Belated New Year
Hmm… I haven’t updated this since before Winter break… Anyway, a brief summary of break is wanting.
The day after return home for break, I set off with several home church friends to Mammoth for snowboarding. Seeing snow and feeling the icy breeze was refreshing and invigorating, until I got cold and long for the warmth that our cabin provided. There was great fun and fellowship with the 17 people in our 12 people cabin. Occasional chaos livened the cabin from time to time during the 5 day trip.
After staying home for a few days, my family went to San Diego for a weekend, enjoying the lively Old Town, the world-famous zoo, the educational museums, and the renowned Dead Sea Scrolls. That was a great time with family. Praise the Lord!
The weekend right before school started again, some UCLA friends of mine and I drove up to the Bay Area to visit some old friends, some whom we haven’t seen for two years. A great celebratory feast over at Hotpot City ensued. Ahh… the memories…
Christmas celebrations are always fun, yet sobering. With the commemorative jubilance over the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ comes the weighty thought of those we know who are still at odds with the holy Creator of the universe. “For the wage of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23), and salvation is in Christ alone, through faith alone; there is no other way. Eternal life or eternal death, there is no middle ground.
Now that school has started up again, I’m actually looking forward to the exciting things this quarter. Continuing my ministry of leading a small group, I really enjoy studying from 1 Corinthians and then teaching it to the guys. The details and theological truth in the text are amazingly encouraging and convicting to say the least. And being able to invest in the lives of these guys is both a joy and a challenge. There is still a lot of things I need to learn and areas that I need to grow in. But the Lord is with me to the end, supplying the strength and grace that I need to proceed. What a responsibility, yet what a pleasure!
Grad school is starting to get hard. As the quarter progresses, the majority of the course load becomes reading papers, doing presentations, and working on projects. That is quite a change from undergrad days, where homework assignments usually consisted of problem sets. Yet somehow I am still managing a pretty flexible schedule for meeting up with people and attending events. The worst is yet to come…
Soon it will be Chinese New Year, so get ready to welcome the year of the Rat! That is all for now…