Plans to Give You Hope and a Future

Llgp, in response to my last post, asked me: “Did you forget about your Monday Philosophy test or did you just think it would be fun to see what effect sleep deprivation would have on your grade point?”

O ye of little faith—for the benefit of you and every other reader, I aced that test. So no, I did not forget about my Monday philosophy test. In fact, I read/skimmed my notes on Sunday night, and had already been paying—GASP!—actual attention in class. So I knew stuff pretty well. I was worried for a bit I’d mixed up some of the identity theory, but I guess I didn’t.

And also, I felt it would be good to include some of the fruits of my labor in this posting—so I’m putting up an image that got scanned in Sunday night, made into a separate image either Sunday or Monday. Unfortunately I had to use the GIMP on this one to get it down to size—Blogger frowns on anything above 50kb. It’s the huge honkin’ cathedral at St. Mary’s College of California, where I went for a Lasallian Leadership Conference last year. If De La Salle people look closely they’ll see the adults from the De La Salle trip in this picture, on the far left.

My big question regarding the file sizes I ended up with is this:

When I scanned these in, about four photos per scan seemed to yield about 200 or so kb per scan. So four photos = 200 kb, so you’re thinking one, once they’re split up, should be about 50 kb. But when the photos are split up, into smaller sections, they yield upwards of 300 kb. You’d think, just logically, it’d be more like 50 kb. Oh well. Maybe it’s the way they’re being saved? I am saving in a pretty high-quality JPEG format—higher quality than the initial scan, probably. But the quality I’m saving in is “100” whatever precisely that means, and the “average” (at least according to the GIMP) is “85.” Go figure.

Two days till the end of summer session. Then one last Philosophy paper to write before Saturday, and I’m done with my first semester of college (yes, this does count as a semester. So while I won’t be a fifth-year Senior, I will be a three-semester Freshman.) One of my friends is having a birthday party soon and is leaving around mid-August. It’s crazy stuff. The thing this summer really has me wishing for is more time. Just more time to spend with people, to get to know them, to not take for granted that the people I’ve known these four years are just always going to be there. Obviously, taking that for granted, if and when I did, was nothing short of stupidity.

Some people whom I know from De La Salle are coming to University of Portland in the fall. That’ll be nice. The ones living on campus are all in the same residence hall as I am. That’ll also be cool. It means there are people I’ll be able to keep in touch with regularly, and that’s always a good thing. But the people from church are all going off to other Universities, two of which are out of state and one of which is Oregon State, down in Corvallis. And of course one of my very best friends, J.S. Morgan / kokosmasher, is headed to George Fox University this fall, so you’ll get to hear how his adventures down there are going.

I’m thinking of the verse in Jeremiah which says “`for I know the plans I have laid for you,’ declares the Lord, `plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” Unfortunately, even though people have been telling me this verse all my life, I don’t know the reference off-hand. Let me grab my small Bible and look it up. Okay, here it is. It’s Jeremiah 29:11. Interesting some of the stuff below it—often this verse gets yanked right out of context. The next two verses: “Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:12-13.) Fun. That last part hits hard; I have a feeling that if I ever hear a sermon on that one, it’ll be one of those "ouch" ones.

“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” Which, of course, I’ve never done really well. It’s good to be reminded of all the times we fight God instead of truly seeking God. It’s good to be reminded that we seek and find not halfheartedly, but when we put our all into the pursuit of God.