approach, be approached

Thinking in circles.

There's a game associated with homeless people.

Particularly when you're trying to decide between Feininger, Kokoschka, and Ernst as the pulp of your latest 12-page art report.

Very big and very small books comprise artist biographies, and since the divisions in the Greenville Library are somewhat arbitrary(kind of alphabetically, sort of by era)...this was slowly becoming mundane.

My thoughts shifted to the Fred's Buddy 1 sleeping in the gray reading section, and Fred's Buddy 2 at the end of my aisle fishing for eye contact. I guess I'm Fred's Buddy 3 because Fred got $20 from me a few months back, for who knows whatever. That time I had been very open.

This time I was playing Risk, strategizing exactly how I'd be able to give alms to both of them and also teach them the importance of sharing. Brilliant. I would give #2 ten dollars in two fives, and then teacherly chide him to give one of those fives to sleeping #1. All of this while resiliently continuing my exhumation of dead artist #785 (Leger), realizing the futility of it all...my agenda, my agenda.

The two men never approached me, so my brain gears stopped turning in that direction.

Checkout. I thought about the stack of books and music under my arm, their weight cramping my hand. It was all becoming poison. What am I doing with all this? Where is God in all this? When did I go down the path of losing all enjoyment in knowledge, or in God's Word, or being close to other people?
Why do things have to be contrived again?

Lunch today, I head over to the Resource Market to get a sandwich and two kids are blurry with hyperactivity, hanging on their mother's purse like primates. One of them looks up at me, brandishing his cardboard and duct-tape sword/stave, stares complacently at the chocolate chip cookie I've bought and immediately asks his mom for one.

My gut instinct was to break my cookie in half give the pieces to this boy and his brother and see them happily/unconciously enjoy the blessing of receiving from someone and maybe learning how to give. But I thought about how the mom might not want her kids to have sugar, or maybe she has them on some freaky youth diet where they can only eat hardboiled eggs and pepto-bismol. But again, I thought too hard. Uselessly and strenuously thought to hard.

May the Mind of Christ dwell richly...we sung those words today in the Bible Conference service. The peace of Christ, the sobriety of Christ, the honesty of Christ, the comradery of Christ. The reality of Christ in us, to change us, to realize that we dwell in "the shadow of the Almighty". That there's no need to fear if our conscience doesn't condemn us. To give freely to others through liberty and love. That's where it sits, and we're told it's not impossible to drop these weights that we feel the need to carry even after the Lord tells us over and over, we are adopted as the sons of God.

I see all of you (bloggers/readers) as dwelling in this peace and I thank God for that, and I pray it continues, but I desire all of your prayers as well, that I can enjoy some of those answers and blessings as well, and as richly as you've seen them, so that Christ can be all, and I can forget myself more and more. There's a lot at stake between homeless men and cookie children.