I have started three different posts in the last couple days, all that seemed important at the time I began writing. But after coming back to them later — when the distractions of life that took me away from writing were dealt with — they didn’t seem all that important any more and I no longer wanted to write about them. Ever had that happen?

My mind has been running in all sorts of different directions lately. School has been a major issue. I’m down to the wire (two weeks left to study) to take an exam worth 12 credit hours. I also start a class next Monday and another one in mid-July that will overlap each other and finish about the same time (which will amount to another 12 credit hours) creating twice as much homework and study as I’ve had up to this point. And I hate studying. I really hate it.

I recently ran across a folder of my school stuff my dad kept till he died. It had every single report card I got from Kindergarten to 12th grade. I was a C average student pretty much the whole way through. Even the classes I loved I only got Cs or Bs. The only classes I got As in were theatre ones.

Many teachers left comments like, "student is polite and friendly but daydreams too much" or "student is not performing up to her abilities." Both probably very true. School bored me most of the time and exasperated me the rest. My internal world, the one I created in my mind, was always far more interesting than the external real one. It hasn’t gotten much better. Oh, I’ve learned to curb my penchant for daydreaming, but frustration with study remains. My main encouragement has been to learn that everyone else in my department hated accounting too and didn’t do well in it (all have business degrees). It’s good to know I’m not the only one who so does not care about the proper way to list expenses on the cash flow statement.

My mind is also filled with thoughts from "Abba’s Child." That will require several posts of their own, so for now I will say that I am being challenged greatly by this book. It’s ideas are enticing, exciting, but they frighten me beyond words. It means living in an entirely different way, adopting a completely new paradigm. Fear of the unknown, and a strange fear of "losing myself" or at least the self I’ve always known, keeps me standing on the edge drooling at the sweet life I’m reading about rather than diving into the deep end.

Then there’s this HBO series I started watching last week. "Rome" delves into the goings-on of the Roman Republic, rife with civil wars, at the very rise and reign of Gaius Julius Caesar. It also shows the early life of a young Gaius Octavius, who later became Caesar Augustus; the emperor who ordered the census that took Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem so Jesus could be born in the City of David as was prophesied. It is a fascinating (and graphic) series about the machinations of power, lust, faith, duty, honor and love. As is so typical of me, as I watch I can’t help but think of a) how ripe the culture was for the love of Jesus, how much it desperately needed it!, and b) the events that followed — the birth of Jesus, his life and ministry, death and resurrection — and how amazing it is that God determined that all that would happen within the context of this newly forged, and finally at peace with itself, Empire. I watch as centurions, patricians, plebes and others talk of the Roman gods as if they truly believed in them. For so long I’ve believed them to be myths that it’s rather shocking to my mind to realize they truly believed in them. It breaks my heart! They did have Jews living among them, but they were slaves. Romans would have no more reason to lend credence to their One God than we do to lend credence to their many. So how, then, did God expect His love to be revealed to the Roman Republic? Except, of course, through a life steeped in it.

Which brings my mind back to the present, and how I must live each day as Abba’s child, steeped in the passionate love of Jesus if I ever hope to make a difference in this world. Watching "Rome" I think of all the ways the Roman Empire (and Augustus especially) prepared the world for the Gospel’s spread. Without the roads/infrastructure, the common languages and rulers, the commonality of the Empire, as well as the persecution the Empire brought upon Jesus’ followers, I don’t think the Gospel would have spread as quickly nor taken such deep root. I can’t help but wonder what God has quietly (or perhaps not so quietly) allowed to developed, perhaps even encouraged and helped along, in our world today that can aid us in spreading His good news to those who haven’t heard, or haven’t experienced through a life steeped in His love.

Yeah, my mind is very crowded these days…