Saturday, June 03, 2006

happy birthday Adam!

Not that he reads this, but today is my favoritest brother Adam's 15th birthday! Yay Adam!

I just got back from taking a membership class at my church. It was John Mark leading it, and there were about four of us in the class: me, an older woman, and a married couple. We spent a lot of time talking about "entire sanctification" (my conclusion: can people just agree on what words mean???).

The older woman was talking about how she used to be Catholic, and was trying to get my great-aunt to stop going to the Catholic church and come to ours. Geez...if they're happy there, growing close to God and being able to serve somehow, then let them go there. Catholics are still Christians. Something I did learn I think last summer was that maybe Catholics do their whole ritual thing because by doing it, that's how they recognize God's presence--and not necessarily by feelings.

And another thing, the Nazarene church is a "missional" church. But I just don't see what our local church is doing to "feed the hungry" and "clothe the naked" in this local area. Can't we just use the energy we spend on convincing everyone we're right, for serving others because that's what Christ did? We talked a little bit about how Jews aren't very accepting of Jesus as their Messiah, because He wasn't what they were expecting to see. But today, if Jesus were to come and live among us, would we expect him to be possibly homeless and hanging out with the people that most of us just pass on by?

If we can just apply that to our way of living...

(the following written on June 4)

I went to Bethany's graduation party yesterday...it was a lot more fun than mine was. We attempted to play volleyball, and then I watched people play wiffleball. I also realized I'd lost one of my rings, the one my dad got for me in Ireland...I'm hoping he'll get me another one.

Later on, we decided to go rent a movie...Bethany, Jess K (ha! she should be "J/K!"), Cassi and I went into Chestertown and got Memoirs of a Geisha but haven't quite finished it. One of the things that struck me as interesting was how they had their whole culture thing, with becoming geishas, while WWII was going on. It was so weird watching the movie, with all the Japanese actors, and then all of a sudden, the Western world breaks in and disrupts everything they knew. Hm.

Today at Mom-Mom's we had a birthday dinner for Adam, with mostly family there.