TOP 5 PODCASTS

So I started blogging, and then realized that it is pretty hard for me to have something useful or meaningful to write down often. I would really hate to be wasting anyone's time who reads a wasted post, especially considering my title is My Life as a Vapor, which is obviously hypocritical considering if our lives are so short why waste it reading a stupid post... anyway... here is one...

If you are into listening to podcasts or think you may someday, here are my top 5 favorites. I love to put one of these on while driving or while spending some down time at home. I am currently way behind in my listening, so look for some of my thoughts/notes on some of these in the near future.

#5 - TED Talks - Ideas Worth Spreading : Though I can't say that I agree with all of the ideas that are presented here, I have watched some neat videos on various topics... Scientists, Educators, and even one from Rick Warren.

#4 - North Point Community Church : Anything by Andy Stanley is good... from books to bible studies to sermons

#3 - Elevation Church : Pastor Steven Furtick ... just listen

#2 - New Spring Church : Pastor Perry Noble is funny, challenging, and life changing

#1 - Mars Hill Bible Church : Rob Bell consistently opens the words of scripture to me in ways that I never understood until I began listening several years ago

Snapshots of the Globe (part 2)

Disease

• 30,000 people will die today from preventable diseases... that was PREVENTABLE diseases TODAY!
• 3,000 people lost their lives on 9-11... not to diminish those lives, but rather to call attention to the first fact
• a child dies of hunger every sixteen seconds
• 40 % of the world lacks basic sanitation facilities
• Over 1 billion people have unsafe drinking water
• the #1 way children in Mozambique contract HIV is by sharpening their pencils with their father's razor blades

- Serving with Eyes Wide Open: Doing Short-term Missions with Cultural Intelligence by David A. Livermore

"Everything the Church is NOT about... seeing someone in our midst struggling, and being alone" Rob Bell

I admit that our concerns about disease and health care in the United States are trivial compared to many other places in the world. May we recognize the importance of committing to using our resources to aiding all of God's people of the world.

GREEN TUESDAY

For the past year or so, I have decided that I want to join the 'go green' bandwagon. When I first began, I tried to do everything 'green'. I started collecting cans, newspaper, and plastics to recycle. I stopped using my air conditioning in my car and because running the water while brushing your teeth isn't environmentally friendly, I started not brushing my teeth. Needless to say, my "attempts" at being a radical environmentalist ended very shortly. In fact, at one point I even burnt my collected plastics and newspapers in the barrel in my back yard... which by the way is actually worse for the environment than throwing them away.

I have decided that I MAY start to dedicate Tuesday's blog as Green Tuesday. You may not give a rip about the environment and thus stop reading my blog forever now because it is our world to do what we want with it, and I don't have the time to mess with it OR you may say that Going Green is interesting but "I will one day start doing that stuff" OR you may think "WOW... what an awesome, cool way to take care of a great thing that God has given us, Brian you are probably one of the smartest people I have ever met, I think this is the greatest thing I have ever read!"

If you are like me... you probably would agree that 'going green' is something you wish you could do to some extent, but you really don't have the time to worry about it, nor is it at the top of the list of concerns you have about the world. That is how I feel. But I still do feel that it is important to take care of our world because we are supposed to, and I really do want to cut out $ that I am WASTING, when I could be using that to open up my financial resources toward some other direction. In saying that here is my first "tip" and maybe only post on GREEN TUESDAY...

So more recently I have tried a different approach than the cold turkey approach. I have now tried to start small. One thing that has worked pretty well for me have been the following:

1. Because we don't really trust our well water for drinking daily at our house, we were using individual store bought bottled water.

FACT: it takes 1.5 million barrels of oil to make the bottles of American's bottled water. If this oil were turned to gasoline, the amount of oil would fuel 500,000 station wagons for coast-to-coast road trips (the green book: the Everyday Guide to Saving the Planet One Simple Step at a Time, Rogers and Kostigen 2007).

We now have a water dispenser, for our drinking water, that uses 5 gallon recycleable water jugs. Not only has this eliminated our use of plastic water bottles, but we have saved money as well. Buying plastic water bottles, by the double dozen can get expensive... what a waste of my financial resources...If I don't want to waste my life, I surely don't want to waste my resources.

Snapshots of the Globe

Poverty vs. Wealth

• 20% of the world live on $1 per day
• 20% live on $2 per day
• 20% live on more than $70 per day
• 40% are somewhere in between
• 8% of people in the world own a car
• the combined income of the 447 wealthiest people in the world have more money than 50% of the world's population...447 people have more money than the combined $ of 3.25 billion people

- Serving with Eyes Wide Open: Doing Short-Term Missions with Cultural Intelligence by David A. Livermore

May my eyes be opened to the world I live in. May I see the difference in my wants and my needs. May I come to understand the eternal value of my resources.

Story

I recently listened to, relistened to, and then listened to again, a message entitled "Story" by Donald Miller. I really, really liked what he said. In the message, he identifies the techniques that are used to write/tell a story that make a story meaningful. He compares stories in movies and stories in the Bible to the 'story' that we are writing with our lives. Anyway... here is a brief overview of the 8 pages of notes I took...

In order for a story to be meaningful it must have

I. Lead character(s) (protagonist)-

• at the end of the story, if you don't believe they are a 'good guy'... then you don't care if they win
• hero: can't think of himself as better than others
• Phillipians 2:3-8 - imitating Christ's Humility

II. Lead character must have an Ambition (what they want)-

• God wants us to want much... it is just what we want that really matters
• What is the Movie Poster tag line: This year... Bob is going to... get a Volvo
  - will that have you weeping in the end?
• If the protagonist dies... what will happen with the ambition? what will not go on? what doesn't resolve at the end?
• An ambition must be risky. It must be something that could cost something.

III. Conflict (hard times)-

• as soon as there is ambition, there will be conflicts and fear
• Best way to get rid of conflicts and fear = not want anything (no ambition)

IV. Resolution (comedy or tragedy)- how will it end?

• Doesn't always happen as you expect
• Is the end going to be that the protagonist gets the Volvo?

Our Stories

• Our lives are stories... God is the inventor of stories
• The decisions we make our telling the stories of our lives
• God has written our climatic scene... we will stand in front of Him and he will say, 'Well done, my good and faithful servant'
• Life isn't meaningless, the story we're writing is
• Most of us will not lead a great story, we may live an ok story, but not a great story
• Characters are defined by what they DO, not what they think or feel

May our life stories be page turners. May we make decisions in our lives that make us a character to root for. May we discover and develop the ambition of our lives. And may we each give God the pen and paper of our lives and trust Him to write a GREAT story.

Sunday Thought

Tonight I was "reaffirmed" (as I am many times) as to why I love the church so much. The church has so many problems, yet it still remains the hope of the world. One of my favorite quotes about the church or really one of my favorite 'challenges' to the church is by Rob Bell.


"Can you imagine what would happen if a group of people with untold resources, passion and energy started asking the question, 'How do we hear the cry of the oppressed?' What if they were actually willing to wade into the cultural, economic, racial, global and personal issues involved without fear, with the confidence that no matter how painful, messy and volatile it got, Jesus would guide them the whole way?

You'd have some church on your hands."

- Rob Bell

That usually boring genealogy stuff...

The other day I started reading the gospel of Matthew. In most other previous times I have started reading Matthew, I have fastforwarded (is that a word?) to verse 18. I am pretty confident I am not the only one who does that, because I hate to say it, but who really cares about who is whose daddy and who did whoever marry inorder to have the son who is father of someone else... and so on and so on... Right, exactly why I always skipped to verse 18. I understand that the genealogy of Jesus is very important... in this case it introduces us to "such themes as the son of David, the fulfillment of prophecy, the supernatural origin of Jesus the Messiah, and the Father's sovereign protection of his Son in order to bring him to Nazareth and accomplish the divine plan of salvation from sin (Carson, D.A.)."

Thanks to bible commentaries, I can put things in quotes and fell like I am smart or even have any clue about what I am talking about.

Anyway....I know all of that is important... way more so then I understand.

But that day I read. And as I read through the list of moms, dads, and sons, I then came to verse 17 which reads, "Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah."

After I read that verse I paused.

And I thought... Man, I know that the line of people we can trace back the lineage of Jesus to is important. And I know that God likes to use certain numbers, like 3, 7, and 14, to do really cool stuff. And I've always heard and believed God's timing to be perfect. But what I didn't ever realize is that God's timing is not only perfect, but it is... the most perfectest (because I can't think of another better word).

I mean really, I have a hard time organizing my closet, keeping my desk clean at work, or even planning my weekend. But to have worked out generations of peoples' lives, whom they will marry, what kids they have, whose going to be king, whose gonna live where, and so on and so on... now that is some organizing, that is some planning, and that is the most perfectest timing.

And then I realized that God has done this for far more than 42 generations of people... rather he has always done this, continues to do this, and as far as I know will remain doing this. He has a plan... He will work out his plan in His timing... And it is up to me how I will play out my part in God's storyline.

May we realize that God's timing is perfect and that how we live out our part of His-story is really the thing that is important to someone living a life that is a vapor.

Bobby Knight

So... I often for some strange reason root for sports personalities that many times the majority of fans don't like. I am not sure why it is, but I have always liked Charles Barkley more than Michael Jordan, Bill Romanowski more than Joe Montana, and yes... Barry Bonds more than Mark McGwire (back when everyone loved McGwire). So, I guess that it doesn't surprise me that I paid more attention tonight to Bobby Knight retiring than I probably will whenever Coach K evently hangs it up at Duke.

I do not agree with everything that Mr. Knight has done in his life. But what I do know and understand is that there have not been very many, if any, other college basketball coaches in the history of the sport that have ever been as dedicated to the teaching of young men the game of basketball as Mr. Knight has. For somebody whose life that has completely been committed to the game of basketball, you must have respect for how he has "lived his life" for his game.

And that is what I guess that I can take away from a life like Bobby Knight's. Whatever you love, have a passion for, or enjoy doing... dive into it, work at it, struggle through its hard parts, learn everything you can about it, share it with others, etc. I think that is 'part' of what Paul means whenever he says, "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters" (Colossians 3:23 TNIV). I can't say that Bobby Knight was teaching the game of basketball as if working for the Lord or not, my guess is that he probably was not... but what I can say is that as a Christian I should have some of the same disciplines and the same dedication to my "work" as Mr. Knight has had. The "work" should never take the place of Christ, because it should always be 'in tune' with Him.