Category: reflections

Musical interlude for the day

Here’s our musical thought for the day…

U2 – With a Shout

Oh, and where do we go?
Where do we go from here?
Where to go
To the side of a hill
Blood was spilt
We were still looking at each other
Oh, we’re goin’ back there
Jerusalem
Jerusalem

Shout
Shout
With a shout, shout it out
Shout
Shout it out

I wanna go
To the foot of Mount Zion
To the foot of he who made me see
To the side of a hill
Where we were still
We were filled
With our love

We’re gonna be there again
Jerusalem
Jerusalem
Jerusalem
Jerusalem
Jerusalem
Jerusalem

Woah…oh…
Shout
Shout
With a shout
Shout

This weekend

Another list…. 🙂

a. Ate dinner with Dan & Martha and Bob & Vickie
b. Purchased four new disks for disk golf
c. Checked out the new paint job and body work on my sister’s car
d. Visited with Kara & Tim, Mom & Dad and Grandma & Grandad
e. Did anyone just notice the arrangement of sexes on line a & d? odd
f. Enjoyed sleeping late on Saturday
g. Played Frisbee/disk golf with Phil in Cedar Hill
h. Phil’s better than us
i. Watched the Bourne Identity
j. Enjoyed What-a-Burger for dinner
k. Spent way to much time waiting on my Fantasy Football Draft
l. Went to encounter Sunday morning
m. Spent the afternoon in Kaufman at Hidden Acres
n. Tried a couple geocaches
o. Found one, didn’t find the other
p. Hid a third geocache for Casa de Blundell
q. It’s located at N 32° 22.864 W 096° 50.990
r. Slept in again on Monday
s. Drove around looking at homes and neighborhoods in Red Oak and Ovilla
t. Ate dinner with Brad & Jen and their kids in Ennis
u. Came home and that was about it for our three day weekend
v. What did you do this weekend?
w. Think you can fill a whole alphabet?
x. I may make it to Z but I guess I ran out of events
y. Over the weekend two people found our first geocache
z. Five people found our second one

Old Blundell’s

Found this picture while browsing Flickr tonight:

The inscription on the wall reads:
This school founded 1604 by Peter Blundell clothier of this town was sold in 1882 to provide for the building of the new school. Bought back in 1940 with funds collected by the Old Bludndellian Club and presented to the govenors in 1945. It was given in 1954 to the National Trust.

Also found this one:

Proverbs 2

This is coming a little late in the day (10:43 p.m.) but thought I’d share some thoughts from my reading this morning, Prov. 2.
It was great to see God at work even more when I came to encounter this morning and it was the primary passage Brian spoke from.

Like most of Proverbs, the focus of Prov. 2 on wisdom and learning the fear and knowledge of the Lord.
As I seek God’s wisdom, will and direction in various areas of my life it’s easy to assume/hope/pray that God will magically open a door, we’ll walk through and presto life will make sense.

As I read this passage I think God is saying things might work a little differently.

turning your ear to wisdom
and applying your heart to understanding,
and if you call out for insight
and cry aloud for understanding,
and if you look for it as for silver
and search for it as for hidden treasure,
then you will understand the fear of the LORD
and find the knowledge of God.

I look at the steps needed to find knowledge and I need to turn my ear towards wisdom, apply my heart to understanding, call out for insight, call out, cry aloud, look for it as treasure and search for it as hidden treasure.

Those aren’t easy things to do.

It’s not ouija Bible or flip a coin to find God’s will – it’s seek and look hard for it as you would look for silver or hidden treasure.

I’ve never really searched for hidden treasure, other than geocaching, so that’s about all I can compare it to.
But it’s easy to get out and look for a couple minutes for a geocache and then give up if we don’t find it right away. Sometimes we might find an easy “park and grab” that takes very little effort to find. But the real reward comes when we search and search and search and find that hidden treasure that’s really worth the effort.

Same with seeking God’s wisdom. Sometimes we might get little nuggets that come easy – those are great and helpful but may not take us very far. But those pieces of wisdom that we really seek out and search for will really make a difference. That’s when we’ll learn the fear and knowledge of the Lord.

I’ll post Brian’s thoughts on the encounter podcast soon. Feel free to share your own in the comments below as well.

Geocaching Wednesday

Well, Wednesday used to be date night for Laurie and I, but with the new semester starting, we’ve moved it to Friday night now.
And so Monday and Wednesday night’s I’m pretty much on my own from 6:30 to 9:30.
I went out and bought a kickstand and water cage for my bike after dinner and installed them both fairly easily.
Afterwards I found a new geocaching trick I’ll share in the next post.
I grabbed some new coordinates and headed out for an evening hunt and ride.
As far as workouts go – it was good.
As far as geocaching goes – I’d give it an C.
My first cache was located at the Oncor (TXU) facility down the road from us. I rode by the first time to scope it out and then pulled into the parking lot to check my coordinates. Luckily I had my bike and water container with me because shortly after stopping a security guard came around the corner to find out what was going on.
I just played everything off and said I was taking a break from my bike ride and checking my route distance on my GPS unit. So much for that cache.
The next cache was located at SAGU. I made a trip around the dorm it was located by and students kept coming in and out and in and out. I figured I’d better wait till next time when the campus is less busy – would have had a lot more luck three weeks ago before class started.
My third and final cache was at a nearby alternative school. Being almost 9 p.m. it was getting dark and as I rode around the campus I figured my chances of finding the cache in the dark were probably a lot less than being stopped by a local police officer or school security.
So I wrapped my hunt up and headed back home.
Now it’s time to get a shower and head to bed.

Wait! I almost forgot – our latest cache is now published, so search, hunt and find. Enjoy!

Have a little faith

In the August edition of Roads & Bridges, David Matthews looks at the finer points of driving according to “God’s law.”
In case you missed it, a woman was recently taken to court after she lead police on a three-mile chase down the Ohio turnpike after they tried to pull her over for breast-feeding her seven-month-old child – while driving.
Her defense – her husband told her to. Apparently driving and breast-feeding would save time.
Why the three-mile chase? She was waiting for instructions from her husband and he told her to only pull over in a public area with witnesses.
What if her husband said to jump off a bridge? According to the First Christian Fellowship – she’d have to.
The church strongly teaches that the husband is the head of the household and is given control over his wife’s actions — and held responsible for them.

Therefore, remaining true to his faith, Barnhill insisted at his wife’s trial that he should be tried for her actions. Donkers was convicted anyway, but this past April those convictions were overturned due to mistakes made by lower court judges. There is no word yet on how the judges’ husbands will be punished.

I wonder what leads people to that kind of self-sacrifice that they will only do what another person tells them to. What leads a woman (or man) to believe they have no control over themselves? It seems to me that they turn into robots at that point.
Yet, how many times do we read in Scripture that we are to give control of ourselves over to God and His will – and still we fight and fight and fight for control.
Here’s a woman who has given full control and responsibility to her husband, yet I have trouble letting go of things and giving control to the Creator of the Universe. The Alpha and Omega. The Great I Am.
I think this woman may have misdirected her faith – but she’s maybe she can teach us a lesson on what it means to fully surrender to God.

1 Peter 2:11-12 “Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.“