Lunatic, Liar, or Lord?

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.'  That is the one thing we must not say.  A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.  He would either be a lunatic - on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell.  You must make your choice.  Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.  You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a Demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God.  But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher.  He has not left that open to us.  He did not intend to."

-C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Who said football is worthless.

For those who don't know who Tim Tebow is, read this paragraph, skip ahead if you do. He is the starting quarterback for the Florida Gators.  His parents are missionaries in the Philippines and he often works in their orphanage during the summers.  He is frequently seen preaching and leading Bible studies in Florida prisons in his free time.  He wears "Phil 4:13" on his face for every game.  He has won numerous awards including college football's most prestigious award, the Heisman Trophy.

In July, at a news conference, the following question was posed to Mr. Tebow:

"I don't mean to sound cynical, but between winning the national championship and winning the Heisman, saving the world in the Philippines and all, did you ever, like, sneak a cigarette when you were in high school? Do you ever do anything wrong? Do you feel like everything is sort of on cruise control for you?"

His response (in part):

"You know, everybody, they can look and say how easy it is. But it's definitely not that easy. The difference is 'cause not many people want to wake up at 5, go through workouts, go speak to young kids, go back, eat lunch, go to class, go to tutoring, go speak at a prison at night, come back. I mean, more people would do those things; they just don't want to sacrifice.

"You know, there's a lot of leaders out there. But, unfortunately, there aren't a lot of good ones. So that's always been my dream and my goal, is to be someone like Danny Wuerffel was to me, to be someone that a parent can say, 'Hey, this kid did it the right way.' That's always been my dream and my goal more so than winning a trophy or winning a championship.

"So if it's cynical or whatnot, that's fine. If people don't believe it, that's fine. There's always going to be naysayers, people that are going to say it's fake. But that's fine because you can't control everybody. But I can control what I do, my attitude, how I approach the situation. So how I approach the situation is I want to do everything in my power that football gives me to influence as many people as I can for the good because that's gonna mean so much more when it's all said and done than just playing football and winning championships."

This kid impresses me more every day.  

My favorite part: "...more people would do these things; they just don't want to sacrifice."

What would we be doing with our day if we were really, I mean really willing to sacrifice?

You can find the original article by Pat Forde on espn.com here.

Interesting stuff recently on Foxnews.com

Some news stories lately have really grabbed me lately. All of them science related. I'll present them in order from the painfully obvious to the most mind blowing.

#1: Topic: Climate Change

What grabbed me in this article was the "why didn't I think of that" factor. Pop quiz: (T or F) If sea ice in the arctic melts, sea levels will rise. The answer is: False.  Because ice, even if it is floating above the surface, is still displacing water. Just like in your 4th grade science experiment, if you put a piece of ice in a glass of water and mark the water level, when the ice melts, has the water level gone up or down? Neither! So why should melting ice make sea levels go up? Just another example of junk-science being used to fool us into panicking about global warming.

#2: Topic:  Nuclear Missile Defense

The article says it best, this looks like something straight out of a "Terminator" movie.  Basically a huge, self-propelled, self-guided bullet, this amazing device is designed to hunt down and ram enemy ICBM (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile) warheads.  It's a cylinder with rocket boosters pointing in every direction that allow it to fly through space....just watch the video linked in the article. Whoa.

#3: Topic: Prosthetic Limbs

Three words: watch. the. video.  You'll find yourself trying to figure out if it's been doctored or is actually from a sci-fi movie. It's not. It's real.  And it's awesome.  Prosthetic limbs that are anatomically correct, and can be controlled by either an ingenious control system integrated into your shoe, by attaching control systems to muscles and tendons, or mere thought.  Imagine feeding yourself for the first time in 26 years, like the man in the video.  Who knows how close we are to a fully functional, fully integrated prosthetic hand that is indistinguishable from the real thing to the naked eye.  Just like Luke Skywalker. 20 years ago: science fiction. Today: reality.  God has allowed man to progress so much these last 100 years.  Who knows what's in store around the corner.

Welp...here we go.

Since I havn't posted in so long, here's some short quips pertaining to my thoughts on the election. I got a catalog from Despair.com in the mail for some reason and found some of their products were slightly profound/ironic.

A rejected Obama campaign slogan.

Something to post on the Whitehouse door come January.

Another rejected Obama poster.

Large corporations new outlook on labor during the Obama presidency.

The credit crisis is your fault.

An unheeded warning (the ship represents the USSR).

I blame the media.

I'm thinking of putting this on the church bus (unrelated).

"I think that Karl Marx quote, 'to each according to his need, from each according to his ability,' really sums up Obama's campaign. What? Karl Marx isn't one of the Marx brothers??"
-Obama voter.

In Other News

Things are going really well down here in FL. There's lots to be done around here and I'm still just trying to hit my stride. The congregation is great, not without its problems, but that is to be expected.

I'm searching for an apartment. I hate shopping for expensive things (i.e. apartments, cars, etc.) I am THE WORST haggler/bargain shopper ever.

If Florida wins out and gets left out of the national championship, I will only be a little upset, even though I know they can beat anyone in the country the way they are playing right now. Losing to Ole Miss is just too big of a loss. BUT, if there are two other 1 loss teams in the championship, I'll be upset. That's neither here nor there, just throwing it out there.

Bye!

Yay for va-ca!

So I have the WHOLE week off this week so I have lots of time to do the lots of things I havn't had lots of time to do. before.

Today I cleaned my car.  Trust me, it needed it.  It took me all afternoon and a trip to O'Reily's Autoparts.  I warshed, waxed, rain-ex-ed, armor-alled, replaced the windshield wipers, scrubbed the carpets/seats, and took all the junk out of there (cept the trunk still has a bunch of copper wire I need to recycle).  Boyitellyahwhat, it is like getting a new car.  Just in time to drive it 20 hours to Tampa.

The wifey and I saw "Iron Man" this weekend.  It was really good. Left me wanting more.  I'm looking forward to the sequel and the upcoming Captain America movie which is supposedly going to intertwine with Iron Man and other Marvel movies including (possibly) X-men and Spiderman.  The possibilities are endless, as are the profits I'm sure.  

Still getting ready for the move, no news on that front really.  Hope everyone is doing well.

Lots going on

I got back from Blue Ridge Family Encampment about a week ago, and it was really cool.  It was very different from your typical summer Bible camp. So different in fact, that I wouldn't put them in the same category.  

I directed the chorus, which was both fun and stressful.  I came in not knowing what to expect, what the kids were expecting, what the camp directors were expecting, what kind of music the kids were familiar with, exactly how many kids I would be dealing with, or the musical talent level of the kids.  I hate going into things not knowing what to expect, so needless to say I was a little worried going in.  

Everything turned out just fine though.  The kids did a great job, we did almost everything I wanted to do except we had to cut a medley of old songs from the book out.  I assumed the kids would know all these songs, so I didn't rehearse them until the 2nd to last rehearsal.  Surprise! We've never heard of any of these songs.  Whoops.  No biggie, the program was going to be on the long side anyway.

I enjoyed teaching the chorus, it was nice to get back into the music world.  I also got to help teach the middle school class.  It took an extra ounce of patience, but it was lots of fun, and I think the kids got a lot out of the class.

Selfishly, it was really good to spend some time with some of my old DXD brothers.  Hudkins did a great job as director of the youth/college program. Dan-O and Landry held it down for the media department, and pulled off a great slide show at the end of the week.  We had a blast on the 11 hour drive there and back, getting lost trying to find whale-mart, helping everything on the schedule go smoothly, and just getting to know all the kids and the college peeps.

In other news, I bought the new Death Cab for Cutie album a couple of weeks ago with the iTunes card I got last Christmas.  I hated it at first.  Track two, "I Will Possess Your Heart" drove me crazy.  I thought it had no meter and was just dumb.  I made myself listen to the whole album again on the way to Searcy to meet up with the guys for Blue Ridge and I finally figured it out.  There is meter after all.  It's two bars of 4, followed by a bar of 3, followed by a bar of 5.  If you do the math 4+4+3+5=4+4+4+4  So it adds up to 4 even bars of 4, but the feel of the bass line makes it feel like mix meter. Genius!  Once I had this epiphany, I listened to the rest of the album with a little more open mindedness.  I didn't like the other songs before, because the phraseology was so choppy.  Every melodic was only 3 or 4 words long it seemed.  I either got used to it or it's not as bad as I originally thought.  All that to say, this is a good album.  Takes some getting used to, but I love it.  4 Gui-stars out of 5!

Concerning my upcoming move:

Things I will miss about living in Springfield:

1. Being close to Searcy and my friends there.

2. My church family at Brookline

3. Thursday night Bible study.

4. The Fall weather.

5. Pineapple Whip!

6. Andy's Frozen Custard.

Things I will not miss:

1. Winter.

2. My stupid job.

3. Fire trucks driving by my apartment. Every. Night.

4. Garbage men picking up the garbage outside my window in their loud, beeping, thundering trucks. At 3 in the morning.

5. Not having a washer, dryer, or dishwasher in my home.

6. Springfield Airport.

Things I am looking forward to in Tampa:

1. My awesome new job that I will enjoy and actually look forward to going to!

2. No winter!!

3. Seeing my sister, brother-in-law, and niece all the time!

4. Living a short drive from my parents!

5. Good airport with decent prices.

6. All the cool stuff to do (Orlando is only 1 hour away; Gainesville is just 3 Go Gators!; pro baseball, football, and hockey; museums, zoos, parks, concerts, and all the things big cities attract; orange groves, strawberry festivals, and generally awesome fruit.)

Big News

So I havn't been posting on here for a while because I've been sitting on some big news and it hasn't been official enough to announce. But now it is.

Starting sometime in the coming months I will be the new Youth Minister at the Bay Area Church of Christ in Mango (near Tampa), Florida.

woot!

More details to come, but I'm still recovering from getting my wisdom teeth pulled so it'll have to be later.

Thanks for all the prayers and encouragement!!!