This week I’d like to welcome to the blogging world:
Jim Akins: church planting guru at West Ridge Church near Atlanta, GA. He coached the training network I went through.
Bob Masterino: an electrician by day, on-line journalist by night, guitar rock star on Sundays at Iron City Church.
Welcome guys!
Found this really cool website today that allows me to track where you guys who read this are from. See it at the bottom on the right. It’ll take a while for it to update, once working you’ll be able to click on it and see a larger picture. Cool!
Recently came across a question by Joseph Sangle ”Do I work for a paycheck or am I doing what I love to do?” Well, what’s your PayDay! What is it that you look forward to each week or month. Is it the automated deposit, a new purchase, or the joy and fullness of doing what you love to do? People use to say, “find what you love and figure out a way to get paid to do it” In the world I live and work in, sometimes you just do what you love regardless of the payday. FYI: last year prior to this, this and this, my blood pressure was consistently staying in the pre-hypertension areas. Today, and for the past several months, it has gone back to normal. Since I don’t work out that much, I attribute it to doing what I love, it’s a lot less stressful.
Wow, what an article! Check out this artical by Forbes. They used the Seven Deadly Sins as alluded to in the Bible then: “For each sin we stretched our imagination to find a workable proxy–murder rates for wrath, per capita billionaires for avarice–then culled the available data sources to rank the cities.” Very interesting, especially with the graphic that allows you to see the trends based on regions as well (look at the south and gluttony). Makes me glad to live in Pittsburgh, The Most Livable City!
Not sure how many of you watched the 60 minute investigation this past Friday; if not, it’s worth your read. Having seen the Bodies Exhibit, catch up on my thoughts here, I interrupted Vegas to watch. I walked away with one thought:
The world has been debating sanctity of life for years, mainly focusing on when life begins and pro-life vs pro-choice options. Now we’ve come full circle to where leading anatomist are fighting for sanctity of life, after-life. It begs to question, do their current arguments put an end to previous debates about the beginning of life? And when will somebody step up and begin fighting for sanctity of life, during life. MLK did a great job of that, but who’s going to take up where he left off.
What are your thoughts from the investigation, the Bodies Exhibit, and the future dialogue on Sanctity of Life?
My wife is so creative…that’s why every year she plans our valentines date. Don’t get to jealous fellas, I have to plan all the other ones throughout the year. This year she took me to a glass blowing/molding warehouse where we watched them create some exhibits. You can check them out here. We were even going to be able to participate, but that’ll have to wait till Easter because of where we were going next. We then traversed the back roads of Oakland, some still hadn’t been cleared from the snow earlier in the week. That was an interesting ride. Eventually we made it here and walked through the Chihuly Glass exhibit. It was amazing seeing the glass illuminated at night. The Thailand Tropical Forest and the Broderie room where my favorite. You should check out the exhibit before it leaves.
Last week hit our house hard with sickness thanks to the now infamous Duke Bug. We also received a wintery mix that made it impossible for one of our cars to get out of the driveway. The Wrangler powers through anything; but the ice crippled the Blazer even in 4 wheel drive. Mid-week I was feeling better and decided not to wait on our landlord to clear our driveway. I’d at least shovel off our parking area so we could salt it once it warmed up. Well, 2 hours later I realized I needed a little more experience and insight into the shoveling task. I think using an actual snow shovel would have helped. There was still a layer of ice, but the piles of snow I pushed to the side were tremendously enjoyed by the dogs. Even after shoveling, I still couldn’t get the Blazer out. Next time, I’ll enjoy some hot chocolate and movies and leave the snow removal to our landlord. I wish I knew how to post pictures here.
Okay it’d be really easy for me right now to create a bullet list of the frustrations that are going on in my life. A lot of people dealing with church planting have them; we never see the progress we expect. We live in an age of Globilization and open access to information further driving our frustration for instant results. Not only with church stuff, but life itself has it’s frustrations. It has been a rough two weeks for me on this front.
So I decided today to do a study on frustration within scripture and ended up in Romans 8. Creation itself is frustrated, but of a different kind. Creation groans because God’s children have not been brought into God’s glory. Creation didn’t choose it’s current position, it was forced upon it. Paul than urges that as children of God we to should be frustrated as we wait for our glorious redemption.
To often my mind, my selfish ambitions lead me away from this perspective. The world has it’s frustrations, but even more so our spiritual life has it’s frustrations. I can complain alot about the worldly frustrations; but am I complaining about my spiritual position? Am I frustrated with the anticipation of being redeemed by the God of creation? How do I view my current state of life: as being subject to frustrations; or inwardly groaning…eargly waiting…painfully overcoming wordly frustrations so that my spirtual life is gloriously runied by the grace of God.
The problem is I’m too often consumed with worldly frustrations rather than the state of my spiritual pilgramage. God Help Me! Help me become consumed with and frustrated by having to wait on my eternal redemption.
