Amanda, I'm jumping on your bandwagon. I already have two other blogs, but we made them in junior high and therefore they are stupid. This one will be classier? Probably not. I'm not very classy when it comes down to it. I don't know how often I'm going to post, because, you know, I don't usually do anything that I set out to do. But I have sort of been looking for a place to catalogue a lot of Biblical stuff -- surprise, I'm making it about Jesus -- and this might be that place. In that vein, I'm going to start with a chunk that I've been looking at a lot this week.
Romans 5:1-5
1Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. 3Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
I fucking love this. Grammatically, one of my favorite things ever is parallelism. And, therefore, Biblically, I love what happens in verses 3 and 4 with perseverance --> character --> hope. That's rad. I'm a sucker for motivational speakers and shit who say things like that. It's pretty. Anyway, I'm really down for the parts of the Bible that just flat out say the opposite of what you want. Like, really, when was the last time you rejoiced in your suffering? When it started pouring in the middle of class and I didn't have an umbrella and had to walk across campus, drowning, I'd say that was suffering. And I would say that there was no rejoicing. But, you know, when I mentioned to Jocelyn that that had happened to me, she said, "Well, hey, we need the rain." And that's really true. We're in the middle of a pretty big drought around here. So, okay, maybe the extreme precipitation was actually a plus...I suppose I can rejoice in the rejuvenation of the planet. And, eventually, it is going to be a beautiful, warm, sunny day in Thousand Oaks. We're lucky to have a lot of those. And I also like that it says "this grace in which we now stand" in verse 2. Like, yeah, that's right, I am currently standing in the grace of God. Standing out in that rain, I am standing in the grace of God. And that's something to rejoice about.