So I made it to Kentucky a few days ago, and here are a few highlights from the past week.

I woke up Wednesday morning to find this fun surprise. Running tally? Kentucky 1, Chris 0.

Criminals out here got nothin’ on our boys back in California. They exploded the whole area around the CD player and still couldn’t get it out. Booyah! Kentucky 1, Chris 1.

But they did make off with my two Rich Mullins CDs and Sufjan Stevens Christmas Box Set. Crap! Kentucky 2, Chris 1.

Good news is that Louisville has good Middle Eastern food and good coffee. I forgot what the drink is called, but it had caffeine, honey, cinnamon and other fun things. Kentucky 2, Chris 2. We’ll see how this battle continues.

More to come, but so far so good here. Except it’s cold. And I have no blubber.

The third day of driving started out a bit colder than the others (down to 15°F) in Wichita as the penultimate destination (Iowa) drew closer.

This leg proved a fair bit milder than the previous day of snow and ice.

Nice open roads were standard fare.

This seedy character (the large man tipping his hat, not the flag) was about the worst thing encountered on this drive.

A few hours later we arrived at the home of our dear friends the Santamarias. They live in a sweet house in Cedar Rapids. Probably the coolest thing is that they have a laundry chute. The closest I’ve come to one of those has been watching Home Alone.

Inside their house were these strange little people.

One of them even attacked me. Fortunately I fended him off and lived to tell about it.

I will stay here in Iowa for a few days and drive the last few hours to Kentucky probably on Monday or Tuesday.

New Mexico tried its best this morning to derail the trip with snowy roads and icy conditions so much so that Odysseus may have thought that I angered Khionê the night before (that’s for you, Adam). But, rest assured, all is well.

All is well except for the cleanliness of my car’s exterior. No, I did not run over a lot of chocolate ice cream. Those are mudsicles.

“How could that have happened?” you may ask. This is how. Driving, stopping, and driving some more through a steady stream of snow for a few hours will do it. Note: descending down a spiraling highway off-ramp caked with snow with no tire chains is about 10 minutes of no fun.

You know what else is no fun? Picnic areas. As you drive down a lonely highway full of snow, you may desire a place to take a quick “rest” break. Thus the wonder of the “Rest Area”. But picnic areas are no such wonders. Some genius decided to build a few of these along the I-40 in Texas, but didn’t feel like including any restrooms. No toilets, no urinals, not even a squatty. Just a quiet place (because no one has a picnic in the middle of Texas when it is below 30 degrees out) for truckers to park and take a nap.

But Oklahoma came to the rescue! Stopping at a gas station that John Wayne probably used (top picture) also reaped the great bounty of a sweet meal at a place called “Restaurant”. I didn’t bother to ask what it was really called but that’s what the big sign had written on it.

I was going to order the country fried steak, but they were out. So I settled for BBQ beef. It came with pinto beans, potato salad, Texas toast, and fried okra. The coffee tasted like it was brewed with grody gym socks and old toilet water, so it was utterly fantastic (but not as good as Silver Dollar’s).

Speaking of toilet water, the men’s room had two showers in it. Apparently people out here don’t know how to eat and instead of simply wiping their hands clean they need to shower off after a meal. If that is you, then this is the place to eat!

Driving through the deserts of California, Arizona, and New Mexico (pictured above) is not the most fun thing to do. Especially 11 hours of it. But there were a few things worth a gander.

Like this contraption. You never know what you are going to find in gas station bathrooms in the middle of nowhere. It is comforting to know, however, that the truckers who frequent the I-40 in New Mexico probably smell quite nice. I need to get me one of these.

I had the great joy of stopping by Flagstaff, Arizona and having lunch with a couple friends. I was told the avocado burger was the way to go, and it was. You might not be able to tell, but this burger was big. We’re talkin’ government stimulus package big. Also, I believe the homemade buns were lightly brushed with some sort of garlicky buttery substance and then grilled a bit. Fantastic.

This was the aftermath.

Who knows what tomorrow has in store as Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas shall all be traversed with impunity.

It’s official. I am moving to Kentucky.

In about a month I will throw a few things in my car and drive across a good portion of the land of the free and the home of the brave to the wild and untamed land known as the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

For  the uninformed, the great Commonwealth of Kentucky (or, the Bluegrass State, henceforth referred to as the BS) is home to the highest per capita number of deer and turkey in the United States. We’ll see what I can do about that. The official dance of the state is clogging.

I am transferring to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY to finish my master’s degree, and will likely spend at least the next three to five years there in the BS.

If this is news to you, dear reader, and are disappointed that I did not inform you of this via personal verbal exchange, or at the very least through some sort of antiquated physical written document, then I am sorry. I did not intend to leave anyone in the proverbial dark.

In all sincerity, I am going to miss California. But even more-so, I am going to miss the people that I have in California. I hope to spend time with all of you before I leave.

Is Jesus made to look more glorious in our lives when we fight to provide health care and life to others or when we fight to make excuses to deny such things to others?

Has he not already poured out immeasurable grace upon us who were lazy, stupid, greedy, sick, undeserving, ignorant, worthless, destitute, poor, and all the while taking advantage of the free handout of common grace?

Apparently my life was more important to Jesus than his own. But do I believe that the lives of others are more important than my own?

Temporarily shelving the abortion issue for my present points, every Christian in America should fight for free health care for all, legal citizens or not.

Every person, whether healthy or sick, rich or poor, industrious or lazy, is made in the image of God and therefore their life now is of tremendous value.

Physical life matters. God’s people are not destined for disembodied heavenly bliss, but a resurrected life in new creation. His people must anticipate that future reality by restoring physical bodies now.

Life is more important than freedom, money, and ideologies.

More from Wright. This time a great example of the frequent flashes of technicolor writing in a mostly technical tome.

The rabbinic literature is of course a mine of information and a minefield for the unwary.

N.T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God

Fantastic sermon by Al Jackson at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Chapel this morning: here is the link.

On a similar note:

No, it isn’t for lack of money that there are 1,568 peoples with no missionaries. It’s because we have so much. The comforts of the West have made us soft and cautious and fearful and indulgent and self-protecting, instead of tough and risk-taking and bold and self-controlled and self-sacrificing. When prosperity preachers fly their personal jets to the Two-thirds World and promise the poor that if they believe in Jesus, they will get rich, they are not doing Christian missions. They are destroying its foundations. That is not the gospel that saves and produces sacrifice.

John Piper, Proclaiming the Excellencies of Christ, Not Prosperity, Among the Nations

More from Wright:

Reality as we know it is the result of a creator god bringing into being a world that is other than himself, and yet which is full of his glory. It was always the intention of this god that creation should one day be flooded with his own life, in a way for which it was prepared from the beginning. As part of the means to this end, the creator brought into being a creature which, by bearing the creator’s image, would bring his wise and loving care to bear upon the creation. By a tragic irony, the creature in question has rebelled against this intention. But the creator has solved this problem in principle in an entirely appropriate way, and as a result is now moving the creation once more towards its originally intended goal. The implementation of this solution now involves the indwelling of this god within his human creatures and ultimately within the whole creation, transforming it into that for which it was made in the beginning. This story, whose similarity to the parable of the Wicked Tenants is scarcely accidental, obviously attempts to ground ontology, a view of what is really there, in the being and activity of the creator/redeemer god. It has, in my own case, already succeeded in subverting all sorts of other stories (including several ‘Christian’ ones) that I used to tell myself about reality. I find that it ‘fits’ with far more of the real world than the usual post-Enlightenment ones. To pretend that this were not the case—to abandon this story in favour of reducing everything to ‘mere history’, just when the Enlightenment-style project is collapsing like the Berlin Wall—would be as dishonest as it would be foolish.

N.T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God