Good Friday 2012

"And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, 'Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani?' which means, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' When some of those who stood by heard this, they said, 'Listen, he is calling on Elijah.' Someone ran and soaked a sponge in vinegar and, putting it on a reed, gave it to him to drink saying, 'Wait! And see if Elijah will come to take him down.' But Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. And the veil of the Sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom. The centurion, who was standing in front of him, had seen how he had died, and he said, 'In truth this man was Son of God.' "

Why is it that the Son of God would give such a cry of despair--"My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" 

Dontcha think that perhaps if He had been calling Elijah, he might've addressed him by name? Unless "My God" is some weird nickname for Elijah.....

..no, I think not. Nor is He blaming God. Nor is He giving up. 

If He had given up, he would have only had to said the word, and all this pain and suffering could have ceased. But it wasn't the nails that held Him up on that cross: It was love.

And if this sacrifice was one of complete love, why would he be blaming the Father?

Two thousand years ago, when the scriptures were taught and passed down orally, the psalms weren't numbered. They wouldn't say "Psalm 22"; they would use the first lines to refer to the whole psalm. 

And so, when Christ was up on that cross with His arms outstretched over the whole world, when He cried out "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?", it wasn't a cry of despair he uttered, but one of hope.

With these few words, He not only spoke of His complete and utter forsakenness, but also called each of us to praise God.

"My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?

You are far from my plea and the cry of my distress.

O my God, I call by day and you give no reply;

I call by night and I find no peace. [...]

All who see my deride me. 

They curl their lips, they toss their heads.

'He trusted in the Lord, let him save him;

let him release him if this is his friend.' [...]

O Lord, do not leave me alone,

my strength, make haste to help me! [...]

I will tell of your name to my brethren

and praise you where they are assembled.

You who fear the Lord, give Him praise! All sons of Jacob, give Him glory. Revere him, Israel's sons!" - Psalm 22 

pro-lifers unite!

On Saturday, I recited the pledge of allegiance to the United States for the first time in--er, I dunno--years?

(first swim meet evah that I've been to that's replaced the national anthem with the pledge of allegiance. ah, well. We spent most of it looking for the flag anyways [never found it].)

So we were reciting it, and you know how it goes...

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America [on second thought, if you're homeschooled, perhaps you instead recited the ten commandments or fruits of the spirit or something like we did], and to the republic for which it stands--one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Hm--"liberty and justice for all"? That's not how I would put it.

(evidence of our country's "liberty and justice for all")

Dear fellow pro-lifers,

Pray for babies! 

Pray that God will open the eyes of America to this horrible injustice! 

Pray to end abortion!

 { Oh, how I wish I was marchin' today... }

post first-week-of-classes report

After more than a month of break, classes *finally* started up again on Tuesday,
and they. were. awesome.

MTH 164
For Precalc II I got the sweetest teacher ever (probably explained by the fact that she's Mr. Willis's daughter and has red hair)! We started by reviewing the properties of logarithms (easyyy), but hey--at least we're not into trigonometry yet. *Yet*...

CSC 110
We spent almost the whole class on Tuesday staring at our computer screens, making no eye-to-eye contact, but interacting with each other over the internet through a discussion board.
Well, I suppose it *is* a computer class.
This is how my online "introduction" went:

Me: Dear everyone, I'm Gab: This is my second semester here (quite excited that classes are finally starting again), and I'm thinking about going into Engineering (it's either that or English--can't decide). This will be my first course in computer science.

Other than that, I like to swim and sing; I'm hoping to get into UVA; and I *can't wait* for Easter!!

Guy 1: Hi, what happens at Easter?

Me: Everything! Christ died for us on the cross and rose from the dead on the third day--liberating us from sin, conquering death, restoring our hope, opening for us the way to a new life. O truly blessed night!

Guy 2: I almost wanna say amen, but that sounds kinda weird, so..... um..... cool post.

Guy 3 : Amen would be OK in this context, I think; it's something good to keep in mind, in any case.

Well....I guess they know who I am now ("so, um, cool post"). :P
Anyway, I had to finish the CSC reading yesterday before my 2nd class this morning, and it was kinda tricky! Binary digits, circuits, transistors, Boolean operations, hexadecimal notation (<--ok, well *that* was easy)... but then we got to create circuits online with, you know, the AND/OR/XOR/NOT/NAND/NOR gates, and that was funnn. (hey, you can try it for yourself here, but I'm not sure it works for Safari or Firefox [I did it in the computer lab at the college, but then couldn't get it to open on my macbook at home], and to get it to open you have to right-click and then open in a new window)


EGR 120
How to start....(*thinking*)
Yesterday morning I went straight from swim practice to the community college, so I got there a half hour early. Turns out, so did my friend, and so did another guy from our EGR class. This "other guy" held some very interesting views on people and life. He spent that whole half hour before class lecturing us on how "if x is high enough, you'll eventually do y" (for example, 'if you pay me this amount of money, I will give you this information'. Or something like... a person who commits crimes because someone has threatened him. Or something like... a person who renounces his faith so that he won't be killed). Apparently, we all like to think we're "nice people", but again "if x is high enough, you'll eventually do y".
Um, No, Mr. Creepy. You're wrong.
What about all those who've died for their faith? (*he starts going on about all the violence in history*...blahblahblah)
No, seriously. What about the martyrs?
They gave up their lives for their faith. Their example is proof that what you say is wrong. Perhaps you don't understand: I'll fit it into your own terms...here's what they said. "I don't care what x is. I will not do y." And I hope and pray that if ever someone threatens to kill me if I do not renounce my faith, that God will give me the courage to stand firm and be killed.

Anyway, now that I've got *that* out of the way...the rest of the class was pretty good (although I practically had nightmares--er, no--*day-mares* about being paired up with Mr. Creepy for a lab partner until my teacher said we could choose our own. *thank goodness*).

I told my friend afterwards, though, that I think engineering is so *flat*. But more on that later. I've already talked enough.

So how did *your* first days of classes go? Any unusual conversations with strangers or teacher-stalking-sessions-that-we-shall-not-explain-in-detail?