Signs and Wonders

Good gracious...September already?!? we have been traipsing around the NE US, I've done 2 weddings, school has started back, and we've been to the beach again! (ok, that was the short list of what we have been doing)

The Road Trip was good...tiring, but really fun. We had a great group of students, and I love how we collected them along the way! We picked up Andrew Nuss in Knoxville, left Jawoo in Akron with his folks, collected Kristin Riley in Syracuse, Rachel in Boston, Heather met us in NYC and I flew home from NYC. Whew! I will do a post on the details of the trip on my College Ministry blog, along with pics. Also check out my 3 albums on Facebook. Plenty of pics there.

This semester at UAB I'm taking an Anthropology class on Symbolism. It's really interesting to think about and the first few classes have focused on the origins of metaphysical thinking, what is reality, can we ever even know reality, etc. Of course Dr. Smith is teaching from a pretty humanistic view, but what do you expect? It's good to stretch my mind and think on stuff like this. And interesting to think about what I can apply to my own spiritual life, the Bible, and the life of Jesus. Just last night in College Group Scott was posing a question about what practically we can get out of the story of the Miracle of the Wedding at Cana, and he mentioned something about what they different aspects and characters can be symbolic of, both then and now. He's not really in to symbolism, so he didn't have any answers for his question, but it got me thinking.

In John 2:11, it says that the water-into-wine was the first of His signs. Now signs, as we are taught by Dr Smith, are specific in that they MUST point to whatever is being represented. They are not symbolic arbitrarily, but are symbolic specifically. The signs in the Bible that are recorded as being Jesus' miracles, all point back to Him. They point to His provision, to His love, His intimate knowledge of what we need, they all point (specifically and generally) to different aspects of Who He Is. Something to ponder today.

In other news, we had a nce, relaxing time at the beach last weekend, and managed to dodge Gustav. My "profile pic" was taken last weekend. It was great to lay on the beach and read. I read 2 books over the weekend! My favorite thing to do! The condo was really nice too. We stayed at the Grand Panama and they are new, so still in nice shape. It was kinda nice to stay in a condo instead of at Laguna Beach Retreat place, but it ended up being a little too expensive. My only complaint for the weekend was when we went to eat out Sunday night, the place we went ran out of hushpuppies! HOW do you run out of hushpuppies at a seafood restaurant at the beach?!? A travesty, I tell you!! Hushpuppies are the closest I get to eating seafood and I REALLY wanted them to go with my chicken fingers! (silly, I know)