Relief

I almost always feel better after an event or series of events is over. These last 24 hours or so have been pretty sweet. To wit:

1. Halloween at UNC-Chapel Hill is like Mardi Gras. Literally tens of thousands of people (an estimated 80,000 last year) descend from all over the state to Franklin Street for drunken craziness.

We decided that we wanted to steal an idea from IV at the College of William and Mary and run a "Pancake House" for students during Halloween night. When you think Halloween, who doesn't think pancakes?

Students cooked all afternoon and made over 1,500 pancakes. We pitched a tent on south campus away from the Franklin Street craziness in order to make sure that we were serving mostly UNC students. We got tables and printed up flyers and got music cranking...and people came by the truckloads.

We had intended to serve from 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. but we ran out of pancakes by 1:00. "Awesome" was the buzzword of the night. InterVarsity students who were helping to make it happen kept saying, "This is AWESOME!" Dozens upon dozens of the guestimated 600-800 students who stopped by said, "This is AWESOME!" Word spread throughout campus that we were down south giving away free pancakes and students just kept coming and coming and coming.

I was planning on leaving around midnight. I left at 1:00 as pancakes were running out. I came home super-amped on extrovert adrenaline.

Some events are keepers, others go in the "we'll never do that again" bin. This event is a keeper. Next year we could double the pancakes and still give them all away.

2. Tonight was our outreach-oriented large group meeting on campus. I spoke on the wonder of God as Father. The place was packed out (nearly 300 students) which is rare for a mid-fall large group with the grind of tests and papers. People invited friends. Maybe some of the people were from the Pancake House the night before. The energy was super-high for worship and people were very receptive to my talk. There were about a half-dozen students who cried through most of it as I talked about the reality of our dads who don't give us a faithful picture of God as Father.

At the end a couple people made significant decisions to connect with God as Father, either to commit their lives or re-commit their lives to the Lord.

I'm home now, a little overly-amped from all that's gone on the past couple days...and a little ashamed of all my worrying. What good does it do me? Why do I demand my "right" to be anxious? Lord, help me...

I'll post some over the next couple days posts from my talk tonight. In the mean time, gotta' go try to get some sleep.