Super Bowl - Day 19

Today is the most watched television broadcast of the year. It's a time spent with friends, family, etc. watching a bunch of guys hit each other. Yay. But it got me to thinking on a totally different topic.

I find it interesting how some people are to live or to die on their television shows. I.E. I must get home to watch my television show. Or they have to watch the super bowl. Or they have to get to a business meeting, even if their sick. They'll even fight through a snow storm to get to this meeting. And it's great when I see someone plowing through with such determination to get things like this done.

But then I look at the exact same people and see them skip church just because.. It didn't fit in their schedule. They stayed up too late watching a movie. They have to watch the Super Bowl tonight. Or maybe they're at church, but because of that late night movie they watched they're spending the entire time at church either going back for coffee to stay awake or nodding off between cups. (Of course I don't think drinking coffee is bad, I'm just trying to make a point.. ;-P)

When preparing for a marathon you'll eat a lot of carbo-loading types of food the days before. You'll make sure the few nights before you get good sleep. You'll warm up, use the bathroom, and stretch before the race. And then throughout the race you'll be focused and strive hard to do your best. To a certain extent I believe this can apply to the worship of God on a Sunday morning. You'll get a good night's sleep so you aren't struggling the whole time to stay awake. You'll use the bathroom before so you're not having to hop up halfway through the sermon. You'll focus your mind to try to reap the most you can from the Word of God. Etc..

When it comes down to it, my point is just that maybe we should prioritize the things God wants us to prioritize. Sure, sometimes you're going to get sick and not want to spread the "love" with everyone. Or you have a bunch of young children who need lots of attention. But is it our priority to be at church, or are we looking for an excuse?

I'd be curious to hear other people's thoughts on this. I'm sure there are lots of other opinions out there.

^_^ - I feel like I'm running out of things to write about... <_<

P.S. Yay! Go Packers! :-P

Picture of the day:

Listening - Day 18

As I sit here listening to my sister play the piano it reminds me of how little we listen today. We have a deadline here. We have to get to this banquet. We have to check our e-mail. We have to see the next piece of old ceramic. Do we spend the time to see little children grow up? How about the time to sit outside and listen to the birds chirping early in the morning? Of course we must get things done. But do we enjoy these things? When our car has a flat tire in the morning do we look out and admire the handiwork of God? We're so hurried in everything that we do, that we forget to worship the one we're doing it all for.

Picture of the day:

Where - Day 17

Where will you be in 10 years? Who will be your friends? Who will you be?

Picture of the day:

Edification - Day 16

Hello!

How are you?

Good.

People talk a lot. Men talk maybe 12,000 or so words per day and women speak about 25,000 words per day. (I have no idea if these are even close, but some studies agree with this. So I'll run with it.)

What is being said? Are they edifying words to build up the saints? Or are they words that tear down and destroy?

When you come to the end of the day can you say that you edified people with your speech? You certainly spoke a lot, but did you say a lot? Will others go away encouraged or discouraged?

Picture of the Day:

Beauty and Strength - Day 15

I went down the Amazon River earlier this year. And one thing that I really came to grips with was the fact that God is both great as well as beautiful in his works.

We spend a lot of time speaking about the greatness of God and his judgment. I don't know that we always spend enough time as Christians observing the beauty of his creation. In the power of a storm there is a beauty. When we look up and admire Pikes Peak we see both beauty and glory.

Psalm 29:2 Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name; worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.

As we observe the beauty that God has created we should give glory to him through our words and actions. We should also observe holiness as beauty. Sin can never be seen as beautiful no matter how much hollywood tries to make it look beautiful. It's as if they dress a pig up in millions of dollars worth in jewelry where at some point it's hard to see the pig. But, it's still a pig under all the jewelry. So remember that holiness is a true beauty.

Psalm 96:6 Honour and majesty are before him: strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.

God is truly magnificent. His sanctuary has strength and beauty to it. Both strength and beauty are part of God's sanctuary. As young men, we can tend to put much of our emphasis on how strong we are but are sloppy in other areas of our lives. I think beauty also has value. We need to have beauty of spirit. A man who has a strong will, but dresses sloppily and who does not keep his house organized and beautiful can be failing in this aspect.

Psalm 90:17 And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.

I don't believe we focus enough on the aspect of beauty as Christians. Christians are well known for doing things badly. Their films are disgustingly put together. They don't put work into their projects. (They wear sandals with socks. - pet peeve ;-P) They don't show the beauty of the Lord because they are lukewarm. They aren't taking the beauty of the Lord and putting it into their work. Instead they are inconsistent and do everything in a mediocre manner. As Christians we should be the ones designing new technology and creating better art forms because we have hope. We should believe in a generational vision. If we care about our children, grandchildren, great great grandchildren etc then we will take dominion over the earth and will do it well and with a passion.

Ecclesiastes 3:10-11 I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it. He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.

God is the ultimate creator of creativity. Everything on this earth he's designed in such incredible ways. The ways our bodies function and think, the way fire burns logs and creates heat. Remember George Washington Carver spent much of his life researching the peanut and found 300 uses for it in our daily lives. It's amazing how just a tiny creation of God like this would have so many uses. That's just one plant of millions of plants that God has created. There's a lot more work to be done.

Psalm 48:2 Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King.

And someday at the end of our work here we're going to go see mount Zion. The city of our King. It's going to be an incredible day when we get to see this city that's called the joy of the whole earth.

But right now we need to take dominion and create beautiful things and marvel at the beautiful things our creator has made.

Picture of the day:

I could put these on another post, but I don't want to post two posts. :-P

Marriage or Video Games? - Day 14

It comes down to the fact that many young men aren't ready to be married. Yes, young men exist and there are actually more males then females in the United States. So where are these elusive men?

Well for one there aren't many men. There's a bunch of males. They in theory have the body parts of a male but they don't act the part. They're a bunch of children. According to a Newsweek article less then a third of guys are growing up by 30 years old. (Growing up = leaving home, getting an education, finding a partner(wife..), starting work and becoming a father)

As a Christian young man I see the serious temptation to not grow up. I recently read a paper by someone on how teenagers (15-17) spend their time and boys typically spend about 85 minutes a day working and about 500 minutes a day with free time.

After looking at this I wonder why we're complaining about boys not being grown up. It's kind of a duh factor. If you're spending 5x the amount of time goofing off then time working you think a man is going to be ready or even want to get married by the time he's 22?

But we're homeschoolers! We spend our time studying geography and staring at math books all day. We're with our parents so the boys must be much better then the average.. Ha ha, I think not. Most of the time, when I converse with a boy between the ages of 15-20 they say they do school and after school, well they really don't do anything. o.0 Really? School should take you about 3-4 hours a day and the rest of the day you do nothing? The problem is these young men aren't being raised to work.

Guess what. If you're raised by women it's going to be harder to become a man. And from what I see, in two parent households, the moms are raising the children and the men are doing... Umm. To be honest I don't really know. I figure most men have about 55-60 free hours per week if they work a 50 hour week. That seems like more then enough time to spend with their boys raising them and training them up. I'm blaming the men. I think it's time to point fingers. (Yay!) Fathers need to look themselves in the eyes and ask if they're raising their boys to be men. Both parents have a role in their children's lives and I don't see the men holding up their end of the bargain.

Now to the boys. Of course I'm speaking this while attempting to drag the log out of my own eye, but here are my basic thoughts. Number one, guys get a vision. If you have no vision for life you're going to fail. You need goals for now and fifty years from now. Otherwise you're going to spin your wheels and be one of those 30 somethings who aren't grown up. Number two, stop buying the load of #%#@% that the world sends your way. They want you to think that a life with children, a job, a wife, a house, etc. is a bad thing. Maybe it is hard, but that doesn't give you a reason to act like a child and hide from responsibility. Plus it's going to be so much more rewarding. Number three, learn to sacrifice. Sacrifice is so difficult especially in our culture that's taught us that it's all about us and the newest toy. Number four, get busy. If it's video games or computer time (except reading my blog of course. ;-) ) or television that's getting in your way of being busy consider throwing it out of your life for awhile. Sometimes these are the lions in our lives and need to be killed. Lastly, grow up. Read good books. I'm starting to get sick of talking to girls who have read a ton of great books and talking to boys incl. myself who don't read very many, if any good books.

To solve problems we have to do things differently. "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Everyone's going to have to sacrifice their flesh in order to see change.

P.S. To be honest I feel pretty naive in this area, but I took my best shot at it. I appreciate others input.

Tomorrow: Beauty and Strength

Marriage or Not? - Day 13

I've been thinking over this lately, partially because no matter where I go it seems someone's always talking about marriage and how to get their kids married. Which is a legitimate concern because I look around and I see a lot of unmarried young ladies who are already beautiful cornerstones yet there is no man there for them. In the circles that I've grown up in many parents and children decide not to go down the college route of sending their kids off to be educated by the world. Which I agree with, except, well I'll leave this till a later time...

Anyways, many couples come together in college. It makes sense, you meet a bunch of people of the opposite sex of about the same age, you're both being educated the same way, you spend some concerted time with them, and typically it's going to eventually happen.

So these parents are having their girls stay home and it in theory makes sense. If you want to be a good mother/help meet generally the home's going to be the best place to learn to be the best at it.

Now here's where the problem begins to happen. These young ladies are staying home and then the boys go to college. Wait, what... If this is all going to work there are going to have to be guys to marry.. <_< This system is fundamentally messed up.

It's going to come down to having to have your children in a pool of other young people. Number one, of course it should be a pool that you're comfortable with your girls or boys getting married in. And number two there NEEDS TO BE A POOL!!! Just sayin'.

In the end I don't think there's going to be one solution that's going to automatically mean marriage. But there are things that one can and should do.

And I think there's another major problem and that's the maturity of the young men. But I'll post that tomorrow. ^_^

Tomorrow: Maturity

And I'm also going to start a daily picture at the end or beginning of my blog posts. I'm going to try to take at least one picture each day, but I didn't get a chance today so here's a good one to premise my topic of maturity tomorrow.