So, nothing much is happening here at the moment. I'm playing the waiting game, since I should be hearing from Uni. any time now. Plus, it's still roasting outside- and is supposed to be for this whole week- again. Please pray for me about Uni. and everything else surrounding that whole thing and coming back. Thanks,

Oops...

I can't technically say I had a bad day, since it wasn't tragic or anything- but it definately wasn't my day- if you get me. I woke up and was still tired and didn't feel well at all- got ready for work, spent most of work (we were really busy today) not feeling well. Then I got my finger smashed and cut (my own fault) and it turned a lovely shade of violet and got much bigger than it should be in about a min. or 2. Well, the drama wasn't over, As I said, I didn't feel well all day-well, I nearly passed out- twice. Then I took the bus near to my dad's house, walked for about 15 min. and he wasn't home, and I couldn't get in the back door- and it's absolutely roasting outside, luckily he got home about 10 min. later. That's been my day so far. I just want to laugh at myself and take a nice long nap. Ah, well, at least it's nearly sunday...... no work then. And monday morning I'm probably going fishing. So the next few days should be nice.
Guess I really shouldn't complain, my day was fairly nice in comparison with someone else's day out there- and I know it. So at the moment I'm just enjoying sitting in air conditioning, and typing, and not doing anything besides that. The only bad thing about my finger (other than that it helps prove I am one of the most accident prone people I know) it's my pinky, on my left hand, I kinda need it to play my mandolin..... : ( Cya all later

..............

So, we're basically roasting over here again...... fun stuff. Anyways, still haven't heard from Uni. yet. I'm not a very patient person : ) But now that I know I could be hearing from them any day now-well how can you stay patient?? : ) . Everything else is going well, just up to work and church, not a lot else, although I did go shopping the other day. That was fun. Wow - this is going to be ashort blog, cause I really don't have loads to say as usual. Better get going, I have the day off work and I want to get some stuff done. Talk to you all later

LIFE

This morning the message at my church was really good. Learned a lot. I love it when you go back to certain words and see their meaning in greek, and the context, it gives you so much more insight. Anyways, just to post a few notes from it- it was on Philippians 4:4-9,

⁴Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!

⁵Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand.

⁶Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; ⁷and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

Meditate on These Things

⁸Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy--meditate on these things. ⁹The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you.
We talked mostly about v. 8 and 9. Here's some cool stuff:

True- made of 2 words in greek, means beginning of mystery
noble- (or honorable) in Greek means God-fearing, Paul was the only one to use it, and used it a lot even though he was persecuted so often.
Just-(or right) following the divine laws, to teach by evidence
Pure- Exciting reverence (that's one you wouldn't really think of together : )
Lovely- in regard to love (philadelphia)
Good report - (or admirable) Known for being good
Virtue- morally excellent- Gr. to lift up
Praiseworthy-about or at praises to God,
Meditate- ( involves something that is known as truth, not just thinking about something.)

Doesn't that shed a lot more on that passage? A really cool point was made- that's life- Real Life- LIFE as it should be and was meant to be lived.

unbelievable reality

I'm reading a book called Praise Habit at the moment, and it's actually quite good. I'm going to post something mind boggling from it (after I explain a wee bit of context so you know where it's comin' from) The writer is talking about how he has this friend who every morning reads an astronomy book- and says all the numbers about stars, and how far away they are and how huge everything is incomparison to him keeps him in line, realizing how small he is. And the whole chapter was basically about how we have this fascination for fame. Anyways, enough background here's the amazing quote : "It's brilliant -literally. I mean, whoever thought of stars shining is ridiculous. I'm all excited about whoever took these pictures ( of galaxies, stars, etc...) but whoever blew that thing up to begin with, now Him I've got to meet. If I'm ever in the same rom with that Guy, I will not be cool. How could I? And what if our eyes met and I was found out? What if I looked up and saw Him running right at me with His arms spread wide and a torrential smile that would turn dry deserts green? This would be unreasonable. There is no justification for the Dreamer of it all, whom the cosmos and the grass in April and the stream swollen with snowmelt and the baby grabbing your finger and the laugh of kids in kindergarten and the smell of jasmine speak about, to be running toward me. That would be ludicrous. The universe has somewhere around 200,000,000,000 galaxies. In our galaxy alone there are about 100,000,000,000 stars, and there are over 6,000,000,000 people living and breathing right now. Why on earth would He bother coming toward me? I am tiny. I am a dot. Yet here He is with His heart in my chest and we're locked in embrace and I'm not exactly sure when it happened but something fired inside of me, and now my arms are around Him, and people are watching, and I will tell you about it. I don't think I can help it. No more than the stars in a black velvet sky can keep from it. " - Praise Habit, by David Crowder . You should read it.

This has to be quick, I'm heading off to Bible study in a couple minutes. Today was good. Feels great outside. Tried to call jonny and sharon, and heather happened to be there babysitting - so I talked to her instead. : ) Anyways, really must go or I'd post more, probably will tomorrow. Have a great day everyone!

It's very nice outside today. A little on the warm side, but not roasting like it has been. We're actually supposed to get some pretty bad thunderstorms this afternoon and on into tonight. I'm hanging out at my dad's house, planning on typing some more for my book underway- actually titled Great Lengths, just like my blog. kinda funny. So I've been having some strange dreams lately : ) . thursday night I think it was, I dreamt I was in an elevator, and for some reason it the cable broke or something, and it went plunging, except, somehow, we didn't die, - and it plunged for like 2 min. even though the building I was dreaming we were in was only three stories high. The next night I had a dream that I was in a house (don't remember which,) and snakes -there were like 2 or 3 were trying to bite me. but somehow one of them was a human but still a snake, (yeah, I know , weird ) And this morning I had a weird dream too, but I can only remember the very end now- some bug or spider or something landed on me and I was trying to get it off,then I woke up. I don't know what's up with the dreams- but the whole horror story theme needs to stop !! : ) Well, I'm gonna enjoy my day off, get some typing done, and just have fun hanging out. Cya all.

Storytime....

So there's this annoying woodpecker that comes around at least a few times a week. It likes the house. It always comes in the morning. It seems to think it's my alarm clock. I heard from a friend that wal-mart has these cool dart type things (bigger, they fly really fast, and they are rubber pointed, so they won't hurt) I guess they're only like a dollar each. I was thinking this morning that a few dollars would be a pretty sound investment in the future prevention/discouragement of annoying woodpeckers. Plus it would be kinda funny I have to say. Especially because it came back three or four times this morning and finally went away for good when it heard me coming out the door with a broomstick. : ) That was the highlight of my morning before church.
This is going to sound somewhat funny- but I had quite a surprise tonight. I went and made myself a p.b. &j. sandwich, and an orange for supper. later when I went to peel the orange , well, it looked fine, smelled fine, but the first bit I peeled away had some sort of black stuff- mold or something. It was disgusting. It got thrown into the bin. weird cause I had just gotten those oranges not even a week ago. Anyways, guess appearances can be decieving as to what's on the inside.
Earlier this week I went into a smaller bookstore downtown, got a book - with a big 'boring' title (an anthology of world liturature ) - (unless you're me who happens to like that sort of thing : ) Anyways, it's really cool. Well, first of all it's huge. But it has tons of stuff in there, ancient writings, you know the greeks, tradgedies and comedies, romans, up to a bit more modern stuff, like from the 16 or 17 hundreds. I was reading some stuff written by Marcus Aurelius. And it was pretty cool, he had a lot of wise stuff to say, especially compared to most of the corrupt roman rulers, granted, I don't know if he lived all of what he said, but he still said some amazing stuff. About living morally, getting along with our fellow humans, all kinds of stuff. It's almost like he knew there was a God out there.... it wouldn't make much sense to say the stuff he said about the gods they had. And yet, correct me if I'm wrong (i may very well be) but I've never heard anything saying he was a christian, or really knew much about it. I guess things like that, in all kinds of writings, show people had some sense, knew intuitively that there was a God out there, ..... Anyway, read some of his stuff if you get a chance. all for now. : ) Have a great day!

dishroom thoughts for the day...

Let me just say first and foremost- no, I'm not gonna analyze dishes today ....or really anything to do with dishes. : ) anyways,I have a headache- (I'm tired, I think I could've slept at least 2 more hrs. than I did without any problem) I was thinking today at work(while in the dishroom-hey, there's a certain peacefulness about it if you're in there by yourself : ) - about people- in general. You have to wonder, everytime you say something possible mean, or negative about someone- even though you may be "justified" in saying it- how will it reflect later? We don't know everything that's going on inside a person's head or in their life. Maybe that's why we're not supposed to judge- we aren't in the correct position to judge. We don't know everything about their lives, and most certainly not their thoughts, motives, or reasoning behind things. To be honest, we really do a very crappy job of understanding people most of the time. I have a friend that I haven't talked to for a couple of months from papau new guinea (png) (from kentucky mt. bible college) I think she understood this concept a lot better than most other people I've met. She knew there wasn't just the way people behave, or the things they do. There was the reason why ......... that is what she was interested in. you'll have a hard time convincing someone that what they are doing is wrong (if that's even you're place) if you don't even know why they act that way. It's almost as though by caring only about what they are doing- even if you may have good intentions- you are showing them precisely that- you only care about what they are doing- not them. If you actually take the time to learn why they are the way they are, you understand them better, and it also shows you actually care about them. You never know, people you meet may really just need someone to try and understand where they are coming from- so you can help them. I guess that's all my dishroom thoughts for today. Have a great day everyone! I'm still roasting over here. cya

Walking Through the Waking World

I was finishing (only had about 20 pgs. left) the book The Four Loves on Sunday night. The last paragraph is great. I love the point C. S. Lewis makes. He says that if you are aware that you are dreaming you are no longer perfectly asleep. I love that. A few lines earlier he was talking about having a place where love for God should be (inside us) but if we didn't have that, possibly all experiences could point to the place ( a God-shaped hole) where God should be, so that we become aware of the fact that something should be there.-I can't begin to put it as well as him- read the book. His last sentence: "but for news of the fully waking world you must go to my betters." I guess I've just been thinking about that a lot lately. There's a Switchfoot song called "beautiful letdown" - it's pure poetry. "It was a beautiful letdown the day I knew, all the riches this world had to offer me would never do, ...........I was tryin so hard to fit in, to fit in , til I found out , I don't belong here, I don't belong......" We were driving down this country road on the way home listening to this song, and I was thinking about that sentence C. S. Lewis wrote, about how if we know we're dreaming- we're not completely asleep any longer. And then I was thinking about the anology I like to use, which I'm sure someone came up with ages before I did. I love impressionstic paintings-(although I'm not the greatest at that style) monet, manet, van gogh.... and I think maybe in a way it's like we're in a painting like that, this dreamy type of world, and to us it looks ok, because we're accustomed to it- like when your eyes get worse and you don't notice it until you put a good pair of glasses on. But when we really come "awake" -to put it so- it will be the difference between an impressionist painting and what we term as reality. And we'll suddenly realize how "unreal" - if you get me- our reality was when faced with actual reality. with God. It doesn't surprise me that people love fantasy-type books, stories, movies...... Is there something inside us that longs for the fantastic ? It doesn't surprise me , because we live in a fantastic world, we just don't always realize it because we're so accustomed to it. We are part of a fantastic story-one that all the great fantasy stories don't begin to rival. Do you think sometimes people fail to see the fantastic in all the stories we were raised on or have read from the bible, as if it's some dry reading about how to organize a desk drawer, or some do-it-yourself book that we only take intrest in when something needs assembled. Why do we pretend like it's such dry reading- when if you actually read it- it most certainly isn't. - Back to our dream-world. Do you ever have times when you are so fully aware that there's something other than this world, something that makes everything here feel so fake, so temporary that you actually wonder why you are still sitting there thinking about it? It's almost as if you expect to be sucked out of this world immediately and confronted with actual reality(that you know is there) and then are surprised that you are still here. Those moments are rare, I can't say I have many of them- but when they do happen -it's as though you glimpse a sliver of what you were really made for. Nothing makes sense, but it's almost as though you understand it, by realizing you basically don't know anything. Maybe you could blame it on the fact that I love travelling- but there is something in me at certain times, something that fully and completely knows this is not my home. It's not my home. I get that I'm talking about slightly weird stuff- and that people don't often try to describe things like this (most likely because you don't really know what you're talking about, or how to put it correctly, and at the same time are probably making yourself sound very much like an idiot. I'm usually good at that : ) but there's such a lovely mystery about it. I think it's important that we realize we're "dreaming" , it gives us the right perspective for the day. I hate it when people try to pretend as though they know everything about God, about heaven, they rationalize it down, turn it into something that's not a mystery at all- (there is a balance, ) I think they lose something beautiful. With our world of definitions, lists, steps, we get caught up. We forget that we are only temporary, that we weren't meant to stay in this world. That changes everything. It does if we actually believe it and don't just claim it. But to end with better words than I could claim, " for news of the fully waking world, you must go to my betters"

34

It's pretty warm over here again today, and it looks like it'll be that way for the rest of the week. (just for all of you over in NI that don't know what 93 degrees farenheit is- I looked it up- it's 34 celsius- sound just a wee bit on the warm side?? ) Anyways, I'm enjoying my day off work for this week. I probably won't end up doing a whole lot. Gotta go....

Untitled..........

If anyone is wondering about the weather over here........It is absolutely roasting... I think I got spoiled over there in NI. It's over 90 degrees(farenheit) I'm not exactly sure what degrees that translates into for celsius- but I can give you a one word description:HOT. Oh, and did I mention the fact that Illinois is humid too? Not a good combination. One without the other is bad enough. - ok- off the weather- (so long as I don't melt)
So I had a cookout today. my brother, casey, a few friends from work. It was fun. Although it would have been nice if more people could've come, but it was fun just hanging out. And I guess this led to a quite random subject- more or less that, and the song playing in the car as we left. And it was a sad thought. You know, we all have choices as to who we are while we live this life, what we do with it- why we are here- our purpose for doing (or lack of) all that we do. I'm a christian (despite things I disagree with that are done under that title- the title merely reflected the fact that those who called themselves (or were called christians were imitations of Christ)). The reason ( at least for all the good stuff) I live how I do , why I live is because I love God ( because he loves me) . I can be a good influence to all the people I chose, I can show love to them, listen to them, be their friend, tell them about God- everything short of making them become a christian. Because you can't do that. Now, this is one of those obvious statements that I'm sure many of us have known for ages. But you can't make someone become a christian. God gave us free will- to chose, and we are able to. This is the sad part-which I'm sure you know about, but it hits alot closer to home when it's the circumstance with people you know or are close to. There are some truly amazing people out there, and not every one choses to follow Christ. It's sad. We don't really ever know whether they will or won't and we probably don't ever know the full impact we do or don't have on people- which is why we should never give up. I guess it's one of the topics you don't like to think about.... It makes me feel sick, It makes my heart feel horrible ( not in the physical sense) So many peoples lives wasted , not knowing there's something better, something we were meant for , something I can't properly descibe. And so many people that make the choice that they don't want anything to do with Christ. It's sad. actually beyond sad. If I had any recomendations for a book (other than the bible) about this it would be the great divorce. Anyways, don't give up, and don't tire of loving others, there's always hope.

wow, I can't believe it's June. I'm having a good summer so far- mostly because it's not scorching hot yet, but everything else is about the same- just work mostly. : ) I'm faxing my ACT scores and my diploma tomorrow to Queen's. I would write more but I don't really have time. cya

Gone

There's a Switchfoot song called Gone (at least if I remember right that's what it's called) anyways, my brother gave me a ride to work today and had that song on, which we both love. I was sitting there at like 10:30 this morning listening to it- and basically it talks about not wasting time, cause today will soon be gone. One line is : life is a day that doesn't last for long.... And that seriously put me in the right attitude as I went into work. Life's too short to get caught up with all kinds of petty things and to get upset over dumb stuff. We'll most likely regret time that we wasted on that kind of thing. We might as well spend our time doing something worthwhile, and something that makes a difference or helps others since we have so little of it. I think that would be the perfect song to wake up to everyday- a nice reminder why we're here- and not to waste any of our days.