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Road Trip… kinda’

I guess “Road Trip” connotes a spontaneous trip to a not-too-near place that isn’t exactly frequented by the road trippers, so my trip to Atlanta C5 (Campus Crusade for Christ Christmas Conference) wasn’t really a road trip, though we did drive five hours there and back. (And I guess “run-on sentence” doesn’t mean anything to me right now and it looks like I sort of inverted that sentence) Regardless, I had a great time in ATL and I’m glad I went.

Several people asked me “So, how’d you like Conference this year?” and what they meant was “Dude, haven’t you been to, like, five conferences before?” I had to explain to them that each conference has different personal significance each year because much of conference is recycled (in particular, the schedule and often the keynote speakers and topics for seminars and other activities) year after year. This year, I found that what I really wanted to “get out of” conference was the opportunity to spend time with my friends and sort of say goodbye before I head to DAL. Of course, I never actually said goodbye as I will be seeing most of those people for a few days at the beginning of their Spring semester, but the goodbye was sort of implicit and necessary for me to begin experiencing the closure I’ll need to make a clean transition to my life in DAL.

Still learning

And it was inevitable that I would learn something that I wouldn’t want to forget, so here it is: In both Matthew and Mark’s accounts of the Gospel, just before Jesus’ death on the cross, He says, “…My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” [Matthew 27:46, Mark 15:34] To me, this marks the point when God turned his back on Jesus because Jesus was covered with Man’s sin and He couldn’t bear to look upon it; it turns out Jesus was also pointing those “in the know” (his disciples and family and others that were familiar with the scriptures) to a specific Psalm that prophesied His death–this was Psalm 22. The Psalm gives a chilling account of what was to come for Christ in the last hours of His life and is a very compelling example of how Christ’s life fulfilled the writings of the Old Testament.

Segue

Reading the passages from Matthew and Mark reminded me of Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion, that is coming out near the end of February this year. I can’t wait to see it and am convinced it will stir up serious discussion about who Jesus Christ was and claimed to be. I wish I was going to be around UF during the premier, just to hear what people are saying and be a part of the many discussions and forums it will instigate.