All your ways and all your thunder

"All your ways and all your thunder/
Got me in a haze running for cover/
Where we gonna go from here?
Where we gonna go from here?"
- mat kearney


This is me in my new waterproof jacket (thanks Dad and Diane!), holding up the Blue70 from many of you. There was a new deal where I paid half-price to purchase half of the suit. (Just kidding - it stretches.) For those of you who aren't swimmers, that will take me about 20 minutes to put on. It WILL fit. This upcoming weekend is our meet against Hope in Calvin's new pool (for a glimpse, check out this link and video.)
We just had an invitational in Chicago, in which I had a chance to get mowed down by the UAA swimmer of the week for her butterfly events. w00t.
Also, had a chance to negative split a 50, which nobody can really figure out how or why I do that. Dan, my coach, pointed out that most people have a velocity graph that looks like y= ln x (he may have used other words...) and mine looks like a y = 3x.

More on Learning to Pray like Jesus:

• Praying in Jesus' name has lots of significance. In those olden days, knowing someone's name held a lot of meaning and power. By praying in Jesus' name, it means we can tap into his power in the presence of God. It also involves "praying in the place of Jesus. By using Jesus' name we are declaring that the prayer we are voicing is what Jesus would pray if he himself were speaking." (Grenz, Prayer: The Cry of the Kingdom, 22) If I were to think of that every time I pray, I think my prayers would be radically different. Not omitting petitions for me, but certainly understanding the significance of weightier supplications as well.
  
• As for the Lord's Prayer, the first petition "hallowed be your name" does not just mean "You are holy" as I thought. Hallowed is a verb, meaning "show the holiness of" or "sanctify." It's what Bible scholars refer to as the divine passive voice, the same as what Jesus used when He told people to "Be healed." Because names hold power, the Jewish rarely spoke God's name, and so used the divine passive tense, intimating that God is the subject or active object in the command.
  
• The second petition in the Lord's Prayer is "Thy kingdom come." My professor pointed out that most people don't feel any urgency for Jesus to return, but that we really should be. The best humanitarian action we can take, more than donating time or money, more than praying for reduction of injustices, is to pray that the kingdom returns. Nothing will stop wars, unnecessary deaths and genocides, energy issues and more except for the return of the kingdom, the Parousia, Jesus' return.
• It's actually the combined knowledge of the two above paragraphs that is inspiring me to keep better tabs on the news around the country and the world, because then I'll know what to pray for and what the world needs relief from. If anybody knows of anything that might not be listed on major headlines, pop them in the comments here, please!
• Last thing - I heard a speech about how love transfers into actions. Nobody can get away with telling their wife, "Honey, I love you, believe me. But I am going to ignore our marriage vows. But really, I love you." And yet... what an allegory that is for our relationship with God.