Rice & Road Trips

so my sister and two friends from church are going to this huge conference in St. Louis called Urbana, which is sorta like Passion, except it must be much more exclusive because this only meets like once every four years, just like the Olympics...or the Winter Olympics. my sister was going to go to this other conference in Kansas City at the IHOP (International House of Prayer) called One Thing, but somehow she got the money for Urbana, which she wanted to go to, so she went. this meant that a whole bunch of kids from Rice from the Houston Christian Church came to pick her up on the way to the conference. but it's cool because pretty much all of the people from the Houston Christian Church are college students from Rice...and i am greatly interested in Rice.

maybe it was something where you had to be there to understand. but all these kids from Rice...they were really cool. like really cool. talking about Christian authors like CS Lewis and John Piper and Yancey and how they want to teach university-level math, because all of them are seniors, and how they think they should be teaching elementary school kids base conversions along with their unit places (like the tenth or hundreds place). and they talked about Rice's football team and all of this stuff. they were really nice, and i thought it was cool how, just like our own youth group, you can see how each person contributes to the group, and each member is no more exactly important than anyone else.

like in my youth group, you have Jerry, who totally adds all of his slang and gangster-esque antics. you have jojo and richard who add all of this humor of goofing off, but can be actually quite serious and add a lot to a discussion. you have billy, my best friend, and me, who are just sorta there and like to lead things and think a lot. you have the girls, who make everything balanced and actually do things since us guys are usually way too lazy to accomplish anything, but they are equally intellectual or fun-loving as the guys are. each person there changes the atmosphere, the environment, and the result has been our youth group since the last mission trip.

and...i think this is crazy cool, because one of my friends from youth group, who is in youth symphony and is a senior about to go to OU next year, got to go with all of these college kids to Urbana. i think that is crazy cool, because it's a lot of freedom. there's a lot of God gonna be going on over there, and you're pretty much on your own, with people who seem to be genuinely interested with you and care about you. i don't know. i just think that they're going to have a really great time. i would like to be a leader, just like that. i want to drive people around to big conferences and see people get saved. i should be willing to take anonymity though. i shouldn't be telling God anything about who i should be.

i was trying to worship earlier, maybe like two hours ago, and i couldn't get girls out of my mind. billy told me a while ago how either my youth pastor or his wife had said that you can tell, sometimes, what an idol is, because that's what will be distracting you when you try to worship and focus on God. i remember reading Mere Christianity and how CS Lewis was saying that, if you want to see heaven on earth - basically, if you want to have the earth - you need to turn your eyes to heaven primarily, and the result might be the earth you wanted. but your eyes, in the first place, need to be pointed towards God. then everything will pretty much fall into place. when you have peace, what doesn't line up doesn't phase you as much as it would before. you focus on the blessings, not the shortcomings.