Long day yesterday. I got up at 4:30 a.m. and got to bed around 1:30 a.m. I flew to Tallahassee on a 6:35 a.m. and arrived back at the airport around 12:30 a.m. Long day, and pretty wild to think about traveling from one side of the country, and back again in such a short amount of time, for only a couple of meetnigs. Sure beats my original plan of staying over and catching a 6:35 a.m. flight back.

Had some time to chew on the theme of Tuesday's PS.42 while sitting on the plane. It revolved around the fact that as Christians, we are Aliens (1 Peter 2:11). The topic annoyed me a little bit, and I had to spend some time figuring out why. When I've heard this type of message in the past, it typicaly revolved around separating ourselves from the world around us completely. That wasn't the message here, but it took me a little while to get beyond that and let sink in what was actually said. I get so annoyed when Christians try to create their own sub-culture isolated from the world, yet I know we're called to be set apart. There's a balance there, and I think I err on the side of not wanting to be associated with the the stupid Christian Sub-Culture (Christian Fiction, Books, Movies, Bracelets, Stupid Church Signs, etc) because it's embaressing to me. I'm trying to figure out how I can be set apart aside from all this junk, and I think it's by loving people differently than the rest of the world. From there I started dwelling on how I do at Loving others differently than the rest of the world. My natural tendancy is to look at all the ways that I suck at this. I then heard the voice of Brad (or God) who typically encourages me when I get to hard on myself in these areas, reminding me of the ways that I do well in this area. I'm going to watch myself over the next week, and see how I'm doing at loving people - both externally and at a heart level. Should be interesting.