I can die happy now!.....I saw Jeremy Camp in concert on Sunday night. It was more amazing than I could have imagined. He's not a performer, he's a worship leader. He played at the Irvine Verizon center; open skies, mountains all around, the city lights below. My heart and all of my being was communing with my Maker. What a glimpse of Heaven! He doesn't just sing, he preaches too, tearfully pouring out his heart to us, about how his wife died, how God has stayed faithful to him, how He has blessed him Beyond Measure. After sharing his testimony, he shared the Gospel and offered up an altar call. What an amazing man whose heart is completely sold out to the Lord. I can't stop listening to his cd.

Last Tuesday, I felt very far from the Lord. I have come alongside a friend who is finding her way back to the Lord, and I feel that the devil was attacking me so that he could get two birds with one stone. We went out onto the beach and sang our hearts out to the Lord of All Creation. After we had a half hour prayer session. Something was distracting me. I didn't feel in the presence of God. I felt that he was so far away that even if I mustered up all of my might I could not reach him. I prayed, I cried, I even yelled at him, my bitterness hardening my heart. I drove my friend home, questioning him, almost shamefully cursing him. After dropping her off, I listened to Christian music on the ride home. I can't remember which songs played, but I felt the Lord speaking to me. By the time I got back to my dorm I realized that there was nothing more in the world I wanted than him. I had considered how life would be without Him, and realized that He is my everything. I pondered that all week. When I heard Jeremy sing "Give me Jesus," a song I had never heard before, I felt like the Lord was singing it to me through Jeremy. Here are a few lines:

Give me Jesus
You can have all this world
Just give me jesus

When I come to die
Give me jesus

He sang it while all-out balling on stage. He had so much passion in his voice.

Tempted, I wanted to go up and shake his hand, maybe get a cd signed. But, then I realized that this whole celebrity infatuation thing is exactly what I want to change about Hollywood. I also realized that I've got all of eternity to not only shake his hand, but worship alongside him. Isn't that WAY better! :)

River

I want to feel the mud
slipping through my fingertips
as my slimmy leaves
sail down the river
towards the abyss

I want to chase after them
But I don't, I watch
I wonder if someone
will find it
and maybe follow it awhile

The look on our faces after free climbing an 80 ft. cliff.


Once again my obsession of Into the Wild has gotten the better of me. Every time I watch it I hate it even more, but it is an unexplainable hatred. I feel compelled to watch it, it exposes something inside my soul that i cannot let go of.


This weekend, I was supposed to go diving with a friend, but she wasn't feeling well enough to venture deep beneath the 50 degree cold water of the Pacific, so we decide at 12 pm that we would go hiking. By 2 we were at the trail head of the East fork of the San Gabriel river. We were on a quest to find the bridge to nowhere, a fabled 150 ft span bridge whose road was washed away about fifty years ago when the canyon flooded, rising the river to 100 ft past it's normal level. We never made it to the bridge. It is a 10 mile hike without a trail. We forded our way up a rushing river of rapids and boulders. We climbed 80ft cliffs to avoid swimming the river (without ropes), walked across fallen logs as rapids surged beneath, and smalled talked with miners, hikers, and hobos. It was ultimate freedom. We were twenty miles from any city with a population of over 100 persons. The Sheep Mountain Wilderness area is truly wilderness and wild. The water is crystal clear snow melt and the wildlife is untamed. We felt so alive, free to explore, accepting of our own mistakes and fate. As I looked down the 80 cliff I had just climbed, with only one good hand because I had sprained my left one, I saw the rushing river below and the certain death that awaited a slip. Every movement was calculated, every pebble taken into account, every route meticulously planned. It made me think of the Into the Wild quote that I so desperately love:

"I read somewhere how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong, to measure yourself at least once... to find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions, facing blind, deaf stone alone, with nothing to help you but your own hands and your own head. . . ."




Boy do I feel strong. To me the deaf stone was a literal rock face. We each must find our own. I wish to take into account that to "measure yourself at least once" means that life should be open to several personal trials. I do not need to stop my adventure at this one junction.

Revive America!

"If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land." 2 Chron. 7:14

Is it too late?

A bill just passed to add 11 more casinos to Indian lands.

Irony

I'm finally giving in to watching The Da Vinci Code. I didn't really like the book because I thought that it was gimmicky and full of fiction stereotypes, formulas, and cliches. Any controversial book ends up winning in the end; the anti-Catholicism following buys it so that they can try to further prove to themselves that Christ was not who he said he was, and the pro-Catholic crowd buys it so that they can participate in religious debate and then warn their parishes about it. The publisher wins! Look how many even Protestant Chriatians bought the book so that they could see how their Lord was potrayed (myself included). The best part is that now that a book has done so wewll, mind you with very little literary acclaim, more books like it will be on the way. You can see I'm jumping for joy. How does a writer get rich? Try to tear apart a 2000 year old religion, so that both foe and friend shall read it. Seriously, has America been brainwashed (no comment)? Everyone around me seemed to think that this book was genius, but each of the "clues" were so unbearably obvious.

....back to the irony. So before I started the film, there was an advertisment for Click. I was bored, so I fast forwarded through the commerical, until I realsied just how insane that movement was. Click is a film about a guy who fastforwards, with a universal remote control, through everything in his life that he doesn't want to endure. Everything is fine and dandy until the fast forward button becomes jammed. The moral of the film was to show down and enjoy these precious memments that we have on this earth. Great moral, horrible film both in the execution of the story and in fim making quality. But, who isn't curious about the BEYOND? ...of course the mystery door inside bed bath and beyond.