concerning how such a small world could ever manage to be so completely full...

yes, it's been awhile. yes, i work too much. yes, i'm aware of that. yes... yes. it needs to stop and it will eventually. ...but for now, His grace is sufficient.
i started saying that because i had a bad attitude about the job. i still do a lot of the time. and i don't want that to affect my work. i say "my work" ...not because i particularly like the job, not because i feel overly responsible for what goes on, not because i was hired... because those aren't always true. i say "my work" because it's work that was entrusted to me. as surely as my stint last year in N. Ireland, as surely as my time at school, as surely as wherever i go in the future. i don't have to like it. some days, i really hate it. but when i remind myself that "His grace is sufficient," He reminds me that i don't do it for the administration -though they get good work out of me- and i don't do it for the salary -oh, how little i do it for the salary- . i do it because He's entrusted it to me for however brief a time -and i spend most days praying that it be a very brief time indeed- and that's not nothing. which is the hardest part to believe sometimes.

(prior to saying this i would state that i'm not given to sentimentality, as anyone reading this should know... and i fully realize that only one Man has ever been/will ever be perfect... you're all very logical. i'm aware. keep your logical shots at this next paragraph of my writing to yourselves. you know what i mean by it, don't make me qualify myself. ;) consider yourselves duly warned.) i'm in awe of the friends i have. the people God's granted me to know. i doubt very much that they recognize -or would admit, even if they did- how unusual they are. gifted in such great, if often vague, talents and bent for massive, if yet unknown, successes. -so much so that it sometimes makes me wonder what the hell i'm doing where i am, but then i stop (see above)-. not one of them is willing to settle. you can't move in the world today for stumbling over someone who gave up a dream, or the search for a dream. not one of them values himself more highly than he ought. it's sounding downright Biblical now and heaven forbid we should think Christ meant what He said. and not one of them would accepts these traits as his own. so everywhere *i* turn, i can't move for stumbling over a representation of Christ. it's beautiful. it's challenging. it's inspiring. it's infuriating. -which of course means, i wouldn't trade it-