So I will give this another go

Over the past couple of weeks and months I have been thinking about the things that have helped me grow and expanded my horizons. There are several things that have done that, marriage, school, dog ownership. One of the big things was this blog, it helped me to try and formulate my thoughts and ideas in a way that other people could understand and engage with. I feel like this is one of the things that has been severely lacking in my life over the past 2 or 3 years, my ideas have become scattered and less organized and it is my hope that with some discipline and work I can get those abilities back in tune (keyword is hope).

So I hope that you will read the older, a bit wiser, and maybe funnier me.

I am a grown up

When I was in third grade I looked at the fourth graders and thought that they were almost grown up. When I got into middle school I looked up to Peter B. thinking that he was mature. In high school I wondered if I would ever become an adult. It took me 22 years and a marriage but I realized last night at about 2am...I am an adult...
...
...
Shoot.

The Human Footprint

Recently I was looking on Google video looking for something good to watch, I came across a show that appeared on Channel 4 in England. The show is called Human Footprint and it was a very insightful show. The idea behind the special is to show you how much stuff you will use in your life, from how much you will eat, how much milk you will drink to how much hair you will grow in your lifetime and how many times you will fall in love (which is three times in a life). The show blends a good amount of humor (if you like English humor) into the hour long program and kept my hooked for the whole run of it. If you have an hour and are looking for a intriguing look into what the average consumption of material over a lifetime (at least a British lifetime) give this program a look.

Apartment

I got an Apartment yesterday and am going to move in this weekend. I also have two invites for Joost, which is a really cool program, if anyone wants them email me at gonzo4god@yahoo.com.

Life

So I haven't posted in a while and I haven't been able to see a lot of my friends in a while, I apologize for that. So just a few things that are going on in my life. I got a job for a friend of my moms, it is working for a company called Discount Sanitation taking calls from angry customers and signing up new ones. I started school, like most people, last Wednesday and am taking Philosophy 101, Math 092 (the teacher didn't show up the first day of class), Sociology 101, and Anthropology 112. The last thing is Ruth comes out in 3 days. Looking back on this I didn't really have a whole lot to tell people so if you want to disregard this post and ask me all of these questions next time we see each other that would be fine.

Pontificating About Or Around Midnight

This post is a tag on to the last post about listening and is my thoughts on why people are resistant to change. While thinking about change over the past few days the question that would come into my mind is what would people lose by accepting change and even changing themselves, as I pondered on that thought the scenario that I laid out in my last post (because that is the most prevalent in my life right now) and in the course of those thoughts one occurred to me that I had never thought of before. What could a person lose if they were to accept change and maybe even change themselves? The answer would be pride.

No matter what there is a lot of danger to a persons pride in changing. If a person changes there is a part of them that is admitting that there is a better way to do something and depending on the context even going as far as having to admit that they were wrong. But even worse is if the person does change and that change doesn't work then that person has to swallow his or her pride and say that the change was wrong. In the scenario that I put forward in the previous post the group would have been skeptical of any change in the person because it would upset the comfort and complacency that the group would have set up for themselves. If the person shows something in the others that they aren't comfortable with or not, in their own minds, ready to hear then they will be very resistant to what the person has to say and maybe at worst to the person.

But then again maybe not, I will be the first to say that there are holes in this theory. Please post and tell me what you think. If I am as consumed by these thoughts in the next week as I have been over the past few days you can count and another post or two.

This Sucks!!!

"The Ocean"

Am I alone in this?
Never a night where I can sleep myself till day.
We must try to figure it out, figure it out.
It won't be that easy.
We lost it somehow.

You come over unannounced.
Silence broken by your voice in the dark.
I need you here tonight
Just like the ocean needs the waves.

Oh, the night becomes the space that's somewhere in between
what I feel and what i'm told.
Sitting on the shoreline trying to figure it out, figure it out.
To find out the meaning and reach it somehow.

You come over unannounced.
Silence broken by your voice in the dark.
Ineed you here tonight
just like the ocean needs the wave.
Fall around me now,
like stars that shine and brighten the way.
Ineed you here tonight just like this night it needs the rain.

The season has changed.
The wind, it moves colder now, colder now.
The clouds are raised,
the rain it falls harder now, all around.

You come over unannounced.
Silence broken by your voice in the dark.
I need you here tonight,
Just like the ocean needs the waves.
Fall around me now,
like stars that shine and brighten the way.
I need you here tonight just like this night it needs the rain.
Over unannounced, silence broken by your voice in the dark.
I need you here tonight,
Just like the ocean needs the waves.

Just like the stars that fall around me now.

Some times Mae puts things into better words then I ever could.

Home

I am home!

The Battery that Keeps Going and Going and Going

So I am definitely find out a concept called recharging (by that I mean taking time out for yourself to get back energy and letting God pour back His love and grace back into you when you have been drained or are close to being drained). In the past week I have been going non-stop and have been in so many spiritual conversations with people that I got so tired, it made me so bored I was finding any reason to escape the ordinary. The other effect it had on me was that I got so tired that I wouldn't even want to add to a conversation, we had a conversation in the class that I didn't agree with and I didn't say anything (which for anyone who knows me knows that is not me) and my excuse was that I didn't think that given the group that my views would be different then theirs (again for anyone who knows me they know that I don't really care, usually).

Then I talked with one of the staff here and we got talking about how you need to have time to yourself and rest (whatever that means for you whether it is reading a book or going to the movies or whatever). So I got this book on postmodern evangelism and have been reading through it and I must say that it is great to feel the life of God come back to you. It is really a great thing to be able to see God speaking through you and using you again

So I would say go out and find yourself a good book or something and really take the time to let God pour into your life and see what God has in store for you.

In Christ
PJ

P.S. The book I was reading is called “More Ready Then You Realize (Evangelism as Dance in the Postmodern Matrix) by: Brian D. McLaren if anyone cares”

what is that in the sky is a bird o wait no its just the end of the world

The end times are something that people have been talking about for a long time but one thing that not many people talk about often is what it will be like in eternity. A big reason for that is probably because no one knows, people have things that they think but no one knows what it will really be like but that doesn't stop people from trying (including me).

So with that in mind i thought i would give it a try. So i thought i would start with what i was taught when i was younger. I was told that we would live out our lives until a peace treaty would be signed by Israel and another nation which would start the 7 year tribulation, 3½ years of relative peace and then 3½ years of war. After that Christ would return condemn Satan and start His thousand year rule over the earth where all of our questions would be answered and we would worship God all the time after which Satan would be released and try to make a stand against God which would fail, then we would live for ever in heaven with God worshiping Him. That is all in a nut shell of course.

Now on to what I have come to think and believe. I really started to think about this about a year ago when people I knew started to talk about it and how great it will be (and it will), with no pain, no questions, ext but when I started o think about it I began to think maybe it wasn't going to be like that, not the whole part about being with God forever and it being a great time. I began to wonder what forever was going to be like.

One I don't think that we will spend our whole lives in heaven, in fact I think that we will spend it here on earth. You see in the bible one thing that you might notice is that we were made on earth and angles were made in the spiritual realm. I believe that if we were meant for the spiritual realm we would have been made there, so why would God put us in a place that we were not made for, that would make no since to me.

The second thing is I don't think that every question will be answered. I think God gave man a curiosity about the world and universe around us. Back in the garden is the best example of what the kingdom of God will be like and in Genesis God gives us the mandate to go out and explore (see below) and to this day there is so much that we have yet ti find out so why would God make such a big universe only to let it go to waist.

Now I do think that we will spend an eternity with God worshiping Him but I think it we will worship Him through our actions, I think that we will continue to try to answer questions we have and in answering those questions we will give glory to God. I think we will still try to find love and marry but all of that will be to the glory and supervision of God. I think in that time we will find out how things were suppose to be.

So I hope all that got you thinking.

In Christ

PJ

Genesis 1

28 God blessed them; and God said to them, " Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth." 29 Then God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; 30 and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food"; and it was so.