Retreat to the mountains

I got to go to a church retreat this weekend. My mom came up and sat on my kids, so my brother and I could both go. It was a group of about 30 twenty-somethings. We drove 3 hours over the Cascades to a ranch with some really nice facilities. We had a speaker, but he didn't do much speaking. It was mostly a group sharing and exploration of topics kind of thing. His name is Phil, and he seems like a really cool guy. He's in some kind of leadership position at YWAM Seattle.

One of the topics was the interrelation of faith, (or the lack thereof) and sin. How much of our sinful actions are spawned from our desire to do things our way because we don't believe that God has a really great plan for our lives. I know I feel that way about my future romantic possibilities. I honestly don't think God wants me to be happy in that regard. Not that He maliciously wants me to be sad and lonely; but I'm just paying the very natural consequences of getting married at 18. Like a prisoner who becomes a Christian would be foolish to think that God doesn’t want them to be free and happy because they are in jail. It's not God's fault they committed the crime.

Anyway, that was a tangent. My point was that my lack of faith that I will be happy with a woman again at some point in my life, seems to undermine my decision to remain apart from women. Although I don't see it as a lack of faith. Hmm. That wasn't as much of a tangent as I thought it was. It's not like the Bible has a guarantee in it that says everyone gets a love-of-a-lifetime. So I can't call my belief that I won't get that a lack of faith. Or CAN I? Actually, if I look deeper, to what is really powering my passion to love a woman and be loved in return; I see that it's just a desire for happiness. Being married would make me happy. The lack of faith isn't about the specific mechanism through which I find my contentment, but rather, that I would find contentment in whatever God's plan for me is. I just can't imagine being happy without a woman to pour romance onto. THAT is my lack of faith. And I'll bet it has something to do with a lack of hope as well.

We spent a lot of time going over Hebrews 11. The Faith chapter. We talked about the great examples of faith that are listed there. The one that got the most attention from the group was:

Hebrews11:

31By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient.

She is certainly the most accessible of the heroes of the faith. She was a screw-up her whole life, (I can relate!) but at a certain moment, God gave her the wisdom, opportunity, and faith to make a choice that saved her and her family.

We did some small group talking stuff. I got to know some people a bit better. I got to read and pray a lot. Driving over the mountains is always great. So overall I had a great time. The happy couples only made me slightly sad and wistful. I'll give it an A-.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Epic Weekend

Image
Wow… I am worn out.  My team’s big project at work is live now, and we just released a big patch to fix some terrible difficulty spikes.  The last time we released Super Adventure Box: World 1 it got pretty universal praise.  (Which I put up here back in April)  Since then our founder/president has used it (Along with the Mad King Clock Tower I designed and built back in October 2012) as examples of content we release that raises retention rate, and therefore revenue.  So expectations were high for this World 2 release which came out on Tuesday.  The day after Labor Day and the Penny Arcade Expo.     Saturday (3 days before SAB World 2 launched) my company held a party at a hotel near PAX for fans, and my project, Super Adventure Box was the main feature.  We were running speed run competitions all night where players tried to be the first to get to the end of the new zones.  I ended up MCing the whole night.  I guess there’s a first time for everything.  Seems like people had a re
Read more

Covid: 4 Years Later

Image
Before I begin let me quickly sketch the readers I'm writing this for, so you can decide if it's worth your 10 minutes. Firstly, this is for those of you who are at least somewhat sympathetic to people who are still worried about Covid and are sincerely curious why we are this way. I'm trying to present our case as coherently as I can, with references. (As well as I, a not-quite-professional writer can.) I'd like to convince you our stance is not based on fear, hypochondria, conspiracy theory, etc. But based on peer reviewed science. I'm also writing for myself and other folks who are taking Covid very seriously. I'm an ambassador by nature, so I like to facilitate understanding between groups where there is none. Many in my cohort simply cannot fathom how most of the world is not seeing the problem. Here's the agenda. First I'll quickly cover history of this pandemic, then some of what the science says about infectious disease and protecting ourselves.
Read more

A Covid Mask Prediction

Image
In speaking with several other covid conscious people I got a very nicely detailed prediction I wanted to record for posterity. They do not want to be credited with this out of concern for messenger-shooting. So I asked them if I could post it here anonymously and they agreed. Anon:"We are going to have mask requirements. I've done the math on all the possible interventions, and masks are the only one which can get the Rt down below 1 and actually stop the pandemic. Without masks, you can't do it; the other tools put together just aren't good enough (the best one, air filtration, maxes out at 80% effective, and so does Far-UVC, and this simply isn't enough with the infectiousness of Covid -- short-range transmission, which neither intervention stops, will keep it going at pandemic levels). Therefore we're going to get masks. I don't know how many maskless people will die before we get masks. But the math is inescapable. We start using respirator masks. Or m
Read more