Since it's Wednesday, and a new month has dawned, I decided it might be good, ok, whatever, to scribble (can you scribble on a keyboard?) some notes about my weekend. It's true. I live weekend to weekend. Not that the weekly stuff isn't important, but it all runs together, and by Friday ends up some sort of hurried smudge of hours in my head. Last weekend was good, though. Both thought-provoking and encouraging - always a good combination. Friday night a few of us got together in my apartment to watch To End All Wars together. (I've noticed a theme in our Friday night "flings," they haven't been so light-hearted lately. Last week it was Hotel Rwanda). I am very thankful that, like me, so many of my teammates don't always approach movies with a "now it's time to turn my brain off" mentality. Those few hours on Friday night were no exception. If you have not seen either of these movies, I would highly recommend them, especially To End All Wars. It asks some deep questions, and stirs you in ways that you will still be processing a week later. Just some of the (actually voiced) questions are: What is the final destination of hatred? At what point does a man lose his dignity? What does it mean to love one's enemies? At what price mercy? A long discussion of these things ensued after the credits. Again, Adriane and I pondered over deeper issues of life, and wondered, Can we really answer such questions without having experienced something of what these men went through? And if we had experienced such tribulation, how would we answer those who asked such questions and had not been through it themselves? I suggested that we would answer with more questions, which would provoke the inquirers to think for themselves. This may or may not be a good reply, I don't know. Then it occurred to me that the "answer" to these seemingly unanswerable questions could not be words at all. The answer is, and always will be, as long as evil rests on the Earth, a person. All our deepest, gut-wrenching fears, all our monstrous, devouring sin is answered in a person. Our only hope, to which we cling with feeble, wretched hands is Jesus Christ. He is the answer. It sounds so cheesy. So Sunday school. But it's true. He really is The Way, The Truth, The Life. All else fades, falls away, and becomes meaningless. He alone remains. The rest of my weekend - trips to Kouriyama, sushi bars, friends, also seem meaningless in light of this profound Truth. I did have a lot of fun this weekend, and was blessed by marvelous bouts of rest and laughter. But instead of leaving you with great, wordy details about the jolly but frivolous parts of my two days off, I'll leave you with the thought-provoking and genuinely hope-filled. When all is said and done, nothing else remains anyway.