"surely you are the people and wisdom will die with you!"

thought one:

in heaven, will we actually be able to hear Jesus have a conversation with God the Father, or are the divisions in personhood that literal? or do they just communicate w/out speaking... i need to get over my heaven questions cause there's just no answers. (yet.)

thought two:
there is an interesting phenomenon i have observed...

often when involved in a conversation (always a bad sign), i find myself referencing sources that are pretty darn unreliable. not that the sources are persons of ill repute or anything, but the whole phrase, "i heard the other day..." usually precedes something that could very possibly be an urban legend.

for instance:
after katrina and before rita, gas prices were often the centers of conversation. directly before rita hit, there was a "run on" gas around where i live. while paying for gas one day, i remarked to the cashier that i was glad i could find gas and how i had heard that gas prices were supposed to rise. he said, yeah, his boss said something about them possibly rising to over $5 the next day. wow, i said.

over the next couple of hours, i used that little tidbit more than i care to admit. i was just making conversation, right? well the gas prices didn't rise, but that VERY BAD HABIT HAS STUCK.

so, resolved: reference nothing without credible sources (ie: would i use this in writing?)

thought three:
was reading Mtt. 5 the other day in spanish and a verse stood out:

"Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil."

bueno, in spanish, the verb used for "to fulfil" is "cumplir," which can mean, as it appears, to complete.

so in my mind, its saying something like this:
"do not think that i have come to break the law or the prophets, i have not come to break but to complete." [the actual word used for "to break" means more like "abolish," but i didn't know that at the time. quite beside the point.]

anyhow, i thought, what a good emphasis... many see Christ as having taken an axe to the stuffy old testament legalism, and that's not it at all.

the beautiful old testament could be better described as "part one" or the "prequel" to the Christ. it did not expire when Jesus came; it was interpreted. only half of the book had been written, and the author did not mean for either half to stand alone. He wrote "part one" layering meaning upon meaning, forshadowing events and weaving subtleties throughout to create the most incredible piece for literary analysis EVER. with this piece, you're not going to get sick of the diction (courtesy a couple dozen different authors), the humor and pathos will still get to you (go read the book of Jonah and Ezekiel 16, respectively) and God is uncontainably awesome time and again... listen to Him in Job 38... in Malachi! in Hosea...

don't get me started.

thought four:
"The Torah and the Nevi'im have an epical quality, although they have no human hero (Moses and David are, in many ways, anti-heros; one may consider the Children of Israel collectively to be the hero of the epic, or, if one must chose a single character, God)"

i've missed you, wikipedia. there's something quite satisfying about going back on a diet, though the guilt for having cheated remains...