“If Jesus’ message of the kingdom of God is true, then everything must change. Everything must change.” ~ Brian McLaren Everything Must Change
As I sat at my desk today, my mind straying to thoughts about this coming weekend, I found myself more and more pulled to God. Talking to Him about anything and everything. This video quenched some of my thirst for something deeper today – something more than computers, networking and music.
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Now playing: Over The Rhine – Born
via FoxyTunes
Tonight some friends of mine laughed as I explained how I thought it was weird that Garfield the Cat had a mustache. Apparently he doesn’t and I’ve been wrong all these years. Take a look for yourself, the yellow totally looks like a mustache:
Also I decided I don’t like Garfield cause he’s orange.
It’s been a bit since I last posted. Odd how compelled I feel to apologize and explain how life has been busy – only that would seem to imply I have points of non-busyness. It’s been quite the norm as of late though, packed days, long hours at work, early morning running – all along the list of people to catch-up with and things on the backburner boiling over. I just returned from Wilderness LT and I feel like I need another vacation. This weekend served as a bit of a break. I can’t remember the last time I got to work on a Monday and thought “that was a really fun weekend!”
On Friday Chris, Marla and I went to Mike and Molly’s to see Elsinore play – tangent: These guys are awesome, great song writing, great vocals, original style and feel. You should buy their CD Nothing for Design on iTunes and Ryan Groff Solo CD People In The Midwest from Parasol.
On Saturday I got up extra early and joined the Buffalo – the trail
running group of Second Wind Running Club. Marla has been inviting me out to run with them for over a year now, figured I’d finally take her up on the offer. We did a 10 mile loop around Lake Clinton. It was a beautiful morning, the temperature cool, the shade nice, and the trail clean. That evening there was a going away party for a friend who is moving back to Taiwan and then I caught up with some friends at Cowboy Monkey for a bit.
Early Sunday morning Darren, Marla and I joined the Second Wind fall marathoners for a long training run. Feeling a little beaten up by the trails the previous day I only did 11 miles instead of the planned 16. The remainder of the day was relaxing, some dinner and watched The Last King of Scotland. I fell asleep last night with a smile on my face – good music, good friends, good running.
I came across this post by Scott McKnight on Jesus Creed, I thought it worth sharing.
Letters to Emerging Christians
“Now my final point: the biggest issue that I see with the Romans Road approach is that once the sin problem is resolved (sin almost always understood as guilt before an all-holy God, which is true but not true enough), salvation has been accomplished. Frankly, this isn’t biblical: the sin problem of guilt, to be sure, has to be resolved, but sin is bigger than guilt (it is distorted relationship with God, self, others, and the world) and therefore the resolution (salvation) is bigger than forgiveness (it is resolved relationships with God, self, others, and the world — and it takes a lifetime). Only a kingdom vision makes the sin problem fully clear and only a kingdom vision makes the solution fully clear.”
I’ve been writing a lot lately to prepare for my talk at i-life summer church tonight. Eventually I’ll post here on the talk and maybe even get a link to the audio. For right now I thought this was fun:
Complements of xkcd.com
I’ve been signed up for the Chicago Marathon for awhile now. I was lucky this year and got in before registration filled up. Race day is October 7th, which, if I can still count to 18, means I need to start training this week. My training thus far has involved eating a lot of cookies, playing Nintendo Wii and watching movies – a very rigorous schedule. These coming weeks are guaranteed to be painful, tiring and tons of fun. Let me know if you want to join me for a run at any point or for any portion of a run.
Running has been a great release for me in recent years – a way for me to clear my head and get alone and think. As the road stretches out before me and the miles pile up behind I find myself drifting in and out of conversation with God. At times it seems easier to pray when I’m running than at any other point of the day. I welcome the spiritual renewal that has traditionally come with training.
Here are some pics chris took last year when I ran Chicago.
Marathon History:
2005 Indianapolis Marathon 3:52:19
2006 Chicago Marathon 3:44:00
2007 Chicago Marathon 3:3-:– (Hopefully)
So there is this show that a lot of early teens watched. It’s so clever and witty with world class writing and not cheese at all. In fact one might even say it’s gonna be a defining classic of this generation. It’s so real and accessible, so much like real life it’s scary.
I started watching it this weekend. Starting for the beginning, the pilot episode.
Wondering what it is?
OK, so all that stuff I said about it isn’t true. But it’s still addicting like any teen soap opera should be. Plus watching Seth feels like watching my life. I’m coming to grips with the fact that not all that I consume in the way of entertainment needs to be deep, thoughtful, or even intelligent – and The OC fits there.
It’s official!
I’ll be returning the wilderness of Colorado for an 8 day trip oriented around connecting with God in a uniquely distraction-free way. We call the program Wilderness LT or WLT. Part of the GCM Network, WLT takes a group out into the wilderness for an extended period of time focused on the spiritual disciplines of Solitude, Silence, Fasting, Prayer, and Simplicity.
There is a strict list of equipment we are allowed to bring – only the essentials, NO Coffee 🙁 The food rations are small for the few days that we will be eating. Five days of complete solitude. No music, TV, or computers to distract me. Just God, me and my issues. It breads intimacy that forever changes how you follow Jesus.
We’ll be returning to the same remote wilderness we stayed in back in the summer of 2005. Pictures of that excursion can be seen here. The dates of this summer’s trip are July 6-14. I’m eager for it to arrive.
A couple Fridays ago some friends and I went to a Chinese Buffet for dinner. It was fun despite the fact that I couldn’t eat most of the food there – boo on non-vegetarian friendly restaurants. I thought I’d share my fortune with you it’s super deep and insightful:
“You are the mast of everything situation”
Greg Van Nada
VERY COOL Love you, Dad
On Mission in Haiti and Memphis / nicknamy.net
[...] some of you may have noticed in our last update letter Illini Life sent off two different missions teams
Desiree
Ahahah! Such a funny commercial!
Support Raising: By the numbers / nicknamy.net
[...] back I posted giving a brief rundown of the process of raising support most missionaries go through. It’s a
nick
Generousee seems a fitting word, surprised we made it this far without it. :-) Thanks for the prayers and kind words
