The Trip Home and Break So Far

Well a late Merry Christmas to you all and a very Happy New Year!
My trip home was exciting. I got within the last flight which normally takes an hour and then I would have been home but the flight got delayed. When we finally boarded the plane and got situated they decided to cancel the flight. So me and my sister were stranded in Seattle. But we have connections! Our pastor recently took over a church in Seattle so we called him up and asked if we could spend the night. Of course they said yes. The next day we ended up borrowing one of their cars and we drove over the pass to our home. Actually I drove because I tend to drive faster than my sister...I won't say how fast as that is classified info. But suffice it to say we made it over the pass and into the glorious desert of eastern Washington in good time. Wide open spaces, mountains, desert, sagebrush...life don't get no better!

A lot of my time has been spent preparing messages and Sunday School lessons. So far I have preached 2x and taught 1 SS lesson. I have 3 more SS lessons, and 2 more sermons to write. Since we are without a pastor my Dad and the other Deacon have been doing a lot of speaking and I am helping lighten the load some. Not to mention the two very interesting situations my Dad is having deal with right now....So that's been fun and exciting. But God is faithful and good and we must trust and rely on Him.

So that's it for now. I hope all of you are haveing a great break and I'll see you in a few weeks.

What will I do?

Well the semester has ended and I have passed all my classes!! But enough with the past. On with the future. The break is here and I am flying home tomorrow. Already I know what I will be doing alot of during break. That is helping out at church. But that is all visible. What will I do in my off-time? You may never know. But I will and so will God. So that is the challenge. Will God be pleased with my activities over break? Will it be a time of growth? Or will I flounder and fall? What will I do? Will I come back stronger and more on fire for God than when I left? What will I do?

Not only is that my question for myself but that is the question for all of you as well. What will you do? I don't need to know but you know and God knows. Will you come back stronger or weaker? What will you do?

Poems, Mariachi, and Ramblings

Well I am 8 hours and 14 minutes into my 20 hour all night/all day shift. I'm listening to what I believe is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir on a polka streaming websight. Don't ask. I'm about to change it. Which I just did. Now I'm listening to a gospel quartet. Friday was the last day of classes. Something happened in Greek class...I have immortalized it in the form of a poem. (first a pause to listen to the bass singer do a solo.) So that music was putting to sleep. I switched to...well it was "In the Mood" played on the accordion...interesting...now it is some mariachi...La Puerta Negra. But the poem...

The fly landed on my paper
I was ready for a caper
Greek class was getting long
I was waiting for the bell to gong

And when that fly had landed
I thought some fun to me was handed
My hand crept up to it
The fly my finger hit

It flew in an arc
My what a lark
It hit Ben in the arm
You can be sure I meant no harm

Ben didn't know what was going on
He covered his mouth with a yawn
The fly was no more
And Greek was soon 'ore.

So that was it...it provided me with some amusement...and all of you with a poem to deride and make fun of...is that redundant? We learned about something called reduplication in Greek...now if that isn't reredundant I don't know what is.....till next time I'll be around and busy....

Just..three...more...weeks...breathe.....breathe....you can do it......

Here's something till I can relate the events of my Thanksgiving Break. I wrote this about two years ago....and it still holds true.

Lamentations of a College Student Suffering from Spring Fever

Paling under fluorescent lights,
I sit and wonder if my mind is all right.
I listen to my teacher drone,
And write notes upon notes ‘til I feel like I’m stoned.

I listen for the buzzing of bees;
Their voices I hear calling me!
But alas and alack, the glass bars the sound
Of nature’s concerto on God’s green ground.

I drag my thoughts back to my teacher,
And try to focus on the lesson ‘bout Miss Beecher.
Then to the window my eyes stray aside,
And my thoughts with the wind,
Trees, and flowers
Abide.

....But there is a better way...

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.



Translated....well kinda....from the Norsk Bible. The focus should not be what "great" things we can do. Instead we should be imitators of Christ. Did he ever speak in tongues? Did he go around all puffed up with self-importatnce? No! He simply loved, served, and sacrificed. He showed us a better way and that is the way that Paul is pointing out in 1 Corinthians 13. The better way...they way of Christ. Are we proud and arrogant "tongue speakers" flaunting our gifts and abilitites? Or are we humble, loving, sacrificing servants? There is a better way....follow that way and it will lead to many adventures.....

And forbid not to speak in tongues...

Om jeg taler med menneskers og englers tunger, men ikke har kjærlighet, da er jeg en lydende malm eller en klingende bjelle. Og om jeg eier profetisk gave og kjenner alle hemmeligheter og all kunnskap, og om jeg har all tro, så jeg kan flytte fjell, men ikke har kjærlighet, da er jeg intet. Og om jeg gir til føde for fattige alt det jeg eier, og om jeg gir mitt legeme til å brennes, men ikke har kjærlighet, da gagner det mig intet. Kjærligheten er langmodig, er velvillig; kjærligheten bærer ikke avind, kjærligheten brammer ikke, opblåses ikke, den gjør intet usømmelig, søker ikke sitt eget, blir ikke bitter, gjemmer ikke på det onde; den gleder sig ikke over urettferdighet, men gleder sig ved sannhet; den utholder alt, tror alt, håper alt, tåler alt. Kjærligheten faller aldri bort; men hvad enten det er profetiske gaver, da skal de få ende, eller det er tunger, da skal de ophøre, eller det er kunnskap, da skal den få ende. For vi skjønner stykkevis og taler profetisk stykkevis; men når det fullkomne kommer, da skal det som er stykkevis, få ende. Da jeg var barn, talte jeg som et barn, tenkte jeg som et barn, dømte jeg som et barn; men da jeg blev mann, la jeg av det barnslige. For nu ser vi i et speil, i en gåte; men da skal vi se åsyn til åsyn; nu kjenner jeg stykkevis, men da skal jeg kjenne fullt ut, likesom jeg også fullt ut er kjent. Men nu blir de stående disse tre, tro, håp, kjærlighet, og størst blandt dem er kjærligheten.

I've been researching tongues for a paper...any questions?

Don't worry...the interpretation is coming ...unless someone wants to offer one...I mean lets do this biblically if we're going to do it.

Life is Real...

Sometimes the seeming futility and endlessness of life reminds me of a poem I list among my favorites. It is

A Parody on a Psalm of Life

Life is real, life is earnest,
And the shell is not its pen –
“Egg thou art, and egg remainest”
Was not spoken of the hen.

Art is long and Time is fleeting,
Be our bills then sharpened well,
And not like muffled drums be beating
On the inside of the shell.

In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the great barnyard of life,
Be not like those lazy cattle!
Be a rooster in the strife!

Lives of roosters all remind us,
We can make our lives sublime,
And when roasted, leave behind us,
Hen tracks on the sands of time.

Hen tracks that perhaps another
Chicken drooping in the rain,
Some forlorn and henpecked brother,
When he sees, shall crow again.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

The words of this poem often come to me when I am suffering from lack of sleep and major assignments are looming in the very near future. The incident that occasioned the remembrance of this poem today and thus memorializing it in my blog was that wonderful institution commonly referred to as Daylight Savings Time. I can assure you that as I look at the clock and the time of 117 AM registers in my somewhat somniatic (yes I just made up a word) state for the second time in an hour, Daylight Savings Time is a myth as it is certainly not light outside. Furthermore, since that said institution, i.e. Daylight Savings Time, has just moved the clocks back one hour, today my 8 hour overnight shift has just been lengthened to 9 hours....and I have 5 major assingments due next week.....why do I do this??? Well...can you think of something better to do with life than to further probe the recesses of my sleep deprived state?? I like adventure and setting the clocks back is almost like crossing the International Date Line without having to travel! Hey...if we set the clocks back an hour everyday for a year would time slow down? Life is real...Life is ernest.......and the sh......Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Abide in Him

"By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked." I John 2:5-6

How do we know that we are in Jesus? If we walk the same as He walked. How do we walk in the same way? By abiding in Him. John 15: 1-5 says "I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing."

How do you abide? As the branch of a fruit tree gets its nurishment from the trunk of the tree, so must we get our nurishment from Jesus. The branch sucks the juice it needs for life from the tree itself. We must do the same with our Savior. Drink deep from God's Word. Get your life from it. As you do that, you will walk as Jesus did and you will be known as one that abides in Christ.

I need thee every hour, most gracious Lord;
No tender voice like thine can peace afford.

I need thee every hour; stay thou nearby;
Temptations lose their power when thou art nigh.

I need thee every hour, in joy or pain;
Come quickly and abide, or life is vain.

I need thee every hour; teach me thy will;
And thy rich promises in me fulfill.

I need thee, O I need thee; every hour I need thee;
O bless me now, my Savior, I come to thee.

Annie Hawks

History of Communication Cont. w/ Application

Last time we started looking at the history of communication. We first looked at how verbal communication came about and without dwelling on that, began to look at how written communication came to be. We will continue in that story.

Characters:
Oog: the guy that got it all started
Aag: Oog's wife
Uug: Oog's brother in law
Junior: Oog's son

Recap of the story so far:
Oog sent Jr. over to Uug's cave to tell Uug something. It got all mixed up and now the whole town thinks that the Red Coats are coming.

The men of the town stood there, shoulder to shoulder waiting for the Red Coats to make their appearance. (The Red Coats were a bunch of marauding barbarians who wore polar bear skin coats dyed with raspberry juice. They were a fearsome lot those Red Coats.) The only man not there to defend the town was Oog. Soon, Uug noticed that Oog was not there so he sent his teenage son Uugo to Oog's cave to alert him to the grave situation that the town of Cavesville was in. When Uugo filled Oog in on the details Oog was shocked! He grabbed his club and headed down to the town post-haste. When Oog got to Uug, Oog immediatly began questioning Uug about what was going on. Uug said, "I was working in my cave when Junior came running in and said that the Red Coats were coming." Oogs mouth dropped wide open. He said, "I sent Junior over to ask you if you wanted to come for supper and if you could bring some bread with you if you came!" They immedialty went to search for Junior. After questioning him at some length, they figured the situation out and sent all the townsmen back to their caves. While talking about the days events over dinner that night, they decided that something had to be done to prevent something like that from happening again. There must be a way to accuratly transfer messages from one place to another. Aag said, "What if you were to make a different mark with some raspberry juice for each sound we have. Then by putting the sound together you would form words and therefore my stringing words together you would have a message!" Oog slapped his hands on his thighs. "I am so glad I thought of that!" he said. "The intelligence of the male mind is astounding!" Uug, Junior, and Uugo concurred. Aag did not and the men didn't get any dessert that night. But from that conversation grew the alphabet and from there simple messages and finally books.

The problem of sending messages to people when you didn't have a runner soon reared its ugly head. Different tribes of cavemen had different solutions. Some polished up metal plates and used sunlight to flash sunlight back and forth. Some whistled or used long wooden horns to call to each other across valleys. Some of the more destructive tribes, of which this writer is a member, preferred the smoke signal approach but they often had altercations with the EPA. "Honestly Sir, the reason I had to send a message to my pen pal in India. That is why I had to burn Yellowstone National Park. That is the only way my pen pal could get the message!"

From those rather primordial beginnings grew the postal system, telegraph, telephone, radio, cell phone, email, instant messaging, etc. And with each of those technological advances, we became more and more addicted to communication. And we have to have more and more options. We can't just have a cell phone now. It has to have text messaging, call waiting, voicemail, and email access. We can't just have email, we have to have several email accounts, Yahoo, Google, and half a dozen other forms of instant messaging. We have our Scholar360 account, blogspot, FaceBook, and MySpace. And if we don't have instant access to at least a score of ways to communicate at any time night or day anywhere in the world, we can't function. What has society come to? We spend so much time communicating with others that we often don't take time to sit and think and still less time to communicate with God. Jesus often got away from it all and spent time in the wilderness and mountains and on the lake. Sometimes it was with his closest friends. Often it was just him and his Father. Alone. For an evening. Or a whole night. Or early in the morning. When was the last time you got alone for a long period of time and just sat and watched the tadpoles swim? You can get a lot of thinking and praying done while doing that. When was the last time you were quiet and let the Spirit search you? I'm probably stepping on some toes now but don't worry....I'm yelling louder at myself than I am at you!

History of Communication

Verbal communication. It started out one of two ways.
Theory one: Oog the caveman was putting up a partition in his cave. His family was growing and he was partitioning off the playroom to make two rooms. While moving a large rock, he dropped it on his foot and the cries of agony and rage went down in history as the first verbal communication that we, as homo sapiens, had.
Theory two: same time, same place. Only this time Oog's wife Aag was watching. When she saw him drop the rock on his foot, she whispered "Oops." From that rather inauspicious beginning, grew the languages we speak today.

One day Oog wanted to tell his brother-in-law Uug something. But, Uug was in his cave and Oog couldn't leave what he was doing to talk to Uug. So Oog sent his son Junior. Now Junior was a good lad but like most boys his age, a little forgetful. To complicate matters even further, Uug was hard of hearing. When Junior left, he knew that he was supposed to ask Uncle Uug if he was going come over for supper and if he was, to bring some bread and pot roast. "And," Oog added, "come home right away."
So Junior left the cave and went next door to Uncle Uug's house. When he got there, he realized that he had forgotten exactly what he was supposed to ask. He thought it had something to do with bread though. So he asked Uncle Uug, "Do you have any bread or toast and are you coming?" and having said that, turned around and left. After all, his dad told him to come right home. Uug was horrified. The Red Coats! And they were coming!! He ran out into center court and sounded the alarm. "The Red Coats are coming!" he shouted. Everybody came running with their clubs. They lined up shoulder to shoulder, ready to defend their wives and children. they waited....and waited....and waited......and waited...........................................................................

to be continued

A Voice of one Crying

A Voice of one crying. Why that for a title? It comes from the book of John, chapter 2 verse 23. When John the Baptist is asked who he is and what he is doing, he responds with "Iam the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Esaias." That is one of my three life verses and one that I hope reflect my mission in life and philosophy of ministry.

Now, why did I create this blog? Why did I, a computer/technology...uh disliker...I almost said hater but that would be too strong of a word...create a blog? Two reasons and they have no real "spiritual" purpose. A friend of mine has a blog and I wanted to respond to a post of his but couldn't until I was also a blogger.
Secondly, I work some very late nights/all nighters/and early mornings. I need something to do when I'm sick of studying!

So that is why I'm here. Basically my reasons are totally pragmatic. But I may actually make a difference in someones life or it may serve to just keep me out of trouble. And if it does either of those, then good. I'm happy.