The Crooked Tree

I'm at the Crooked Tree once again and the AC is blowing and making me very cold. I'm listening to A Long December and thinking about how weird it is that I'm going to school. It's not weird that I'm leaving my family because I've already done that, and it's not weird that I'm leaving Dallas because I don't like Dallas. It's weird because I have friends here. Some that I want to keep and some that God just bumped me into for whatever purpose. And now I'm about to go to a big public university where I will actually choose my friends. And then, to further complicate things, there will be the ever-ridiculous substance of alcohol. And drugs too. And then there will be the issue of finding a church (which I think God has already resolved for me which is nice). So here's the deal: there are many things that I should probably be worried about or afraid of or at least thinking about, but I'm not. This past week I've said goodbye to most of my Covenant buddies and many of them seem worried about something that I'm not. Am I missing something? 

Over the past few months, as I've been thinking about the circles of friends I will be forging, I've tried to determine what a passionate follower of Christ would do, or what Christ Himself would do. But then I thought that we all have different callings in terms of missions and evangelism and such, so I prayed to God and read the Bible and listened to Him because I figured He's probably the best guy to ask. And now, with the spiritual guidance of the Crooked Tree, I have formulated a basic outline for the friends that I would like to make (which is funny because God will probably tell me that I'm wrong and He has some bright idea instead). 

I think that God wants me to have friends, close friends, really close friends, who are not Christians. I also think that God wants me to have close friends who are Christians, because without the constant sharpening fellowship then we become complacent, stagnant, like a pond in a desert. And, now that you have read my great epiphany, you might think "Wow Hunter you are an idiot every Christian knows that," or something like that. But this is why I am so excited about making non-Christian people my friends: I always grew up in a private school and I went to church and all of my extracurriculars were connected to the school or church so I didn't have have much of a chance to engage culture at a Christ-like level. But I don't feel that I was in the wrong attending all these Christians because I think it was a time of preparation and equipping. I was being armed to engage culture. And now the battle begins. With love, sacrifice, humility, selflessness, faithfulness, loyalty, joy, mercy, and grace.