Campus police cruised up on me while skating in a parking lot, and informed me that skateboarding was not permitted. "Really," I commented. He reiterated to me that this was university policy. "Okay," I said sadly. I almost forgot and rode away on my skateboard, but caught myself, picked up my board and walked back to my van. I'd been skateboarding in that parking lot occasionally since I started going to school there 3 years ago and while I always avoided security because of the common knowledge that police harrass skateboarders, I never knew there was an anti-skateboarding policy in place. Regardless, it's understandable. Skateboarding is inherently destructive. We take chunks out of concrete and bricks and mortar when we ollie onto or grind our metal trucks over curbs and such. Playing rock and roll is also inherently destructive. A little bit won't hurt you but in the long run it impairs your hearing. As one who expresses exuberance through both skateboarding and hard rock, and as a Christian, it has occurred to me to consider my liberty to practice such noisy activities. We do, afterall, follow the one who "a bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out" (Isaiah 42:3). I've since concluded that living is inherently destructive. To exist at minimum is to consume resources, create waste, and inevitably to inconvenience someone else and occasionally break things. Furthermore, a sedentary, risk-free life will almost always eventually be more destructive to the self than skateboarding will ever be to a sidewalk. An isolated life of never offending anyone would be far more detrimental to the soul than noisy rock music with a message intended to provoke thoughts of God would be to ringing ears. "Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him" (Colossians 3:17). Just don't skateboard on campus.

It's curious when people point out that they have a black friend. If ethnicity isn't an issue, why then the need to justify yourself by bringing it up? This is a joke between Gilbert and I, and we exchanged glances and smirks while yet another customer pointed out his own disregard for so-called racial barriers in an attempt to, I suppose, make Gilbert feel more welcome. This customer was a retired high school teacher and college professor who favored math and science, and Gilbert and I were changing some glass on his house. "When we die," he asked, "what color will our souls be?" This was what he confronted racist people with to help them see past their shallowness. While I expect, based on the prophet Daniel and much of the NT, that one day God will resurrect our physical bodies and we won't be disembodied souls for long, and furthermore while I don't think God made a mistake in designing the spectrum of pigment variations displayed in the human race, I felt that the man's point was mostly rhetorical and generally good, so I didn't dispute the technicalities with him. I think I did, however, ask him what colors our souls were, just for fun. I asked him if he believed in Jesus Christ, and he said he did, that "It's only logical," but then went almost directly into an espousal of evolution, insisting that the bible didn't contradict the theory. "There is no reason that any educated person shouldn't accept evolution." I wasn't being much help to Gilbert at this point. With the customer's permission, I pointed out that we understand from Genesis and Romans that death is the resulting curse of sin, specifically Adam's disobedience in the Garden of Eden. So how, I asked, do we account for the generations upon generations of death, killing and suffering through natural selection which evolutionary theory demands to have occurred before Adam and Eve could have existed as they are presented in the creation account? At this, the professor embarked on a two or three minute recounting of Jesus' parable about the men who'd received varying amounts of money or talents, at the end of which he asked, "What was the question?" I reminded him, and he concluded his monologue with the explanation that Genesis is a parable not unlike the one he'd just rephrased, and finally ending with the connection between the differing talents of the parable and the differing levels of scientific prowess and educational opportunities of people today. I sensed that I was being patronized. He asked me what I believe about creation and evolution. "I believe God," I said, "and I believe that what He said in His word is true." I expect that when I stand before Holy God, it will really be better for me to have given Him the benefit of the doubt on world history. Surely He won't chastise me with something like, "Why didn't you believe what your teachers told you? You should have known the Bible wasn't literal." "Abram believed the Lord, and He credited it to him as righteousness." Genesis 15:6

Ernie was holed up in his house in Africa and running out of food and water because of all the political turmoil and violence outside. He is a missionary. He bought me an old book, one that had been a great resource to him, called Defense of the Faith, and it has been an invaluable reference source for me over the years. I had a conversation with Ernie about living the straight and narrow life. For instance, the things he learned in seminary, he said, were worth cutting off his long hair. I pointed out, however, that he had not at all settled for the conventional life. He'd gone to live in Africa, afterall. I have long suspected, and expected, that a life of close obedience to Jesus would be any life but typical. The paradox, I have found, is the stability and consistency and lasting contentment that have accompanied a life of being no longer conformed to the world (Rom 12:2). While He keeps me ever mindful that I am not to rely on things or even people, because they are fast to come and go, He has also been patient and gentle and careful in many of the ways He prepares me for what lies ahead. Hearing about Ernie being in some peril is a stark reminder to me, even as I enjoy the cityscape from the bar on my screened-in deck, that our safety and security are not guaranteed. Chaos and genocide feel not nearly so far away as I look at the note Ernie wrote inside the cover of the book he left me.