two for the show

i've finally recovered from covid so i'm gonna list all the things i've been up to real quick, since i missed a weekly check-in!

( covid induced morbs )

i got out of my funk after new years eve, which was the day the last of my symptoms went away. i got a message from a friend asking me out to dinner, which surprised me because we haven't talked since early december. the day after that, i messaged some other friends to invite them to get drinks at a really fancy and expensive bar. these plans were made a month ago with three of my friends, but we wanted to wait until closer to the date to invite the last two people. we're not as close to them as we are with each other and we wanted the plans to appear more spontaneous to them. i sent the message while feeling bad about myself, so when he responded "i'd love to!" it felt really nice. i waited a long time to finally invite him because the youngest of our friends still needed to reach legal drinking age. her birthday was yesterday and we went to a karaoke bar and then had a slumber party at my house. one of our friends introduced us all to soju and we all loved it and finished a bottle together.

tldr for this week:

saturday: new years eve party
monday: art gallery with my sister
tuesday: birthday party (karaoke and sleepover)
thursday: dinner with my friend
friday: genshin impact in-person event
weekend??: drinks at fancy bar - date and time tbd
 

if only my entire winter break could have been this exciting.. ˚‧º·(˚ ˃̣̣̥᷄⌓˂̣̣̥᷅ )‧º·˚ i'm grateful that i have friends and that i can go out with them, but i'm allowed to be upset that i got sick!! school starts in a week, which is kind of a bummer but at least i'll be able to go to the gym again. hopefully i can meet some new people this semester. 

[job] divine vending machine

since my first bible study entry, i learned when you read the bible for the first time, you need to accept that you won't understand most of it. none of the bible makes sense unless you read all of it, because everything happens in the context of everything else.

after finishing the book of job, my sister and i were confused and bummed out: how could god let such a blameless and upright man be tortured for so long, just so god can win a bet against satan? my sister found a video about it on youtube and sent it to me, and that's when we properly realized that the bible is way too advanced for normal people to read on their own. here are the sources i'm writing about in this entry:

video: the book of job explained
videos by bibleproject: overview: job; the book of job;
website: what does job 2:10 mean?

you can watch these videos without reading job! they're easy to follow and they don't assume that you've read or understood job.

i already wrote about god's righteousness compared to human righteousness here, and this entry builds on that. a major theme in the book of job is humans trying to understand why god runs the universe the way he does. humans try to figure out the rules that he follows, so we can crack the code and make sense of things like suffering. it's complex though, and god has a universal vantage point. he understands so much more than we do. job's perspective is limited to his own tiny life, and only god is qualified to run the universe. we don't have the perspective to make assumptions about how god ought to do things.

( about the videos )

the concept of speaking against god is very interesting to me.. job spoke rightly about god, but job's friends did not. but job talked smack about god, and job's friends did not! it's not a sin to question god, or even to talk bad about him, if those are our honest thoughts. it's worse to lie to god and to force ourselves to follow something we don't believe in, or to fear that our faith will waver when we start asking questions. it is right and just to question god if we involve him in the process and do it through prayer. even jesus seemingly spoke against god when he said "my god, my god, why have you forsaken me?"