thoughts from the lab...

well, i have decided to start a new series of blogging called "thoughts from the lab" in which i will list thoughts i have while killing time in the lab. i have to confess, however, at this moment, i am not in the lab. i am actually on the porch in the med school lounge. its quite nice outside today.
ive decided to try to spend more time in the med school lounge for reasons many of you can guess.... thats right. to meet some people. take for example the two guys that were just eating lunch next to me. did i talk to them you ask? why, no. because i was busy typing this blog. im not sure what i would have said anyways, besides.. hey, can i have some of your food? im hungry. i am hungry. i had a turkey sandwich about 2 hours ago and i feel its time to eat again. although, eating is not an option because i dont have any money and i wont have any money until friday. praise the Lord for payday.
ok, so today in lab my beautifully planned experiment went to crap when i ran out of cells. for those who care, im trying to kill some mouse cells with different stimuli and you have to have at least .5 million cells per sample. well, i ran out and couldnt do my experiment. no worries though. i will just carry on tomorrow once the cells have grown a little more.
i just realized that thoughts from the lab has potential to be really boring. ill try to actually give thoughts instead of details.
here is a thought: on my way back from a wonderful weekend in birmingham i was thinking a lot about what it means to be set apart. a friend of mine told me he really wants to live set apart, wants people to see a difference in him. and so, i started asking God what this means. i used to always think we, christians, looked different because we didnt DO this or we didnt DO that, but i think God means to set us apart in a far greater way. i think if we start to define being set apart as "acting" different from others, we are doing just that... acting. i think what sets us apart is soley Jesus. the truth that we are secure in His love, in His view of us... that we are different from the world that is searching for its security, and looking for love in all the wrong places. by living in Christ we live in freedom and that is very set apart from a world in chains. now i dont think this necessarily translates into we can just do anything anyone else does, but i think if we start to focus so much on us and how we are "acting" better than the world instead of focusing on loving Jesus and loving the world we will find ourselves looking more like the world in our self absorbance. i dont think saying "ass" in front of a non-christian or drinking a beer while saying "ass" for that matter is going to label you as worldly. but, then again... if you are doing that because you are not secure in Christ, in who He called you to be, then thats where you take on chains.
i was really humbled by this on the way home because its very easy for me to get self-righteous about how i dont believe in crazy evolution and how im not doing this or not doing that. i am nothing apart from Christ. my classmates and everyone for that matter, dont need me to not do stuff, they need to see someone in love with someone bigger than themselves, someone free and someone who loves them unconditionally.