7 Quick Takes Friday

Happy weekend everyone! March is here! Which means this month we get to enjoy spring break and celebrate our 1 year anniversary by going up the coast for two nights, which I am VERY excited about! Enjoy your Friday my friends!

**1**
After being under the weather all week I finally have my energy back, which is wonderful. I spent several lazy days this past weekend and into the beginning of the week feeling like I couldn't get off the couch very easily but thankfully that feeling is gone. I felt so lazy! Even though it was kind of a nice excuse to do nothing :)

**2**
When I met with the committee members from the Seattle Presbytery a week and a 1/2 ago, they wanted to "encourage" me to develop the personal devotional discipline of reading through the lectionary texts each day for my own devotions. (For those who aren't familiar with this, it's a way of dividing up the bible for personal use and for preaching making sure the whole bible gets covered in a 3 year cycle. So each day there are two Psalms, one Old Testament passage, one New Testament passage, and one Gospels passage to read. It is used across almost all mainline denominations and Catholic churches and has been used for centuries). Many pastors use this for their devotions, to give themselves a wide variety in their personal scripture reading. I've always steered away from it because it feels choppy to me, jumping around too much, but when your committee "encourages" something, that's not really the time to ignore it! So I've been reading the lectionary texts and I have to be honest, I'm starting to enjoy it! I think it is going to give me a richer view of scripture than I would get if I were just trying to read straight through the bible. For anyone who'd like to see what the texts are for a given day, you can click on this link: http://www.pcusa.org/devotions/lectionary/index.htm

**3**
My dear niece, Helen, turns 12 today and while we can't be there to celebrate with her, I loved having a 12 year old girl to shop for! I gave her several small things, but one thing that was especially fun for me is that I made her 3 mixed CDs with a variety of music on them. I included some current popular stuff with the tween crowd (several Miley Cyrus songs and stuff from the Glee soundtracks), some country, some worship, and even a few from musicals I loved when I was her age. It was very fun to work on, I hope she enjoys them!

**4**
As a teaching assistant for the preaching classes, I get to hear several sermons a week of students. A few are definitely terrible (although I haven't had any of those this quarter thankfully!) but every now and then I'll hear a sermon from a student that blows me away. I got to hear one of these yesterday. What was fun is that it was given by a woman probably in her late 30s, who is Korean and English is very much her second language. I happen to know she was terrified going into this class. She didn't need to be. She was phenomenal. With her thick Korean accent, she preached on Jesus clearing the temple and made some incredible connections between the temple and His body, and how by clearing out the temple, the place where people can come to be a worshiping body he was rebuking the sacrificial system for failing to create a space where people could encounter him. Then, she drops this on us: "if Jesus came into your ministry today, what would he overturn? Where would he rebuke you for not being his body?" You could have heard a pin drop. It was a remarkable sermon, one I know I'll remember for a long time.

**5**
I am almost finished with my next book on my reading list, "Jesus Wants to Save Christians" by Rob Bell, and I gotta be honest, it's wrecking me. It's pushing my theology, my political views, my views of what the church & ministry should be in ways I haven't encountered in a long time. I have a few different posts in mind that I'll write about later, but that's what my mind has been occupied with this week.

**6**
I've decided this year off from being in a seminary classroom every day, reading nothing but theology, has been so good for me. I tried reading Rob Bell's book last year, while still in school, and while I thought the beginning was good, I put it down. I couldn't enter into another book about God at that point. But now, having been away from it for awhile (not God, just the constant reading about him!) I find that I am hungry for it again. I'm soaking up this book and thinking about it and reflecting on it in ways I didn't have time or energy to do with most of my seminary reading. I'm so thankful for this break, and if I end up in a church I think I'll have a renewed sense of energy for thinking deeply about things again.

**7**
Tonight we get to celebrate my dear friend, Ryan's birthday with a dinner party and Settlers of Catan tournament (we'll have about 3 games going for about 12 people). I love that after all these years of friendship I am still in his life and am able to be present to celebrate him for yet another year. Happy Birthday Ryan!