Days have theme songs...

...and though it's almost over, here's today's, compliments of Lacrae.

Father God, I'm prayin' to you for somebody, who knows you Lord but just hasn't, hasn't been seein' you in the right view lately, Hear me out...
Father, I'm prayin' for a friend he and I are pretty close, and out of all my friends for this one I'm concerned the most. He say he readin' daily but he ain't really learnin'. He been in church but say that he ain't moved by any sermon. His faith's weak, he ain't prayed in a week, he wake up and just weeps with his face in the sink. Lord, you gotta help my man, I'm prayin' for him daily, he ain't sinned but it just seem as if he goin' crazy. He say he feelin' trapped... he's strugglin', even though he talk to me, I tell him what to do but he don't listen when he oughta' be. I'm scared for him coz there's people that look up to him, he got some younger siblings who been changed by what he's done for them but is it done for him? Lord don't let it be, if he don't wanna talk to you then Father hear from me...
  Yeah, I'm prayin' for you, I'm prayin' for you...
God, his condition is worsen since we were last conversed and I'm with him now and he ain't doin' well and this I'm certain. He say he tryna' trust you, doesn't wanna disgust you but he was in the mist of sinners and did not discuss you and just today his anxiety's got the best of him, he knows Christ but for hours refuse to rest in Him, he's not the best of men but Lord I know he really loves you and I can't understand why lately he's not thinkin' of you. People trust this dude, you could crush this dude, Father he needs more of you.  I pray you touch this dude.  What can I say to him? I'm determined to pray for him.  Father empty and break him.  I pray you'll just have your way with him, coz there's a change in him and the effects are strong.  I pray you open up his heart before the next song and when he gets home, I pray he'll open up the sixty-six book love letter you wrote and soak it up coz he ain't hearin' You and he ain't feelin' me and God I know it's killin' You because it's killin' me and matter of fact there's somethin' else he's concealin' see,
                                                    the person that I've been prayin' about is really me...

torrens voluptatis

I will see JESUS, really see Him, literally in His presence.
"At present, if we are reborn in Christ, the spirit in us lives directly on God; but the mind and, still more, the body receives life from Him at a thousand removes- through our ancestors, through our food, through the elements.  The faint, far-off results of those energies which God's creative rapture implanted in matter when He made the worlds are what we now call physical pleasures; and even thus filtered, they are too much for our present management.  What would it be to taste at the fountainhead that stream of which even these lower reaches prove so intoxicating?  Yet that, I believe, is what lies before us.  The whole man is to drink joy from the fountain of joy... In the light of our present specialized and depraved appetites, we cannot imagine this torrens voluptatis, and I warn everyone most seriously not to try.  But it must be mentioned, to drive out thoughts even more misleading- thoughts that what is saved is a mere ghost, or that the risen body lives in numb insensibility.  The body was made for the Lord, and these dismal fancies are wide of the mark.
     Meanwhile the cross comes before the crown and tomorrow is Monday morning..." ~C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
But it is not this day; today is the cross.  To live is Christ and to die is gain.  No, it's not today, but it IS coming, and glorious anticipation gives us strength to continue.

Sometimes I wonder about the sanity (or lack thereof) of my mind...

So instead of hashing out cognitive thought, here's a cockney poem I wrote a couple years back.
As art, it's miserable- as an expression of my mind, it serves.
[and no, I'm not British, so yes, my cockney isn't legit, shopopalo]

Cockney

Here's lookin' at you kid

'Cause tonight you're gonna Charlie Brown

I'll be lookin' fer you kid

As the icy waves crash down

The first'll mess an' muck your brearf

The second, knock you cold

The third brings resurrecshun

This jig ney'er grows old!

Lor', luv a duck!

Cold blink in Jurrassic Park

Ya sure feel like a schmuck

Chomped by Noah's Ark

The George Michael's quite legendary

So unfortunately ordinary

"Logic! Why don't they teach logic at these schools?"

Forgive me as I climb onto a soap box...

     I've grown up with a sense of moral obligation to education.  Grades are only a reflection on that obligation, as words are to faith.  Thanks Mom- I think homeschooling helped form my mind that way.
     Most students know how to make the grade: take good notes, tell the prof what he wants to hear, study for the test... that's how most students "learn."  But they never activate their minds.  They don't think, and their teachers often don't require them to.
     I could go on and on about the failings of our educational system, but (I think) students realizing education is not a vehicle to a "good job" but rather an intrinsically valuable entity in itself is the first step to developing our minds.  And, as Ben Stuart points out, the formation of our minds matter because "what you think about is what you care about and what you care about is what you chase."
                                                                                          ...stepping down from box now.

"Life is pain, highness! Anyone who says differently is selling something."

     In case you haven't noticed, this thing we call life is seriously depraved.  I'm reading The Natashas: Inside the Global Sex Trade by Victor Malarek, and I do not have words to describe the atrocity of evil it reveals.  Honestly- grotesque, wicked, malignant, repulsive, base, vicious, damnable- I've used these words for far more petty things, and they don't measure up.  

     "How can people treat people like this?!" I've screamed into the book multiple times.  They clearly do not value human life, something society agrees we all should do.

     But why?  Why is human life valuable?  Because we are made in the image of God.  We represent Him, and in Him is all value.  But most people don't understand that.  I'm really curious to hear how non-christians would answer that question...