I set out for a walk in the brisk night air seeking to follow the moon.

I asked myself what drove me to that end. Was it pursuit of beauty? No, for I had embraced the grotesqueness within myself. What reason was there then to embrace the loveliness without? Was it to speak to God? No, for I was well content to pass through my days living as if He were naught. What reason was there then to seek Him now? And as I pondered the question of purpose, I became greatly distressed. The road began to turn away from the moon and so I proceeded down the next street, but it was a dead end. My body bent with worry, my eyes darting to and fro to find the way, I found myself being averted continually from the moon I sought. Tears streaming down my face, I pleaded to whomever was listening to show me the way. The answer was just more road. I cried out to God.
To my right I beheld a clear horizon and the moon clear as could be.

And God answered me.

Why Humor in Fellowship?

In the Wake of the Virginia Tech Massacre

We recently witnessed a great tragedy in our country, the murder of 32 college students and educators. Like all such instances, this drives us to great grief and often fear. However, complacency will eventually set in as always. In fact, most people with whom I have discussed the massacre at Virginia Tech have already reached this point. Now is the time to study this tragedy. Now is the time to learn from it, before we forget how evil it really was.

In the days after the massacre, I found it rather ironic that that morning was Holocaust Remembrance Day at UCLA. As students woke up and walked to class, they passed by many Jewish students reading off names of victims of the Holocaust. And across the nation, students woke up, went to class, not knowing that within hours, people would be reading off their names in a similar fashion. Furthermore, the Holocaust and the Virginia Tech Massacre are directly linked, for both have the same source. The Holocaust taught us of the incredible potential for evil all men share. How else does one explain the vast majority of an entire nation not too different from ours rising up in concert to betray their friends and neighbors to concentration camps, torture, and death? We may judge the Nazis for their cruel and inhuman acts, yet perhaps if the Nazi party came to power in the States, promising power, safety, and domination, we would do the same.

We all share the same evil that Seung-Hui Cho demonstrated that day. All evil deeds spring forth from evil thoughts and desires. Murder springs from hatred, and who among us can say we have not murdered many in our hearts through our hate? Perhaps some of us have contemplated murder. In the eyes of man’s law, Cho was guilty of murder, and we are innocent, but in the eyes of God’s law, we all have violated His command “You shall not murder.” Some of us have murdered more than 32 people. What makes us any different from Cho?

We’ve gone even farther. Have you ever told a lie? We all agree that one who lies is a liar. Have you ever stolen anything, even the tiniest piece of candy or an eraser? One who steals is a thief. Have you ever taken God’s holy name in vain? Have you ever committed adultery? Most of us would say no, but Jesus said that he who looks on a woman with lust has already committed adultery in his heart. Have you committed adultery in your heart? That makes you an adulterer. I don’t know which of the above questions you can say “yes” to, but I know I can say I’m a murderer, thief, liar, one who has taken the Lord’s name in vain, and adulterer. And that’s just by using five of the Ten Commandments, God’s law and standard of judgment. We’re all born thinking we’re good people. Yet if I introduced myself saying, “Hi, I’m Seth. I’m a murdering, thieving, lying, blaspheming adulterer, but I’m a pretty good person,” would you believe me even for a second? We all have that potential for great evil deeds, but we all have also violated God’s Law.

One day, you will stand before God and be required to give an account for your sin. If God finds you guilty, He will send you to hell, a place of eternal torment, but if He finds you innocent, He will take you to heaven. As you have violated His law, would He pronounce you innocent or guilty? We all are guilty of violating His Law. Perhaps you think that God in His love and mercy will let you enter heaven anyways. However, allow me to propose an analogy. You’re on trial for committing some great crime, the sentence for which is a fine far greater than you can ever pay, and so you are facing the rest of your life in prison. The judge listens to your case and then pronounces you guilty. He then says, “However, I’m going to forgive you and let you go.” Now, from an objective point of view, would you call that man a good judge or a corrupt judge? A perfect judge, such as God is, will find you guilty and sentence you to prison for life. And God, as a perfect judge, will sentence you to eternity in hell for your disobedience. Ask yourself, does this concern you at all? If not, why?

Now imagine they’re about to take you away when a man walks into the courtroom and approaches the judge. He says, “I will pay this man’s fine.” Now justice has been served. The fine has been paid and your sentence has been removed by this man. This man was Jesus Christ, God in the flesh. He was incarnated in the form of a man, lived a perfect and sinless life, and died a horrible, bloody death on the cross to take the punishment for sinners. You’ve probably heard that you need to believe in Jesus, but that’s not enough. Scripture teaches that even the demons believe and tremble. I can believe in a parachute and jump out of a plane, but if I never put the parachute on, my belief is wasted and meaningless. You must repent of your sin. Repentance is a changing of heart and mind, a complete turning away from your sin and to placing your faith in Jesus Christ. This is what Christ requires of you in order for you to be saved. Otherwise, you will suffer eternity in hell.

One more thing the Virginia Tech Massacre reminded us of is the mortality of man and the frailty of human life. You woke up this morning and went to class just as the students did that very morning. The students in the first classroom had no idea as they listened to their professor lecture that they had just seconds to live. None of us know when our death will come. It could be in fifty years. It could be in five minutes. As you walk back to your dorm, you could be struck dead by a speeding car. You may think to yourself that you’re young and you have years to live, years before you need to repent and give your life to Christ, yet today is the day of salvation. Right now is your chance. I tell you this because I love you, because I passionately do not want you to suffer eternity in hell. I implore you to repent of your sins now, because like the students of Virginia Tech, tomorrow may be too late.

An Article about the Writing of Itself

By Seth Axen
Published: Sun, 01 Apr 2007 01:00:00 -0400

There the college student sat, poring through his textbooks into the long hours of the night, pondering his very existence. Finals week loomed at his door, and he was seriously considering taking the first flight to Fiji where he would joyously bask in the sunlight on the beach, drinking bottle after bottle of chilled root-beer. A bead of sweat fell onto his book, the small pat yanking him from Fiji and back to his doom. Skimming down a page in one textbook, he muttered murderous threats to whichever rabid wacko discovered Hydrazine. A ray of light pierced his gloomy thoughts and he scrambled for Wikipedia. A grin crossed his face as his most loyal friend informed him that a certain Theodor Curtius was his torturer. Clicking on the link to this name, he cried out in despair as he read that this fiend died 79 years, 1 month, and 11 days before this very day! After a quick Wikipedia search into time travel, he abandoned the idea of returning to that date and witnessing the occasion. Sighing, he began to spin his chair back to his desk when he noticed a miniscule, almost unnoticeable envelope icon on the lower right corner of his screen. Someone had seen fit to send him an e-mail to strengthen him in this dark hour! Feverishly, he double-clicked the envelope, thus opening a window containing the e-mail. It was from Emily Griswold! Oh no. The last time she had e-mailed him, she had complained rather annoyingly about the photograph of a crushed armadillo that he had sent her. And here she was asking him to – to write the April Alumnus Column for The Cracked Pot, that den of lies and trickery!

He swallowed carefully, trying his hardest to maintain his composure. How could he refuse to write it? Griswold had connections. She had even been rumored to be a ringleader for the Williamsburg mafia before she had returned home on medical leave. Ha! Medical leave! Only a fool would buy that story. It was clear that the local law enforcement had begun to suspect her and that she had to leave town as quickly as possible. And she hadn’t exactly been well-behaved in her time “recuperating,” either. After all, she had written an article for a previous edition for the den of lies and trickery (henceforth mentioned as DOLAT), indoctrinating high school students worldwide into her “seize the day” philosophy and encouraging them to forsake their studies. Of course she would say that. Stupid kids are easier to kill. He realized that there was no way to turn down the article for fear of her wrath, and so he reluctantly e-mailed her, agreeing to write it. Closing the window and spinning his chair back around, he resumed his studying, not knowing that his life would be forever changed.

Twelve days later, the student sat yet again at his desk, poring through his Physics textbook to study for his final the very next day and practicing his Russian accent in a vain attempt to have his grade boosted a step. All at once, his well-honed senses alerted him of a hostile threat in the room. He took a deep breath, retrieved his comb from his pocket, expecting the worst, and spun around. He started backward in terror and fell square onto his back. Pulling himself to his knees, he cautiously stared at the e-mail alert on his screen informing that Griswold had sent him yet another e-mail. He slowly clicked on the link to open the e-mail and then read it. An ice-cold sense of foreboding crawled down his spine. Griswold had e-mailed him to inform him that Chris McMillion, one of Tiffany Yonts’s henchmen and the editor of the columns section of the DOLAT, had set the deadline for the article as…tomorrow! The student bit his nails nervously and then swiftly e-mailed Griswold to ask her what to do. Surely, she could use some of her shady influences to straighten McMillion out. However, her reply crushed any such hopes. She simply recommended that he ask McMillion for an extension, slyly including the suggestion that he make fodder out of the aforementioned editor. Of course! A quick Webster search revealed that “fodder” meant “food.” Here the mafia queen was, using a typical Italian reference to food to hint that he knock McMillion off. The law was certainly on to her, now that she was seeking to enlist a civilian to do her dirty work.

Well, he wouldn’t, no matter what threats she slipped into her e-mails under this guise.

Choosing each word very carefully, he formulated an e-mail and sent it off to McMillion, requesting an extension due to the extreme circumstances of finals week. Never had the student met McMillion or even conversed with him publicly, but the stories he’d heard about him were enough. McMillion was the L in DOLAT, a man closely associated with lies, laziness, and libel, but who also had a healthy amount of literary talent. It was most likely for this reason that his section of the DOLAT had thrived and that the student had been selected to write for it. And here was his reply. He said that since that was the best excuse he had received all week, he would grant the extension. How fortunate for the student, yet he scoffed at such an excuse. McMillion had most likely heard many better excuses that week but felt compelled to grant them all as he knew that otherwise he would have no columns published and thus would have Yonts to contend with.

Well, it would be foolish to refuse such an offer, so the student began brainstorming.

His article would have to be humorous. Perhaps he could include absurd alliterations to actual individuals. McMillion would definitely be pleased with such libel. This column’s purpose was to warn students of life after high-school, so he knew that he would need to vividly depict the dangers of college life. Perhaps he should add some action to it to grab the weak minds of the male readership, and even some romance for the female readership. Ah, forget that. The student knew that he could never discuss romance well enough for the girls, but he should at least mention the word “romance” at least three times to grab their attention. College could be very dangerous, the student realized, so perhaps he should include unbelievable yet mostly true stories of the risks that he as a student had to face every day. The student swiftly began pounding away at his keyboard, formulating the details of his article. As it began to take form, he realized that while it was no work of art and could be rather tedious at times, it served its purpose and included all of the elements that high-school students usually love, even if in a more raw form than they are accustomed to.

Before long, he found himself writing the final paragraph. A tear of joy fell from his eye and onto the keyboard, causing the period key to short out Oh well, that would only lightly affect his article from now on It would still have all the elements of genius that could win him a Pulitzer He searched his e-mail for the link to the submission form that Griswold had sent him long ago Having found it, he copied and pasted his masterpiece into the window, ran one final grammar and spel check Sighing, he hoped that he had’nt missed any punctuation errors Hovering the cursor over the Submit button he

As published in the April 1st "April Fools" edition of The Cracked Pot at http://www.crackedpot.org/3-6

Hello all! How have I been as of late? Rather smashingly.

I gather that the TPS Thailand 2007 team returned sometime last week. Members of the team have been uploading photo albums from the trip on facebook and tagging each other in them. I very much enjoyed flipping through them and seeing some familiar places and locales.

Eventually, I realized I was frantically flipping through album after album looking for a picture that had any one of the kids I had in my group last year. My heart was racing each time I saw a face that looked familiar, only to zoom in and see that it was a different child. Unfortunately, I didn't find any pictures of my 6-year-olds (who would now be seven), and it actually reduced me to tears.

I had forgotten how much those kids mean to me. I had forgotten the grief when I heard that Paul had left with his family before the last day of the conference, followed by the utter joy when he came to say goodbye to me. I had forgotten the twins Jonathan and David, and how much they had encouraged us through their memorization of Scripture and their helpfulness in teaching the other children. I had forgotten the obedience struggles we had with little Laura Joy and how strongly she and I had bonded in the end. Rather, I did not forget these things per se, but I forgot how much they meant to me. Each one of those children has a small piece of my heart, and I realize now that they always will. I'll never be the same. And so I will flip through photos longing to see them, I will perk up when I hear one of their names said, and I will always look the future, hoping that if nothing else, I will see them in heaven again.

Seth