not-so-harmless

TO: All of my Faith Students...

I hope that all of you enjoyed one last telling of the Captain Alfred Saga. It was a pleasure to participate one last time.

-- Mr. Harmless the great and powerful...

Blogger Idol

Blogger Idol is back, and better than ever! You could begin participating in week 2 right now! Originally hosted by the living room, there is now a blog completely dedicated to this blogging concept.

If you have never been a Blogger Idol participant, or if you have never even heard of Blogger Idol, then I would like to suggest that you take a spin on over there right now. Especially since this week's topic was suggested by such an influential blogger...

You can read all about Blogger Idol here.

And if you still aren't sure if you want to participate in such an event, then at least check out some of my better entries from the first round.

• Week 16 - Home - The Tree
• Week 14 - Spirituality
• Week 13 - Blog Tips
• Birds of a Feather
• Week 8 - "I confess..."
• Week 7 - Play... What's that?
• Week 6 - Movies
• Week 4 -Oops

Stay the Course

"GOD, teach me lessons for living so I can stay the course.
Give me insight so I can do what you tell me--
my whole life one long, obedient response.

Guide me down the road of your commandments;
I love traveling this freeway!

Give me a bent for your words of wisdom,
and not for piling up loot.
Divert my eyes from toys and trinkets,
invigorate me on the pilgrim way.

Affirm your promises to me--
promises made to all who fear you.
Deflect the harsh words of my critics--
but what you say is always so good.

See how hungry I am for your counsel;
preserve my life through your righteous ways!"

--Psalm 119:33-40

This is a great Psalm to start the day with.

Notice that David doesn't just ask God to miraculously cause him to stay the course, instead he asks God to teach him the "life lessons" to stay the course. Then he asks for insight so that his life could be characterized by obedience.

Too many times today, Christians just want God to do everything for them. They claim that they want to live a righteous life, but when God begins to allow the trials and temptations in that He will use to bring about that righteous life they fail and flounder because they can't see that God is wanting them to live an obedient life.

God is not our righteousness genie. YES, He wants us to be righteous! Don't get me wrong. In fact, He puts a guarantee on our salvation in the book of Romans that says, whoever He justifies, He might, He will think about, HE WILL sanctify!

But this sanctification process can be tough!

In other places in the Bible it is called dying to self, taking up your cross, denying self, mortifying (killing) the flesh, etc. Or as David says here, "my whole life, one long obedient response."

But so many times we get diverted by the worthless things of this life, or as David puts it, "toys and trinkets."

Pray with me today that God will help us to stay the course. That He will invigorate us for the pilgrimage.

caffeine

OK, I changed my mind... This one is my favorite!


(by the way, that is the caffeine molecule)

t-shirts

My brother-in-law introduced me to this site the other day. There are several geeky things on the site, especially t-shirts that are designed for only the geekiest people to get. And as much as I hate to admit it, I found several of them quite funny.


Here is a picture of my personal favorite.


And here is a picture of the one that my wife picked out. (I like this one almost as much as I like the one that I picked.)


You will have to check out the rest of the t-shirts and evaluate your own geekiness. Here is a checklist you could use to determine whether or not you are a true geek.

• if you find more than five of the t-shirts funny...
  
• if you scrunch your shoulders up and laugh through your nose...
  
• if you share them with all of your cubicle buddies...
  

...then you might be a geek.

The sure-fire way to tell if you are a geek is if you already knew about the think-geek site, or if you use the word combination -- "sure-fire."

Thanks

A special thanks to truegrit for letting me know that my site wasn't lookin' so good.

I didn't realize it, but my blog didn't look quite right in Mozilla Firefox, and since there are a lot of people out there who use this instead of Internet Explorer, she thought that she would let me know.

I told her that I felt like the guy that had his fly down, that somebody finally had the nerve to tell him.

She went the next step and also took the time to figure out what needed fixed to make things look better.

Much thanks, and hopefully this looks better.

Coffee

I know that lately there have been some who have done some coffee bashing. They have not understood the importance of this amazing beverage, and have likened it... no... have belittled it by comparing it to hot chocolate.

Now, I have tasted the before mentioned hot chocolate, and I will freely admit, that it was pretty good. But it was missing something. Something wonderful. Something amazing. Something that I just couldn't live without. I couldn't put my finger on it at first, what was the missing ingredient? Oh yeah, Coffee.

I would also like to direct you to this. I definitely don't think that they could say the same thing about hot chocolate. No Sir!

And besides, you could never get a good hot chocolate at any store, unless it was a coffee!

Coffee. Coffee. Coffee.

Thankyou Columbia for providing us with a good drug!