the other day, i was driving down the road and the jimmy eat world song kill came on my ipod. i love that song, but i haven't heard it in forever. so i listened to it a couple of times and then put on the entire album, futures, and just basked in the awesomeness of jimmy eat world. and it got me thinking about how many times that really happens. how many times am i just driving down the street and a song comes on and it takes me way back when and a whole new set of memories opens up? i love how that happens. not that i'm trying to relive high school, but some songs really do just take me back to a different time.
i don't know, this was just a blurb that i've been thinking about for a few days. it is an incredible thing - how a song can just take you to a time and place that's so much different, whether happy or sad. it's pretty freakin' cool.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Saturday, January 17, 2009
The New Year
Jeremiah 29:11 - "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope."
Anyways, about this time every year I reflect on the past year (as I was watching the NFL playoffs last Sunday, I thought to myself "man it's been a year since the Super Bowl." That's what triggered it this year...ha.) I think about what's happened and all that and wow...what a year it's been. I am literally in the very last place I thought I would be at this point. Last year over the break I was spending time up in the Seattle area and seriously considering moving up there to take a job on Young Life staff. Eventually I more or less decided to go, and was getting geared up for the seemingly impossible amount of money I had to raise. I knew God was bigger than money, though, and I knew if it was His plan for my life, then the money would come. I repeated Jeremiah 29:11 over and over and over again, and I was ready to tackle it. Then the rug was kinda pulled out from under me. I had decided to double major in Political Science and Liberal Arts. Liberal Arts consists of 3 minors, and I had chosen History, English, and Journalism. Everything was in order to graduate, or so I thought, and I went to commencement and walked and all that fun stuff. Then, two weeks later, I got a call saying I didn't actually graduate and I had to come back to retake a class I had made a D in. The worst part was that I got the call while I was at Young Life camp on what is possibly the most important day of the week - the day that the truth about our fallen human condition is presented.
"Welfare." The word in that verse confused me. What is welfare? Is it for my ultimate good? Is it something that is material? What exactly is it? Well, tonight as I looked at that verse I checked the footnote, and the word used in the Hebrew is "shalom." Peace. Not just the absence of conflict, but ultimate peace that only can stem from a relationship with God. Peace that surpasses all understanding. This is a concept I am just now learning as I reflect upon 2008.
The next few months were almost a complete blur. I spent the summer in Branson, Missouri, for Discipleship Focus, and though I was living in "community," I had never felt lonelier. Comparing it to DF the first time I did it as well as my incredible experience at Malibu the summer before was inevitable. I couldn't help but think about the community we had developed in Canada in just a few short days and wonder why the sense of community never developed over an entire summer, for me at least.
After I made it through that, I made the decision to stay in school for an entire year and get a second degree as well as finish up the first, which I am now on pace to do. The first degree is finally finished! The semester itself, though, was miserable. I felt even more alone than during the summer. Everything suffered - my relationship with others, my relationship with God (which was probably the reason for everything else suffering), my attitude towards school, Young Life, everything.
"Shalom" - the ultimate sense of peace that comes only from a relationship with God. The last two weeks or so of the semester were completely different. I began to read the Bible and focus on my relationship with Christ more, and as I focused on that relationship, my relationships with others began to develop. God also met some of the desires he had put on my heart when I began to look to Him to fulfill those desires instead of trying to fulfill them myself, which got...um...interesting. "Shalom." Even though I don't believe I am perfect - or anywhere close to it - I have recovered that sense of peace.
The Christmas/New Year's break was fantastic. A couple of great road trips, a huge bowl game, and a fantastic girlfriend later made this one of the best Christmas breaks ever. And now I find myself here, at 4:45 in the morning, thinking about the upcoming year. There are way more questions than answers:
Do I go on Young Life staff?
Do I go to seminary?
Where should I do either of those two options?
What should I do this summer?
What should I do job-wise this semester?
There are others, but those are most of the major ones. The wonderful thing is that I do feel this sense of peace. So, in a way, I'm in exactly the same place I was last year. And I guess I just need to ring in the New Year with a Bible verse:
Jeremiah 29:11 - "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope."
Shalom!
<3>
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Football Conference Supremacy?
I was listening to a radio call-in show today and a guy called in and started talking about the PAC-10's dominance in bowl games this year. Now, to their credit, 5-0 is impressive.
The PAC-10 in bowl games:
Arizona beat BYU
Cal beat Miami
Oregon beat Oklahoma State
Oregon State beat Pitt (in a 3-0 barn burner, might I add)
USC beat Penn State
I won't make any statements as to the quality of the teams the PAC-10 played, but I do think it's interesting that the PAC-10 finished their bowl games the day after the SEC started theirs. With the exception of the GMAC bowl and a few others, the "better" bowl games are typically played later. So that right there is interesting in and of itself.
Then, the caller said that the SEC was overrated for 2 reasons. The first was because the SEC has lost 2 bowl games thus far. The second was because the SEC "never played tough teams outside of the conference."
First, the bowl argument. The SEC in bowl games this year:
South Carolina lost to Iowa
Alabama lost to Utah
LSU beat Georgia Tech
Ole Miss beat Texas Tech
Georgia beat Michigan State
Kentucky beat Eastern Carolina
Vanderbilt beat Boston College
The guy may have had a point about the bowl records, but half of the PAC-10 wasn't bowl eligible. Half of their league made it, while 8 of the 12 SEC teams were eligible. Stanford and Arizona both came within one game of eligibility, while Tennessee, Auburn, and Arkansas were all within one game. Maybe that speaks for the difficulty of the SEC over the difficulty of the PAC-10, but using bowl games to determine conference supremacy isn't a great way to say who's better.
Now, the winner of the PAC-10 and the winner of the SEC are always going to be elite teams. Same with the Big XII and some years (but apparently not most) the Big 10+1 will be too. The ACC and Big East...not so much. Anyway, you have to compare more than just the best teams in the league to determine which conference is the best, which leads me to my next point.
The caller was bragging about the PAC-1o stepping out to play other BCS conference teams and how the SEC didn't do that. That, in and of itself, was a blatant falsehood, but he also went on to say that the SEC only plays FBS teams and all that. He, nor the hosts, made any mention of Washington and Washington State's impressive combined 2-23 record. Conference record wise (Tennessee actually had a better conference record than Kentucky, but their overall record wasn't bowl eligible), the two worst SEC teams were 11-14 combined, and both of those teams (Mississippi State and Kentucky) won more than one conference game. So, of course a PAC-1o team isn't going to schedule an FBS team because they play 2 teams that would probably barely even pass for FBS teams.
Finally, the caller and the hosts completely failed to mention the SEC stepping out and playing BCS conference teams. The caller bragged about USC playing Ohio State (who sucks) and Virginia (who also sucks). He said SEC teams only play FBS teams, or at least non-BCS teams. The caller and the hosts completely failed to mention the following games:
Alabama beat Clemson
Georgia beat Arizona State
Georgia lost to Georgia Tech
Florida beat Florida State
Florida beat Miami
Vanderbilt lost to Duke
Vanderbilt lost to Wake Forest
Ole Miss lost to Wake Forest
Mississippi State lost to Georgia Tech
South Carolina beat North Carolina State
South Carolina lost to Clemson
Tennessee lost to UCLA
Kentucky beat Louisville
Auburn lost to West Virginia
Arkansas lost to Texas
So, the SEC played 15 games against BCS non-conference teams. In a down year, they only won 6, with no help from LSU as they played no BCS non-conference teams
USC beat Virginia
USC beat Ohio State
USC beat Notre Dame
Oregon beat Purdue
Oregon State lost to Penn State
Cal beat Michigan State
Cal lost to Maryland
Stanford lost to Notre Dame
Arizona State lost to Georgia
UCLA beat Tennessee
Washington State lost to Oklahoma State
Washington State lost to Baylor
Washington lost to Oklahoma
Washington lost to Notre Dame
The PAC-10, who supposedly plays more BCS non-conference opponents, played 14 games (15>14, for those West Coast types who prefer self-esteem to actual math and science marks). They won 6 and lost 8.
Head to head, the conferences were 1-1 against each other.
The SEC got 8 teams into bowls, the PAC-10 only 5. The PAC-10's weak conference schedule is what held USC out of the title game. This was a down year in college football in general, and I don't really know what this post proves or claims one way or the other, but the PAC-10 is not the best conference in football. Never has been, never will be. The SEC will likely be hoisting its third BCS Championship banner in as many years Thursday night.
Demons
I cast out a demon today.
My dad and I went to eat lunch, and then his truck broke down, so we called my mom to come pick us up. As we were driving back to the house, mom's radio started wigging out and my dad goes "Oh, your radio is possessed by a demon." I jokingly put my hand on the radio and said "The power of Christ compels thee." My mom looked at me and said "Don't make fun of that" and right as she did the radio started working right again.
I have realized my calling as a faith healer/demon hunter.
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