So Much To Think About

Advice

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.

Mary Schmich – ADVICE, LIKE YOUTH, PROBABLY JUST WASTED ON THE YOUNGChicago Tribune

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Old Man thinking

I mowed the lawn today, and after doing so
I sat down and had a cold beer.
The day was really quite beautiful, and the drink facilitated some deep thinking.
My wife walked by and asked me what I was doing,
and I said, “Nothing.”
The reason I said “nothing” instead of saying “just thinking” is because she then would have asked, “About what?”
At that point I would have had to explain that men are deep thinkers about various topics, which would lead to other questions.
Finally I pondered an age old question: Is giving birth more painful than getting kicked in the nuts?
Women always maintain that giving birth is way more painful than a guy getting kicked in the nuts, but how could they know?
Well, after another beer, and some more heavy deductive thinking, I have come up with an answer to that question.
Getting kicked in the nuts is more painful than having a baby, and even though I obviously couldn’t really know, here is the reason for my conclusion:
A year or so after giving birth, a woman will often say, “It might be nice to have another child.”
But you never hear a guy say, “You know, I think I would like another kick in the nuts.”

I rest my case.
Time for another beer. Then maybe a nap.
Credit : Thewani Dewmi

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Louisiana

Oh, Louisiana. You have so many more problems. According to U.S. News & World Report, you are one of the lowest-ranked states in the country:
RANKINGS SCORECARD

• Crime & Corrections #50
• Economy #49
• Education #47
• Fiscal Stability #41
• Health Care #46
• Infrastructure #49
• Natural Environment #49
• Opportunity #44

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Be great for God

John Hannah of DTS. When I was a student there, Dr. Hannah would say, “You want to be great for God?” I would sit up in my chair and audible under my breath, “Yes!” He would then say, “Don’t quit, don’t fornicate, and you will be the only one left and you will be great.”

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Losing

“Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know. Defeat and losing clarify so much, or have the potential to do so. Embrace it. Don’t try to run away from it.” What he’s saying is that winning confirms what you already know, but losing reveals what you need to know. Like watching Jeopardy! reveals what you don’t know. The elite competitor cherishes that knowledge because it will push them to become better. Winning isn’t the ultimate goal. Better is.

Maurice Ashley – chess’s first Black American Grandmaster. via kareem Abdul Jabbar

Immigrants
there are 10.5 million (down from 12.2 million in 2007) illegal immigrants. According to the Migration Policy Institute, 62 percent have been here at least 10 years, 22 percent at least 20 years, 21 percent for less than five years. Twenty-eight percent own their homes.

The Contradiction

If God was once found among the condemned and cursed, how can we be so sure that this isn’t happening again right now as we speak? That is what I mean when I say that the cross stands as a “sign of contradiction” in the midst of history against any human presumption to know, with any finality, who is cursed and who is saved. We got it catastrophically wrong at Golgotha, and I don’t think anything has changed since.

Richard Beck

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Path to peace

consider the words of the Chinese writer Lu Xun more than a century ago: “Hope is like a path in the countryside. Originally, there is nothing — but as people walk this way again and again, a path appears.”

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Abide in Me

Jesus defines what abiding in him means by comparing it to the way he abides in the Father. “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love” (John 15:10). Jesus was clear that we abide in him by choosing to obey his commands. Simply put, abiding is an action, not an emotion.

Once we recognize how consumer spirituality focuses on our feelings, and how Jesus focuses on our behavior, the shortcomings of pop Christianity begin to make perfect sense. Many of our churches are not designed to help us actually do what Jesus commanded in the world, but to help us escape emotionally from the world—if only temporarily for a few hours on the weekend. We may leave church with a renewed sense of the divine, or we may even feel on fire for God, but few are bothered when these sentiments do not translate into any actual change in behavior. This is because consumer Christianity is designed to give us what we want rather than what we need. To paraphrase Roger Ailes’ credo, most people do not want to be righteous, they just want to feel righteous.

Skye Jethanti 

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Pity

In my mind, pity isn’t even analogous to compassion.?Pity is just the paternalistic cousin of contempt. It allows us to see others as “those less fortunate than ourselves” (a term I loathe). Pity keeps the other person at a distance and me in a rarified state of satisfaction.… Compassion, on the other hand, draws us close. 

Nadia Bolz-Weber

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STILL ON THE JOIRNEY