Month: September 2011

He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity. ~ Ecclesiastes 5:10

You must submit to supreme suffering in order to discover the completion of joy. ~ John Calvin

People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing. ~ Dale Carnegie

Today I’m thankful for the change of seasons. I appreciate the warmth of summer, the cool of autumn/the beauty, the snow of winter, and the beautiful new life of spring.

Fall’s in the air. w00t!

New life is amazing. Our cat had kittens today. The little ones who are conceived from tiny little particles meeting one another and growing in the womb and eventually coming out as fully functioning creatures can be hard to get my mind around at times.

We don’t appreciate life enough today. In a culture where abortion and survival of the fittest nonsense is mainstream it can be hard to remember how amazing it truly is. We would not be here if it weren’t for the incredible way that God created the human body and its means to reproduce. There is absolutely no way that over a trillion years the body would evolve to ever be able to reproduce. Without the many different things that must happen in order for someone to emerge from the womb we wouldn’t be here. It’s an incredible process and is incredibly fine tuned. Our God is truly amazing.

I think in our culture it’s easy to forget that being a grand important leader is not the only role in life. The message that is told to us is that being selfish is the way to roll. It’s really all about you. But I was reminded today of this when I was cheering on the sidelines of the marathon my sister ran today. At first, I didn’t really want to cheer. It was weird. But I noticed that it was because I was full of myself and self conscious. And then I decided it was about others. And I immediately noticed that I was able to interact and encourage people as they ran by. And let me tell you something, I got much more from it while at the same time they appreciated it much more than if I were to just stand there staring. You don’t know how much encouragement means when you’re running a race. When someone yells at me to keep going, I get that little adrenaline rush and realize that people care for me and it helps me to keep running. But this doesn’t just apply at running races. It applies to the race of life. It applies in everyday life. When you compliment someone, when you send them letters of encouragement, when you clap and cheer for them, when you’re there for years, etc. you’ll never know how much this helps people. Sometimes just those little words of complimenting someone will change the course of their entire life.

We need to stop falling in love with ourselves. It’s not about us. It’s about others. Stop getting so offended when your personal pride is stepped on. I’m glad it was stepped on. You shouldn’t be proud. <_< The instant that you stop giving you’re going to start getting offended and uptight about every little thing. I’m telling you from personal experience. Virtually the instant I stop giving to others is the moment that I start getting all mad about things. You can’t be ambivalent. You’re either going to be giving of yourself or becoming selfish. Why do you think it’s so hard to find people who have been close friends for 40-50 years? Probably because they’ve been told to follow their hearts and dreams. Feel free to throw your friends under the bus as a bonus. And then at 80 their sitting in a nursing home because their children hate them. They tossed them into the public education system as soon as they could, because they hated having them around. Their life was all about money. They would move at the drop of a hat for a thousand dollar raise in another state.

We need to be more grateful for others. People are created in the image of God. We need to stop treating them like trash in our words, in the way we interact with them, and how we debate with them on the internet. It’s time to take that cold little grinch heart and start loving others and supporting them.

“Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.” ~ Mark Twain


Exactly

Today I attended a filmmaking class. I learned many good things. But something that really stood out to me was that we need to be purposeful with what we do. We need to have wisdom with what we do. We can’t really drift through life in a naive way. We need to be connected and think critically about everything. We need to have plans. We need to be visionary. We need to trust God. And everything we do needs to be done with a purpose. We need to be focused on obeying God. We make films, or write books, or build businesses that honor God. Why? Because we love him and we love his laws.