Unfortunately, this time is now. This little sketch (courtesy of Chelsea Perry) accurately sums up the last week and the next 5 or so days of my life:

[Click the image for the full size]

But I guess it’s what I deserve since I won’t be working for 5 months.

Once the craziness is over, I will post some pictures from camp meeting.

As I’ve been telling people about my travel plans, some have a hard time understanding what I’ll be doing for 5 months.  No work?  No school?  Just traveling?  Why?  I usually respond half-jokingly, “Well, I have to be somewhere right?”  I admit that sometimes the thought does scare me.  Other times the thought is very freeing.  I will be spending time with a dear friend, diving into different cultures, seeking God and His will, and enjoying life away from the many things that try to run off with my soul.

It seems that this general aversion to (or discomfort by) “downtime” is apparent in many areas of our lives.  I find it ironic that hardly do we ever just kick back in our living rooms and simply “live”.  Most every American living room boasts a TV as its central focus.  When did the TV become a necessity for living?  Some of my best memories in Austria were the evenings when my host father and I would sit in the TV-less living room and discuss life over a glass of wine.  Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened much since.

This problem plagues the church as well.  It’s easy for us to live the Christian life on Sundays in the company of other believers.  But I think we often walk out the doors at noon and ask ourselves (rhetorically), “Now what?”  We stare dumbfounded at the dichotomous gap between what is and what should be.

All this to say, I hope to learn what it means to live in these “ordinary” times.