there is hope for me yet

So yesterday morning I finished a 24 hour take home essay exam. The question was pretty intense, depressing, and seemingly hopeless. I had to take breaks and read verses from Revelation 21 such as:

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!" (vs 3-5)

Those verses usually serve as a good reminder that this world as we know it, with its pain and hurt and sorrow will pass away and people wont be fleeing the janjawaneed forever. That's such good news.

On a lighter note, some of my friends and I went skating down by city hall last night and it was really fun. I didn't actually bring my skates but went for the company, and it turned out that I got to have some really fantastic conversation with Drew, one of the guys who lives at the Abbey. It's been a long time since I've been able to talk about history and development and politics with people who weren't in my program and therefore had a different perspective, but one that wasn't so extremely opposite as mine. It was interesting, because I found myself less of a crazy-leftist-hippie and gave some respect to the more economically conservative side of things. I think that was a moment of progress for me. He seems to have more opportunity to think about positive things with his degree. I, on the other hand, find myself so often nearly debilitated by what we study because it's never positive. I think the only positive spin we've had on development is my development theory course - and even then we body-slammed neoclassical economics and Adam Smith. Crazy Marxist profs!