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dac99a
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Name: Daniel
Country: United States
State: Texas
Metro: San Antonio
Gender: Male
Interests: Christianity, Psychology, Guitar, Mountain Biking, and other outdoor activities.
Expertise: Assessing Psychological Disorders
Occupation: Learning Disabilities Speciali
Industry: Education
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  crazydc8
Member Since:
10/12/2005
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| Many people have differing opinions on the meaning of justice. Some seem to think it is their right and responsibility to administer justice on others. Some may see the need, yet feel no obligation to act upon it. Still others may not at all see the need to seek justice at all.
Justice, in the broad sense means to me that a person gets what they deserve. That could mean getting punished for committing or crime, or getting rewarded for working hard. I think most people tend to think only of punishment for wrongdoing. A person can hold the office of “justice” in which that person decides upon the punishment of those who do wrong. Either way, justice is not always served in our broken world. Crimes go unpunished and hard work goes unrewarded. Despite this, most people seem to have some innate sense of justice that we believe should be served.
In Psalm 107, the Psalmist discusses how God seeks justice. The picture is painted of God making fruitful the land in which the inhabitants are good, as well as drying up the land of the wicked. He increased the size of the flocks and families of those in whom he found favor, yet he decreased the number of the flocks and families of those whom he wanted to humble. Either way, God is administering justice to humans based on their behavior.
So what should a Christian do with the idea of justice?
First of all, I think the love of Christ should prevail over any of our needs to seek justice in the world. We should focus more on fighting in injustice for those who are oppressed or unrewarded than on punishing those who do wrong. There is plenty of that form of injustice to keep one busy for an entire lifetime.
Second, we must learn the lesson from Psalm 107 that our God seeks justice himself, even without us. When we want so badly to repay that person who did us wrong, we must remember the words of the Father in Deuteronomy 32:35 in which he says “vengeance is mine, I will repay.”
Lastly, we should praise God for administering justice. We administer justice very poorly, leading to all sorts of oppression. Yet his perspective is much larger than ours. He sees the heart and knows all the circumstances of everyone involved. No attorneys or arguments needed. | | |
| This morning I have an amazing opportunity to experience nature. I am not on a mountainside or a beach, but I cannot help but recognize the beauty of what is around me. The temperature is not yet hot, yet the sun is peering through the trees. I smell a hint of sweet cedar in the air. The trees rustle in the breeze. There is a squirrel in the tree who seems to be expressing displeasure about something. The birds call out. In a little while I will drive and enjoy the rolling hills of the Texas hill country. What a privilege!
Aside from the beauty of this place, I can experience the glory of the natural world in myself. I was able to wake up this morning, I could move and think. I could see, hear, and touch. All of these things mean that my body has at some level achieved the fragile balance of being functional. These are miracles of nature many people experience, but most take for granted.
Verses 21 - 30 of Psalm 107 mentions seeing the works of God in his natural creation. We live every day in a wondrous world of simultaneous simplicity and complexity. What seems simple may be complex, and vice versa. Yet we seldom take time to thank God for his creation, or to recognize his power as the creator.
So I propose today that you take a minute and savor the glory of God in his creation. Look around you at his handiwork. Imagine him creating the smallest and largest of the physical world. Think about the amazing process that occurs every time you take a breath. After you savor, thank God for doing this work for you. | | |
| This morning I have an amazing opportunity to experience nature. I am not on a mountainside or a beach, but I cannot help but recognize the beauty of what is around me. The temperature is not yet hot, yet the sun is peering through the trees. I smell a hint of sweet cedar in the air. The trees rustle in the breeze. There is a squirrel in the tree who seems to be expressing displeasure about something. The birds call out. In a little while I will drive and enjoy the rolling hills of the Texas hill country. What a privilege!
Aside from the beauty of this place, I can experience the glory of the natural world in myself. I was able to wake up this morning, I could move and think. I could see, hear, and touch. All of these things mean that my body has at some level achieved the fragile balance of being functional. These are miracles of nature many people experience, but most take for granted.
Verses 21 - 30 of Psalm 107 mentions seeing the works of God in his natural creation. We live every day in a wondrous world of simultaneous simplicity and complexity. What seems simple may be complex, and vice versa. Yet we seldom take time to thank God for his creation, or to recognize his power as the creator.
So I propose today that you take a minute and savor the glory of God in his creation. Look around you at his handiwork. Imagine him creating the smallest and largest of the physical world. Think about the amazing process that occurs every time you take a breath. After you savor, thank God for doing this work for you. | | |
| Like everyone else (I think), I do not always make the best decisions. A friend and I on a ski trip once decided we were going to hike up to an area called the “Jaurez bowl.” A bowl is a generally peak that goes over the tree line. I am a pretty experienced skier, and it was an area I had actually skied before.
As we stammered up the bowl carrying our skis, we passed a peculiar sign that said “If you fall you must Self-arrest.” As long as I have been skiing, I have never heard such vocabulary. I have subsequently learned that to “Self-Arrest” is to be able stop yourself if you are cascading uncontrollably.
As we stared off the precipice of the “Juarez” bowl, we were not scared, just disappointed. We felt like this run was not long enough to be worth the effort, so we moved on. We thought “surely there is a better place further down.” As we kept going, the slopes (logically, since we were skiing downhill) kept getting shorter, not longer. Eventually we reached the end of the road, it was either go down or go down.
So we went down, even though we were not really able to see the entirety of the run we were embarking upon. After skiing down about 30 feet, I discovered there was a problem with this run. There was a line of boulders which were blocking the way. It was not a cliff, so we could not jump off of it. The run was too steep for us walk across and there was not enough snow to ski over it.
We both reached respective impasses on the rocks. I just did not know what to do, neither did he. We sat there for a minute waiting for some revelation that would point us to the correct path. When no revelation came, we prayed. We prayed that God would help us come out alive and we meant it. I cannot remember the last time I prayed such a prayer. All I knew was that there were no options that looked good. As we sat there, we lamented about our poor decision making skills. We could have gone down the steep fun bowl like everyone else, but we had to be rebellious and try for something different.
In verses 8 -14 of Psalm 107, the Psalmist thanks God that he saves us from our own bad decisions. That is pretty awesome because people (and ski mountains) are often less forgiving. When a person makes a bad decision, we often want them to “self-arrest” or suffer the full extent of consequences. If God did that, we would all be sunk. There have been numerous times in my life when God has not let me wallow in the consequences of my decisions. Instead, he has picked me up and brought me back.
With God’s help, we did make it down the hill that day without having to “self-arrest” from any uncontrollable falls. That is a really good thing because I am pretty sure I could not do it. So I can thank God that he has the power to “arrest” me from my uncontrollable falls. He knows that my decisions are not always perfect, but he keeps rescuing me. | | |
| On My Path
It seems that I am always on my own path, usually a different one than most people. Many people have their lives mapped out, but it seldom works out the way that we want. Yet they still take expected paths to expected places. I am trying to take a different path, one that seems to have quite some resistance.
I am trying to get into a Ph.D. program in the field of psychology. This is my second year to try doing so. Last year I went through this grueling process and applied to Texas A&M University. I drove down for the interviews, did my best, but did not get selected. The programs are very competitive. This time I applied to 3 programs. One of them never called me for an interview. The other two are still hanging in the balance.
One program I applied to is at the University of Texas in Austin. When I initially inquired about their program, they were really responsive, which really surprised me. They invited me to come down and meet some of the professors. I took a day off of work and drove about 70 miles north to Austin. I was really impressed with how personable they were, especially for such a large prestigious university. I met with the director of the program and had another telephone conversation with a professor whose interests are similar to mine. They seemed to be really interested in having me join their program. They said they would let me know if I was admitted at the end of February.
The other program I applied to is at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. The main reason I applied was because my mentor from my Master's work was teaching there. Basically, I figure that I might have a chance of getting in because they have a smaller program and I have an advocate who might be able to help me get in. About three weeks ago, I received an e-mail that I had been selected to interview. Since then I have been going through the process of taking days off of work as well as electronically arranging airplane tickets, housing arrangements, and transportation. Finally, it was all worked out. Here goes nothing...
Half-hearted
From the beginning of this journey, I have felt a little half-hearted about the whole thing. I cannot lie, I am just not real keen on the idea of moving across the country. Especially to a fairly small city in a part of the country that gets real real cold, cold enough that they had a huge ice storm only two weeks before I came. President Obama even declared parts of the state a “federal disaster area.” My initial thought was “What is the deal with ice? Sure, it makes driving very dangerous, but we are not talking about something like the aftermath of a hurricane or some huge natural disaster, right?”
However, I have subsequently learned that the ice gathers on the trees and causes them to topple down, destroying whatever there is around. The ice even destroys power lines, so that many people were without power in very very cold temperatures. That is why it is so devastating for the people in the area. It does not sound too fun to me. By the time I got there, the aftermath of the storm was still evident in the many trees and tree branches that still had not been cleaned up.
I got my friend Chris to drive me to the airport, mostly because he does not have a job right now, so I knew that he would be free. Despite his availability, having him take me may have not been a really good idea because he wants me in Austin more than anyone. He was not really pumping me up about the trip. He said “Do you really want more years of Abilene?”
He really did have a point. I have been living in a city of over 1.3 million people for the past two years, so it kind of seems like moving to a city with 600,000 would seem like going back to my college town. Abilene is a small city of about 150,000 in West Texas. I spent 6 years there getting my bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Even though it is not the most happening town, we usually had fun. I had good friends there. Mostly I did not really know much about what else was out there. Now I know a little more, and I am wanting to broaden my horizons.
Chris’ not-so-subtle bias was not really making me happy because I was trying to think positively about this trip. Even though I would rather go to Austin, I may not get into UT, then I would be left with Kentucky or another year of San Antonio. Plus, Chris is trying to move to Austin himself, we want to be roommates there. Yet, this trip was about checking out Kentucky, so I was trying to keep an open mind and enjoy myself.
Off the Ground?
Everything seemed to be working out well until I got on the airplane. Soon after I got settled in the captain announced there would be about a ten minute delay. After ten minutes went by, he came back and gave us an “indefinite” time period before departure. An hour later as we became airborne, while my connecting flight to Memphis was only 20 minutes from leaving Houston, my first of three destinations for the day. We finally arrived in Houston about ten minutes after my connecting flight left for Memphis.
As soon as our plane reached the terminal, I turned on my phone, which had three messages on it. Two were from my parents, one was from the airline. My parents had been on the phone with the airline since I left San Antonio trying to get me on another flight that would get me to Lexington at a reasonable time. I called my dad back and he told me to rush off the plane and get to gate C29, because there was a flight that left quickly and would get me there. As soon as I got off the plane I was at gate C17, so I figured C29 would not be that far away. I was wrong. I finally reached C29 breathing heavily after almost jogging what seemed like half of a mile. Yet there were no attendants behind the desk and I watched the jet slowly pull away from the terminal.
So I knew that I was going to have to talk to some type of customer service person, yet I could not get my parents to stop calling me and giving me directions. Eventually I just stopped answering. The customer service person said that they booked me on a flight that left an hour later and would get me to Kentucky at 8:30 pm, which meant that I was going to miss the social gathering which was planned for prospective students. By this point, I did not care. However, this new flight was connecting in Atlanta, not Memphis like I had originally planned. The airlines were different too. I did not know that airlines cooperated that much. I made the original reservation with continental airlines, but ended up taking more Delta flights than Continental.
The customer service person was at least nice enough to give me a lunch voucher. So after an interesting meal of grilled chicken and rice, I was on my way to Atlanta.
Arrival
I arrived in Lexington at 8:30 p.m. My ride called and said she would be there to pick me up in about twenty minutes. I was okay with that, because I knew it may take me that long to get my bag. I watched as one by one each of my fellow passengers picked up their bags and went on their way.
It turned out that airlines only seem to cooperate well when it comes to selling your fares. Unfortunately, they do not seem to collaborate very well on re-routing baggage. First I went to Continental, then they sent me to Delta, who tried to send me back to Continental. Neither had my bag. I suggested that we go check with Northwest because I was supposed to fly into Lexington on a Northwest flight. Then one of the workers reassured me “If you did not get on the plane, neither should have your bag.” I figured he would not have a good reason to lie to me, so I filed a lost baggage claim with Delta. By the time I was finished running around looking for my bags, my ride had been waiting on me for a while.
My mentor from Abilene set me up to stay with Norah and Andy. Norah is a second year student in their program. She took me to Wal-Mart and helped me find some half-way decent clothes to wear for the interviews. The next morning I got up, pulled all of the plastic off of my newly purchased clothes, and we headed to the University.
Kind of a Ruckus
The morning started with some breakfast, where the candidates and the applicants sat around and made small talk. The official proceedings began with the director of the program introducing himself and telling a strange story that not many people understood. He seemed to be the stereotypical eccentric, yet personable instructor who was at least a little out of touch with reality.
The morning really started for me when he asked who had traveled the farthest for the interview. I thought may be someone had come farther than me, so I waited to see what someone else would say. Then one of the other professors chimed in and asked “who was it that lost their baggage on the airplane? That person deserves this award.”
After I raised my hand, I drew a pitiful gaze from the rest of the crowd. The award was one of those cheep t-shirts that you receive for donating blood. Wahoo! real exciting (sarcasm)! It was pretty funny, I did not really mind the spectacle. It is just one of those things you have to laugh about, plus it served as kind of an icebreaker to get some people loosened up. Nonetheless, I received compliments from many people on my Wal-Mart purchased interview clothing. They said “I never would have known,” which I think was true.
The Big Show
So then it started, around 8 hours of answering tough questions, sharing, and thinking on my feet. They split us up into groups of 5, then we went to 3 different stations which were separated into different topics.
Many of the questions were domain-specific, all about our passions and experiences. Sometimes I felt like a broken record. I found myself wanting to change my answers just to experience a little variety. I guess I just have too many experiences, because it is very difficult for me to sum it all up in an answer that is less than thirty seconds long.
Then there were the classic interview questions. “Describe yourself in three words,” “How would your supervisor describe you?” and “What is a challenge you have faced?” I did my best, all the while trying to listen intensely to everyone else’s answers. I also try not to be a cliche. Classic butt-kissing is just not my style. I tried to be myself, yet still consider my audience.
By the time 11:30 am came around, I was mentally exhausted. Keeping up constant impression management on so little sleep had taxed me so much that my head was physically hurting. By the afternoon I started to lose that tight grip I had on myself for the first three and a half hours of the day. I continued to try and engage throughout the afternoon, but it was really difficult. Although it was not my best afternoon, I think I did okay.
Sized Up
Friday afternoon after the interviews we went back to Andy and Norah’s for a couple of hours, then went to dinner with my mentor and his wife. I ended up spending the night with them and we got to catch up. He gave me some of the skinny. He said that he would put in a good word for me in their meeting on Tuesday (which is tomorrow now). Then I would hear from them some time this week.
My experience has been that you hear really quickly if you get in, but it takes forever if you do not. I imagine that they have to wait for everyone to accept their place before they send out the rejections.
I really do not know how well I did. Groupthink is such a complicated thing that predicting it seems futile. We have been through those situations where rational people make irrational decisions in groups. Of course, may be they could make a rational decision that they do not want me. I just do not know. I do know at least that I have one advocate, which may be exactly what I needed last year.
Reprise
At the airport the next morning I got there early enough to take one last shot at finding my bag before I went home. I went to the Continental counter and then was once again re-routed to the Delta counter. After finding my baggage claim delta number (which they never gave me, I had to call Delta to get it), the lady behind the counter said “let’s go check with Northwest.” She went behind the door at the Northwest section and sure enough came back rolling my silver suitcase.
I was glad I had it, yet it was bittersweet because I only had time to go re-check it and get on the plane. As I was re-checking my bag, I realized I was going to have to pay $15 to get my bag back home, even though I never even had it during my trip at all. I complained to the machine, but the worker felt my pain and waived the fee. He said “if anyone asks, you are flying with the military.”
Except for a 20 minute delay before take-off, the everything worked out fine getting home. I decided on the plane that I needed to write about it. I think it is a good story, even though the end has not really come yet. The whole thing was a whirlwind and I am sure I will be processing it for a while.
No matter what happened or happens in the future, it all reminds me that God does things his own way. I do not think that this trip went perfectly, but I bet he does. God really does have a sense of humor. | | |
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