I heard that Shaq wants to play this guy in horse…sorry Shaq, you, and your new teammate LeBron, couldn’t touch this guy.
Monthly Archive for June, 2009
I went to bed last night and panic hit me. I realized I was out of coffee. That meant one thing for me. I had to get up early and go get some! While I was out I decided to sit and read my bible for a while at the coffee shop. I’ve been reading through the New Testament for a bit, so the other day I decided to read through I Samuel…and I’m glad that I have as I felt God teaching me through this portion of scripture.
So fast forward to this morning. I’m reading the Bible and a guy sidles up to me.
“What are you reading?”, he says.
I said, “the Bible.”
He says, “What part?”
I say, “I Samuel…the part about David and Goliath.”
This is when he said, “I’m Miguel by the way.” Then he had me turn to Romans chapter 1 and proceeded to tell me about Martin Luther. He asked how long I had been studying the Bible.
I told him, “A while.”
He then told me that I needed to ‘forget about stuff like Samuel.’ And that I need to focus solely on the Gospel. That is where the power of God is at.
Then as I started talking, he excused himself from the conversation.
Let me go over a few reasons why I beg you not to be like Miguel:
a.) Don’t ever criticize how or what someone is reading in scripture. Especially, if you don’t know them at all!
b.) Don’t ever tell somebody that they should ‘forget about’ parts of Scripture. C’mon Miguel.
c.) Don’t ever preach a sermon to a stranger and then walk away as they start to respond.
d.) Don’t ever forget that the Gospel is God’s story of redemption through Jesus and we find that all over scripture.
e.) Don’t let your head knowledge of the Good News become more important than living the Good News. Jesus said that loving God with our all our heart, mind, soul, and strength was the most important thing. And the second thing was ‘like it’, love your neighbor as yourself. Our surrender to God releases us to be surrendered to others. Our love for and from God inspires us to love others. If our relationship with God gets boiled down to doctrine and intellectual enlightenment then we are missing the boat. (not necessarily saying that about Miguel, probably preaching a sermonette to myself.)
As he walked out the door I tried not to feel judged, or to judge. I prayed that he would step into the fullness of the Good News and that his life would become ‘the workmanship’ that it was created to be. I prayed that his heart would align with his head. But in the meantime…be like Jesus…not like Miguel. No offense Miguel.
I love this video because:
a.) I like dancing
b.)I like seeing spontaneous movements of fun
c.) I like thinking about the why and how things ‘get started’.
I hate to pollute this is a stand alone (and nearly disturbing) picture, but the question came to mind: “Did this guy intend to start a dance party on a hill, or did he just love to dance?”
For those of us who would like to see a Jesus movement happen…I offer this: Shouldn’t we just start dancing? Instead of talking about dance theory, how to properly dance, complaining about other people dancing wrong, and comparing our dance to others? I would rather be the guy acting like a crazy person and dancing for the love of it, than a professional dancer getting a grass stain on my butt while critiquing his form…and outfit.
Thanks to Mike G. and Zach L. for unearthing this for me.
I found this talk from Clay Shirky to be fascinating. It’s making me think about ‘marketing’ and creating connectedness in our ministry in Barcelona.
Clay Shirky: How Twitter can make history | Video on TED.com
We’ve started a new blog that will specifically talk our ministry and life in Barcelona! It’s cleverly entitled:
Add it to your Feedburner too.
I’m tired of Facebook…this is rant about it.
I’m no longer a fan of everyone knowing stuff about me that I have accepted as a ‘friend’. Don’t you think that having a thousand ‘friends’ that you never see or share life cheapening the word? The word used to mean something…now it just means people that I’ve accepted to see my personal information and pictures online.
Facebook has a way of creating a sense of false connection in some relationships. Some interaction on Facebook is ‘real’ because it actually effects the real life I live day to day. But some interaction creates a weird sense of connection…I say weird because these connections don’t really connect with anything in the life that I touch on a daily basis. Like does it really matter when I write things like, “Justin is going to bed.” Or “Justin is getting ready to eat lunch.” While it is good to get in touch with people around the world, I just don’t think that getting play-by-play of people’s lives is really creating a real relationship. Information and knowledge about someone is not relationship with someone. Even information that builds on actual relationship is easily skewed because words created on a web page are not a replacement for the person.
I believe that this false sense of knowing is actually harmful to the development of real relationships in our daily lives.
Facebook is a networking tool that I enjoy, but when we look to it for a sense of relationship it can displace us from reality. Why would I want to spend time reading the status updates of people whom I never see, when my daughter is sitting on the floor wanting to play with me? Or when my neighbor needs help moving? Or when I could be playing guitar? If I really wanted to learn about how a friend a doing, how is reading their status update a good replacement for picking up the phone or meeting for coffee?
I don’t want to be extremist or anything, but I do want to be honest with myself about how well I am actually doing engaging with the world around me. Virtual reality will never replace actual reality.
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