The Shadow of God is, simply put, an amazing book.  If you have an interest in Judaism, I recommend it.  If you're not the scholarly nerd type like me, don't worry, it's historical fiction, which is something you really don't see much in literature on Judaism.  In 15 stories, it covers Judaism from the Babylonian exile under Nebuchadrezzar up to the destruction of the Second Temple of YHWH in the Roman War.  Big stuff

Life has been great.  Classes going well, workload isn't bad (c'mon, my homework is reading Paul's epistles and writting short abstracts on them, cuz that's a subject so foreign to me), getting to see Kara as much as can be expected.  I always wouldn't mind more, but I'm pretty sure that would be true regardless of how often I went.  Oh well.  Yea yea, laugh it up, this is me talking about that kind of stuff.

As a choice few know, I'm in the midst of a bit of a battle over what I'm gonna do with my life.  If anyone has any prayers, ideas, or outright Old Testament-style prophecies they'd be willing to offer, please do.

That book has me thinking about something.  It depicts the pious Jews as being, even in their humility, proud of being a nation wholly owned by God.  Better stated, they love it.  What zeal.  For instance, it narrates the old story of the men of Israel gathering to listen to Ezra read the law after the return from Babylon.  They then rush home to put into practice the next commanded holiday of the calendar.  In one scene, they take what shelter they can from a storm during the gathering.  While of course many of the details are conjecture, the point remains.  There are Christians who won't drive to church in the rain.  I'm guilty of similar stupidity, but please people, let's realize who we are.  We have been grafted into the family of God.  Start acting like it.  Though we have no physical homeland, our faith is a fulfillment of every promise and foreshadowing in the Scriptures.  We'll never be able to earn it, but try anyway.

In closing, I have a week until a certain holiday that involves lots of red and pink.  That means me thinking about sappy stuff.  I may need more prayer here than about the career stuff .

P.S. A message to guys: don't bother thinking too much about my good friend Abby.  She gets motion sick.