You know the sort of day. The sort where you're wakened by an alarm in the middle of a perfectly awful dream and you don't know whether to be grateful or throw things across the room. The sort of day where you take a little bit longer in the shower because you think "If only I stand in the hot water long enough, maybe it'll clear my head." The sort where you're behind everything and it isn't even 8am yet.

Those sort of days.

I'm having one. My head feels like it's stuck in a vice-grip and my eyes don't want to look in any direction but straight ahead. I'm ignoring chores around the house, thinking about the coffee I'm going to drink in a few minutes, and trying to figure out why my soul is such an unregenerate thing.

I stood in my room this morning, stared at my laundry, my unmade bed, with a towel wrapped around my head and said quite out loud, "Soul, what is your problem?" Only I wasn't so polite as that. How can this pendulum swing so quickly and wildly? How can my spirit be the reigning power one day and my sin overtake it the next? And I'm not even talking about the bad sins, you know, I'm talking about the easy ones, pummeled thoughts, over-analyzing things, doubting promises--the easy sins to slip into, the ones we blame on our personalities or our perspective.

Strange how quickly a head-cold or a sink full of dishes or an unanswered email can bring us face to face with nothing other than Self. I like to think the raggedness of my soul is due to peripheral things, but really, in the end, it's me. It's just me being a sinner.

Just losing sight of Him and the perfect law that gives freedom. It's not free if I have to scrounge around for it, grasp for it, compare myself to it (and everything else), and ultimately be undone by it. That's not what James was talking about.

The other night in our small group we discussed the Adamic Covenant and then the Noahic one and one girl mentions how it seems like it was God's followup plan, His backup. But I think it was something different. I think all these covenants all along are His plan. Each one a solid succession to the last, each one present so that we are always aware of what we have been saved from. Each one a mirror into what we'd be without our present help.

So it's 10am and I'm going to ignore the unmade bed and todo list. I'm going to a friend's house and we'll drink coffee and listen to classical music while we tackle our work to-do lists. And sometimes we'll just remind one another of Jesus.