glow sticks and the french language

A few random thoughts (four to be exact):

1.
I haven't written here for about a month, unless you count the post on Halloween that I wrote 15 minutes ago but dated as being written 4 days ago just because I wanted to make it a separate post. (I know, nerdy of me.) A lot has happened: papers, pumpkin smashing, mid-terms, studying, visiting friends, the Car Rally. Now that the second half of the semester is starting, I feel like I have a little bit of breathing room, but not too much. I really need to work on minimizing distractions, and getting my rocks into the jar before I start adding gravel and sand.

2.
It's been cold recently. It even snowed a few days ago. This brings me great joy. Although it's been a bit warmer in the last couple of days, I'm hoping that this early freeze means we're in for a cold, snowy, and fun winter. I took these pictures a couple weeks ago while I was on on one of my morning runs in the frost.

Note that this picture is entirely and completely posed. I normally don't have such a victorious grin on my face as I'm running, nor do I look at the sky. I find that it's more useful to keep an eye on the ground ahead of me. It prevents painful and unnecessary things from occurring (falling on my face, for example).

3.
In church this morning, Pastor Bill made a distinction between knowing information about God and knowing God personally. It was a passing comment; it wasn't the main point of the sermon, but it made me think of French. In French, there are two different words for the verb "to know," as opposed to English's one. Savoir (pronounced saav-woir) means to know about, to know intellectually: You'd say "I sais that Courtney is that short girl with blonde hair in my Hist o' Christ class. She is a Theology major, and she lives in a Theme House." But connaitre means to know personally. You'd say, "I connais Courtney: I sit by her in Hist o' Christ and we laugh together at the professor's jokes. We like to go ice skating together, and talk about life." I think that the distinction is an important one, and I'm sad that it's been lost in English. We shouldn't just know about (savoir) God... we need to know (connaitre) God.

4.
These last few days I've had several different "moments" when I'm convicted, either by something I'm reading or thinking about or hearing. But it's not a complete conviction: I'm almost-convicted. It's hard to describe. I feel like if I could just force the concepts that I'm mulling over into my head and heart, it would have a big effect on the way I live and operate, whether it be physically, emotionally, or spiritually. But it's like that conviction is just beyond my grasp. Today the perfect illustration came to me. In the middle of the sermon, I suddenly thought, I feel like a glow stick. I've got all these truths bumming around inside of my head, and all I need is a SNAP! and they'll break through their little intellectual barrier and combine with my life, causing me to glow.


So I'll end with this picture that I took while I was home for Fall Break. Calm; peaceful; beautiful; glowing. All I need is to be bent until I snap. If that makes any sense at all.