Earning and Learning

recently i've been stressing out about the cost of eating food in real life. Since i've been in school or at home my whole entire life, i've never had to think about consistently purchasing my own food. I respect every single person who lives a real life much more the longer that i'm in "life". 

Today was a good food purchase though! a six inch sub from Subway only costs $3.91, which i consider an acceptable amount to pay for such a sandwich. Oh, southwest Chipotle sauce, how you justify so much... On another note, the blog spellcheck is telling me that i'm spelling Chipotle incorrectly, and it is suggesting that it should be spelled Shippable. Hm. 

This sunday at the high school service at traders point (the church that i'm interning at) i will be delivering my first sermon! O_O When Jake; my boss; asked me to speak, i got a little frightened, but i'm cool with doing it. I will be speaking on christian community. The key verses are found in James, though i will probably draw from other texts as well. 

Since i've been developing the sermon, i've noticed a couple different things in James. The most apparent thing that i've noticed is how many rhetorical questions James asks. I think in a 20 verse spread he asks 10 rhetorical questions. This intrigued me. I was curious as to why he did this so much. As i pondered, my mind wandered back to my english 100 writing class during my freshman year of college. I had to write a ridiculously extensive paper on epistemology and the study of teaching. To start this off, i had no idea what it was, but i soon came to know that epistemology is just a long fancy way of saying, "when you teach yourself something, you understand it better than when you are taught". 

Applying that back to James, rhetorical questions make a ton of sense. How often does a kid learn how to walk because his parents told him how? How often does a bird learn to fly without first jumping out of the nest? James is giving them guidelines of self discovery, thus solidifying his message more than if he just gave commands. I think it was Thomas Edison who said, "i haven't failed 1,000 times at making a lightbulb, but rather i've found 1,000 ways to not make one." or something like that. :-)

Another thing that i noticed when reading James is his focus on prayer. James gives a section toward the end of his letter that deals with how we as christians are supposed to act within christian community in which he drills prayer into the recipient's heads. "Are you suffering? keep praying about it. Are you sick? have other faithful believers come and pray for you." (James 5:13, 5:14) How much do we as modern day christians saturate things in prayer? When was the last time i spent a day praising God through prayer worship toward Him? Even when he asks who is suffering, he says "keep praying about it", implying the prayer was happening in the first place. its obvious, prayer is the pipeline to correct living.

If you go to this link you can listen to the entire new coldplay album for free. Its not bad, not bad at all. 

well, James calls me once again so i will bid you adieu!