A Night and a Day

Sebastian and I stayed out late last night on the beach, mingling with the other tourists and stuff. As is prone to happen, I got into a conversation about Christ with one of the girls there. She had a really strong personality, so I felt pretty free to speak boldly.

She believed in things like "fate" and "harmony" but not in an actual personal God. All of the miraculous stories in my life, she attributed to either coincidence or explained them away. I challenged her logical irresponsibility at believing in a relativistic worldview and she responded pretty emotionally without actually contending the points I was making. She finally got offended when I started insisting that she knew the Truth, but was doing everything in her power to put herself in the driver's seat. I guess it's scary to think that some one else knows more about you than you do. She had also been turned off by religion because of her childhood... a circumstance I seem to run into a lot over here. This does not help my love of organized religion.

So after reflecting on our conversation, I appologized for my aggressive tone. It's not a way I usually talk to people now, but it's definitely how I used to. It was interesting to analyze myself and realize that I hadn't really been acting out of love, but out of a sense of competition. Bummer. So I repented and learned something, and suffered the consequence of a limited group of other people to dance with for the rest of the night. I think she told her friends I was a jerk or something. She was probably right.

Today I finished reading the Old Testament! That's been a work in progress since August I think, but the 4.5 hour bus ride from Sihanoukville to Phnom Penh provided the perfect occaision to get through the last stretch... I need to write more about that some time too.

This morning was nice... the beach was cool and breezy and it was a good day to leave. It had just started to rain when we were packing up. So we said goodbye to the throng of beach vendors, mostly cute little kids who'd just as soon play with you as sell you something... although they always come back to the "Mista, buy one?" It's nice being back in Phnom Penh tonight though.

God is doing His healing work on me and I'm feeling the effects of it. My mind is being renewed and it will not be long before God is at the center of my life once again. Consequently, I'm smiling a lot more lately.