RANT:
Oh, for Pete's sake! Why does Nate think like he does? Why does he say things like, "You don't miss it here at all, do you?" That is just a plain stupid remark. Why on earth would he think that? I could understand him thinking I don't miss HIM as a boyfriend anymore, which I don't, but I just do not see how he could think I'm doing fine here, not missing home at all.

Those are the words that get me: "at all." How could I conceivably not miss home at all? That's where my family is. That's where I grew up. That's my home! And I really miss home. I would love to be back with my mother and sister and grandma and grandpa and great-grandma, but I belong here for now.

It's true, I have days where I'm so busy I don't think of home much. I have days where homework's so pressing I don't feel like talking a long time on the phone (like today), but I still do want to talk, for just, like, 15 minutes, to get a taste of home again.

And he goes and assumes by that that I don't miss home at all.

And why does he just assume the world is out to get him? Why is he still having problems with that?

I suppose it's because he's still just a baby Christian.

Which reminds me of more questions. But then they are also answered by the above statement.

Nate is at that point where, now he's found Christ, and he's at this glorious high point in his faith and wants to tell everybody how they need Christ. He still has a lot to learn about people, though, and how to share the message with them well.

INSIGHTS:
Or maybe I'm wrong. I haven't talked to any of the people he's been talking to about God. Maybe he is actually making a difference... I shouldn't be so quick to judge. But somehow I see him catching them totally off guard, somehow stabbing close to a source of pain for them, and therefore they carefully guard their minds so nothing he says can get in. People do that. Not because they don't want to hear the message--but because they DO. Ironic, isn't it? But the thing is, they don't like to be reminded of the pain in their past or that they still go through that prevents them from coming to God. It's kind of related to pride. (Most of the reasons people don't come to God are.) They have gone through or are going through pain, they have survived or are telling themselves they can survive all on their own-- not by any act of God's.

I was like that. All my life I was proud! When sermons hit close to home for me, I would tell myself, "Well, that doesn't apply to me! I got through that. I didn't need God to get through it." And harden my heart to it, Pharoah hardened his heart after all the plagues he endured. I'm willing to venture that much of Pharoah's thoughts were along the lines of, "Well, I've been through a famine before. This is nothing new. We can still get our food from elsewhere, and eventually the famine will end," while ignoring all the people who were dying of starvation. And perhaps he thought, "Oh, good! Those flies/gnats/frogs/locusts disappeared. They're gone; we have survived. We can survive anything this Moses sends our way." Even when Pharoah finally let Moses and the Israelites go, he soon changed his mind again and rode after them. And rode to his death.

Many people nowadays are like Pharoah. They go through life saying to themselves, "I survived such-and-such. God had nothing to do with it. I can survive this, too." We, as Christians, know this is not true, that God has helped bring them through whatever, by placing certain people in their lives, or whatever may have happened. So we try to tell them, somehow, that God is Who helps them through things. But often we do this by making very vague guesses as to what a person might be feeling, and we act on that guess, and stab close to home--but not quite there. The "not quite there" is the crux. There's a mindset in all humankind that says, "That was a close call. Next time I will avoid anything that might bring me close to that danger again."

I guess all this makes sense. People don't like to experience pain. They avoid it. If someone gets close to touching it, but doesn't quite hit it, people often will say, "Oh, lucky guess... But just to be safe, I am going to avoid talking to that person from now on."

There's another half to this, though. If someone's talking to you and hits, not close to, but RIGHT ON a source of pain--which is really hard to do, more often than not--they tend to break down and drop all barriers. Like the Samaritan woman at the well. That'll have to wait for another entry, though.

-Stephanie