HARMLESS THOUGHTS

This blog led me to a really interesting song.  At first I was like...hmm... But I can't help myself.  It's so fun to listen to. It is called, "Jesus is a Friend of Mine" by Sonseed. It's so... Well, it looks like there are a few other people who have been listening to this song. Here is the David Crowder Band performing the same song. [HT: Sunday School Thoughts ] ZAP!

Ever since Jim DeMint came to our church, I have really liked him. In fact, I don't think that I have ever heard a more sincere politician. Here is a video on CNN of Jim talking about the Bailout. Embedded video from CNN Video

I don't have a Wii, but after I saw this guy, I really wanted a Wiimote. Johnny Chung Lee At least check out his head tracking video.

One more Twitter Post. I added Twitter on the sidebar. Just so you know.

I am connecting my Jott.com account with Twitter. This way I can call Jott and it will send my post two twitter. Then I connected my twitter account to my facebook account so that the status message will be the same on both. In other words, my current status is: geek.

I am trying out Twitter . I don't know why.  I suppose that I have heard enough people mention it, so I thought I would give it a whirl.  I added it to the sidebar of this blog. I am twitting away . So, those of you who twitter, could you add me as your buddies or pals or friends or web-compadres or whatever you call a twitter companion?!?

I taught the counseling class again this week, but it didn't go as well as I was hoping.  I was covering the second half of the Six Basic Elements of Biblical Counseling, but there was an entire 15 minute span of time where I felt disoriented in my notes.  (In case you were wondering, it is really bad when the teacher feels disoriented!)  I know that I was following my notes, I just had a moment where I didn't feel like I was connecting with the class. I know that this probably came from the lack of adequate preparation.  The last few weeks have been some pretty challenging weeks and haven't allowed for much prep time, so I don't feel that I could have done any better than I did... It is just that I really like to be prepared.  And more importantly, I really like to connect with the class that I am teaching. The people in the class didn't seem to be disoriented, which is a good sign, so it wasn't a total loss.  I even had several really good comments and questi...

    Sent to you by mattharmless via Google Reader:     John Frame on Christians and Political Choices via Josh Harris on 9/17/08 My friend Tony Reinke shared the following quote by theologian John Frame over at my Church Blog . I think it's worth repeating here: "...in some cultures (like the ancient Roman, in which the New Testament was written) there is not much that Christians can do, other than pray, to influence political structures and policies. But when they can influence them, they should. In modern democracies, all citizens are 'lesser magistrates' by virtue of the ballot box. Christians have an obligation to vote according to God's standards. And, as they are gifted and called, they should influence others to vote in the same way. This is not to say that political choices are always obvious. Often we must choose the lesser of two evils. Candidate Mershon may have a better view of one issue than Candidate Beates, while Beates has a better view ...

I just found out that one of my students does claymation! Here is a bit of his work: I love claymation!

I saw this video here . Colorado for Equal Rights Personhood Amendment from Personhood USA on Vimeo .

Wow. http://labs.google.com/gaudi You need to check this site out.  It indexes words or phrases from videos.  You can pull up speeches from different candidates and see when they bring up that topic.  I can't really describe it, just check it out.

    Sent to you by mattharmless via Google Reader:     Correspondence on Abortion and Voting via Joshua Harris blog (Covenant Life Church) on 9/16/08 Recently a couple pursuing membership in our church wrote me a very thoughtful, humble letter with questions generated by the recent sermon "Don???t Waste Your Vote." In particular, they took issue with the emphasis placed on the issue of abortion. While pro-life themselves, they felt that by highlighting abortion we were essentially endorsing a particular party. I wrote them back and sought to share the perspective of the pastoral team, why we did what we did and how we view this issue. I'm sharing our correspondence here (with their permission) for two reasons. First, because I think it's an encouraging example of how Christians should interact on what are often heated subjects. We need to be able to speak about these issues with charity and respect toward each other. I think the way this couple raised the...

I was guessing that there would be, maybe, 10 people in the counseling class. At 5:30 there were 7 people in the room. I thought that was going to be alright. Nice small intimate crowd... By 5:40 I had almost 50 people in the room. That wasn't expected.

Here is the Power Point for the first week. (Please don't let the number of slides frighten you. That is actually the number of clicks to get through the whole presentation.)

I wanted to put in a plug for a DVD set that a friend of mine found. It is called Modern Parables, and is located at http://www.modernparable.com .  Here is a short trailer for one of the parables. Go to the site to watch all 6 trailers or try out a full lesson . Let me know what you think.

Today I am preparing for my "Life Ed" class. I mentioned before that I am teaching a class at my church titled Counseling 101. I have done some prep for this class, but the last few weeks have been challenging to my time table. In fact, the other day my oldest son said, "Daddy, all you do is work. You get up and you work, you go to school and you work, you get home and you work, we go to sleep and you work... That's all you do!" It was a sad commentary on my current state. Mostly because I was just feeling that way when he said it. I was thinking that it was all in my imagination, but I guess not. So, anyway, I am putting the final touches on the notes for this class. The topics that I am covering this week are Building Involvement (Saying, I Care!) , Gathering Data (Gathering the information you need) , and Determining the Problem (Making sense of the data) .  This will be the first time teaching through these particular topics, so that always adds the...

I actually dreamed, last night, that I was sitting in a lawn chair. That was it. Nothing exciting happened. I was sitting outside of my parent's house. There were a few other family members who came and went, but I just sat there. And not just for a short time... It was quite a while. (At least in dream-time it was quite a while.) Is this some sort of sign that I am too busy in my waking hours?

The Sophomore Bible class is focused on the book of Proverbs for the first half of the year. I really love Proverbs and I am really looking forward to getting into this study, but trying to figure out which Proverbs to pick for scripture memory seemed a little daunting. There are so many good ones and it would be difficult to pick which ones would really leave an impression on the kids. So, instead of picking the Proverbs that they need to memorize, I am going to let them pick their own. Each week they need to pick two new Proverbs to have memorized. As they progress, this list of scriptures will continue to increase. Each week they will need to be ready to quote any and/or all of the Proverbs from their "arsenal". I am calling these verses their "Smack Verses" because that is what Proverbs tend to do to me. They smack me around! Proverbs say things that most people would never walk right up to someone and say. Here are a couple of examples: Proverbs 12:1 ...

I'm trying out the jott feature to see if it posts to my blog. Will find out. listen Powered by Jott

I am sure you have probably already heard of Google Chrome by now, but just in case you haven't, I thought I would mention it. Google Chrome is Google's Web Browser .  I am not going to say that it beats out Firefox, but so far I am liking it.  Like most of Google's products , it is streamlined, which (in my opinion) is always better when dealing with technology.  Too many bells and whistles and you end up getting lost. If you haven't heard about it, it is worth a spin around the block.

Well, the first day of school came and went. ...and only one kid had to be taken away in an ambulance. (Literally.  I waited to post this until I knew he was OK.  He is my oldest son's best friend in school.  He was at the bottom of a water slide when a girl went down and cracked him in the head with her knee.  He's good now.

In honor of the beginning of another school year, I have changed my background image again.  As usual, I snagged this image from the NASA image of the day site.  This is a martian sunrise photographed by the Phoenix lander. Read the rest of the information about this picture .

My favorite thing about working at home (...not yard work or home repair work, it is the doing some teacher-prep work, while sitting at my desk.) is the afternoon coffee.   (Cheesecake courtesy Lee Smith)

I am so thankful for one more day before the first day of school.