I've been having a good week. Life just feels good for once in a long time. I feel content. I really do. I like where I'm at, what I'm doing, the general sway of things, as it were. I feel energized. I feel like smiling. There are probably a few reasons for it. One of them being having a new friend. Friends are good things to have. They'll save you from the worst of times (as all of my friends have proven -- even if they don't know it). Other reasons may be...well, I don't want to over-analyze my good week. I think the sun is less enjoyable when you're staring directly at it. I think my week will feel less enjoyable if I'm staring straight at it also. Call me crazy.

Anyone heard the new Coldplay CD?! Geeeeez. I absolutely love it. See, I was really skeptical about it. I kept hearing their single, The Speed of Sound, on the radio -- and developed a loathing for it. Sure, not as much as I hate hearing Green Day & the Killers now -- but I just hear it so often, it gets on my nerves (though the radio in general is fast becoming my metaphorical fork in the eyeball). It seemed so ... mediocre. It didn't seem like a step up from their last CD. It isn't a bad song, just not very impressive. Anyway, I decided just to buy the new one and take a risk. Turns out to be amazing. And I think their single is the only one I'm not really enjoying all that much. If you don't have, well my friends, you need it. I mean, need it like you need hair on your chest. Er. Well, more than that. Because you really don't need hair on your chest (that's you, ladies).

I've been reading Lamentations this week. Weird book to read when you're having a good week, I know. Or is it? It's actually really encouraging. I posted one of my favourite chunks of Scripture from Lamentations the other day (which you can see below for your Scripture-viewing convenience). Just a crazy book. I remember hearing people talk about how much of a whiner the guy was. Yet I'm reading it and I'm thinking, "He isn't whining. He's in pain -- he's tormented because of his circumstances." Writing from the heart, writing from the depths of despair is one of the most amazing things I find in the Bible. You see David and the psalm-writers do it throughout the Psalms. You see it all over the Bible. These are people who are going through what looks like Hell to them, and their words, however poetic and brutal they may be, are all they have. But what I find so amazing is how they can write about such pain and misery and desperation and then all of a sudden remember who God is, and what He can and will do. I love that part of Lamentations in 3:21 where he says, "Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope". Man. 'Yet this...' I love those two words. Yet this. My life feels like hell, everything is going wrong, there's a storm in my head and I can't escape it -- Yet This. Yet This I remember. God is with me. God is my Rescuer, My Protector, My Comforter, My Shield, My Redeemer, My Strong Tower, My Help In Time Of Need, My Hope, My Father.