Best Hockey Fight EVER!

Thanks

Wee Fighting

I've seen this on a few sites and decided I should get a count too.

24

I say bring it on #25.

Virtual Barber Shop

Listen with earphones.

Brilliant

Simple systemic solution.


Play Pump International

If I'm doing my math right, and if I found the right numbers. A single pump system cost in the neighborhood of $15,000.
$15,000 for revolutionary answers to numerous societal issues.

Simply brilliant.

Update

FYI
Just a quick update on my New Year's Resolutions.

#1 Dr. Pepper Fast
Doing great. While I've substituted my cola beverages for tea and vitamin water, I'm still making progress towards just pure H2O. I haven't slipped up once, despite the Deuce's attempts tempt with with such beverages.

#2 Memorize Colossians
Still working. Can't check this off yet.

#3 Read 40 books
Doing well. I'll give a separate update on this in a week or two once I've finished a couple more books.

#4 Map out TV show idea and make a TV contact
I did meet someone in the TV business, and while it may not be my way in, it should help provide future networking opportunities. Still to finish mapping out characters.

#5 See doctor and get asthma under control
Not yet. However I did see an ophthalmologist and got a new prescription for my glasses, purchased new glasses as well as got contacts for the first time in my 29 years.

#6 Organize and Minimize Closet
Check
This one also included me purchasing my first suit ever. I'm not really a suit guy and have avoided purchasing one. However as the big 3-Oh looms over me this year, I've decided that growing up and moving on must me part of my M-O.
So tonight I premiere my pimp suit - - ladies.

So there you go. I'm making progress and haven't bailed on any yet. Not bad for my first real resolutions ever.

Wedding

So I thought I'd let everyone know that in T-minus 4 hours I will be at my sister's, Chelsy, wedding.
Last night at the rehearsal she and Mickey (Micheal her real soon to be husband) showed a slide show to the Bebo Norman song "A Page Is Turned". I'll post it along with some possible photos in the near future.

-tsh-

Immature?

Yes, but so what? It's funny.
Click HERE for Great Movies About Farting.
Here's one to tie you over until you visit the site.

difficult post (part 2)

[I've been intentionally avoiding comments from my past difficult post, but I will get to them soon. I've been thinking that I need to post some more honest, unscripted thoughts in order to bring another level of authenticity to this thing. Hence the difficult part of the posts. Maybe through them we can find ourselves reaching greater depths of connectivity. - - Here's a post I wrote soon after the last. Sorry I didn't have Internet access for a few days, so this is a little late.]

Why is my hope so fragile? Why does the small conflict send me into a tailspin? Careening towards earth, unable to eject. The least amount of pressure reveals my flaws and exposes my weakness until my facade beings to crack.

How long, O LORD ? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?"
- Psalm 13

Has my faith grown at all? Or have I just been struggling against greater trails and temptations? Why has time and experience turned my child-like faith into a mature mess? I find myself looking back and agreeing with Nicodemus when he asked Jesus, "How can a man be born when he is old?" When will the transformational change begin to occur in my life? When will life give me greater perspective and less detours?

As I'm typing this David Crowder is singing on my computer,

And there's nothing wrong with you
And nothing left to do
But believe something bigger
And there's nothing wrong with love
I know it's just enough to believe

Don't give up now
A break in the clouds
We will be found
Rescue is coming
Rescue is coming
Rescue is coming
Rescue is coming now

I can't wait. Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus.

quote

"I don't deny that there should be priests to remind men that they will one day die. I only say it is necessary to have another kind of priests, called poets, actually to remind men that they are not dead yet."

-G.K. Chesterton

Which are you? Priest or poet?

quote

"I've tried every approach to life. I bought a bunch of stuff. and was like, nah. That's not it. Thought I'd shut myself off. Maybe that’s cool. Maybe that’s what you have to do to be a genius, you have to be mad. If you get the word 'mad' from the word 'genius' then maybe you'd make the genius appear. But that doesn’t work either. What I'm trying to say is I've messed with all the approaches except for one. and that’s just love. I've done everything in my life that I want to do except just give and receive real love. I don't mean like a Roman Candle fireworks, Hollywood, hot pink love. I mean like no matter what, I got your back love. I don't need to hear I love you. Some of the people who say they love you, are the last to have your back. So I’m going to experiment with this love thing..."

-John Mayer Live CD during the middle of "Bold As Love"

thanks to

Bound, Bound, Bound and Rebound

"...just get a leg up and slap it on down..."

Thanks to all my jackalopes.
-tsh-

connection

We finally got internet connection here at our apartment today.
Yahoo!

Questions

I saw this photo with this question today:

Do We Care?And early today I discussed this question with some other youth leaders.

Why does our service see such minimal results?

Questions on my mind as I try to fall asleep tonight.

A New Law

I saw this today and felt the need to share.

Do not be afraid.

A Difficult Post

A QUESTION

Last night in my community group the icebreaker question was this:

            Name one thing that you are good at.  (Yeah I know…not really a question, but I kept my mouth shut.)

Then of course we had to go around in a circle and everyone has to share.  First off I hate that.  I hate the expectation of having to answer. 

 

A CONFLICT

The problem was I really couldn’t think of anything.  I ended up giving some BS response that I didn’t really believe.

 

A COMMENT

Now I’m not looking for pity or responses on what you think I’m good at.  Even if you were to offer a valued opinion I probably can’t accept it at this point as it would seem to me only a response to this post.  Not necessarily genuine in my eyes.  However, I’m sure you, my readers, are incredibly honest people, although a little foolhardy to be following/reading what I spout out.   

 

A CLARIFICATION

And what I’m not saying is that I’m not good at anything.  I have a good sense of humor and a good amount of patience and I’m incredibly good looking.  Also I have a good sense of humor and a good self image.  If golden stars were passed out for Seinfeld quoting skills, well…I’d have a lot of golden stars.  And I can list several other things, but moving on, what I am also not saying is that I don’t have things that I enjoy doing either.  (That’s a poorly constructed sentence, but I don’t feel like fixing it).  I love to organize things.  I love bring order where there was chaos.  I love youth and youth ministry.  I love sharing the Bible.  I love doing a lot of things.

 

Some of my negativism is because I’m my own worst critic, but some of it is because really I don’t know what I good for.  You can be good at things, but unless you are acknowledged and appreciated and using your talents, what is…what you’re good at…good for?  Being good at something and not using it is worthless.  If you have NBA talents but never pick up a basketball, are you really good at the sport?  Loving something that seemingly refuses to embrace you, well that just seems sad.  If you are the second coming of Jimmy Stewart, but never win an acting audition are you really a good actor? 

 

A CONFESSION

Just a peak into what steals my joy and robs my passion:

I feel like the past couple of years my hope has diminished and I’m fading into oblivion.

And I don’t know what to do with that.

 

[I don’t know if I’ve shared this with anybody, opening myself up this much (and this isn’t much).  And I can’t say why I feel the need to do so tonight.  This is me trying to be more honest, and this seems to be my most effective forum for speaking this kind of truth. - TSH]

 

 

 

Audible

I had somewhat an off week when it came to listening to sermons.  But here are a few you may want to check out.  I think it was Rick Warren who called today’s sermons, yesteryears commentaries (something like that).  I totally agree.

 

Sermons I Listened To This Week

• First off at church Steve Dye preach on How’s My Neighbor: Orphans and Widows
• On Monday I listened to Mark Scott, Dean of Academics at Ozark Christian College.  His sermon was entitled Love the Church More Honestly (Rev. 2-3) from a series called Living in the Real World.
• Then I listened to an archived sermon by Damien Spikereit, preaching professor at Ozark Christian College.  His sermon was entitled Kiss One Another, from a series entitled Life Together where they were going through all the One Another passages in Scripture. 
• Wednesday (I think) I listened to Chip Ingram preach at Southeast Christian College as a guest speaker.  Jim wrote a book titled Good to Great in God’s Eyes, and that also the title of his message.  This was an interesting message.  A little self-help-ish, but was worth the listen.
• Today I listened to Jon Weece, senior minister at Southland Christian Church in Lexington, KY.  He preached an amazing sermon from their series called BREATHE.  BREATHE is an acronym, each letter representing an action that are immensely beneficial in daily life change.  The E stood for Examine Myself with a Fearless Honesty.  Jon is an amazing preacher.  I’ve met him at Ozark briefly and he is legit.  He reads a letter from an eleven year old girl in this sermon that is heart breaking - - yet beautiful.  Listen and be challenged.
• I listened to a second Jon Weece message as well today from the BREATHE series entitled Amend My Relationships. 

 

 

Nothing else I'd rather NOT do

See world's first eyeball tattoo - - careful this is gross and painful.

Confessions (Part 2)

I hear Usher’s song in my head.  “These are my confessions…” 

Unfortunately when I loving sing to myself in the mirror and rip off my shirt it just ain’t what MTV wants on the air.  Then again Jack Blacks had a few shirtless hits.

“I’m good enough.  I’m smart enough.  And doggone it people read my blog.”

 

But that’s not what I want to confess.  Here’s my second confession of the day.

 

When at Chick-fil-A I like to say “thank you” a lot.

Apparently when someone tells a Chick-fil-A employee “thank you”, the employee must reply with “It’s my pleasure.” 

I think this is a little odd, but I still like it.  It’s not “not a problem” or “you’re very welcome”.  It’s much more intimate of a statement. 

“It’s my pleasure.”

 

Plus when I happen to get the cute lady who works there to takes my order and she says “it’s my pleasure”. 

However, when a guy takes my order I try to never thank them, that’s oddly uncomfortable.

Confessions (Part 1)

Two confessions today.  I’ll post the second soon enough. 

 

This morning it did not take long until I was suffering from a headache.  After 29 years I have finally decided to get contacts (mainly because the examination, the trial lenses and the tutorial only cast $20 more with my regular exam), which has not helped my headache.  My eyes are still adjusting and my mind is still in disbelief that what I’m seeing is real.  Add this together with the obsessive nagging I have to deal with from the time I punch in until the time I lock the doors and the pressure behind my eyes was almost unbearable. 

There was only one cure.  I gathered enough change from my change drawer and set off to Chick-fil-A.  While a Dr. Pepper and an order of waffle fries have the combined power of ten Tylenol, I had to settle for the less effective sweet tea and waffle fry combo.  (58 days strong into the Dr. Pepper fast…yahoo?!)  Surely this would ease the throbbing.  Plus I can sit alone and read my book and the crew that works there leaves me alone.  Solitude, peace and manna from heaven.  

However when I pulled into the parking lot a small framed aged woman approached me asking for 85 cents.  I’m not sure what 85 cents does for a person, maybe bus fare, but I lied to her and told her I might have some change when I left.  I actually left with $1.43 in change.

I’m trying to be Christ-like, in fact I’ve been trying for 21 out of my 29 years, and today I lied about 85 cents.  My selfishness refused a woman 85 cents.  Will I ever begin to resemble Jesus?  I could have easily skipped the sweet tea and enjoyed a cup of water instead.  Some days I feel that I have inched no closer to Christ than when I first begun this journey. 

As I sat in the booth thinking about this, no longer able to enjoy my afternoon retreat, the sound system in the restaurant began to play Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) by Chris Tomlin.  I couldn’t help but be overwhelmed by the incredible love of our God.  My enormous selfishness cannot compare to the immense love of God. 

 

Rich Mullins called it “the wreckless raging fury”.  Actually I feel the need to print the entire songs lyrics.  Kind of a meditative release for me.  Otherwise I’ll end up crying again, which caused a few uncomfortable glances from the Chick-fil-A crowd.  No one needs that.

 

The Love of God

By Rich Mullins

 

There's a wideness in God's mercy
I cannot find in my own
And He keeps His fire burning
To melt this heart of stone
Keeps me aching with a yearning
Keeps me glad to have been caught
In the reckless raging fury
That they call the love of God

Now I've seen no band of angels
But I've heard the soldiers' songs
Love hangs over them like a banner
Love within them leads them on
To the battle on the journey
And it's never gonna stop
Ever widening their mercies
And the fury of His love

Oh the love of God
And oh, the love of God
The love of God

Joy and sorrow are this ocean
And in their every ebb and flow
Now the Lord a door has opened
That all Hell could never close
Here I'm tested and made worthy
Tossed about but lifted up
In the reckless raging fury
That they call the love of God

 

Quote

I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult.
  - EB White