deepbrew

Matthew 19:29 (NLT) And everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or property, for my sake, will receive a hundred times as much in return and will inherit eternal life.

I don’t think I’ve given up any of the above mentioned things. Any of them would be extremely difficult to give up.

30 But many who are the greatest now will be least important then, and those who seem least important now will be the greatest then.

This must mean that there are tons of people today with totally wrong values. Well, I guess that is obvious, but even well respected people with seemingly totally reasonable values will find one day that what they valued, and the admiration that other people awarded them, were totally valueless.

I was browsing around tonight on Steve Pavlina’s excellent personal development website, and became fascinated by the claims of PhotoReading, a reading technique which supposedly allows you to read books at least 3 times faster than normal.

He’s recommending the course from learningstrategies.com, and after the “special discount” the basic course is $99.

Have any of you heard of it?  Is this possible?  Wow, would I ever love it if it were!

The amazon website has assorted feedback.

The forum at stevepavlina.com also has varied reports.

This website is negative.

However, I really want it to be true!

I just turned 24 recently.  Some of you that knew it remembered.  Thank you.

24 seems very very old.  I hardly know what to do with myself.  I’ve been trying to act more grown up the last couple of days.  I don’t think it’s working.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about my life.  I plan to do more, tomorrow, for an extended period of time.  I don’t have to work tomorrow so I’m going to try to invest in some solitude.  I want to think, pray, and reevaluate my life goals, and think about where I am, how I am actually doing as a follower of Jesus.  They taught us how to do this stuff at FB, the school I went to once.  I’m glad for that.

I was going to post a pic I took yesterday morning, but the more I look at it, the more I think it’s not all that great.  But I do want to get back to doing a few photos.  If only I had an SLR….

Life is good and full.  Too full, I think, for doing the things that are really important (like writing on this blog and taking pictures).  In my solitude tomorrow I’m going to ask God to tell me how to do all the things that are important in life, namely people related things, yet get something done and be a competent and productive person.  I will let you know if he lets me in on the secret.

I think I might like being 24, though, because it’s such a nice even number.  I never did like odd numbers for ages.  They never seemed very friendly.  24 is two beautiful even numbers right beside each other.  You can’t lose with that deadly combination.

I think blogging must fill some kind of deep subconscious primal urge.  I need to write, I need to tell the world what’s on my mind, even if it’s nothing more than telling the world that I feel like telling them what’s on my mind.  So there, I’ve told you.

I cannot comprehend the amish school shooting in Lancaster.  What an unspeakable tragedy: loss of life for 5 innocents, loss of innocence for many more, and the tormenting mystery of a seemingly good person gone horribly wrong.  God, what is going on?

Dallas Willard says that saints are separate from normal Christians only by the fact that they consume huge amounts of grace, about as much grace as a 747 consumes jet fuel on takeoff.  We must position ourselves to receive that grace, we must “grow in grace,” and this growth comes through effort on our part.  We often think grace and effort do not belong together, however, this is mistaken.  Grace is opposed to earning, not effort.  It is through our small effort of positioning ourselves to receive that God is able to pour huge amounts of unmerited favor into our lives.

The gathering of mennofesters is over.  It was a huge success.  Michael’s paper was about 25 pages long, and had it all been typed it would have been well over 30, and it was as brilliant a presentation of Christianity as I have ever seen, almost.  Jordan’s treatment of discipleship was thorough and true and scriptural and compelling.  They both said they liked my story version of basic Christian truth.  We are going to make the changes we want then send them off to Peter G to be compiled, eventually.  I don’t know if I will post mine on here.  Thank you for wanting me to.

Kervin’s wedding is this weekend, and I am in charge of the vocal music, and also doing a bit of snapshot photography.  Speaking of photography, I haven’t posted a photo in an age.  I am almost ready to remove the “photos” from the tagline of my site.  Maybe I should make it Ocassional coffee-induced musings and occasional spurts of photography, or something.

I’ll stop.  Later.  D

I thought i should let you know what I’m up to, so you’re not worried about my long upcoming online absence.  Me and two of my close friends, Jordan and Michael, have conspired together to form a study group, and our first project, long in the making, is a Mennofesto (inspired by another friend, the honorable Peter Goertzen).  The Mennofesto is a personal declaration of things we feel are worth talking about.  How I’m going to do it: I’m going to write a story, informally styled, that tells the story of the world as I see it, beginning with God in the middle of nothing, continuing on up through the Biblical account of history, spending a good deal of time on the life and work of Jesus, touching on the key points of early Christianity, and skimming over the 2 millenia of church history until I come to me at Pilgrim Christian Fellowship.  I will make extensive use of footnotes, attempting to articulate in the footnotes my position on “important” issues as the story alludes to them.  I am hoping to be all done w/ this monumental work by September 20th, so my co-mennofesters will have sufficient time to review it before the hash session on sep. 30.  Here’s the first paragraph:

The first first thing in the world was God.  Well, really, I guess he wasn’t in the world, ’cause at that time there was no world.  I guess he was just the first, first thing in the whole universe.  Well, I guess he wasn’t the first thing in the universe either, because he was before the universe.  So, the first first thing in anything, and in nothing, was God.

God was this living being, and he was totally everything.  I mean that!  Since there wasn’t anything besides him, not even space, he was it.  He was always there, too, and didn’t have a beginning.  By that I mean he wasn’t born like a person. He didn’t grow up, or mature, or get smarter, or get old, or anything like that.  He was just there, and was God.

I come from a family that loves to discuss things, and this weekend, when all of us, except for my brother in Poland, were together, we never lacked things to talk about. However, we ended up with some major disagreements which we never resolved, and that doesn’t feel good.

Why do we tend to dislike people who disagree with us? I’ve been trying to figure that out, and today I think I sort of hit upon the reason, and it isn’t very flattering. We dislike people who disagree with us because we value our own opinions, and when they say things that seem to disrespect our opinions, and by extension our intelligence, we turn them into our enemies. The disagreeing person never meant to be an enemy, in most cases, but they easily become that.

Furthermore, groups of people can’t stand other groups of people who disagree with them? WHY? It seems so ridiculous, that the love for all men which followers of Christ are to be filled with can be compromised by something as simple as a disagreement.

I think this is idiotic, and I want to get over it. I think the cause of Christ would be much better served if I would really LIKE people who don’t flatter my opinions. But good gracious, just thinking right now about a few people who hold some absolutely ridiculous ideas is making me see just how hard liking some of my adversaries in opinion is going to be. I am going to have to pray for a miracle.

And just in case you were wandering, yes, I still love all the members of my family very much and look forward to many more stimulating discussions with them, and loving everyone through it all. Actually agreeing in the end would be a plus.

This story about Billy Graham did good things for me.  I’m posting a few excerpts that really resonated w/ me.  Yeah, I know, it’s a lazy way to post, but I liked the article.

“His mind is on the heavenly more than the temporal, on the central promises of Christianity more than on the passing political parade.”

“As he has grown older, Graham has come to an appreciation of complexity and a gentleness of spirit that sets him apart from many other high-profile figures in America’s popular religious milieu—including, judging from their public remarks, his own son Franklin Graham, and men such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.”

“For Graham, politics is a secondary to the Gospel, which transcends party lines and, for believers, transcends earthly reality itself.”

And this strikes me as much as any of it,

“If he had his life to live over again, Graham says he would spend more time immersed in Scripture and theology. He never went to seminary, and his lack of a graduate education is something that still gives him a twinge. “The greatest regret that I have is that I didn’t study more and read more,”"

…don’t worry, don’t fear, don’t be preoccupied with food or clothes, how you look, or the

worries of tommorrow. your father will take care of you. seek first his kingdom, and he will

supply everything…