Space is an important theological issue.  I'm not talking about outer space-although, I guess there are some cosmologically theological issues at hand there.  But what I'm talking about is something that anyone who's ever moved into a dorm room or tried to stay away during a class that is in a dreary lecture hall or worshiped in a space that doesn't reflect the type of God that the minister is speaking of.  I believe that how we organize the physical surroundings that we exist in matters.

I had planed to write on many different things today, none of which are now the subject of this blog.  Unfortunately, I awoke this morning with an NPR story about a Ugandan gay rights advocate who was brutally beaten to death in his home yesterday.  The dull shock of yet another hate crime based on a person's sexuality almost didn't pass my numbed mind.  But then when I read a New York Times article on the details surrounding David Kato's death, I became deeply saddened because I learned that I took part in the murder.

A few weeks ago (Dec. 4, 2010, to be exact) I heard something on NPR's Prairie Home Companion that caught my attention.  Confession: usually I hate this program.  I usually find Garrison Keilor speaking to someone-certainly not me-but someone who must be Lutheran, from a small town and at least 40 years older than me.  But on that day's segment of "The News from Lake Wobegon" (which you can still download as a free podcast) Garrison talks about how  he wished the recent snowstorm would have caused the town to shutdown and how happy it makes people to cancel all those unnecessary items off their to-do lists and just enjoy the day for once.

The part that got me interested was when he started by saying that the town was in the mentality of "a northern dogged-ness, a fear of being considered weaklings...

"Strengthen your hearts."-James 5.8

  Of all the things the author of James could have told Christians in times of turmoil, this may seem the lamest-almost counterintuitive.  As someone who has spent a majority of their life in the world of academia, I always think problems are issues of not knowing the right answer.  It is an issue of the mind; a problem I can solve.  That, or the issue is something that is beyond my ability to change singlehandedly-poverty, hunger, etc.  But the Word James brings us is that our world needs courageous hearts,