death

One of my friends from life before college committed suicide last week. Needless to say, my spring break was different then usual. It hit me really hard. I am sad and angry at him for being selfish, and hurting for his family. His suicide note mentioned how he believed the God of the Bible to be fictitious, and that he did not have any relationships with anyone. Kind of a slap in the face to his family and friends. I hurt for him, it must have been terrible feeling that alone. At what point does family calling you saying they love you and wanting to be with you become insufficient? Depression is hard to understand.

I wish there was more to say. Sometimes there just isnt.

" The word gospel literally means 'good news.' Jesus declared that he had come to 'preach good news to the poor.' But what good news, what gospel did the church have for Richard and his brothers? What 'good news' have God's people brought to the world's 3 billion poor? What 'gospel' has Africa's 12 million AIDS orphans seen? And here's a question for you: What gospel have most of us embraced in the 21st century?

A gospel with a hole in it."

-Richard Stearns

fame

From the book "Fame and the Founding Fathers: Essays by Douglass Adair"

"...the desire for fame is thus a dynamic element in the historical process; it rejects the static complacent urge in the human heart to merely be and invites the strenuous effort to become -- to become a person and force in history larger then the ordinary. The love of fame encourages a man to make history, to leave the mark of his deeds and his ideals on the world; it incites a man to refuse to be the victim of events and to become an "event -making" personality -- a being never to be forgotten by those later generations that will be born into a world his actions helped to shape."