Warning: There is no filter in this post. No proofreading. No spell check. Just my random thoughts on this random Tuesday night. Enjoy. Summer. It's a refreshing feeling. I'm so thankful for a job that allows me a two month hiatus. Teaching can be one of the most rewarding, but draining jobs. I thought I was a patient person until I became a teacher. But oh, the moments when I have a class that is attentive and quiet. I just love that feeling too.

I'm still working during the summer though. Odd jobs, really. I'm teaching swim lessons for the next couple weeks. Then I have the amazing opportunity to lead worship and sing for a few events. And most excitingly, I'll be back as a track leader at WIRED for my third summer here in Dothan. I'm really looking forward to it.

Costa Rica. My first overseas mission trip ever. Really? Yep. It is a blessing from the Lord (that came in the form of a sweet couple in our church) that made this financially possible. All things work together for the good...

Speaking of good. God is good. But He's more than that, He's loving when I'm unlovable. He's patient when I'm hesitant. He's forgiving when I'm embarrassing. It's good to remind myself of these things. Especially, when I start to think I'm never going to be good enough.

And while we're talking about things that aren't good. This world is not good. I see so much I wish I didn't see. Mostly on the internet. I'm not superstitious (more suspicious than anything), but one time my dad told me that if you add up the letters in "computer" based on an ancient Babylonian numbering system, they equal 666. The alleged "mark of the beast" symbol. There are only two other words that equal this number - kissinger (whatever that means) and witchcraft. Weird, I know.

Anyway, that's a whole lot of babble to say... I am supersti.., suspicious of how this world is operating. Of how I am operating. If I am being honest, I spend a great deal of my time interacting with technology. My phone and my computer are basically attached to my hip. I am dying for an iPad actually, because it is smaller and more compact than my laptop (imagine that... something more portable than a laptop!) But goodness... the time that is wasted by staring at a screen. Every time I think of deleting social networking from my life - I feel like I'm deleting 1400 facebook friends and 400 twitter followers. Plus the fact that I order pizza online. Pay bills online. Buy music online. Sell music online. Wow...

And he causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number is 666. - Revelation 13:16-18

No one will buy or sell except the one who has the mark. Most everything nowadays is sold with a UPC code. Which is scanned onto a computer. And we are leaning more and more towards doing everything online. I don't know... "computer" adding up to 666 doesn't seem so crazy to me now, Dad.

So what does that leave me with? Not much, really. You won't see me throwing out my Droid anytime soon. But then again, I don't want to sit by and become ignorant of the blatant evil that is masquerading itself in the form of twitter statuses filled with gossip and hate; innocent "facebook chats" leading to adultery; google searching images that lead to pornography; building aquariums, farms and other games that waste our time; and probably the easiest to overlook and the most convicting of mine... constantly feeding our minds with what everyone else thinks and does.

I don't know how this post that began with a few babblings turned into my thoughts on the end times and the mark of the beast... but welcome to my mind. This is how I operate. I just decided to write it all out tonight instead of speaking it aloud. My husband says thank you. :)