anyhow. i think my favorite part of the week is going to church. I wasn't going to go yesterday cuz i had so much stuff to do. but i changed my mind at the last minute. glad i went. Everything was so awesome. First of all we sang "Blessed" which is one of my favorite songs. So i kinda knew it was going to be a good day. Actually i've noticed that to enjoy a service i have to know at least one of the praise songs. Maybe that's why i didn't like my freshman year fellowship and churches. but if you sing a song i like, it's almost impossible to have a bad message. I guess that's why they put the singing at the beginning of service.
P. Ulmer usually sits up on stage with the choir and the p&w leaders. The camera is scanning the stage and sitting next to P. Ulmer on sunday was Jesse Jackson. I was very surprised. but then again not really cuz the pastor is friends with almost every body who is somebody. So the Rev. Jackson said a few words. he compared the history of blacks to a symphony. And how now we're in the fourth movement which is the fight to have access to capital. I forgot most of what he said, but i just remember this statement "Money grows on trees, If it's planted in money mud." I thought it was very funny but it made me think alot. Read this interesting article about jesse here .
There i was at the corner debating whether or not to walk home or wait for the bus. I saw a lady holding a bible so we started talking. It turns she's been unemployed for over a year, has four kids, no high school diploma and no car. And she shared that sometimes she feels so embarrassed, that she has no high school diploma and she can't even support her family finacially. My response was God's not ashamed of you. it's the other fellow that's the acuser of the brethren. I kinda wanted to cry cuz i wanted to help her so and i felt like i had nothing to offer her but words of advice and bible verses. Very powerful but i also wanted to give her something more substantative. In a way i'm glad the bus didn't come cuz it gave me a chance to talk to her.
Anyways this conversation just reminded me about this weird thing about my Christanity and bible knowledge. I don't feel i know the bible very well. Many times i'm hesitant to even talk about the bible. and i always say stuff like, i don't know where in the bible but there's a verse that says... It's pretty bad cuz when i was a bible study leader, my "students" would always provide the scripture reference as i was talking. But the thing is sometimes i'll start talking and as i try to encourage somebody and i feel like i'm simultaneously encouraging myself. I always walk away from conversations like that with a better perspective on my life. So although i don't know that many verses, when i start using them in a conversation they become more true, more entrenched in my mind. Now my mom and i will sit around talking about leviticus and numbers and stuff. We had this huge discussion about numbers 12. Now i can never forget the first two verses of number 12 which talks about miriam and aaron's complaint against Moses because he had married an Ethiopian woman. My mom couldn't believe i'd forgotten them in the first place.
Yesterday i dropped by bro. off at the bus stop at 6:05. i saw his bus coming and turned around and went home. Today on our way to the bus stop he told me that the bus driver had passed him up yesterday. I was very enraged. It totally pisses me off when bus drivers do that. I just can't understand why they think a person would be standing at a bus stop at 6:05am in the morning if not to catch their bus. Do people usually just go outside and stand at a corner that early in the morning? So today, the same bus driver tried to pass him up again, same bus stop, time and everything. My little bro. wasn't having it though. He ran into the street in front of the bus, forcing it to stop. As the bus pulled away, i could see my bro. talking to the bus driver. I was so proud of him for standing up for himself.