Santa Claus is coming, hear the banjo strumming

There are only 2 weeks left of November! How time flies when you are knee deep in Biblical texts. Thanksgiving is next week and I am excited because I was invited to eat at the DTS leader's home that evening for their own "Thanksgiving for the Americans in India" dinner! We'll most likely be eating Chicken, but hey, it's close enough for me. Praise God I was able to eat Thanksgiving Dinner before I came to India. As much as I hate the NFL I do miss Sunday afternoons taking a nap on the couch with the soft sound of the Football announcers on TV and my Mom screaming at the TV in the background.

What God has shown me from Romans cannot possibly be contained in this blog, but I shall attempt to reveal to you the mysteries revealed to me through this letter of Paul to the saints in Rome.

I will start off with the very thing God showed me before I even really dug into this book. You already read my previous entry about how I realized, I mean really realized I am not any different than any other human being that has ever lived. After that revelation and after finishing all my assignments I saw that this very point is included in Romans (14:10-12). The entire topic of judging actually hit me pretty hard this week.

I think the major thing God showed me though is something he revealed to our teacher this week, Sam, during his SBS in Montana. God does not want us to even desire sin. Sure, it sounds simple enough, but I guess I never really thought about this or even tried to desire the things of God, the things of the Spirit, things that are good for Him, not for me.

I mean, I always felt like I would always desire sin and as long as I don't act on those desires I was okay, but now I think God gets hurt when I desire sin and not Hims. Even if I don't act on it. It's like a husband telling his wife that at work all day he desired to be with so many of the women he saw on the street and in the office, but he wanted to remain faithful to his wife so he did not act on any of his desires. I think God is like the wife in this situation. She'd be angry, jealous, and upset her husband shared this with her, and she would want him to only desire her, not all those other woman! Who cares if he didn't act on his desires!!


The whole of 13:1-7 reminded me of our new president and many "Christian's" horrible attitudes and lack of submission to the new governing authority. Paul wrote this passage when Nero was Caesar! Can you imagine? Nero! "Submit to the governing authorities, they are God's servants, instituted by God." He was telling these Christians to submit to Nero, the guy who persecuted Christians like crazy. And also, what is so bad about sharing everything anyway, have these "Christians" even read Acts or heard of the Year of Jubilee? Why do people assume our country is going to become socialist all of a sudden? Every year people get so upset over the new president. Well, read Romans people. Who are we to judge our brothers and sisters?

Okay, enough about that, I am really falling in love with India. I feel like I write about this topic every entry, but it is what I am seeing and feeling and experiencing here. I love every minute of it. I really know this is where I belong at this season in my life. India is my home. God really blessed me today with some amazing news that I was not expecting, and now I can live out the rest of my day praising His name and thanking Him for being a provider!

I had another revelation during work duty on Friday. God often shows me things while I am sweeping the driveway. I remember reading in The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne, that whenever a box of shoes would come in as a donation for the people she worked with she would go through all the pairs of shoes before anyone else and pick out the smallest, most uncomfortable pair and keep those for herself so that no one else would have to wear them. Now you are probably thinking, "what does this have to do with sweeping the driveway?" So I am going to tell you! We have been sweeping the driveway for 1.5 months now and the brooms, which are just a bunch of long sticks tied together, are falling apart and losing sticks, so some are worse off than others. I realized after I started sweeping and seeing my friend struggle with the worst broom, that I should have taken that broom first so that no one else had to use it.

Here I am listening to Christmas music and wishing I could be home for Christmas. Having a white Christmas would be so wonderful, but perhaps in Nepal there will actually be snow in the mountains! That would be nice, but you'll probably hear on the news, "23 year old woman found dead, buried in the snow in Nepali mountains. Friends say a 7 day trek was too much for her."

Happy Mid-November! I hope you all remembered, remembered the 5th of November.