I'm putting the recap of this past weekend on hold. I may get around to finishing it, i may not. If i do, i'll tell you so you can go read it. There are just more pressing matters to attend to. Today is Ash Wednesday, and with the beginning of the season of Lent, comes the opening of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ". Here on the Carson-Newman campus, the excitement level among many of those who are going to see this movie is bordering on that before an important football game. I'm sure that many of you also see this excitement in the people around you. The excitement about this film and the impact it very well may have on the Church is wonderful, because as the Church, we need to be broken from our slumber. But i fear that the excitement surrounding "The Passion" is in itself surrounded by naivity. You (and maybe we-i dont know if you'm going tonight-but if i can, i will) who are going to see this movie tonight must be prepared to be shocked. Shocked by the violence, shocked by the gore, and most of all, shocked at what it took to provide forgiveness for our sins. Mel spares no one in his depiction of the flagellation and the cruxifixion of Christ. To give you a true sense of the scale of the violence depicted in this film, Roger Ebert(who has watched more movies than probably anyone else in this nation), in his review of the movie for The Chicago Sun-Times, describes "The Passion of the Christ" as "the most violent film I have ever seen"(emphasis mine). But even with my warning and my fear, I cannot help but go to this movie(be it tonight, or tomorrow, or next week), and in so doing, urge everyone i come in contact with to go see it. Why? Because we must understand the cost that Christ paid, and the sacrifice that was made when God allowed His only Son to die on the cross. If we do not understand this, i fear that we will continue to go on living enchanted by the lie of cheap grace, and never knowing, never needing to take hold of true, costly, powerful Grace. And that is something we must not allow to happen.

  posted by Andy @ 2:11 PM

 
I'm writing these posts as if i had a computer on this retreat and were able to make posts, so i'm writing these in my dorm on monday evening.

So, I'm here in Pigeon Forge, sitting on the side of a mountain in a cabin overlooking Wears Valley. I'm up here with my girlfriend's youth group on a weekend retreat. This is the first in a series of posts detailing the happenings of this weekend.

I left from school at about 6 this afternoon(can you call 6 o'clock "afternoon"?), after getting a bite to eat at the high quality eatery that is the caf. I had already packed up everything, and had driven down to the caf so i could make a quick exit. So i pulled out of the parking lot and pointed the Chief towards I-40, and prayed that i would get there without being blown off the road(the winds were incredibly high today), and then i got on I-40, and discovered that going 75 was a whole lot more interesting than going 55. Especially with 40 mph crosswinds buffeting my very boxy SUV. After 10 harrowing minutes of wrestling with my Jeep, I reached the Pigeon Forge exit.

It's about 6:15 at this point, and the folks driving up from Maryville were meeting at Impact Fellowship at 6:30. You might be thinking..."Okay, why did you leave this early?" One word answers your question. Traffic. The mass of people going to Pigeon Forge and deciding to go on I-40 to do it get together in a mass convention(en masse...hehe)and decide, "Hey, when we almost get to Sevierville on Hwy. 66, we're all going to stop our cars and read the newspaper, or map, or something, and cause a giant traffic jam that it takes 45 minutes to go two miles in." Yeah, i know. I'm also being melodramatic. But that's why i left thirty minutes before Courtney's church. I finally get through Sevierville, and into Pigeon Forge, and then i'm able to hit Wears Valley. This road is the homestretch of one of my favorite drives, and i love it when i'm able to drive fast with nothing but the night in front of my headlights. I get to the turn off for the road that goes up toward the cabins, and realise that i have to turn left instead of right...because i'm not coming from Maryville. So i make the turn and head down this little country road, keeping close watch out for the next road i need to turn down. Up ahead of me, i see the road, which had been described to me as "going straight up". They werent kidding, and i was excited. Mountain roads are my favorite things to drive on. Especially ones that double back and change elevation quickly. This road scaled up the mountain like a serpentine ladder, winding back and forth as it ascended high enough to make me have to pop my ears. I got to the cabin, parked the Jeep in the driveway and went and sat on the front porch until the rest of the group got there. Amazingly, i had beaten them there by about 15 minutes.

So after everyone got there, we all went in and explored this huge cabin, and the first place i went to was downstairs, where they had the pool table...because i really enjoy playing pool. It's a game of angles, which allows(or maybe forces) my brain to get a little bit of a work out. Plus it also has a certain frustration factor to it(not unlike golf and bowling)that makes it both relaxing and addictive. We played around a little bit, and when i wasnt playing, i was sitting with my lovely girlfriend, enjoying the chance to be with her this weekend. We started up bible study after about an hour's break, and that lasted for a good couple of hours. After bible study, we had free time until about 1:00, so me and two other guys(Jed and Brent...who happen to be the other two non-single guys there) went outside to the hot tub and had a relaxing time...that is, until the girls went to the porch above us, and poured cold water onto us(oddly enough, none of it hit me), and then we spent the rest of the hour talking about how we were going to exact our revenge on the girls, and we came up with two ideas: freezing their towels, and koolaid. We also agreed to wait until tomorrow night to execute our plan(so i have to hurry up and finish typing this). After we got back in, we stayed up for at least a couple more hours and played pool and talked, and we're finally hitting the bed. More tomorrow.

  posted by Andy @ 4:13 AM

 
Well. I'm almost at the end of the week. Thank God. Just one more day of classes to struggle through, and i'm free. If you get a chance, drop on over to the songs page, i've got two new songs up that i haven't played yet, plus i now have the ability to field comments about the songs. So if you like it, say so. If you dont, say so too. I welcome criticism. It makes me better as a writer and an artist. Well, i'm going to get off of here so that i can go to sleep. Cause sleep is good. Goodnight, grace and peace to you all.

  posted by Andy @ 1:14 AM

 
I'm thankful for the backspace key(i actually just used it then). Without it, i would be fielding blows from scores and scores of hopelessly offended people who would have been left without defense from a whirlwind of ill-thought words that have had no time to be analyzed. But i'm also thankful that we dont have a backspace key to instantly correct our misdeeds and misvocalisations. Cause we learn so much from them, that we really cant see the effect until we're far enough away from the fact to look back and see how far we've come. We cant miss the forest for the trees. Sure, you gotta have trees to have a forest, but one tree? It's only a rather large, leafy headstone.

  posted by Andy @ 12:15 AM

 
My body was right. I went to bed fully aware of a deep throbbing pain in my left knee(curiously, that's the one that doesnt pop out of joint), and thought: "Shoot. It's gonna rain. A lot. Sure enough, my body was roused enough by the ambient light in my room to look out the window and go, "Hmm. It's raining. A lot." And by a lot, i mean buckets of cats and dogs. I immediately thought, "ahh...i dont wanna screw around with that." So i went back to the glorious haven of sleep instead of being cold and wet on my way to church.

I finally woke up at about noon, and walked into my brother's bedroom only to have him tell me that Texas was trading Cap'n A-rod to the...redsox? No. I would have been overjoyed and been leaping up and down and doing cartwheels in the basement(now that's a dangerous proposition...a 6'4" man doing cartwheels in the house. not a good idea.)if that were the case. But no. Happieness was not in my immediate future, because A-rod went to the MFY's. (yankees for those who arent sabe) But i walk upstairs to get on the computer to substantiate the information to find that the rest of my family took the same advice i gave myself: stay in bed.

  posted by Andy @ 1:13 PM

 
So. It's more than about time that i post. Cause it has been a while, hasnt it? At the moment, i'm just sitting here looking over some notes for a Politics test i have tomorrow morning, and talking to people on the internet. Is it bad when it's Tuesday(or wednesday, as the case may be), and all you want is for it to be the weekend? Oh well...i dont care. I slept past supper tonight(again), and really didnt want(or need) to have ramen 4 straight meals in a row. So i went to Hardees. Oh yeah. It's been so long since i've been there, i had almost forgotten how good their Thickburgers are. Incrediblosity. Oh yeah.(that's twice i've said that...probably not the last time.) And i'm not even mentioning the curly fries. Dang. Oh yeah, (that's three)promotional dealie. There's a new song on the songs page, check it out.

I find i'm being pierced to the heart more and more by hymns. Thankfully, they put the sacrifice of the Cross into words that i can understand. I wish that i had a grasp(or maybe a lack of a grasp) of the wonder of the grace of the cross. The fact that our Savior died for us, even though we stood against him, profaning his name, yelling at the top of our lungs to crucify what we should be crying to save. We cry as in unison with Caiaphas, "Let his blood be on us and our children!" And though we dont have any idea what we say when we say this, it happens. The blood of Christ is upon us, and because of it, we have life to the full.

  posted by Andy @ 1:32 AM