Looking at/for Stuff

Through the windows of my office I can behold the beauty of the rolling green hills of central Arkansas. This is the Natural State, and I am at work. I am at work and blogging.

Obviously, work is a little slow for me right now. I just started 2 weeks ago. I'm the "new doctor," and I've pretty well acquired a Norris-like status in this small, hospitable town. Kinda weird. I feel like a novelty, and yet we don't really have any friends at this point. What we do have are woods, a lake, a Wal-Mart, and a really old twin cinema made of scraps of Terminator robots, tin cans, and film reels.

We are in search for a church and have tried 5 different ones of varying denominations. I've realized my desire for real fellowship with people. I love the body of Christ and don't particularly care what label is on their sign or what they believe about election vs. free-will or whether one has to sprinkled or dunked or has to speak in tongues or know how to look up the Hebrew or Greek word and add meaning to it. I just want to meet with other believers to spur and be spurred toward love and good deeds. I want to meet with people who really love Jesus and want to make His name known in their lives. I've tasted community like that during my residency, so now I'm like the dude in Plato's cave allegory who found the way out of the cave.

Unfortunately, we haven't found that yet. We've found a lot of churches who have been doing the way things have been done since their existence in this country. They love Sunday night service. Sunday night service is the Jr. Varsity B-version of the Sunday morning service, and I wonder if anyone really likes it. I'm pretty sure it only exists as the skimmer. It pulls off the cream of the crop and lets the pastor and those in attendance know who the dedicated ones are. On a brighter note, we have taken advantage of these Sunday night services to squeeze in 2 visits to 2 different churches on Sundays. However, the 28-second welcome session announced by "Turn and shake the hands of the people around you" hasn't really fostered any friendships for us yet.

I know these green hills have to be harboring some Jesus friends for us. Until then, I'll just keep watching movie trailers while at work and weighing whether or not I want to watch them at the crappy twin cinema.