7 Quick Takes Friday

Happy Friday everyone! It is finally October and the weather seems to be cooperating with the calendar as it has finally cooled off a bit. Still hovering in the 80s but that is better than 90s in my book! Here are the highlights from this week!

**1**
As you can see from my photos, I had a great birthday party last weekend, celebrating with good friends, chocolate fondue, and wine--delicious! I had also asked people to bring me mixed CDs they made from their itunes collection, saying that I wanted them to pick their favorite songs, songs they would hate for me to go my 28th year without hearing. Several people did that and it was awesome! I'm now enjoying all kinds of new music!

**2**
I finished reading The Wednesday Sisters, and am not sure it's my new favorite book, but it was mindlessly entertaining. I'm now reading an AWESOME book called Midwives, which the reviews said was reminiscient of To Kill a Mockingbird, my all time favorite book. It's set in Vermont in the 1980s, so it's not exactly like Mockingbird, but the court room drama, the prejudice against a group of people (in this case midwives) and the 13 year old female narrator have similar feelings to Harper Lee's classic. So far, as of page 60, I'd highly recommend Midwives!

**3**
It was very strange being back on campus this week. I've graduated, and almost all my friends have as well, so I'm now wandering around with a ton of new students. I feel old! I'm a teaching assistant for a couple classes, and in one of them there were 65 students and I knew about 5 of them. Very strange feeling! After not being on campus for 6 months I am loving being back in the classroom, in my old job, helping students out, answering questions, and grading papers. I actually missed it.

**4**
One of the perks of being a Fuller grad is the opportunity sit in and audit one class per quarter for FREE. So basically getting a $1200 class that you had always wanted to take while a student for the cost of nothing. It's a fabulous system. So since I am around here and on campus I figured I should take advantage of it. I had a really horrible experience with one of my required systematic theology classes and it was a part of theology that dealt with Jesus, atonement, salvation and the incarnation. I kind of figure that at some point as I'm applying to be a pastor people might ask me what I believe about Jesus and it might be a good idea to have an answer for that. Am I a substitutionary atonement person? Another kind of atonement person? (You can tell I learned a lot in this class 4 years ago, I can't even come up with another type of atonement theory...). This quarter one of my favorite (and VERY Presbyterian) professors is teaching this class so I thought the prudent thing would be to sit in on it for the quarter and get the notes at least. After 2 class sessions so far, I can honestly say the audit route is my kind of learning! Let me hear the lectures and then let me come home and read a novel, not 1500 pages of systematic theology. I'm loving it!

**5**
It's October--my niece is due this month!! Charles and I have been praying daily for this precious little girl, for her mommy and daddy, and for God to be preparing all of us to receive her into our family and to love her to the best of our ability as she grows into the woman God has already created her to be. We cannot wait, I am HATING that I am 3500 miles away from my sister right now and it is going to be excruciatingly hard to not be there right away, but I'll get to be there probably about 2 weeks after baby Zoe shows up (that's not her real name, just what we're calling her til Megan and Nathan tell us what her real name is!) word of warning to all readers, in about 3.5 weeks, when this baby shows up, prepare for lots of baby pictures and bragging of the VERY proud aunt! You were warned...

**6**
I've been thinking a lot lately about consistency in how we interpret scripture and I have a question that I'd love comments/responses on. The concept of having a consistent ethic in life has come up a lot for Charles and I and here's one place that continues to bother us. Many Christians are against abortion, arguing that God gives life, life begins at conception, and life should be protected at all cost--every baby has the right to live. However, many of these same Christians are FOR using the military to solve international problems, to attack other countries, to defend our own homeland at the cost of thousands of lives (our own soldiers and also civilians in other countries). I'm curious if anyone else feels like this is an inconsistent ethic of the protection of life? Why is it that abortion clinics are picketed all the time (and sometimes even bombed in an effort to make a point about a babies right to life which just seems ironic to me), and people will yell and scream about protecting a babies life but those same individuals are the first to defend decisions to go to war. I'm genuinely wrestling with this, and would love to hear from people--if God is the God who creates, gives, and sustains life, does this not carry over to the lives of people who are already born or does that just mean he only cares about babies? Is this a consistent ethic of life? (there are many other examples of this--if people are so vocal about being anti-abortion, because that is killing innocent babies, why are these same people NOT just as vocal about genocides in other countries, where innocent children are dying as well, why don't we beg our government to do something to protect the innocent lives in countries where mass killing sprees are happening?) There's your deep thought for the day. Thoughts?

**7**
And for a lighter note, I'm loving being a youth volunteer--never thought I'd say that, but Wednesday night was kickball night and it was a blast. I also got to have 1 on 1 time with a couple different high school girls and have loved that as well, it's a great group of kids, and I've learned a lot already about loving them and being there for them!