Lots of things going on, basically, I haven’t had much time to myself to process things over the past week. As always, I’ll write them out here so that I can get back to life.

Last night, I turned down an appointment to be a deacon. This deacon was entrusted with teaching, but also with training in righteousness. In other words, it was more than just academic study, there was an element of heart as well. I didn’t turn it down because I doubted my abilities. I also didn’t turn it down because of a lack of support of the church – I was one of the two obvious choices nominated by the congregation for this role. The reasons are more complex than that.

Largely, I just enjoy teaching the Bible and networking with other teachers. I do not enjoy being an administrator in any sense of the word. In many ways, I just want to be a ‘member’ of the church without being a ‘leader’ of the church. Being a leader requires more time than I have, especially as I want to focus on a more important priority, my fiancee. Like I said, it’s not that leadership is so much hard as time consuming. It’s that it’s not my full-time job.

More importantly, I feel it’s more important that a deacon is someone that is a bit more grounded than me. It’s not a lack of confidence, but a realization that I am not healed from my past. I am reactionary and the people of my church need and deserve someone that is not reactionary to every small article written by someone miles away. I’ll behave at MOAC 2004 and have a good time. I will probably write a lot about my experiences. However, the goal of this and any deaconate is the serve the people and demonstrate what it means to follow God, not what it means to stop being ICoC. Sometimes, those two things are the same, sometimes they are not: at the present moment, I cannot tell when they are not the same.

I am broken-hearted about it in a way. My tendency is to be angry at the things in my past life and blame them for taking one more thing away from me. The truth is that I am not entitled to be anything. I became a Christian expecting nothing but joyful at the promise of Heaven. That is all I truly need and I have been happy to be a Christian, especially over the past two years since arriving in Omaha. Being a family-oriented church, it has truly helped me to feel like family and to feel like I am not as weird as I perceive myself to be. The other truth is that I choose to give the things in my past power over me. Being a Christian is about overcoming and the book of Revelation covers that theme abundantly. It is more important to overcome than it is receive justice. Besides, as far as people are concerned, I have spoken to most of them. I wish that resolution in all cases was as easy as my resolution with Arthur Grayson. It hasn’t been, in part because Arthur is the only one that offered a sincere apology. In any case, my forgiveness should not be conditional because God’s forgiveness for me is unconditional. I truly believe that God will see justice done in my lifetime, but that is his business, not mine.

I am not cheated – I have a wonderful life in a not-so-busy city with a woman that loves me totally and completely from the heart. I truly have everything I need and more. In a way, I am glad to be able to focus on that for a while. Besides that, I have always been a proponent of National Get Over Yourself Day(tm) – God will preserve those that he has called, I am not the savior of the ICoC, the Omaha Church of Christ, or anyone else. I may serve as a deacon in the future, but now is not the right time for me.

Of course, all of this is subject to change.

More later, as always, there are good things going on that I didn’t have time to write about yesterday.