Moses, Magic, and the Wrong Jew

Today has been genuinely nice.  I went to church this morning (and this evening), and I even went to Sunday School and stuck around for the ministry expo that was today.  I've come to a point where I am realizing that I won't just happen into community.  Unfortunately it took me 3 years and a smattering of churches to realize this as a young adult.  We'll see what happens, but at least the naïveté of my former years has worn off a bit and God is showing me that there really is more.  My life has been something of a thrill ride lately, complete with the ups and downs and occasional nausea.  

I am incredibly hopeful about this week.  I did some academic reading today at Starbucks, and it's the first time I've devoted my brain to the Academy in an embarrassingly long time.  I've been a skimmer and a skipper lately.  It isn't that I've given up on school or anything, it's just that this semester has not been really engaging.  For about a month I was riding a wave of anthropological stimulation with Honors, but that fell off (and the class has kind of disintegrated before my eyes, to tell the truth).  Today, however, I read a few pages of Freud's Totem and Taboo, and it made me remember why I love anthropology, religious studies, cross-cultural communication, and the lot.  After Freud defined sorcery and magic, I went and listened to a sermon on Moses throwing down his rod at the burning bush and it becoming a snake.  The irony was beautiful.

Also in that sermon, I skipped gears a little.  Bobby Tucker was preaching on Moses, and he got to the verse that talks about removing Moses's name from the book if it would forgive the sin of Israel.  Bro. Bobby said something to the tune of "Who else does it sound like to take the sins of people onto himself to set them free?"  And I was like, "Ooh!  Paul said that in Romans 9!"

I obviously forgot about Jesus.  Fortunately sermons are understood to be rhetorical, so I didn't make a fool of myself aloud and in earnest.  It did make me laugh, though.

Maybe a report on the Lasagna Party will be in order tomorrow.  It was craziness.  For now all the craziness I need is the deep slumber that awaits me in my bed as Rob Bell podcasts me to sleep.

T