I’ve been buried of late. School is kicking my butt right now. In a good way, and I’m loving it, but still… I’m not a good student and it’s at these times that it shows. I’ve also had the opportunity to reconnect with some old friends, both through email and by phone. It’s been awesome to catch up on their lives, and them on mine, and share all the amazing things God’s been teaching us in the intervening months/years. But it’s also taken a lot of my time. And then there’s Harry. Harry Potter. But I’ll get to him in a moment.

With all my crazy busy-ness, my house had fallen into disarray. Dishes stacked up in the kitchen, the bathroom looked like something from a horror film, laundry piles were scattered everywhere — my good intentions to get all my remaining loads done "tomorrow" notwithstanding — and science experiments  were growing in the frig. I need a house elf. And my house is maybe 1,000 sq feet, if that. I don’t know how ya’ll with those big houses do it. At any rate, the possibility of my sister coming for a visit kicked me into gear the last two days and I can now declare, as the medium in the movie Poltergeist did (as she wiped her hair off her sweaty forehead), "this house is clean." I can now go back to my regularly scheduled activities — until the mess gets too, uh, messy, once again.

You’d think I’d learn to keep things up once I got them clean. Maintenance, I think normal people call it. My sister used to try so hard to teach me to "just spend 15 minutes a day doing one chore, and by the end of the week you’ll find you don’t have much work to do at all."

Yeah, right. Did she not live with me for the first 18 years of my life?? Who did she think that was in the bedroom across the hall? That girl (me not my sister) never cleaned like that, either. What makes her think I would do that now?

Which brings me to Harry Potter. Unless you’ve been living in a cave on the Lost Island, you know that the seventh and final book in the Harry Potter series was released Saturday at 12am (or Friday at midnight, however you like to look at it). My book arrived, as Amazon promised, early Saturday afternoon. I, however, was running quite late and had to set the book aside until I got all my homework done (can I tell you how much that killed me to do!). I have rarely put the book down since. Even so, with all the interruptions (see first and second paragraphs above) I’m not done. I think that will happen tonight.

Every night has been a delicious reading fest filled with excitement, drama, wonder, humor, sorrow and joy. The television has not gotten this little attention since I got TiVo last year. And I haven’t missed it. Every waking moment is consumed with Harry’s adventure, even when my mind is supposed to be on the marketing chapters I was reading, the paper I’m supposed to be writing even as I write this post or the notes on my latest accounting assignment. I even dream about Harry. Monday morning I was Harry (in my dream, silly); Tuesday I was Dumbledore, traveling backwards through time to help Harry (don’t ask me, I just dream it). Wednesday I was watching Harry and this morning I was Harry again. Crazy stuff.

Why can’t I be this obsessed with Jesus? Why aren’t I this obsessed with Him? He has been more to me, given me so much more than J.K. Rowling and all her characters ever could. He sits with me when I cry, stands by me when I run, stays by my side and talks with me even while I sin and loves me no matter what I do. I can’t say that for anyone or anything else in my life. So why do I choose TiVo’s recorded viewing suggestions over God’s reading suggestions? Why do I choose to spend time exploring Harry’s world instead of exploring my Lover’s heart? I’ve spent more time this week reading Harry Potter’s last adventure than I have reading all of God’s amazing ones written in His Word all year. —Yeah, let that sink in a moment. Because it’s an ugly truth. — As Ron Weasley says, I "need to sort out [my] priorities."

When I was preparing to go overseas I kept coming up against the idea of a "life verse." I’d never had one before, and didn’t know if I could choose one at that point. However, that’s what people kept telling me "ought" to go on the front of my prayer card. Other people had verses about the harvest being plenty or about being light to the world. But for me only one passage kept coming back to my mind. It’s the only one that I’ve been truly passionate about over every other passage; the one that captures my heart and causes me to cry out, "Yeah, me too!" I decided that even though it’s not all "evangelistic" and stuff, it is my life verse; the one I want to be able to say, even if I didn’t achieve it, I fought like hell to. In the quiet of my home this week, with the television off and even my iPod sitting quiet and idle, this verse has quietly wormed its way back into my head, echoing into the depths of my soul and, like an enchanted wand, illuminating and bringing warmth to the darkest places of my heart. I think when I finish Harry tonight, I need to pick up a different Book and explore another Life of adventure. My own.

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. — Phil 3:10-11