this morning during church, i engaged in a little thing i'd like to call 'restrospective introspection' or 'retrintrospection' if you will. it's always interesting to think about how you would've reacted in the past to a thing you're experiencing in the present. during pastor taylor's sermon [which was a sort of introduction of james because we'll be going through the book of james] i realized that, had this been unregenerate bud hearing the sermon, i would've thought of the fact that james never really mentions the fact that he's Jesus' brother as a negative thing.
instead, it's quite the opposite. james never mentioned his potentially social status-increasing [or severely decreasing, depending on the society] relationship with Jesus for a very simple reason: his epistle was written for the express purpose of ensuring the dispersed jewish population that they were saved by grace alone just like the gentiles. prideful boasting of one's position or title as the brother of Jesus, the cousin of mary, or anything other than 'a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ' has absolutely no place in a biblical epistle. the factoid i once would've received as either a throwaway piece of trivia or a proof of the bible's inconsistency or unreliability, i now regard as quite a powerful message.
today was christin's 27th birthday, as many of you on facebook know, and we spent it at church, having panda express for lunch and outback steakhouse for dinner, and watching a lot of buffy the vampire slayer season three. it's getting really good. did i say getting? i meant that it was always good, from the first episode, and it's still getting better. good times. giles is still the man, eliza dushku looks hilarious with all that make-up on, oz cracks me up, et cetera. once christin went to sleep, i played the paladin a bit [level 73 now] and now it's bedtime. school starts back up this week. aiya. so close to graduating.
No comments:
Post a Comment