and a firm resolve to make the most of this one. I lined up a number of projects: I was going to take lots of photos, paint some scenes, and brew my own beer. The only one of the above that I even made a little headway on was the photography bit, and technical difficulties snagged that project up pretty well. But all that is alright, because I just had the most productive summer I've ever had. God's plan for my summer included something much more important than pursuing some vain hobbies. He sent me to minister and serve youth in my community, and along the way brought brothers and sisters into my life that he used to grow me and love me.

As far as growth goes, God showed me some of what He's capable and willing to do through me. He also showed areas of rebellion in my life. While it's not fun to discover flaws in yourself, I'm still encouraged by seeing it. I know He'll not leave me alone until He's finished His work in me, and now I have recent examples of just how powerfully He desires to move in my life.

Becoming friends with so many of you has been an honor and something of a surprise. I let my defenses down without even consciously realizing it, and grew closer than I was expecting to the people here. So saying goodbye to Heidelberg and the people in it, especially for quite possibly the last time, hurts. It hurts much more than it has for years. But even that is for God's glory, though, because I hadn't realized that I'd even I'd put back walls around my heart until they were breached. I don't want to go through life holding people at arms length to avoid pain when we part. So I'm going to very consciously try to keep my defenses down and make the most out of the opportunities for relationships I'm given, no matter the cost. And heck, at least I feel something that way, which is much better than the emotional numbness that so often characterizes my condition.

I would have loved to spend more time with the people here, both those I recently met and those I've known for a while. But this is all the time God gave me. So here I say goodbye to those of you I leave behind. Thank you all for your companionship; I've treasured the role you have played in my life this summer. Despite all the demands that day to day living imposes on my time and focus, I'm going to try to stay in touch with as many of you as I can. But if we don't keep in close contact, it's not because I don't love you; I love you all dearly. I'll see you all someday, either sooner or later. Until then,

For His glory,
Matt

Someone want to tell me what it means to respond to God's love? Because I don't know what it looks like, and so far I haven't been having much luck figuring it out.

In other news, I board a plane in 35 hours.

What my college tuition is paying for...

(Edit: Click on the title of the post to view the video)

I've mentioned to some people over the summer about a prank I participated in last spring. For those who don't know, a couple of my friends and I decided that it would be hilarious to pretend to mug someone on one of the many campus tours that go on every day for prospective students. The link up above is to a movie that shows what happens. =) (Warning: It's a 35 MB file, so you need a fast internet connection to get it in any sort of decent time)

Credit given where it's due: The tall guy who got tackled is Karl Muecke. The masked marauder is Charlie McRaven, my roomate last year. Angie Schulz did the filming and the video editing. I took some photos that didn't make it into the final product. Oh, and Angie and I pretended to be German students looking at the school, so we wouldn't be out of place among all the high schoolers.

Hard Words

Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters-yes, even his own life-he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

"Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who see it will ridicule him, saying, 'This fellow began to build and was not able to finish' "

Luke 14:25-30

I've been reading through Luke and recently read this passage above. For the past couple days my thoughts about it have gradually been coalescing to the point that now I feel I can cogently write down some of them. My apologies if I'm mistaken. =)

So I want to share two things that really came to me while I was reading the above passage. I'll start off with the bit I'm more sure about; namely, the part about counting the cost of following Jesus before you start. I think that Christians today have a tendency to present a rose-colored picture of Christianity to non-believers. We focus on the rewards of following Jesus and de-emphasize the negative aspects. Not that I've ever heard anyone say in so many words that you'll never have any troubles once you put your trust in Christ, but the implication is there. I'd say that it's a characteristic common to anyone, including myself, who's ever tried to "sell" Christianity to someone. Rather, we try to make Christianity sound as attractive as possible. It's the way out culture teaches us to advertise. But maybe we've been going about it the wrong way all this time.

Jesus makes it clear that He expects us to submit our will (never pleasant for anyone!) to Him. He tells us time and again to expect trouble here on Earth. So why do we follow Him? Luke 18:29-30 comes to mind: "I tell you the truth," Jesus said to them, "no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age and, in the age to come, eternal life". John 14:27 : "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid." But the biggest reason is that Jesus loves us as God loves Him (John 15:9), and we respond to that love. So maybe we should emphasize the unpleasant aspects of Christianity when we're evangelizing to people. Tell them that they will have troubles, that their lives will get turned upside down. Let them know they'll be pressured and hemmed and assaulted from all directions. But tell them they'll be living a life that makes a difference, and that they'll have the love and support of the maker of the universe to let them thrive during the times of trouble that will come. It's dishonest and unfair to them to let them believe otherwise.

Now that I've reached this part of the post, I've realized I was mistaken earlier when I said that I wanted to share two things about the above passage. In reality, I only wanted to share one thing directly from Luke. There's another idea that's floating around in my head, but it's only tangentially related to the passage above. Since the thought occurred to me when I was meditating on the passage, I erroneously thought it had something to do with the above passage. I see now that I was mistaken. Don't worry though, I'll bring it up again soon. I just think it needs to mature a bit more before I'm ready to share it. And I don't particularly want to delay this post until then.

See here you have it. Let me know what you think.