Stupid thoughts in a pointless moment.

Prone to wander, right? I’ve been fighting that lately, to be honest. I can’t handle it. I think about it every day and yet I still put off spending time with God. I guess that’s the human in me. I hate how good I can be at softly saying “no” to the Holy Spirit. I’ve been doing it for weeks now and I’m always afraid that one day He’ll just stop wooing me. But I know that’s not the case. In fact, God started dragging me back to Himself this afternoon. Such a relief. He simply placed a memory in my mind. One that reminds me of His goodness and my selfishness. One that reminds me that He loves everyone. Including me.

——

A couple of years ago, my friend Blake died. It was a long, but beautiful, fight with Leukemia. I’ve never seen someone grow that much that fast. God was clearly at work. The cancer came back three times, I think. But each time it went away, it was a miracle. My friends and I had never experienced anything like it. We all joined together and supported him like nothing I’d ever seen. The last time it came back, Blake and all of us knew it was different. The fight was coming to an end and God was bringing him home. Trouble was, God was bringing me to Malaysia.

——

God spoke to my heart in wanting me to go to Malaysia and managed to use my horrible handwriting to woo my mildly aerophibic mother into going. The mission trip was a simple one. Go to a couple of cities and perform a musical. My dad wrote the script and had the role of a “scrooge-like” character and my mom played the lead role alongside of him. We were all set to go in early December until we got the call that my grandfather had suffered from a fatal heart-attack. At this point, my dad understandably opted out of the trip and they had to quickly find a replacement. My mom and I still chose to go. We flew to Louisiana for the funeral just a day or two before the flight was scheduled for Malaysia. We then had to fly back to Tampa with a stop in Atlanta that was delayed on the runway for 3 or more hours due to freezing temperatures. Not exactly an ideal situation considering we had to be at the Orlando airport at 9pm. We landed in Tampa around 730pm and barely managed to make it to Orlando in time. We took our seats on the airplane and about a minute later, the doors closed. I took a deep breath and then remembered that Blake was back in the hospital and it wasn’t looking good.

——

On my second day in Malaysia, Blake died. I still had a week and a half left in Malaysia meaning I would miss the funeral. I wanted to fly home and just forget about the trip but it was unreasonable. So, as all of my friends drew near to one another and mourned, I performed on a stage infront of people I didn’t know in a place that I didn’t know. It was surreal. For basically two years now, it has yet to click. I accepted it. I just didn’t comprehend it. I never saw him die. I missed the mourning. For all I know, he just went to college or something. He’s out there somewhere with his long orange hair talking about movies with someone. But I know that’s not true because people talked about his death. They witnessed it. So in my heart, I know it’s true. But in my mind, do I really treat it that way?

This is where God grabbed me. Was I doing the same thing with Him? Never fully understanding what had happened because it didn’t happen right in front of me? Do I talk about God the same way I talk about Blake? Something that happened in the past and changed our lives but I wasn’t there so it doesn’t really change me? The same way 9/11 felt to most of us? “Oh man. That was terrible.” But if you actually talk to someone who was there, the horror that took place in their minds still hasn’t left. It was a nightmare. My friends who experienced Blakes death have never been the same. I know that for a week or so after the funeral they all stayed with each other and discussed Blakes life and laughed and cried and grew closer together. So as an outsider, I missed the realness of Blake’s death. I know in my heart that it’s true. But for two years now, my mind wants to treat it differently since I wasn’t there. It makes the affect on my life very minimal.

I think we’re all prone to doing that with God. But as believers, we need to push past that mental barrier that removes us from the affects of the Bible on our lives. Because even though we believe it, we weren’t there. So it’s easy to miss the emotions and the realness of what is described to us in the Bible. My prayer is that we would treat the Bible seriously in both our hearts and our minds. Because God has given us the Bible so that our hearts and minds can be one in this understanding and so that it will radically change our lives. Thank God that He’s given us eye witness accounts of what He’s done. Because that’s what we need. Thank God for that. Because even though we weren’t there, Jesus Christ still died on a cross and conquered death 3 days later. God, how loving. What beautiful pearls You’ve given to the swine despite our daily shortcomings.

endersgameblog:

As we’ve now reached the end of principal photography on ENDER’S GAME, it seems fitting to take a step back and acknowledge the two people responsible for giving such vivid life to the imaginary world in which we’ve spent the past many months immersed.

And when we say immersed, we truly…

endersgameblog:

“I need you to be clever, Bean.  I need you to think of solutions to
problems we haven’t seen yet.”

In Dragon Army, Ender encourages input.  So do we.  That’s why we’re
opening this blog up to you, the readers.

Ask us a question about ENDER’S GAME — something you’ve been dying to know.  We’ll select our favorites (or as many as we can) from the comments section and start answering them.

Fire away!

Will the slang of battle school remain or will the dialogue be adjusted to translate better to the masses? I’m not one for changes, but I could see reasons to change that and am wondering if it was considered.