For those of you who may have worried that I may have dropped off the planet, eaten the wrong type of mushroom, said something bad about the wrong Italian’s mom, slipped on a banana peel, sailed somewhere far far away, lost my ability to type, or been hauled off by aliens, thankfully none of those things have actually happened. What HAS happened is that I have been fairly busy. Not that it hasn’t been good, but my time to blog has been relatively short to say the least. So, what has been going on in these parts? Well, I am glad you asked. I have been spending a little bit of time with this really awesome girl who lives up in Edmond - if you have kept up with my blog at all, you might know who I am talking about - if you haven’t, her name is Kelsey Scoggins and she is pretty much the coolest (she’s taken guys, sorry!). I have been working on trying to recruit more National Merit students to come to OU, calling them, emailing them and generally trying to get them to come to campus. I have been taming wild honeymoon stallions, leaping tall buildings in single bounds, devising a plan to save the world, finding the cure for cancer (I am still working on that one), sticking things to Teflon (where is that copyright symbol, I am sure I will get sued), looking myself up on Google, practicing deep breathing exercises, living dangerously, spending wisely, eating well (lots of onions :-) ), and brushing my teeth. I have been trying to keep track of where the time went, but it would take so long to figure it out that I would have spent a whole lot more time figuring out where the time went. So, rather than doing that, I will continue on with this insane blog entry.

I suppose that I do have some profound insight for this blog entry, I am not writing just to hear myself type. The profound insight is this - it is an amazing to see the faith which is exemplified in Matthew 8:1-17. The first example is demonstrated by the man with leprosy. When he sees Jesus coming he goes down and kneels before him saying, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” What a simple, yet profound statement. This man knew that it was well within the power of Jesus to heal him of the disease which he had been experiencing for a while, but he also knew that Jesus was not obligated to heal him. What a wonderful attitude is reflected by saying, “God, I know that you can do this, but I only ask you to do it if you are willing.” This totally moves the emphasis from us to looking entirely at the power and wisdom of God!

The second example of faith is from the centurion. When he told Jesus that he had a servant who was sick at home and was near death, Jesus got ready to follow him to his house. However, this man replied that there was no need for Jesus to go and besides, the centurion said that he was not even worthy to have Jesus in his house. This centurion knew that Jesus didn’t need to be there physically to heal the servant and so he said that Jesus could merely say the word and the servant would be completely healed. Jesus was totally amazed at this demonstration of faith. As I look at this centurion, there are a couple of things that I see. He realized that Jesus had incredible power and he approached Jesus with humility. This is another great thing which goes along with faith. We certainly do approach the throne boldly, but we don’t do it in such a way that we forget our place. Humility is key in presenting our requests to God, because we are obviously not the ones who are making the final decision. Some interesting reflections to think about - faith with humility is certainly what both of these people reflect!

I hope this entry didn’t put you to sleep. It almost put me to sleep as I heard the gentle susurration (spelling corrected per Marilyn Scoggins - thanks for the heads up! :-) ) of the keyboard. Okay, I need to get some things figured out for this evening!