Change...

Anatole France once said, "All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy..." How true this statement seems to me. As you can well see I have not posted in quite a while. Life has been in a rush, a blur, a surreal swirl of events over the past week or so. I leave for my freshman year of University today, one of the biggest steps one takes in their lifetime. This step, however, arises feelings of both joy and sobriety, happiness and melancholy. When I was younger, and even up until about 2 years ago, I was ready to venture out and go, go, go. I was ready to embark on this next step, to leave home, to go to a college far away, to begin again. Of course, to certain degrees these types of feelings aren't necessarily negative, but not all positive. However, over the past year, in my last year of Franklin Classical, I have experienced an overwhelming sense of community, to a degree that I have never felt before. In our little community I go to school and church with the same people, I hang out and go on trips with the same people. I am a part of a community that love and care for me, that are interested in my life and the things that I do. I am a part of a community where, not only do people love, but I have a chance to return that love, to do my part, to pray for and stand by the people that I have come to know and love so well. A community is a true picture of God's grace. We all have our foibles and our quirks, and yet we are to be accepted, despite our differences and our flaws. That is what I have had the absolute joy of experiencing this past year. As a result, I have definetly experienced some reservations in leaving, but I know that God has a wonderful plan for my epxeriences at University that will enable me to return to this community better equipped. I thank God for the blessings that He has placed in my life with the communities at Franklin Classical, Christ Community, my swim team, and elsewhere. Thank you to all of you who have been a part of my life, you have blessed me in so many inexplicable ways. You have strengthened and encouraged me, giving me the ability to look forward to this next step with resolution and strength. Thank you.


Thus, I leave today to begin a new step. I will probably not be able to post for a while again, because of Orientation and the beginning of classes, but I will return again soon.
My new e-mail is bbleymai@gardner-webb.edu

"There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction."
-Winston Churchill

The Joy of Books

Historian Thomas Macaulay once said, "I would rather be poor in a cottage of books than a king without the desire to read." Amen! What would our lives be without books? Especially for those of us who have been instilled with a wrestless passion, a zealous abandon, an earnest hungering for the knowledge concealed between those pages. Oh the wonderful feeling when a good book is discovered! that moment of realization when you realize that this is the stuff of wonder and magnificence. You begin to feel that yearning, that pull, that tug, as the author begins to draw you into the world of their mind. The author entices the mind and ignites the senses, luring you in, deeper and farther...stretching the mind and fueling the imagination, daring you to identify with characters, to see a little bit of yourself in the people, and perhaps letting your mind wander and attempt, what by your physical mind is deemed impossible, through those characters. Good books are magnificence, brilliance, and wonder embodied; beauty, goodness, and truth, between two pieces of wood (the really good ones :); our past, present, future, in one moment; the story of life, love, and the pursuit of happiness in the palm of your hand...


Unfortunately, in our day and age a book of such description is hard to find, thus worth the time if found. Voltaire once made a statement that can echo forward into our time, "I keep to old books, for they teach me something; from the new I learn very little." Thankfully, there are those faithful few of the modern age that cling to the traditions of old by writing substantive material, but I pray that many more will come as well. Until that time, however, we cling to those today that make the effort, and we hold onto the classics, which oftens results in digging through old bookshops in foreign countries, bartering with little old men over their earth-shattering prices...our backs suffer, knees suffer, and our checkbooks certainly feel the pain, but the knowledge contained within is priceless. Thus, if we actually followed John Ruskin's charge of, "A book worth reading is a book worth buying." The most well-read man by classic standards will most likely man be one of the poorest in material wealth, but oh the wealth of his mind! As a result, we press on searching and foraging throughout the world in back alleys and beaten up book stands, living by the motto, "Wear the old coat, buy the new book!"


Thus, a tradition that I shall begin with my blog is a library entry. Each time I buy a new book, I will post it, thus officially starting my library. Now I have a little backtracking from England to do, but for now I shall begin with a recent purchase...

Library Entry:

Book: The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets With Critical Observations on their Works. Vols. 1-4.
Author: Samuel Johnson
Date: 1819
Appearance: beautiful leather binding, a little worse for wear in a few areas, but overall in pretty good condition.
Location Found: Discovered by a friend, who found them in New York.
Price: $20 :)


My library has officially begun. The motto is by Sir Thomas Aquinas, "Beware the man of one book."

Grace For All

"The Jews would not willingly tread upon the smallest piece of paper in their way, but took it up; for possibly, said they, the name of God may be upon it. Though there was little superstition in this, yet truly there is nothing but good religion in it, if we apply it to man. Trample not on any; there may be some work of grace there, that thou knowest not of. The name of God may be written upon that soul thou treadest on: it may be a soul that Christ thought so much of as to give His precious blood for it; therefore, despise it not."

-Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Coleridge captures in this statement the very essence of God's view of the value of every human being. When we come into contact with another human being, as God's children, we are to take into account that God's sacrifice for us was a sacrifice for all men, for all humanity. He died so that we may be saved, and He lives so that might be free from the snare of the enemy. No man is exempt from God's grace and mercy should He seek it with a humble heart. We have all fallen short of the Kingdom of God, we are all sinners, yet we have a Savior, a loving Father who sent His only Son to die on the cross so that all may know Him. Thus, if He died for all, He values all. If He values all, since we are His children our time on earth is to be spent taking on the mind of Christ, being so overcome by His love so that we become more and more like Him. If this is all true, which according to His word it is, we are to exclude no one, to not bar, in our own prejudice, any one person from the Kingdom of God. We live in an imperfect world, one that is overcome by every sin and result of sin, thus its inhabitants are not perfect. As Christians, we can exclude no one on account of their sin, because we are sinners as well. God is the ultimate Judge, the only ruler in the case of man's heart, only He can determine the condition and situation of a man's soul. So we, God's people are simply here to be an extension of God's grace and love. To show the world the same love that God has showed us. He is the reason we are here, He is the reason we have hope and a future, He is the reason for it all, so our responsibility is to show that to all...the whole world, no exceptions.