This has been the first week back to school for teachers. It's been a bit overwhelming but also I'm really excited to be teaching again...which is weird seeing as how last year was by far my worst year yet. But this is a new year and I'm excited to try and teach 3rd grade for the first time ever. It will undoubtedly require more nurturing out of me then I'm used to but I'm kind of looking forward to it.
I've been out of depression for a couple of months now and am still so thankful. It has truly been a blessing from God to be stable again and I hope I don't ever take stability for granted again. Last year I spent the whole year fighting depression and it was a really tough year, but this year I'm no longer depressed so I'm sure it'll go well for me. Depression is such a difficult thing to deal with, something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. But I'm finally over it, and couldn't be happier to be back at work.
Tomorrow is meet the teacher day, and my class isn't even close to being ready for the parents. Big surprise there I know. But hopefully I'll get it ready by 1:00 tomorrow so I can at least try and impress them and assure them that their kids are getting a good teacher this year. Honestly, I can't wait to start teaching, which just feels kind of weird to say after last year.
After school tonight I went running for the first time with the Sarasota Surge running club. Had a really good time, ran extremely slow, as in an 11:30 pace for 2 miles but still enjoyed myself. We did some core work afterwards so I enjoyed that also. They seem like nice people and it'll be good to expand my social circle a little bit outside the church.
Speaking of church, I've been really discouraged lately about pretty much everything that has to do with the church. In Dominican Republic the Catholic church covered over a site that was evidence that there was slavery there bc they said that there had never been slavery there. How many atrocities has the Church committed in the past. I know I have a tendency to focus on the negative in many areas of life, but I'm really starting to question the Church and it's role in the world. You look at the Church throughout the ages and all that we've done wrong in the name of Christ and it just sickens me. It's no wonder people don't want to come to Jesus since we're the ones representing Him. I look at the church in America today and just have to shake my head. I mean, what real difference are we even making in the lives of anyone outside of our congregation? Most of us don't know anyone living in poverty, and yet Jesus was close to the poor. We see Jesus in the least of these but a large part of the problem is that we've isolated ourselves from the least of these. We have 50-60 billion dollars wrapped up in church buildings and land in the USA alone. How ridiculous is that? Half the world lives on less than $2 a day and we have $50,000,000,000 in church buildings. Are you kidding me? How effective can that be? Churches start out small and then they get bigger and hire more staff. Their missions budgets either stay the same or shrink when it should be the opposite. How can we avoid that as a church plant? Maybe organized religion is nothing more then an oppiate for the masses. I would like it to be a fire starter that ignites social change but so many times it's the opposite. How can we do a better job at being Christ to the world around us? Because right now it feels like the devil is winning. We argue about systematic theology when people are starving to death. Rarely do we hear about global problems in church services. And we need to move past charity and move towards justice. I certainly don't have the answers but maybe the point is to start asking different questions, ya know?
