My Life in Fort Wayne - Mondays

It's kind of hard to believe, but I've already lived in Fort Wayne for 6 whole months. As with living anywhere else, I've developed a certain rhythm of life, and because most of you have no idea what I actually do in Fort Wayne, I thought it would be a good idea to do some short posts of what I actually do every day.

So hopefully, every day this week, I'm going to be posting a short blurb of what that day normally looks like.

Monday - Summer League Day

7am - Monday Mornings - Worst mornings ever.
Monday mornings are difficult. Sometime it's because I sleep too late on Sunday, trying to prolong my weekend. But really, most of the time it's just because it's Monday morning. I've developed this weird, unproductive routine that happens most Monday mornings. I get up, eat some breakfast and do my quiet times. Then I go lay down and take a nap. That's right, folks. I take a half hour nap half an hour after waking up ...at 7:30 in the morning. I usually end up getting to work a little later than usual, but the nap is totally worth it! I actually didn't take a nap this morning, and I've been feeling uncharacteristically tired all day today. Coincidence? I think not!

8:30am - 6:15pm - Work
Not much to say here. Work is work.

6:30pm - 9:00pm - Ultimate Summer League
For those of you who don't know what summer league is, it's basically just like IM sports, where you are on set teams for a set number of weeks (10, for us), and you compete every week against whoever you are scheduled to play. At the end of the season, there is a playoff tournament, and teams are seeded according to their regular season performance. Some of the teams in our league are pre-formed, and some of them are draft teams (meaning, team captains drafted players).

I'm on a draft team, and I'm pretty sure that our team is the best draft team, despite having a mere 3-5 record. Around half of our team is inexperienced and haven't played any level of organized ultimate, so we had a pretty steep learning curve the first few weeks. But we've played pretty damn well for being a draft team. We had the most difficult regular season schedule in the entire league, but we still managed to score double digits in all but one loss (games are to 15). We lost our last playoff game and are out of contention for the championship, but it's okay. We actually beat a 4-1 team in the first round of the playoffs, which was awesome.

So I actually wrote this entire post (except for this part) beforehand, and I just got back from my summer league game. HOLY CRAP. WHAT A GAME. We had already beat this team 15-8 in the regular season, and we didn't like them. And we still didn't like them. They called a lot of travels and ticky-tack fouls on us. They were actually 0-4 in our division. But they jumped off to a 8-3 lead. We cut the lead down to 2, at 10-12, and we finally tied it up at 13-13. Games are win by two, and we started trading points, with us taking advantage and then them coming back and tying it up. With hard cap at 17, they took the last advantage at 16-15, and we tied it up again making it 16-16, universe point. We lost universe point. But oh man. What a game. I actually cramped up a few times in that game, I stretched out, came back to play, and finally cramped out at universe point again. So did our best handler. But damn. What a game. Two and half hours. Universe point. Both of my calves are super tight right now, and I can barely walk, BUT I FEEL SO ALIVE. It's been a while since I've felt this deep competitiveness come out from inside of me, and I love it!! I was planning on taking a picture of us playing to post on here, but I completely forgot. So please accept this crappy picture of us trying to figure out our team cheer.

Red Team!!!

9-10PM Go Home, eat, watch a little TV, read a little, shower, sleep.
There are few things better than some Meijer-brand Flavor Ice after a long ultimate game.

Best $2.99 I've ever spent

My Life in Fort Wayne - Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays

It's been a while, Barnes and Noble.

I went to Barnes and Noble the other day to look for a book to give to my Little Brother as a birthday gift. I had already bought him a Calvin and Hobbes collection from Amazon, but I wanted to also get him something more "productive" like an interesting history or science book, because he's mentioned before that he really likes to learn. 

Walking through the store, I couldn't find the science section for the life of me, as the entire store seemed to be either recent bestsellers, teen fiction, or non-book products. I eventually gave up my quest for the science section and just asked one of the employees there, and she led me to this hidden corner of the store, a crevice with only two bookshelves worth of books. Many of the books there were by Dawkins and Hawking and dealt with topics relating to science and religion, sparking my long-neglected intellectual interest, so I momentarily paused my gift shopping to go see if there were any philosophy books I could take home to read. Again, after trekking through the store many times, I couldn't find the philosophy section. Asking the attendant to help me again, she led me to a literally waist-high, half empty bookshelf. This was the philosophy section.

I'm convinced this is an accurate representation of the Barnes and Noble I visited.

I tend not to be one of those generational, temporal snobs that goes "OMG KIDS THESE DAYS. FAITH IN HUMANITY LOST. EACH GENERATION GETS WORSE AND WORSE. I DONT WANT TO LIVE ON THIS PLANET ANYMORE", but I would be lying if I said that I wasn't a little sad for the state of our society.  I don't care much what kids read, because they're just kids. But it was really weird walking through the store and seeing so many adults browsing the teen fiction sections and sitting down reading near those sections. Maybe this all has to do with the relatively lower education level here in Fort Wayne.

On a somewhat more positive note, it was nice walking through a bookstore again. Browsing in an actual bookstore is so much better than browsing an online bookstore like Amazon. It's nice to actually see how thick a book is, to pick it up and feel its weight, and to flip through the pages. This may sound kind of weird, but it was a nice feeling being able to once again "judge a book on its cover" (along with its back cover and infolds). Amazon is great, but it's often impossible to tell what a book is like and if its good or not, even from reviews (there are a lot of dumb reviewers out there).

After an hour and a half of wandering around and looking at my own stuff, I finally found a book to get Jobe. It's a non-fiction book on ninjas that was surprisingly heavy, with a lot of drawings and illustrations and stuff. It was pretty cool, if I can say so myself.

Justice for Penn State

The NCAA just lowered the boom on Penn State. Sixty million dollar fine, 4 year bowl ban, all 1998-2001 wins vacated, and a reduction of 20 scholarships per year for four years [src]. For some reason, it feels too soft, too harsh, and just right all at the same time.

The $60 million fine, post-season ban, and scholarship reductions feel just about right. The University, the "system" that is responsible for the coverup of these horrendous, perverse actions will suffer massive, mainly financial, losses. We're hearing about decommits from football recruits, and I wouldn't be surprised if general enrollment plummets these next few years. It may be a long, long time before PSU as a university as a whole recovers from this.

The vacation of wins from 1998-2011, 112 wins in total including six bowl wins and two conference championships, seems a bit harsh. The intent of the vacation is clear - it's a straight shot at Joe Pa's win record, dropping him from first in wins to 12th. This aim at Joe Pa is warranted, but hugely unfair to the players that played in those 14 seasons, who had nothing to do with the coverup. It's unfair to the fans, who witnessed the wins first hand. I've always been a big opponent of vacating wins, as it's completely retroactive. If there's one thing this whole Sandusky/Paterno fiasco has taught us, it's that you can't change the past, which I think the NCAA is trying to do.

But for some reason, this all still doesn't feel like enough. The people really responsible for this haven't received their due punishment. Joe Paterno has the refuge of being dead, Sandusky is still alive in some prison somewhere, and others responsible for the coverup haven't even charged criminally yet. There's part of me that wants so bad for Joe Pa to be alive to face the music, to take the stand, to suffer further public humiliation for his failures. The taking down of the statue isn't enough. The renaming of the library (which hasn't happened yet) isn't enough. And let's not even get started on Sandusky. Lifetime in prison for him isn't enough. Execution even seems merciful for the man who raped little boys and made them perform oral sex on him. My stomach turns just at the thought of it.

These sanctions are a good start, but I can't help but feel like justice hasn't yet been served, that the students and former players are being punished too harshly while Paterno, Sandusky, and the others involved in the coverup aren't being punished enough.

Justice can never be fully dished out in this life. We can take comfort in knowing that Paterno and Sandusky will one day have to answer to their Maker, and will have to answer the God of heaven and earth, Righteous Judge, the Creator of the broken little boys, face to face. Thank God He is a God of Justice.

Joe Paterno and the Depravity of Man

Less Dreaming, More Prayer

"It's a great thing to want to do great things for the kingdom of God. However, it's a terrible thing to want to be great in the kingdom of God." - RC Sproul

I really don't know if other people are like this, but I daydream a lot. I'm not talking about the "Secret Life of Walter Mitty" sort of temporary complete detachment from reality, but when my mind wanders or when my eyes are closed and I'm trying to sleep, I drift off into my dreams.

My imaginations are exactly what you would expect from a young guy who struggles with pride - they usually consist of me being some sort of hero. Sometimes it's me being a hero in sports, where I hit some game-winning shot or make the game-winning layout. Other times, I defend some beautiful girl's honor and win over her heart. As I've grown spiritually and started thinking much more about the kingdom of God, many of these imaginations often become imaginations of the great things I would do for God.

Some of the more "dangerous" and obviously sinful imaginations are easier to recognize and suppress immediately. These are those imaginations of being some famous pastor or a sacrificial missionary-martyr. They could often also be as simple as doing something good for the Church and getting a lot of praise and recognition. These sorts of dreams, though extremely tempting to me, are easy to recognize and fight.

It's the imaginations of more imminent works for God that often prove more problematic, especially when God brings something to my mind that I should do that would actually be pretty admirable. For example, upcoming meetings and conversations, or some evangelism or invitation that I'm hoping to make often bring this sort of imagination/dreaming/speculation to my mind.

Recently, as I was driving, God brought one of my old friends to mind that I thought I should encourage to return to church when I got home. In itself, this was a very good thing that I was excited to do. However, I sort of drifted into imagining my conversation with her, and what it would look like. I imagined the different things she would say and how I would respond. Then it sort of hit me. What was I doing? It's good to be prepared for any conversation, but what was the point of allowing my imagination to run wild with simply speculating at the conversation that would happen? If I actually cared about this friend, shouldn't I be spending the time to pray for her, as I know that it is only God who will actually be able to change her heart? Is this dreaming as opposed to praying a symptom of doing good works out of pride rather than love? Am I more concerned with winning God points than I am with the restoration of someone's soul? The more I thought about it, the more I realized how much more time I could spend praying as opposed to imagining myself doing something "good" for God.

Prayer matters. Prayer works. I know it. I've experienced it. I know God is sovereign over all. But still I always seem to fall back and rely on my own effort, on my own wisdom and eloquent words instead of the power of God (1 Cor 2). Instead of drifting off into dreams of how I'm going to evangelize to some specific individuals, I need to lay it all in front of God, the only one who can actually do anything about it. Dreaming won't do any good. But prayer will.

[Thinking about it, this "Less _______, more prayer" seems to be a good formula in general. Less complaining, more prayer. Less self-reliance, more prayer. Less fear, more prayer.]

Not getting anything out of sermons?

How's your obedience been recently? I've found in my life that when I am actively battling sin and doing my best to live blamelessly that I usually get the most out of Scripture and sermons, and it is when I'm steeped in sin, my conscious isn't clear, and I'm waffling spiritually that my Bible reading most often feels dry and sermons are hard to sit through. The following quote and book excerpt were especially poignant to me as I've thought and struggled through recent spiritual "funks." I know the "I don't get anything out of sermons" sentiment is commonly felt, especially with us young people, so hopefully this can be of some encouragement to you, as it has been to me. 

"God does not grant fresh revelations until there has been a complaince with those already received." - A.W. Pink

An excerpt from The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

"'Only those who obey can believe, and only those who believe can obey... The truth is that so long as we hold both sides of the proposition together they contain nothing inconsistent with right belief, but as soon as one is divorced from the other, it is bound to prove a stumbling block. 'Only those who believe obey' is what we say to that part of a believer's soul which obeys, and 'only those who obey believe' is what we say to that part of the soul of the obedient which believes. If the first half of the proposition stands alone, the believer is exposed to the danger of cheap grace, which is another word for damnation. If the second half stands alone, the believer is exposed to the danger of salvation through works, which is also another word for damnation.

At this point we may conveniently throw in a few observations of a pastoral character. In dealing with souls, it is essential for the pastor to bear in mind both sides of the proposition. When people complain, for instance, that they find it hard to believe, it is a sign of deliberate or unconscious disobedience. It is all too easy to put them off by offering the remedy of cheap grace. That only leaves the disease as bad as it was before, and makes the word of grace a sort of self-administered consolation, or a self-imparted absolution. But when this happens, the poor man can no longer find any comfort in the words of priestly absolution - he has become deaf to the Word of God. And even if he absolves himself from his sins a thousand times, he has lost all capacity of faith in the true forgiveness, just because he has never really known it. Unbelief thrives on cheap grace, for it is determined to persist in disobedience.

Clergy frequently come across cases like this nowadays. The outcome is usually that self-imparted absolution confirms the man in his disobedience, makes him plead ignorance of the kindness as well as of the commandment of God. He complains that God's commandment is uncertain, and susceptible of different interpretations. At first he was aware enough of the disobedience, but with his increasing hardness of heart that awareness grows even fainter, and in the end he comes so enmeshed that he loses all capacity for hearing the Word, and faith is quite impossible.

One can imagine him conversing thus with his pastor:
"I have lost the faith I once had."
"You must listen to the Word as it is spoken to you in the sermon."
"I do; but I cannot get anything out of it, it just falls on deaf ears as far as I'm concerned."
"The trouble is, you don't really want to listen."
"On the contrary, I do." 

And here they generally break off, because the pastor is at a loss what to say next. He only remembers the first half of the proposition: 'Only those who believe obey.' But this does not help, for faith is just what this particular man finds impossible. The pastor feels himself confronted with the ultimate riddle of predestination. God grants faith to some and withholds it from others. So the pastor throws up the sponge and leaves the poor man to his fate...It is now time to take the bull by the horns, and say: 'Only those who obey believe.' 

Thus the flow of the conversation is interrupted, and the pastor can continue:
"You are disobedient, you are trying to keep some part of your life under your own control. That is what is preventing you from listening to Christ and believing in his grace. You cannot hear Christ because you are willfully disobedient. Somewhere in your heart you are refusing to listen to his call. Your difficulty is your sins." 

Christ now enters the lists again and comes to grips with the devil, who until now has been hiding under the cloak of cheap grace. It is all-important that the pastor should be ready with both sides of the proposition: 'Only those who obey can believe, and only those who believe can obey.' In the name of Christ he must exhort the man to obedience, to action, to take the first step. He must say: 'Tear yourself away from all other attachments, and follow him.'...The traunt must be dragged from the hiding place which he has build for himself. Only then can he recover the freedom to see, hear, and believe."

I wouldn't mind the Heat winning the championship

I'm okay with Lebron getting a ring. There. I said it. Some of my fellow Lebron-haters may feel a little betrayed (sorry, Tim), but my heart just can't hate Lebron with the passion that I used to. I'm still pulling for the Thunder to win, but my disdain for the Heat has really faded these playoffs. Here's why.

Lebron has been doing everything his critics (like me) said he couldn't do. 
Lebron is driving hard to the hoop, drawing contact, and making free throws. He's playing well all game, every game.  He's showing up in the fourth quarter. He's closing games. He's kept his flopping to a minimum. He's playing with that look in his eye that we didn't think he had, with the will and desire to win we all thought he lacked. Even though he's teamed up with Wade and Bosh, with Bosh injured and Wade sucking, there's no question that Lebron carried this team to the Finals. Lebron has proven to me that he's grown a pair, and what I considered his biggest weakness - his mental strength - has improved drastically.

Shane Battier is a stud. 
I've always loved Battier because he reminds me so much of myself - tall, dark, and handsome. Well. He's the player I hope to be like. A great defender, with a decent offensive game. Actually, I've always wanted to be more like Jason Kidd. But whatever. I'll settle for Shane.

Chris Bosh is making a huge impact that's going largely unnoticed. 
In my opinion, Chris Bosh deserves a ton of credit for the Heat's last two wins. His offensive rebounding has absolutely killed the Thunder, giving the Heat all those second shot opportunities. He's playing his heart out, and for that, mad respect.

I really dislike the Thunder play style, and don't really think they deserve a ring. 
One of the biggest reasons I wouldn't really mind the Heat winning the championships, is that I kind of really don't want the Thunder to win it. I don't like their style of low-assist, high-turnover, iso-every-possession basketball. I don't like how much of a jumpshooting team they are. In my mind, I think the Thunder winning the championship would be too easy. It's not because they didn't play good teams (they probably had the most difficult road to the finals), but I guess just much more prefer seeing wily veterans win championships, not young athletes with questionable basketball IQ win. Also, I don't like how Westbrook plays. Or how he dresses.

So that's that. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm no longer a Lebron-hater. I am now merely a Lebron-disliker.

[As an aside, I'm now a Wade-hater. Flopping, crying for calls, not showing up in games, flagrants, and being an all-around douche. No thanks. Sources: 1 2 3 4 5 6 ]

Best double flop ever.

Trusting Your Teammates

There's no worse feeling in sports than feeling like you can't trust your teammates. I just got home from my third summer league game, and we are now 0-3. The first two games were decently close, but we just got blown out 15-6. The main problem with the build of our team is that we have very few true handlers - 2 guys and 1 girl. On a 15-person team, this isn't nearly enough, especially when there are 40 mph winds out there like there was today. Half of our team are new to ultimate, making it even more difficult to move the disc.

Today, we had a bunch of first/second-throw turnovers. It's a horrible feeling running out to set up the offense for cuts only to turn around and see the disc dropped right in front of the goal-line. The motivation to run back on defense in these situations is hard to come by. It becomes increasingly difficult to keep churning and fighting at my own role as cutter when we make these crippling mistakes. The mistakes start eating at your brain, and I found myself getting more and more frustrated with my team, which not only made me less and less encouraging, but it also really hurt my energy level out on the field. Conflicting temptations battle withing me - one to quit on the team and give up, and the other to be a hero and overstep my role on the team (even though  probably wouldn't do any better).

It really all leaves me in a very weird position. I'm a cutter. That's what I'm best at, and that's what I like playing. Despite the drops, our handlers are still better handlers than me. But a cutter needs someone to throw it to him, and when our handlers aren't playing well (or aren't in the game), it's hard for me to play my role as a cutter without getting disappointed, especially when I run hard and make great cuts but never get the disc. Due to both selfish frustrations and obvious all-around poor performance, I found the trust in my teammates slowly eroding over the span of the game. And this is probably the worst mindset an athlete can succumb to.

When you don't trust your teammates, your head gets way too big and you think you're better than everyone else on the team, and you try to do too much and screw the rest of the team over. You get frustrated and bring your team's morale down with a bad attitude. You lose motivation to play hard because you feel like no matter what you do, it won't make a difference. I need to learn to continue to trust my teammates even when I'm tempted not to and be a positive encouraging force, not a negative one.

Sorry this post was so all over the place and ramble-y. I'm extremely tired, but just decided to share my frustrations with the world. Here's a picture of me looking fabulous playing ultimate.

Don't I look FABULOUS?

Mockingjay Book Review

I just finished the 3rd book of the Hunger Game series, and it under-delivered more than any book I've ever read. I'm extremely disappointing in this final book, and just thinking about Katniss makes me angry. I get overly ticked off by incompetence and foolishness (which is something I need to work on), and the stupidity of Katniss set me off the entire book. Allow me to just go on a little angry rant about it.
Again, as before, don't read any of this post if you haven't read the books and plan to (I wouldn't plan to. Not worth it). Here's my review of the first book, which was also pretty disappointing...but definitely not as much as this one.

Katniss is an idiot...and becomes more and more of an idiot as the book goes on.

This is a theme that has actually been present in all three books, but the other two have had some saving grace to end the book. In the first book, Katniss gives us the satisfaction that she has cheated the system, and in the second book, Katniss is the spark to a revolution. In this book, Katniss' idiocy doesn't lead to any greater good. Throughout the entire book, I couldn't stop thinking to myself, "What is wrong with you? Don't be an idiot? Are you seriously this dumb?" All in all, Katniss is a stereotypical teenage girl that no one likes - overly emotional and impulsive, irrationally rebellious, selfish and dramatic, etc.
I gave her a pass for it in the beginning when she was still recovering from the concussion, but she still continued being a selfish, foolish little bi...girl who managed to screw everyone over with her crappy attitude. Every single decision she made in the book was a foolish one. Here's a short list of "wtf is she thinking" moments I had when reading the book.

• When she decides it's a good idea to run off, get Boggsstomped on the face multiple times, and attempt to bring down the entire Capitol Air Force with her cute little arrows.
• When she's in the underground bunker, after she's explicitly told to remain calm because she's the example for everyone else, goes absolutely hysterical when she can't find her sister. The reaction is understandable, but come on. Is there no better, less panic-inducing way to go about this?
• When she decides to run towards the armed enemy Peacekeeper and make some BS speech about peace while reaching out to him. DO YOU LACK NO SENSE, WOMANGIRL?! She totally deserved to be shot. Too bad it didn't do more damage.
• When she devised her own plan to steal the Holo and go prancing off herself to go assassinate Snow. What an idiot. I mean seriously. This is the worst idea ever. And maybe I missed it, but it also seems like the author never really spent the time for Katniss to narrate to us the development of the plan in her head. She just sort of drops in the "I need to steal the Holo" line and then builds it in little by little. The reasoning behind the plan really escapes me. Did she think that Coin wouldn't let her kill Snow? Did she think that the rebels weren't going to win? Why in the world did she feel the need to take this into her own hands? Here, we have Katniss again thinking she's the center of the world, and the betrayal and physical harm towards those around her are disregarded by her, as long as she gets what she wants.
• When she goes to talk to Haymitch, he makes a bad joke, and she storms out and cries. Anyone else see a fifteen year old drama queen?
• She approves of the last Hunger Games. Maybe it's just me, but I was really surprised that she would back this. Again, her spirit of revenge takes over any rationality she had. [Aside: this issue of the last Hunger Games seems passed over though. There really doesn't seem to be a point in it.]
• When she shot Coin. Seriously? You're telling me that you risked the dozen lives of your team, most of who died for your little fantasy mission, to kill Snow, and yet you kill the person you enabled you to get your revenge instead? I get it. Coin may have killed your sister. But you've killed the new leader of your country based on a short conversation you had with your arch-enemy, the most cruel and trecherous person you know? What in the world is wrong with you?!

The whole middle of the book was pointless. It neither added to the plot or developed any characters.
 
I'm talking about the whole deal with Katniss leading her team to go assassinate Snow. What's the point of it? How would the story be any different if they just sat in the camp and waited for the rebels to take over Capitol, which they were bound to do, given their control over all the other districts? The entire section seems unnecessary, and just something to fill pages and get a little "excitement" in the book (reminds me a little of car chase scenes in movies). Other than Katniss seeing Prim die, there's just nothing in that entire section that adds to the plot. The team doesn't really contribute to the rebel efforts in any way, and they end up in a spot they could have been had they just stayed at camp and (this is unthinkable for Katniss) obeyed orders. The characters that die we don't really care about or know well, and what happens to the characters doesn't give us a deeper understanding of who they are (besides Katniss being a moron). The only scene from the book that added any sort of depth to the characters is when Katniss listened in to Gale and Peeta talking about her at night. Otherwise, nothing really significant happened in the character development. Another thing. Doesn't it seem way too easy that the three main characters are on this mission together? Maybe it's just me, but it just makes the entire mission seem so much more contrived.

The threat of Coin's authoritarian leadership is woefully underdeveloped.

This complaint of mine is similar to the one I had about the first book, when the conflict that the author set up between Capitol and the districts was basically neglected for the second half of the book. In the first third of the book, we see the development of this weird tension between District 13 being totally controlling and almost even oppressing of its people, and Katniss and the other people from District 12 need to adjust to their new controlled lifestyle. The question that inevitably comes up is: If Coin and District 13 overthrow Capitol, is this what life in the districts will look like? Will all people need to follow a strict schedule every day for the rest of their lives? Will they only be portioned a specific amount of food, with severe punishments for stealing? Are the people fighting to overthrow one tyranny only to be ruled by another? We've seen this so many times in history. The people are disgruntled with the tyranny of their government, so they sign on with a new revolution, which turns out to actually be more oppresive and cruel than the first one. See China. See Cambodia. District 13 seemed very much like a Communist state. It was probably necessary for them to survive in the hard times, but I really wondered if Panem was going to actually be worse off with Coin in leadership.  As in the first book, this whole issue is basically brought up and then ignored for the rest of the book. The author touches on it again towards the end, with Snow telling Katniss how bad Coin is. Katniss goes on to kill Coin, which a naive reader may assume is an act for the best of Panem because of Coin's authoritarian leadership, but it's quite obvious that Katniss was basically still insane at that point and killed Coin because she thought that Coin killed Prim. So in the end, the whole issue of Coin bringing in an even worse government is drowned out by what Katniss thought was Prim's murder. Really disappointing.  

The ending seems forced. 

Every aspect of the ending seems forced. Katniss going crazy. Katniss killing Coin. Katniss choosing Peeta. Katniss remaining crazy. I said it earlier, but I'll say it again. The end of the book simply didn't seem to fit into the rest of the book. Katniss' mind, which the reader sees through, is completely muddled. The end of the book is like a blur, making it really hard for me as the reader to actually get any closure on. The twist with Katniss killing Coin seems to be a contrived twist, as the author cops out from dealing with the whole Coin being president issue because she's reached her page limit. There wasn't a real twist in the entire book, so I guess she just decided to put it in. It really just seems so incredibly forced, and not something the rest of the book built to. The entire book seemed to be building up to Katniss killing Snow. That was her mission. It was even her mission after Prim was dead. And she goes and kills Coin? Come on.  

But fine. Katniss kills Coin. Fun twist. Then...she gets aquitted?! Are you joking me? If you want to end in some tragic sort of way and not have it be a "fairy tale", fine. But Katniss just killed the new President of the country, and the only punishment she gets is that she's sent home? What?! The whole chapter with her in prison thinking about suicide was pathetic and pointless, and the author is obviously trying to get a more melancholy ending to the book and not a "cheerful" one, but again, she cops out of that. The ending is still a fairy tale ending. Katniss is living at home, marries the man she always wanted to, has three beautiful children, and they live in peace. Sure she has nightmares, but it's hard to call that an unhappy ending. Maybe this is just my sense of justice coming out. Katniss deserved to die. Not just for killing Coin. The entire series was basically about how the things she did caused everyone around her to die. Her rashness and foolishness throughout the entire series were only minimally punished. There was no justice for her.  

My own alternate ending

Here's my better ending, given that Katniss still assassinates Coin: Katniss gets thrown in prison, but she's confident that Haymitch and Plutarch will get her out of this situation, as they have previously both privately voiced concerns about Coin being in power (they didn't really in the book, but let's just assume they did). After some time in prison, she comes out to be sentenced. As the sentence is read out loud, Katniss crumbles to the ground and starts screaming hysterically. "Katniss Everdeen. You are sentenced to play in the final Hunger Games. Should you survive, you will be granted freedom." Katniss is shackled and carried away. Katniss slips deeper into insanity. She can't go through it again. She can't face the mutts again. She just cant. In the few days leading to the last Games, Katniss' emotional breakdowns become less frequent, and she begins to consider her long journey there, how she will be the first and only player to play in three Hunger Games. She realizes the irony of being sent to the Hunger Games that she herself instituted. She thinks about Gale and Peeta, still unable to make a decision. She thinks about Prim and her mother, both of whom she has let down. She thinks of Haymitch, who has always backed her up and saved her, but who could only bargain for her to play again in the Hunger Games, as opposed to an instant execution. The day has come, and as Katniss steps on the ring to bring her up to the arena, and as she looks around at the surroundings and her opponents, she has a moment of clarity before the madness of the Games begin. In the games of hunger, you win or you die. Prim was always right. Vengeance and retribution may bring blood, but compassion and forgiveness are what bring healing (or something to that nature). Then the horn sounds. The 76th and final Hunger Games have begun. 

That's just how I would have ended the book. But I'm not a best-selling author, so whatever.  

Book Review - The Hunger Games

Northpark Prayer Meetings

I've been going to the weekly prayer meetings at my new church for a few weeks now. It's a lot different from any prayer meeting I've ever attended, and God has used it as a huge learning experience for me.

Very Small
First of all, it's tiny. Northpark is a 300+ person church, but the prayer meeting averages around 8 people. That's less than three percent of the church. I remember someone (I think it was Sara) saying to me that she read in a book, "You can tell how popular the pastor is at a church by how many people show up on Sunday morning, but you can tell how popular Jesus is at a church by how many people show up at their prayer meetings." I don't want to jump to conclusions about the church or make unfair judgments on the spiritual lives of others, but I've gotta admit that the small number of people at the prayer meeting was quite disappointing to see.

Very Elderly
Not only was the prayer meeting small, but all of the members in the prayer meeting were very old. Apart from me, the average age of an attendee at the prayer meeting is probably 70-75. The youngest person there aside from me is probably around 60 years old. I must admit that in my pride, I looked down on the old people, but I've been learning to love and appreciate the elderly. But it just doesn't seem right that the prayer burden of the church is placed on a few elderly of the church. I don't really know how else to describe it. It just doesn't feel right that the only people going to prayer meetings are the elderly.

Very Unfamiliar
What we pray for in the prayer meeting is also quite different from what I'm used to. The majority of the time is spent praying for those with physical ailments and the families of the recently deceased. Considerable time is also spent praying for the country, as these older folk are extremely conservative and upset that the US is no longer a "Christian nation." We haven't prayed for the global church and we rarely pray for the salvation of the unsaved. Being in these prayer meetings and praying for these things weekly has taught me a lot. In my pride, I was quite annoyed at first that we didn't pray for "things that matter." But like my parents tried to teach me earlier, God cares about everything, not just what I consider to be "important things."

Very Edifying
Praying with these older people really has taught me a lot. The love they display each week for those they are praying for is to be imitated. But what has surprised me the most is the childlike faith of the people I'm praying with. One of the older men has bone cancer, but when he prays, he just gushes praises and thanksgiving. It's absolutely amazing. The solid faith of walking with the Lord for more years than even my parents has been alive is a joy to observe. But again. It's absolutely humbling how childlike their faith is - how they come before God completely convinced of his power and sovereignty. How they don't feel the need to use big words or loud petitioning or eloquent speech. They just pray with faith. It's amazing. I feel like such an immature young man with them...with my subconscious need to "pray a powerful prayer", if that makes any sense.

On the Magnitude of Space and Time

Our questions are never completely and fully answered. Growing as a Christian, there are questions that I face that I find difficult to answer in different chapters in my life. For a good portion of my college career, the main question that bothered me and nagged at me was the question of natural disasters. Why would God allow them to happen? This is probably because of the various natural disasters that happened in the recent past - Katrina, Haiti, South Asia, Japan. For these doubts and questions, I usually have head answers that I already know. If someone asked me questions on my own doubts, I could answer them. But deep down, I have yet to fully come to peace with those answers.

For me, the question/doubt that is nagging me right now is really hard to describe and articulate, but I'm going to try anyways. It has to do with the bigness and vastness of the universe. Basically, given the enormity of the universe, is it not arrogant to say that of all of the universe, the millions of stars and lightyears, God especially loves humans so much that He sent his son down to die for us? Now I know Romans 8, and I know that God is here to redeem all of creation, but I can't help but think that it all just seems so human-centric. Why would God decide to plan things such that something as insignificant in the universe, such as human beings, have a special ability to communicate with him? Why would God choose to bless a single life form with his special revelation on a tiny planet in a tiny galaxy in a single universe, to which there could possibly be parallels?

And put space aside for a bit. What about time? Time just rumbles on. Humans have only been able to communicate via writing for a few thousand years. What will the gospel look like in another 10000 years? Or 1,000,000 years? Will humans even be recognizable then, or will some sort of natural or man-made evolution have happened? Space is vast, it is but finite. Time, however, is a number line that never ends. Will people a million years from now be able to understand that God came as a man and died on the cross for them? Will not Christianity seem more and more bogus and insane as time passes? Will the Bible avoid becoming completely obsolete as our forms of communication shifts completely away from text?

These doubts have been in the back of my head for a while, and I think about it every so often, but reading Isaac Asimov's short story The Last Question really makes it all come back again (I highly recommend reading it - it's pretty mind-blowing). We often forget just how small and insignificant we are when measured by time and space. Atheists, like Isaac Asimov, seem to have a significantly more firm grasp on the magnitude of the universe and the finitude of humanity. But this insignificance in time and space also leads to a certain hopelessness and meaninglessness. It's all sort of hard to describe. In a way, I think it's beneficial to periodically ponder our smallness in comparison with the universe. How much smaller are we in comparison to an infinite God that holds the entire universe in the palm of His hand! How much more remarkable is it that he loves us! Who is man that You are mindful of him?! This love is a great mystery, and one that I can't wrap my head around, and I doubt I ever will fully, in this life or the next.

Even though I find it incredulous that a God would care about a single species on a tiny speck of a planet in the enormity of the universe (and the space of all possible universes) and I find it unbelievable that such a God would invade time at such a precise time as to interact with humans that are more or less experience many of the same things I experience, I hold on dearly to the empty grave. Though I have not yet in my head reconciled these things, I know that Christ rose from the dead. Christ rose from the dead! I do not know why this universe was allowed to exist, and I do not know if there exists universes parallel to this one. I do not know what the human race will look like ten thousand years from now, and I do not know when time will end and Jesus will come back. But this I know - that Christ was crucified, died, and was buried, and on the third day he rose again! It is on the resurrection that my faith rests. And if he didn't, we of all men are to be most pitied.