Déardaoin, Márta 03, 2005

Not too Shabby

So by the look of my past several blogs I sound pretty depressed. I’m really not. True I’ve been stressed lately and have the inevitability of my looming graduation, a source of both great joy and great frustration, staring me in the face and daring me even think I know what I’m going to do next. I really do live a great life. I have amazing friends, literally all over the world, from whom I receive the greater part my joy and blessings. I am constantly faced with amazing opportunities to travel, meet new people, be spontaneous (one of my more favorite activities), and just basically have fun. This Saturday morning I’ll be boarding a plane with 68 of my closest and greatest friends. Yes, sir it’s time for another Choral tour Florida 05’ baby, sun, warmth, fun, and a schedule nowhere near the ferocity of Tundra Tour 04’. We have a mere 15 concerts during the next week which leaves plenty of time for lounging beachside and getting nice and toasty before heading back for the last two months of school. I can almost feel it. I’m gearing up to go to New Zealand in May after I walk in April. I’ll be there for about two and a half weeks working primarily with Chinese nationals who are there for graduate studies. After that, I’m looking at a summer full of unexpected happenings and relaxing with the family on last time before I head out on my own. But until then I’m remain here, Aaron the college student. It’s not a bad life, just confusing at times. I am happily single, of course open to the possibility of changing that but I don’t expect it will happen any time soon and I like it that way. I have time for me, and doing what I want to do. I can spend what little money I have on myself and the things I like. As it looks right now I’m going to be moving around a lot in the next 5 to 10 years and I don’t have any desire to drag someone into the life I am prepared (yeah right) to live. I just don’t think it’s fair to ask someone to not have a home and move around constantly. Just doesn’t seem right to me. Anyway, things really are good. God is good, even when I’m not.
I’ve recently started reading C.S. Lewis’s “The Screwtape Letters,” in hopes that I’ll actually get the chance to finish it. It’s not likely but I still hold to my hope. I was reading a chapter, and if you don’t know “The Screwtape Letters” are a fictional set of letters supposedly written by Screwtape, a demon higher up, to Wormwood, apparently his nephew and a relatively new tempter just starting out. In the letter I read today Screwtape said something that really intrigued me. I’ll quote it so that I get it right and you can understand where I’m going:
“When I see the temporal suffering of humans who finally escape us, I feel as if I had been allowed to taste the first course of a rich banquet and then denied the rest. It is worse than not to have tasted it at all. The Enemy (God), true to His barbarous methods of warfare. Allows us to see the short misery of His favorites only to tantalize and torment us – to mock the incessant hunger which, during this present phase of the great conflict, His blockade is admittedly imposing. “
Now of course this raises questions of the Problem of Evil, does God really cause some of it? And in reading this I almost made the mistake of thinking that God may cause us to go through things just so that Satan will go through this torment. While I don’t think that is possible, and I will admit I don’t have a very good answer to the problem of evil, it is interesting to think that our temporary misery would cause so much in the way of torment to Satan. You would think that for a being that hates us almost as much as he hates God, and would seek to cause us harm, would find so much torment in our suffering on earth because he knows that for us it is temporary and to the ones that overcome will be given great rewards, but for him the suffering is just beginning. I think it interesting that something we dislike so much, could cause the enemy even for pain. “Take joy, my brothers, when you face trials of many kinds” James.
A.T.H.

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