it’s interesting to think about how it changes us when we invest in people and get to know them, how people get into our hearts and never fully leave. i’ve been blessed to have so many good friends but with that comes the challenge of maintaining those friendships. not in that it is a chore, but in that with busyness and conflicting schedules it can be difficult to even find time to hang out with people. then to that you can add the friends who drift away or change so much as to be unrecognizable. i even ponder the friends that i could have had, acquaintances i’ve met who i will never have the time, energy, or ability to pursue a friendship with. all of these people leave pieces of themselves in your heart in a way that is at once mundane from endless repetition and yet remains mysterious in each individual execution.

theologically i don’t have a strong concept of heaven. i’ve gone beyond the simple understanding of physical realm of clouds and angels and whatnot, but i don’t know what i understand of it. this i follow: in Christ, in the end, we are all brought together for eternity. i’m not sure exactly what that means, but as best i can conceive of it is this: those tiny pieces of heart that touch one another most intimately are but a foreshadowing of what Christ’s unity looks like. and i guess that’s what i’m hoping in, because i don’t know what else there is for me?

i have been thinking a little bit lately about intelligent design. the more i think about it, the more it makes me angry.

frankly, i think it’s bullshit.

i don’t deny God’s agency in the creation of the universe. i’m on board with that. definitely. unfortunately for many creationists and intelligent design supporters, i don’t think God is trying to somehow trick us. God has provided us with deductive faculties and a world that is so immeasurably complex and yet beautiful that we can appreciate his hand in it without having a concrete grasp on how he has manipulated it. somehow, we miss that. if the arrogance of the academy in holding fast to evolution and speciation is an overestimation of their knowledge of the world, how much more so are our simplistic interpretations of genesis an overestimation of our knowledge of God? why can’t the universe be enormous, the tale of history before the coming of Christ storied, and the processes shaping our world much larger than we can conceive of? from where i sit, it looks like bad theology.

what’s worse though is that as far as i can tell, intelligent design doesn’t even pretend to be science either. other than talking about it and writing pseudoscientific books, intelligent designers seem to have little to say about actual methods or processes by which things are designed intelligently. apparently, they simply look for what evolutionary theory can’t explain and shout out “ha! and that’s what God must have done! there he is!” then they look smug as the scientists try to explain that though they don’t know now, perhaps they’ll know later.

of course, much like with heliocentricity, it tends to turn out that science is capable of discovering very elegant explanations. then Christians look like morons for trying to trick the people around us into thinking we understand the universe completely, right now. ultimately what can this do other than make us out to be some of the most simple-minded and self-interested people on earth? we are far better to say we do not know.

kevin was wondering whether people had been taught anything critical of evolution in high school. i’m not sure whether that’s relevant. are there actually people who reject Christ based on their inability to reconcile him with evolutionary theory? that’s not a difficult task. who is out on the streets ministering to the poor, the lost, and the broken while Christians are busy fighting these phantom enemies?

if Jesus walked among us today, would we be the ones loving people, or would we be the pharisees trying to trick him into saying something contradictory to our tiny theology?

it seems like i’ve been busy.

it probably seems that way because i have been, sort of. certainly i’ve been active, out doing things and running around, but i’ve also had plenty of free time in the evenings and mornings where i’m not inspired to do anything, but i’m also not luxuriating in the time to do nothing. i’m rarely relaxing. i find myself semi-compulsively hitting up my email and websurfing even in my freetime – a bad habit i prefer to leave at the office.

so that’s how i end up spending my free time, and while it’s not particularly unenjoyable, i definitely notice that it puts me in a certain mindset, it makes it difficult for me to simply relax – not so much vegetate as ruminate on things. instead i find myself spazzing around and unable to focus on any particular train of thought for more than a few minutes. this is not good.

i think this fact of modern life is an even better argument for the sabbath. of all the spiritual disciplines i have engaged in, the practice of setting aside a day (or a half-day, even) for the Lord is at once the largest commitment but also the one with which i had the greatest success. i formerly took half-sabbaths on thursday, leaving work at 1pm to go home and just hang out with God for the rest of the day. i’d read some scripture, ponder my life, engage in prayer, even just listen to worship music. i was relatively free of distractions since most of my friends were still at work – occasionally we’d grab a lunch or something – but i didn’t seek to fill that day with things to do. it was never especially structured time, but it was my time with God and i tried to make sure to respect that. one aspect of that is that i set aside my digital world, leaving the computer off and figuring if anyone needed me urgently they could call me. or find me.

it was good, and i look at how busy i’ve become and can’t even rightly remember when i stopped. i want to get back into it, but even now i’m fighting with myself as to when to set that time aside, but in the end i pray that i will find the strength to do so.

huh. i guess that’s my new year’s resolution, then.