I have been thinking about my place in life lately and am coming more and more to the realization that I am living a pretty extraordinary life.

The first and foremost reason for this at the moment is that I am about to move to a pretty remarkable place to get paid to do things that I love to do. And I don't mean just getting paid, but I'm actually being given a decent living to hang out with college students. Now, this is not about the pay that I'm getting, it's about the fact that I'm actually being allowed the opportunity to do exactly the kinds of things that I love to do, and actually make a career of it. I would say that this is a kind of life that most people do not have the luxury of living, so I never want to take this for granted or ever feel entitled to it. This is a privilege that I want to use well and wisely since it has been given to me.

It has certainly not been easy to get to this point. Just deciding to pursue this path was difficult, because it was venturing into territory I never expected to get into nor did I feel confident in my abilities to do this for real. It was (and still is) an unpredictable path to take that largely took circumstances and control out of my hands and placed them firmly into God's. It brought about a lot of questions from security-minded people around me that were difficult or impossible to answer because I had to give up the idea of control.

Now, something that I hope is clear by the way that I live is that I'm not interested in campus ministry because it is possible to have a career in it. I figure that I will be working in campus ministry no matter what, because God has revealed it to be an insanely important mission in the world. Internally, I agonize over those who get into campus ministry simply because it is a job that will pay them. Unfortunately, I encounter all too many of these, especially in my Graduate School of Theology world. There are too many campus ministers who wouldn't have given campus ministry a second thought had it not been a job opening somewhere. Fortunately, some of these grow into it, but many in this situation do not last very long.

God has really shaped me in campus ministry to this point. Starting at University of Oklahoma, then University of Alabama, then Tulsa (for a little bit), then Abilene Christian University, and now onto Kansas State University. All of these have been very different from each other and have shaped a huge picture of campus ministry in my mind. I have taken away incredible experience from each of these that I hope can play important parts in Kansas. Each of these places has taught me things that I now consider indispensable. I have succeeded and failed at different things in each of these circumstances, all of which has taught me that much more. I know that this will be no different in Kansas. There will be tremendously high experiences and incredible successes, and there will be hard disappointments. But all of it will work together to engage the mission of campus ministry at KState all the more.

Now, one reality I have not let myself think about a whole lot yet is leaving Abilene. Once again I find myself at a place in life where I have become part of a community that means everything to me. There was certainly a day when I would not have minded seeing Abilene in my rearview mirror. But I decided to change my attitude about that, upon which God really opened my eyes to the opportunity here. I have a network of friends that have supported me and been by my side at every step. I have a faith community that has impacted me in big ways. God has put me into the middle of a powerful campus ministry that has served me and let me serve, and a church that has really been Jesus is so many ways. I just hope that my investment in other people can be half of what they have been to me. I am happy that Abilene has been what it has been.

So, with that I wrap up this adventurous little chapter of life and look into the next. Who knows what will happen from here. It has been exciting and unpredictable, and I figure there will be no end to that. Although I've had a ten thousand experiences so far, I know that I'm still just getting out of the starting gate - in both life and career.

Life is good. Praise God for that.

After a couple of days of roughing it in the wilderness with 30-some-odd college students, building fires, swimming in the freezing lake, massive games of Red Rover, middle-of-the-night pranking, singing, and worshiping God, we pack into the van and various cars and start meandering our way back to Abilene.

We stop for lunch. Erin finishes and, since she is in her own car, leaves on her own to get back to Abilene sooner. We get back on the road a little later and suddenly there is a phone call from her saying that she is on the side of the highway. We catch up to her about ten minutes later, and her car is on the shoulder, Erin is in hysterics, her windshield is caved in, she and the interior of her car are covered in glass, there are feathers everywhere, and a huge dead turkey on the side of the road. Apparently said turkey decided to bound across the road and attempt flight. He succeeded, but only in his flight to Turkey Heaven. Unless it was a turkey suicide??

Okay, time for more feeding of the Virginia Tech blog frenzy. I know that when it comes to spouting opinions, everyone is an expert and has the most insightful and correct things to say. I suppose I am no different. But, I feel like there is one aspect of what is going on that completely misses the point, no matter which side you are on. That issue, which has inflamed many passions lately, is gun control.

The events in Blacksburg have given fuel to two very prominent voices - those who believe there should be strict control or that guns should be outlawed entirely, and those who believe that gun control disarmed a citizenry who would have been able to defend themselves from such an attack. Whichever way you look at it, the issues of gun control are responsible for 32 innocent people getting killed.

I believe there is an issue going on here that is much deeper than the legality or non-legality of guns. We are surrounded by a deeply poisonous pop culture of violence. Our video games are deeply violent. Our movies glorify killing. Our music glamorizes atrocities. And, I know this because I participate in some of this. I like to hook up the network and play a rousing round of HalfLife Deathmatch. I play Halo with my nephews. I used to spend hours on Grand Theft Auto. I ultimately gave up GTA completely because it really was affecting how I saw the world around me. The influence of the things that feed our minds runs much deeper than we think. There is no such thing as "just a game" or "just a movie" or "just music."

There are some things that we have a superficial hypersensitivity to as an American society. One of these is sex. Although a seething sexuality surrounds us, the nation went into an uproar at the Janet Jackson Superbowl incident. Yet, horrific violence really does not phase us. I point back to the Grand Theft Auto series of video games. These games are the bloodiest, most violent pieces of entertainment that exist. It makes gunning people down on the street, murdering police, crushing bodies with vehicles, selling drugs, and killing rivals the newest level of fun. But, when it was revealed that a secret code could be entered that unlocked a 30 second sex scene in the game, the country and legislators went crazy that this kind of thing was in the hands of our children. That's what it took for people to be concerned? Add two ounces of illicit sex to 800 pounds of horrific violence and only then will you have a problem.

Our culture is poisoned with violence. This poison feeds every one of us. What does it feed to those who are disaffected? What does it feed to those who are looking for a fantasy? What does it feed to the lonely 8th grader who finds solace only in front of his computer? This is when it becomes more than entertainment and transforms into the food of ideas on which we feast. What are the consequences of walking down the street behind the police officer, choosing your weapon, raising the arm, and spraying his head over the sidewalk in front of him? In the game, nothing. You choose your next weapon and move on to the next person. If you somehow die, you revive immediately. You feel nothing. You know no one. Pain does not exist. No one knows you in this world - total anonymity and complete power make you a god. In the dark room with the movie, the power of the violence over life gives even the villains an edge of cool. Everything is solved with the weapon, even for the heroes. Kill. Slash. Stab. Shoot. Destroy. Explode. All of these are answers to a situation and give power to the weak.

You may not see this happening to you. And maybe you are completely unaffected by the images, ideas, and concepts and are constantly fed into you. But I would hazard to guess that you are one of the few. And every once in a while, there is someone, somewhere, who is fed just enough to be overtaken by the alternate reality. And we don't see it until after the damage is done.

I consider it a great gift from God to be part of a church family that has elders that will crawl over and walk down the tops of pews to get to you because they feel like they need to pray with you.

I suppose I should join the crowd and have something to say about the horrific evil that descended upon Virginia Tech today.

But what can you say.

There is nothing that makes sense.

Nothing that truly overcomes the horror of violent death of innocent people at the hands of a madman.

Nothing that doesn't, in some little way, sound contrived, as if for a moment it is something that you are having to force yourself to believe. But I will try.

I heard from Seth Terrell, the campus minister at VaTech, and I do not envy the position this man is now in. Or maybe I do? It is now that he is charged with demonstrating and revealing God in the midst of the darkness of the most supreme kind of evil. Evil that will do one of two things in the minds of most people - 1) shake whatever faith they may have had and erode it into a cynical, broken view of the depravity of man and the absence of any kind of benevolent God, or 2) reignite the faith of those who have been reminded of their own desperation and helplessness in a world that ebbs and flows with goodness and evil.

Evil is present. It is real. It flows, it strikes, it paralyzes, it destroys, it corrupts, it perverts. Usually it twists good just enough to suit its own purposes. But every now and then it bursts through its own facade, probably to let itself gaze upon its true hideous deformity and laugh with a screeching cackle at the helpless world it knows it controls. Then it disappears again back under the rug, emerging just enough to trip the unsuspecting who are not watching their step.

The echo of evil's shrill squeak was heard around the world today. Hundreds of students wandered into their classes and sleepily pulled out their notebooks and laptops to listen to another lecture. Another day, another class, another hour writing lecture notes and typing instant messages to other friends who are just as bored and tired as you are at the moment. But soon the hour will be up, and you'll slide your stuff back in the bag and walk back to the dorm for a late morning nap before lunch. That is, until the door swings open, the barrel rises toward your forehead, the loud pop rings out, and your head is torn halfway off your body and your face is shredded. The world instantly goes black and that is it.

I just heard you. Oh my God! You said. Exactly! Why do we say that? Why is that our expression we use when we encounter something horrific? I'm not sure that is always using God's name "in vain." I'm thinking that, if we let it, that expression of shock just might be a reminder that it is exactly the only reasonable thing to think in the face of that kind of pure evil! What if the world shouted that in the face of Satan, constantly? OH MY GOD! Demons shrieked at the name of God. Is there any power invested in us over evil? Of course there is! Does that mean we could have stopped a madman killer on a college campus? I have no answers to that, but I sure know the power that can stop a lot of the waves of evil that would certainly emanate from something like this. A power that can stop the despair, a power that can short circuit the hopelessness, a power that can remove the fear. A power that changes our response from "Why, God?" to "I really need you, God."

So, what is there to say to this? Maybe our gut reaction really is the answer:

OH MY GOD!

I believe that I have arrived at a point in life that I have been working towards for about two and a half years now. I am currently finishing a relatively big paper about a significant period in my life that involved a large amount of conflict. This has been intense to think about, but I can now think about it and process it without anger flaring up or getting tense. It has been interesting to move through the stages of healing from this experience and see how God slowly brings forgiveness and wholeness once again.

Only one problem I had with this paper: the background and description section, which is supposed to be two pages, ended up being thirteen for me. I guess it still is pretty personal.

God provides. It is as simple as that. He always does the right thing at the right time, if you just have faith enough to believe that he will. Here is a small example of this. Yesterday was a very off day for me. Very. I got up late and didn't even go outside during the day. I went to bed last night in the same clothes I woke up in. This normally wouldn't be too big of a deal, except that I teach one of the college classes at church on Sundays, and had still yet to do the final preparation on my lesson. For some reason I just simply could not get it together to get it done. On top of this, I was doing the communion thoughts for the second service. All day I would think about these things, and even read through the entire book of Numbers (where my lesson was based) but never found the mental stability to sit down and get them lined out. Lesson preparation involves not only lining out the lesson but, for me, putting together a PowerPoint of at least twenty slides or so. Finally, at midnight, the pressure was inescapable and I had to really start. I put together about the first half of my lesson and slides and simply ran out of steam. This was about 2:30am. By this time I am very frustrated with myself and resorting to real, earnest prayers to God to somehow give me the words I needed to finish out class in the morning.

After sleeping through the Easter Sunrise service and our weekly Sunday morning prayer group (which I felt like a jerk for doing), I dragged myself into class ready to slop through some ideas and be done with it. While people are drifting in, I am telling my co-teacher about the lesson. Nic, who is one of the co-teachers of the other college class, which was combined with us today, was standing nearby and chimed in with "that sounds like my lesson for today."

Me: "What??"
Nic: "That's my lesson for today."
Me: "You're teaching?"
Nic: "Yeah. Gary said I had this week."
Me: "I'm on the schedule for this week."
Nic: "I guess he didn't think about the combined class."
Me: "Be my guest!!!"

In the end, we worked it out so that I taught the first half of class, and he picked it up from there. It worked together nicely, and I felt like class turned out really well. Then I scored a memorable communion thought by making everyone think the "F" word. But that's another story. :-)

So, I have always found that when I really, genuinely pray for God to intercede, he always does. Always. His provision always overcomes our shortcomings.

Welcome to Discount Bananas 3.0! This may come as a shock, but yes, I am dropping my completely self-created personal site and am moving everything over to Blogger. I know that it is a move away from the simple minimalist structure and custom design of my old site, but it combines everything onto one page and allows me to focus on other things than maintenance of my own system, which is much more tedious. You probably noticed that my system was acting up lately, which cemented my move back to Blogger, which I was already thinking about.

Back to Blogger, you say? Yes, this humble blog started right here back in 2003, but was dropped after I moved to Alabama and started fresh with the new Discount Bananas site. However, I have revived this account, and will continue to tweak the look and layout as I go along. All of the content from the old blog is here. My only regret about moving is that I lose all comments posted to entries on the other system.

So, those of you who read this blog through a feed need to repoint your readers to the Blogger feed. So, now that we're here, let's get going again!