Grapes (picture)

Grapes

Joel 1: 12 "The vine is dried up and the fig tree is withered; the pomegranate, the palm and apple tree- all the trees of the field- are dried up. Surely the joy of mankind is withered away."

I painted grapes in class because it reminded me of how when growing fruit is taken care of properly, they grow into these amazingly delicious fruit! Everyone wants to eat them and pick them and use them to feed their stomachs. They are healthy for you and give you natural energy that everyone wants. If the fruit though is not taken care of properly,the fruit rots and becomes sour. No one wants to eat it and no one even really wants to touch it. It is kind of like that with God. We are the fruit and He is the one taking care of us. We have the potential of becoming something beautiful but sometimes the fruit just goes sour. Without the farmer, we would die. We would have no chance to live and become the amazing fruit that we could one day be. You have to want to be taken care of though. Otherwise the farmer will not help you. It could water the fruit all He wants but unless we soak up the water, it will not help us. Sometimes I do not allow the farmer to help me through. I sometimes rely on other fruit to keep me alive but there really is just no way they can help me no matter how much I want them too. It really is only the farmer who will save me.

Joel

Reading the book of Joel out by the lake in class was very relaxing and something I could really get used to. I have read books out in nature before but never out loud. The only time I ever really read out loud is if I am alone in my room. I think that it is weird to read aloud when other people can hear. But reading out in nature when no one else is really around, I think is a good idea to get your mind away from the hustle and bustle of life. We get so caught up in it all that it can sometimes be hard to pull ourselves away from it. For me personally I would love to just be able to walk out by the lake on my free time and read a good book. Not only is it hard for me to find the time but also once I have the time to actually get myself out there, it never seems to happen. I just can't seem to pull myself there. It is true for even just reading in my room. When I get free time in my room I tend to just turn on my TV instead of read a book that I already started. Once I get to start that book then it is very hard for me to put it down but for some reason picking it up is the hard part. Also I have never really fully read the book of Joel. It was pretty cool to get to be able to read the Bible in a literature class. In some parts it was kind of harsh about things but in other parts it was cool because it talked about God's promises to them. Never realized the kind of book it was until now.

Cemetery

To be honest, when we went to the cemetery last week, it was not my favorite thing. It was very sad to see all the people that rested there. Some of them were even war veterans. I don't like thinking about people laying in the ground dead. While I was there walking around too I started to think about how many of them were actually in heaven and how many were in hell. I guessed that most of them were probably unsaved which made it even more sader. I sometimes don't understand why people are so ashamed to tell people about Jesus, especially if they are someone you might not ever see again. I am completely guilty of this but if Christians talked about Jesus more than how many more of those people in that cemetery would be saved? Doesn't Jesus say that we should go and make disciples of all nations? Doesn't that mean that we should spending our time accomplishing that instead of going on facebook and watching tv? Sometimes we are just so blinded with the things going on in our own lives that we don't even see the opportunites that God might place infront of us to just even bring up God. That is kind of what God was talking to me about when we were in there. As much as I didn't like being in there, I think that it was a good opportunity for God to show me something that true for my own life and probably a lot of other people's as well. It has already been useful in a situation that came up with my friend. I kind of got to talk to him about praying. It was pretty cool.

Something Blue

I am currently reading this book right now called "Something Blue" and it is about a girl named Darcy, who thinks that she is the greatest, prettiest thing in all of New York City. In her life, things have always gone her way so when she got engaged to one of the most popular and successful men in NYC it came to no surprise to anyone. Her best friend always stuck at her side through everything. They were neighbors from the very beginning and they even went to college together. Her best friend was a little less than what Darcy would say most men want. She was very dull and not very pretty. Darcy eventually falls in love with her fiances groomsman and when Marcus finally tells her that he loves her, Darcy instantly calls off the wedding with her fiance. A few hours later, she heads over to her best friends house only to find her fiance in the bathroom of her best friends house. They had an affair for almost as long as Marcus and Darcy. All in one day she looses her best friend, and fiance and finds out that she is pregnant with Marcus's baby. Sooner or later after spending more time with Marcus, Darcy realizes that she made the wrong decision about the guy that she chose and gets very depressed about it. That is where I ended in the book and I am finding it to be very sad but at the same time there is a lot to learn from it. I am excited to see what the ending is going to be like and to see if she will end up with Marcus or the first guy. To me she doesn't deserve either of them because she cheats and cheaters should never win anything.

What is love?

Sometimes I can't help but think about what love is really like. What allows you to love another person instead of just like them? Why is friendship love, family love, and true love all different? What characteristics make them different? All these questions run through my mind especially since a lot of our time in class we talk about love.

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the true. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 These verses are some of the most popular verses in the Bible and I think that people think they understand but they never really take the time out to look at them and try and read between the lines as to what God intended love to be. For Christians, I think that most people know how they should act toward one another therefore showing what they believe to be what God intended love to be among humans. Sometimes we also forget that this description of love is not just for the people we like...but most importantly for the people we dislike most in this world. I am 100% guilty of not showing love to the people that I don't like.

Tonight in volleyball, one of the guys on my team was making me very mad because he was basically telling me that I couldn't play. He cut infront of me every time the ball came to me and pretty much just never gave me a chance to actually play. When it was my time to serve, he was standing right infront of me at the net and I decided that I was going to not care about getting points for the team but try and hit him with the ball when I served. Even though my aim was right, he was paying attention and knocked it out of the way. How did I show him love by doing that? He was making me very bitter the whole night, but what good did it do me to try and hit him with the ball? Absolutely none.

I think that to truly understand love we have to understand God. Because God is love. And when we know God we know love.

The Things They Carried

I found this story to be kind of sad the more and more I read it. It talks a lot about all the different things that these military men have to carry on their backs all through out the day. Each person carries different items to meet their own needs and wants and some things are just they have to carry to keep them safe. But some carry more than just the physical items. Jimmy Cross is in love with a girl that does not seem to have any type of feelings for this man besides the fact that she writes to him and thinks about him a lot. To top it off, while thinking about Martha one of his friends, a fellow army man dies. Jimmy feels extremely guilty about this like any man would but Martha is still on his mind. Guilt was carried on the back of Jimmy as well as food and guns. This story was sad because as a college student safe over in the states, we don't realize that there are military over in other countries fighting for us and I take advantage of it so much. They are not just robots that have no lif outside of the military but they are men and women missing their families, being shot at, falling in love, are in love, and some will never get a chance to experience love. How could I complain about my life, when I have it made. I forget way too much just how blessed and lucky I am. Thank you military men and women for all it is that you do for this country!

What We Talk about When We Talk about Love

I think that in this story all the characters were trying to describe to each other just what it was they thought love was. They each had a different point of view on it and some of them were a little more messed up then others. Terri thought that her dead ex-husband loved her even though he tried desperately to kill her. She even expected the other 3 people in the room to agree with her. She seemed to have no anger toward him what so ever. Even her new husband, Mel, didn't say that it wasn't love. He just commented that he didn't know the man. Meanwhile Mel tells his guests that maybe "love" isn't really as deep as everyone makes it out to be. He comments on how people always seem to fall out of love with one another--but how can that be. If you were truly in love with someone wouldn't that feeling last forever? How do people move on so quickly from those kind of feelings like they never even existed? I would have to agree more with what Mel had to say about love. I wonder all the time how two people going out can say I love you so quickly and then when its time to break up, they are over the other person so quickly. In our society to day, I think that we are too quick to say I love you and that most of the time those feelings aren't even there because we don't really know what it is they feel like. It's like a woman in pregnancy...when its about time for the baby to come there are many false alarms but once it's really time for the baby, then she really knows that it's real.