Budding song writer

So I've got my three year old on my shoulders this morning, about to bring him in the kitchen for breakfast and I hear him singing a song while patting me on the head.

"Daddy's head is shining bright."

The day is off to a great start.

Eight years and counting!

Eight years ago today I married the love of my life. Sweetheart, I thank God for you. You find a way to bless me every day. I know it hasn't always been an easy road, but it is very, very good. Forgive me for the times when I don't treat you with the love and respect that I should. There are mountains and valleys, battles to fight and victories to claim, and it all means more to have you at my side. I adore you. You are my helpmate, my friend, my beloved beautiful bride.

The best Moma in the world.

She lives right here in this house.

I could not have picked a better

mother for my sons, but come to

think of it, I really believe God had

more to do with that than I did.

Thank you Lord for giving her to us.

I don't know what we'd do without her.

I love you darling!

God's 2 cents

One of the greatest things about following Jesus is learning to hear His voice. Sure, there are times when I wonder if it's His voice I'm hearing or just my own wishful thinking. But sometimes the words are so powerful, so unexpected, or said in such a way that I absolutely know: it's Him!

And He can say more in two words than anyone else could say in their entire lifetime. He spoke to me earlier this year. It was a simple question from me and prompted a response so succinct, yet powerful, that there was no doubt He had spoken.

I had been feeling overwhelmed at my job. It seemed like the artist in me was for naught. Often in my life I've felt my vocation and my heart's desire were at opposite ends of the spectrum. And for me life can really be frustrating when there isn't time for the art to be expressed. (One reason I am blogging, actually. Expression.)

Anyway, I asked God, why did you give me this artistic talent? What am I supposed to do with it? What am I supposed to do with my life?

And He said, "Get creative."

No greater Courage, No greater Love

Petty Officer Second Class (SEAL) Michael A. Monsoor will receive the Medal of Honor posthumously in a ceremony at the White House April 8, 2008. He will receive the award for his actions in Ar Ramadi, Iraq on Sept. 29, 2006. On that day, Monsoor was part of a sniper overwatch security position with three other SEALs and eight Iraqi Army (IA) soldiers. An insurgent closed in and threw a fragmentation grenade into the overwatch position. The grenade hit Monsoor in the chest before falling to the ground. Positioned next to the single exit, Monsoor was the only one who could have escaped harm. Instead, he dropped onto the grenade to shield the others from the blast. Monsoor died approximately 30 minutes later from wounds sustained from the blast. Because of Petty Officer Monsoor’s actions, he saved the lives of his 3 teammates and the IA soldiers. Monsoor also received the Silver Star for his actions during the same deployment in May 2006, when he exposed himself to heavy enemy fire to rescue and treat an injured teammate.

http://www.navy.mil/moh/Monsoor/PG.html

Okay Al-Quaida, Taliban, Hamas, etc. I challenge any of you to produce even one example of one of your so called 'Freedom Fighters' doing something like this for one of his fellow soldiers.

A striking juxtaposition, I think, that they equate courage with strapping on a bomb and killing innocents, while our men sacrifice their lives in order to save their brothers.

Jesus said it best:

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

John 15:13 (KJV)

A rambling discourse on 'Greatness'

Men are haunted by the vastness of eternity. And so we ask ourselves: will our actions echo across the centuries? Will strangers hear our names long after we are gone, and wonder who we were, how bravely we fought, how fiercely we loved? Odysseus, from the opening monologue of the movie 'Troy'.

When I was a boy I knew exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up. There was a paragon of greatness that called out to me. The hero to beat all heroes--with nothing but a loincloth and a hunting knife. That's right, good old Tarzan. I watched him every Saturday morning, read the novels (as soon as I learned to read well enough), and begged my daddy to buy the comic books. Tarzan was greatness personified. He could wrestle crocodiles, put gorillas in the full-nelson, and fight off any jungle denizen that dared cross him. He protected those within his care and feared nothing.

Adventure films have come a long way since Johnny Weismuller swung on a vine and did the Tarzan yell. A more recent one that caught my attention was the aforementioned 'Troy'. In the movie Eric Bana plays Hector, defender and eldest Prince of the walled city. He shares the screen with Orlando Bloom, who plays his younger brother Paris, and Peter O'Toole who plays their father Priam, King of Troy. And, during the movie's most confrontational moments, Bana faces off with Brad Pitt, who plays Achilles, the legendary warrior and unstoppable killing machine.

I've read some reviews that talk about Achilles being the hero. But when I watched it, I didn't quite see it that way. Achilles was loyal to no one. He didn't even want to get involved. Hector was defending his family and his home--and even the cowardly younger brother who brought the war to them by having a fling with Helen. Hector was the real hero of the story. Achilles only becomes an interesting character, to me, when he first begins to care about someone other than himself.

Like most men, I'm still drawn to larger than life heroes that do daring deeds. Adventure is hard to come by in these modern times (one reason why I think our society is so entertainment driven). Make me forget my mundane life for a while. Give me a few hours of vicarious adventure, so that I can experience the thrill, however hollow. I say 'hollow' because we do this type of adventuring from the sofa or the theater seat. Local sporting events bring us a little closer to the action, and yet we are still sitting safely in the stands.

The book "Wild at Heart" by John Eldridge explores this phenomenon to much greater detail than I have time for here. Go read it if you haven't already. Personally I think adventure is all around us, if we only have eyes to see. If we can as God does.

God looks at things upside down. Or as I've said before, the world has everything backwards and upside down. God alone has it right. Want to be great? Serve everybody. That's what Jesus said. The first will be last and the last first. I think there are many facets to what He was saying there, one of them being that when we get to heaven we are going to be really surprised at who the truly glorious ones are.

I think of my mother's mother as I write this. My grandfather left her when my mama was very young. From that point, my Mema raised her children alone. She never remarried. She was their provider and protector, and the example of what a Christian should be. Personally I can't remember her ever saying anything bad about anyone. She lived a quiet life and when she went home, it was a quiet death--very sudden, while she was talking to her sister, like God just reached down and took her. Which is what I think happened. She epitomized greatness. Godliness and sacrifice were evident throughout her life.

And yet, as a man, I still look for a battle to fight. Something I can put my hands to and wrestle to the ground. There is a need to conquer. I think this is a God-given thing. Masculinity is bestowed so that we can protect. To defend the ones we love. To achieve goals that are bigger than ourselves. To answer a call to war from our "Great King". To advance the Kingdom. Those are the things that pull at a man's heart.

All this to say, that as I've gotten older my view of greatness has shifted a bit. Yes there are battles to fight. The battle for the hearts of my children, for one. There is a war for their souls, and it's beginning even now. The world and satan will do what they can to deceive them and snatch them away. It's my job to arm my boys with the truth. To show them how to resist. How to draw close to God and see the devil flee.

I think there are dark days ahead. I think Christian men will have their hands full of adventure, if we just open our eyes to it. There is a Kingdom to advance and a war to wage. We just have to see it for what it is and learn how to wield the Sword. The quote at the beginning of this post is a good one. And I think, thousands of years from now, we will sit with our Lord in heaven and recount our battles, tell of the victories He led us in. The Bible mentions that even now we are surrounded by a 'great cloud of witnesses'. What we do matters. Our actions can and do have eternal significance.

I pray often for my boys that God will give them a heart like His. That they will be world-changers for Him. I don't think this necessarily means that they will have ministries that impact millions of people. Maybe they will. Maybe they won't. But I do know that God has a destiny for each of them, and I want them to find it. God doesn't measure success in terms of numbers. Jesus asked his followers after the crowds left him. "Do you want to leave too?" He had twelve men that He brought in close. Three that were really close to Him. And He used these men to turn the course of history. He wasn't interested in building the next 'Mega-church'. He wanted to change lives, one at a time if He had to. And He did. He stopped to touch the untouchable, to reach out to the ostracized and hated ones.

That person that I barely notice, who brings a refill for my sweet tea, may be neck deep in a battle for their lives. I need to answer the call of my "Great King" and learn to reach out. (Daddy, help me do this!) I need to learn to wield the Sword, His word. I need to pray fierce prayers. I need to make sure that the world does not have more influence over my children than I do. I need to love my wife with passion. Live adventurously!

I think we can all have great impact. We just need to see what God is doing and get involved. Redefine greatness, and see with God's eyes.

Okay, reading back over this it is something of a rambling post, but I'll leave it as it is. Maybe there is something worth gleaning.

Motivation!

It's been a busy week around here, not much time left for blogging. I apologize to my hordes of loyal readers. I'm going to try to post some this weekend. But I need to put a disclaimer for February:

Outage is coming. What does this mean? For those of us who work at a nuclear power plant it means long work days. I'll be getting about twenty hours of overtime a week and that will be for the whole month of feb up until the tenth of march. So...if it gets really quiet around here, please don't abandon me. I will be back in full force soon.

I am bracing myself for the outage even as I type this. I am reciting those song lyrics that will get anyone motivated. You know the song I'm talking about. And if you don't, then shame on you, but I'll post the lyrics so you can become familiar with one of the most awesome pieces of music ever conceived. (Warning, this is not for the faint of heart.)

Risin' up, back on the street
Did my time, took my chances
Went the distance, now I'm back on my feet
Just a man and his will to survive
So many times, it happens too fast
You change your passion for glory
Don't lose your grip on the dreams of the past
You must fight just to keep them alive

Chorus: It's the eye of the tiger, it's the thrill of the fight
Risin' up to the challenge of our rival
And the last known survivor stalks his prey in the night
And he's watchin' us all with the eye of the tiger

Face to face, out in the heat
Hangin' tough, stayin' hungry
They stack the odds still we take to the street
For the kill with the skill to survive

chorus

Risin' up, straight to the top
Have the guts, got the glory
Went the distance, now I'm not gonna stop
Just a man and his will to survive chorus
The eye of the tiger (repeats out)...

by Survivor

Why I'm blogging

Wunderkraut has posted another killer ...uh... post, this time about blogging itself. (The kind of self-referentialism that I find vaguely cool.) He's been wondering where all the bloggers have gone. And says of blogger burnout:

That happened to me, but because I am a sentimental fool, I couldn’t quit blogging. So I changed my style. Now I write about my life, my job, my family, you know, boring stuff. But you know what? I don’t care. I enjoy writing. It soothes my jangled nerves. But I no longer do it in hopes of being a big name or of making a difference. Those that read me, like what I have to say, the other 280 some odd Google Image searchers per day just want my pictures.

So I asked myself, Why do I blog? Really for me it's very simple. I need some sort of creative outlet. I don't have the time for really in-depth writing right now. Or any means of painting. I could probably do some drawing, and maybe I will get back to that. But for me, right now, just the chance to sit down for a few minutes and pound out an opinion or two is a good outlet for creativity and expressing myself. Which is part of what creativity is: expression of oneself. Now let me end this post and put up at least one more with something that will almost resemble content.

Answers in Genesis

Carl Kerby

Wow! We had a great series of very informative presentations at church today. Carl Kerby from Answers in Genesis came and gave three talks. As a scientist (I have a BS in Biology with a Chemistry minor) and a former educator (I also have a BS in secondary education), I really appreciate it when believing scientists effectively show how the Bible and the evidence found in the world around us are NOT at odds with one another.

Much of what Carl covered, I had already studied, years ago. As a young believer entering college I wanted to know what I believed regarding evolution, and how to defend it--more to my own mind than to others; I was basically trying to innoculate myself from being brainwashed by the secular scientists I knew I would encounter. (There are also some wonderful Christian professors at secular colleges, I was pleased to discover.) As a result of this self-study, I was more acutely aware of the things in Biology that didn't fit the evolution model. Sometimes the professor would even point out these problematic areas. I remember the day my Biology prof admitted that we don't know (YET--he would emphasize) how proteins evolved.

See, the protein that reads the DNA is itself coded for by the DNA. So, the protein could not be there first since its code is contained in the DNA that it decodes. What? Never heard that? Yeah, they don't exactly teach you that in High School Biology, but evolution is still proposed as an all-but-completely-proven theory.

Basically, proteins would have to decode themselves before they could exist. So, without the protein there first, DNA would never be read and the protein would never be made. Likewise, the DNA couldn't have been there first since DNA is made and maintained by the proteins of the cell. Some theories about abiogenesis suggest that RNA probably evolved first and then DNA. But this does not solve the problem. RNA still has to be decoded by very specific proteins that are themselves coded for by the information contained in the RNA.

To sum all this up, both DNA and/or RNA and the fully formed decoding protein system would have to be present at the same time in order for the system as a whole to work. It's kind of a 'Chicken or Egg' question.

Here's a link to the article I cannibalized for the above explanation:

http://www.detectingdesign.com/abiogenesis.html

Anywho, I got a good refresher today. Carl didn't touch on the above example (probably didn't want to see eyes glazing over), but he did bring a lot of old ideas back to my mind. Ideas that were probably fresh to some of the others in attendance. He and I also had a brief conversation afterwards, when I mentioned the discovery of dinosaur soft tissue not long ago. (He said he did use that example in another of his talks.)

But for me the best thing about each of his presentations was that, time and again, he emphasized that we need to be grounded in God's word and realize that it is fact, not a bunch of fables. That it is supported by the evidence, not refuted. It all mainly has to do with the worldview you carry to the evidence when you begin to interpret it.

Go to their website; there is a ton of free material there. Get educated. And don't think it doesn't matter whether God simply created in six literal days or whether he set the wheels in motion and let evolution take over. It does matter. Either the Bible is true, or not. If we can't trust it to give us an accurate account in the first few pages, we will eventually reject it, compomise it, or exchange it for a doctrine that allows us to tell God what He really meant.

http://http//www.answersingenesis.org/

A Key Turning

Well, I've finally decided to start blogging, about two years into the fad really. Which is pretty much the way I follow most trends.

The first decision to make was, of course, that of a title. And now that I have it, I guess I should explain it's relevance. (For the hordes of loyal readers that are sure to find their way to this cyber doorstep.)

Back in '05 I wrote a short story entitled "A Key Turning". It was for a fiction writing contest for the local paper of the town I was living in. And lo and behold I actually won. Since then I haven't sold a single word, but I write on. And should I never sell another word, I'm actually quite pleased with that one accomplishment. It was an inspired story.

I mean that literally. On the way to work one day, soon after I had noticed the contest announcement in the paper, I saw in my mind's eye a seabag lock. What is that about? I wondered. And I heard His voice as clear in my spirit as I've ever heard anything, "That's for your story." Soon after that I began writing it. It's about the things that keep us locked up inside, and the way we can be free. Mostly it's about forgiveness.

Now that I'm blogging, I can see all kinds of symbolism in the simple artifacts of lock and key. It's the way that shackles are removed. It's the way we enter our homes. Jesus has given us the 'keys to the kingdom'. When people talk about some crucial method of attaining a goal, they describe it in terms like, "the key to victory is..." And I've even heard folks talk about a key turning point in their lives, etc.

And those are the kinds of things I want to blog about. The things that have opened doors for me and are 'Key' in my life: God, family, friends, humor, art, and inspiration.

Here we go....