Playing Catch-up

I've been trying to catch up on my reading from failing last weeks assignment to read chapters 8 and 9 in "The Jesus I Never Knew." It's a pretty interesting book, and I question my ideas of who Jesus was every time I read it. Chapter 9 in conjunction with what I've been reading in the study "Experiencing God" have had me thinking about how and what I spend my time praying for. I could relate with Yancey's thoughts of God as some great magician or magic genie. This is pretty much how I prayed throughout my childhood and part of me never really grew out of that. Sure, I stopped praying for jet-packs or a super Nintendo, but I'd always end up praying that some miracle would happen because I knew he could do it so why not? Sometimes I would catch myself and think, "well, wishing for personal miracles is kind of selfish" so I would try to reason out how I could somehow prove that God did it and that it would be okay that way. Looking back after reading through this chapter I can't help but feel a little retarded. Even if I could prove to people that I got a jet-pack because God thought it was cool too, it still wouldn't accomplish anything worthwhile. The same can be said for some of the more rational prayers I've had about spontaneous healing. I can't tell you how many times I wanted my knee to not be broken after I ran it into a wall, but what would that have done for the Kingdom? If anything my going through that pain helped me realize again how many people around me care about me and are willing to do what they can if I'm ever in need and the only reason I have those people is because God put them in my life. Now, the funny thing is I'm not sure how to reformat my prayer time so that it will be better spent, or what things make sense to pray for. Does praying for something miraculous to happen in someone else's life so that they might believe lie outside of what God is willing to do? I don't know anymore.

Organized Outreach Objective

For a campus like UTD, I'm surprised there haven't been more attempts at video game related events. I'm not saying we should set up some big tournament kind of thing, but we could at least have more public gatherings for things like Guitar Hero/Rock Band, Halo, or Smash Bros. A lot of people on campus play these games and I'm sure that there would be plenty of people willing to come to a larger setting where they can play against or with new people. Last semester I started attending weekly meetings of ATSA, or the Atec Student Association, and it wasn't so much an organizational meeting as it was a LAN party where we would usually play Team Fortress 2. Despite what you might assume, there was a lot of socializing going on and I got to know some of the people in my major better because of it. I think we could do something like this as well. Obviously, without access to some computer lab we would need to stick to console based games, and I would be wiling to bring what I can from what I own to minimize what cost there will be. I see this as a weekly or bi-weekly event, where we could supply some small snacks like cookies and drinks. It would also be nice if we could get a clubhouse to use in order to house large groups.