ANOTHER POST BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE LETTERS P, M, AND S

So in order to save gas and money I decided to take the bus to the youth centre. I figured out the bus, and it didn't look so bad, it was going to take twice as long to get there but I found a route with no transfers so it was okay. I had a couple of other options, but they had transfers and thus would take longer.
Here was the plan for the day, youth center to school (someone needed to copy my notes and I was going to study for a bit) then superstore then back home.

So I went and waited for the bus, arriving 10 minutes before it was supposed to get there. Half an hour later no bus. Then I saw this little old lady slip and fall on the ice. I went over to help her and during that time option number two pulled in and then drove away before I could get back to it. It is always great when you get jacked for doing something nice. Anyway, I waited another 1ominutes, and then option 3 came in so I hopped on that one. I wasn't sure when option 1 was going to come around and I didn't want to stand at the bus stop all day. This option took over an hour to get to where I wanted to be, but oh well.

I eventually made it to the centre only to find that it was closed. This dude almost never closes this place so something must have happened. I couldn't find the bus stop that went back the other direction so I walked back to downtown. Only about a 15 minute walk. It was an absolutely beautiful day, about 5 degrees on the positive side. Too bad I didn't know that when I first left because was wearing my winter coat, mitts and a scarf. I was also carrying a backpack full of books that I had brought for the kids at the centre and the textbooks I needed to study with later. It must have weighed at least 30 pounds. And I carried a bag full of craft stuff in my hand.

At the downtown terminal I hop on the bus to get to uni. The bus was nearly empty. I sat in a seat that was a little bigger than normal seats because it faced the side of the bus not the front. And I had put my backpack beside me, thankful to give my back a break. At the next stop some crazy lady gets on and of all the places she could sit guess where she sat... yup, right beside me. I knew she was going to sit there, so I looked the other way trying to hide my smile and discussing with God how I was not sharing his sense of humor at the moment.

"Excuse me. Excuse me" She said.

"Yes" I replied, wondering what she wanted. She just kept yelling "Excuse me" and I didn't know what she was talking about. I thought it was one of those "Excuse me" type things you say when you want to ask somebody the time or something. It couldn't possibly be a move out of my way "excuse me". She was a large women and I thought she would have chosen a larger seat with nobody sitting on it. But no. She was carrying a small bag of groceries, looked like bread and eggs.

She sat down beside me, still yelling excuse me, and I was still wondering what the heck was going on. Then she pushed my backpack into squishing me in the seat so that I hat to sit on my side. I was so squished I didn't think I would be able to squeeze out. Then she places her small, and also light weight bag in the nice space she cleared on the seat while I am crammed.

I don't know what happened but a few minutes later she drops the JC profanity and glares at some other stranger on the bus not even within arms reach of her so I don't know what that was about. I then received a sympathetic look of understanding from another passenger and then we both started to chuckle a little bit.

I get to the uni and wait for the person I was supposed to meet to give him my notes. Meeting time 3:30. By 3:40 I decided to leave. This was the third time he didn't show up so I left. Just as I was leaving the uni he showed up and I wanted to be a jerk and tell him I didn't have time, but I couldn't. So we walked back to the library photocopy centre. I thought he was just missing one or two days from last semester. I gave him my binder. He proceeded to take all of November out. What the h***? You gotta be kidding me. First of all, this is going to take forever. Secondly, it's one thing to miss one or two classes, but to skip an entire month? Now I am a little pissed. I think he sensed it. He started giving some big excuse about it was such a hard month because he had so many midterms, blah blah blah. "You know what? Me too, in fact I probably had more than you because I am taking 6 classes, and I work and I do volunteer work, but I still go to class." I would have liked to say that, but no, instead I said, "No probem". Then to make my time at the university complete I walked into the bathroom and found a used condom on the floor. Sick!

The blessings of the day continued, but this is a really long post already so I will say goodnight.

???

I am trying to work through things in little baby steps here. Well actually I have been finding convenient ways of avoiding and slowing down the process of accepting what God is trying to tell me. A convenient, but important, delay tactic has been asking questions. Here are some that have come up as I try to come to terms with this loving/witnessing to perverts who rape and sell children.

How do I know if I love them? Love is tangible when people are around you, but this is a group of people that are impersonal to and far away from me.

Can you love someone and still want them to be burned at that stake? Okay, okay, not burned, but at least punished for what they are doing? Jail maybe?

Is there room in God's justice for our criminal justice system?

As a Christian is it okay for me to want them to be put in prison for what they have done, even if they have repented and turned to God?

Right now I am having difficulty accepting the new covenant. I want an eye for an eye, although I realize their are implications for myself under the old system of the Law. This is quite distressing for me. You don't get to chose when you will follow God, and when you will not. You can't pick and choose which rules you want to follow, well I suppose you could but then it wouldn't really be Christianity. Scripture says much about giving your life to God, "giving yourself as a living sacrifice", so this is a big deal if I can't get though this and accept what God is saying. If you are lukewarm He will spit you out, it's an all or nothing deal. So if I can't do "all", then that only leaves one option. I am not throwing in the towel, I am fighting, but I am getting tired. And no one seems to understand how hard this is and how much I want to help the victims not the offenders.

SIDE NOTE: TIMES HAVE CHANGED

Just a short little aside to the usual things I post on my blog.

Things have changed a lot in our society. Things are always changing, I know, but every once and a while I see something that reminds of the way things used to be.

During the break I was back at home where there was cable tv. I was lucky enough to catch a "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" marathon. In one of the episodes, Ashley, Will's 16 year old cousin is on a date. Earlier in the episode, she had told her friends that it might be "the night". On this date her and her boyfriend take a drive and end up looking over some cliff thing, and they are just talking. It comes out that Ashley thought this would be "the night" since her boyfriend was moving away. They have this awkward "Are you ready", "Uh, well are you ready" scene. They go back and forth like this a bit and then Ashleys says that she is not ready to have sex yet. And I was shocked, but also pleased when the audience all cheered. I don't know if it was a real audience or not, but the point they were making was that it was a good thing not to have sex. Now I don't have time to watch much tv, but in the bits that I see and hear about it seems like not having sex isn't even an option anymore. The Fresh Prince isn't even that old. Perhaps, if we are lucky, history will repeat itself and we can go back to the time when children had a mother and a father, and a girl getting pregnant at 13 was unheard of.

Another pleasantly surpirsing moment for me occurred while watching "The Jungle Book". Bagheera, the panther, says "There is no love greater than this, that a man lays down his life for a friend." It made my night.

So maybe I wasn't so ready

Last week I decided that I was not ready to deal with this. I thought maybe I could, but I was wrong. I had a somewhat legitimate excuse in that I had a big exam today(which, by the way, went horribly, and I was not able to study as much as I wanted to because I had ear tubes put in and I was projectile vomiting for a day), and was hoping to buy some time while I find Tarshish. Unfortunately, just as there are no whales to swallow me whole, there is also no boat to escape on in the middle of Saskatchewan. (Perhaps I should try contacting the Last Saskatchewan Pirate!)

Well now the exam is over, and I am going to spend some time in prayer tomorrow morning. I am going to head over to the prayer room, that way I can't be distracted as easily and try to work through things. I am going to spend some time listening, trying to figure out what exactly God is telling me to do. Am I being sent or just told to love this group of people whose actions (perhaps the people themselves) I despise? I hope for neither, but I know that will not be the case.

I am also hoping that God will reveal some great new understanding of how His justice and mercy work. I don't want to love these people. I want them punished. I don't want to save the perverts I want to save the victims.

I posted the passage from Jonah, but to me this is different because they did not know they were doing wrong. These (insert profanity) must be aware that they are wrong, or they wouldn't have to do it so secretly.

People tell me that they must be hurting, if they are causing others to hurt as well. I don't think I buy that. I don't believe that these people are hurting, I think they are just being (insert profanity).

I try to look at them as creation, not as sinners. But to me they are like bacteria (creation) who become resistant to antibiotics (good), and as such are evil. Regardless of the presence/absence/quality/concentration of the antibiotic, they mutate and develop resistance. Once resistant, no amount of good can change them back.

"It's the sick who need a doctor." But these people are more then just sick. They should be sent to the coroner.

I don't think I have the vocabulary to describe how adamantly against this I am. But I really only have 2 choices. Follow God or walk away.

But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. 2 He prayed to the LORD, "O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. 3 Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live."

4 But the LORD replied, "Have you any right to be angry?"

5 Jonah went out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. 6 Then the LORD God provided a vine and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the vine. 7 But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the vine so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah's head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, "It would be better for me to die than to live."

9 But God said to Jonah, "Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?"
"I do," he said. "I am angry enough to die."

10 But the LORD said, "You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11 But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?"

Jonah 4

But God, these men know what they are doing to these children. It's not like Nineveh, who "cannot tell their right hand from their left." Aren't you angry, God, at what these men are doing?