day no. 13,192 continued... guns are better than punching‏

Atticus articulated this goldmine the other night for no particular reason that I could discern.

“Guns are better than punching,” he said casually.

Well stated my little man.

Depends on what you’re trying to accomplish I suppose, but on the surface I accept your theory and am willing to run it out.

It’s at this point that I wish I had a loyal fan base that faithfully followed my blog.

If that minion existed, I would draw upon their creative powers to produce a t-shirt using this phrase and perhaps a logo to accompany it.

I can see myself now.

I’m wearing this cool shirt somebody on the interwebs made for me and I run into a stranger at Wal-Mart who laughs and says, “Ha, I like your shirt.”  I reply, “Yeah, my son said this one time and I blogged about it and somebody who reads my blog made a shirt out of it and sent it to me after I asked them to.”  Then stranger would then undoubtedly awkwardly move on to grab the “yogurt and gym socks” still on his list.

It would be the best.

I miss it already.

“The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you'll never have.” ~ Søren Kierkegaard

(Yeah, that went darker at the end than I had originally intended. My bad.

day no. 13,192: happy birthday, atticus!

Today my firstborn son, Atticus, turns 6 years old.

He is awesome.

I love being his dad.

Even when I'm not loving being his dad, I still love, deep down, that I'm his dad.

He loves justice and wrestling and swords and coloring and letting his sister drink water first and helping and order and the outdoors and a feast of other things.

I love you Atticus.

It it a great joy and privilege for which I thank God, the Creator and Decider of all things, for the opportunity to be your dad and for you to be my son.

6 years.

6.

Every cliche' about time I can think of comes to mind, All seeming, right now, entirely appropriate and applicable (and not cliche')

Time flies when you're having fun.
These early years go by so quickly.
Take time to enjoy it.
Etc....

I love you my son.

day no. 13,191: the essence of idolatry‏

"The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him." ~ A.W. Tozer 

It would be easy to think that our western civilized minds had somehow outgrown the archaic habit of idolatry, but we'd be lazy to assume such. 

Idolatry is not merely bowing down to idols made of wood and gold, although it is certainly not less than that.  

As Tozer points out, it is putting on to God something unworthy of Him or in other words, putting on to lesser objects things too worthy for them.

day no. 13,190: no better goal, no better gift‏

Philippians 3:14

I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

My friend Tim summarized this verse in the following way:

“There is no better goal than to strive for Jesus and no better gift than to receive Him.”

Boom.Roasted!

There is NO BETTER goal for which to strive than Christlikeness.

There is NO BETTER gift than to receive Christ.

The gift of grace compels us to get after the goal.

We work hard for the One who has already given us everything necessary.

We hold on to the One who already holds us perfectly in His capable, caring arms.

day no. 13,189: the foolishness of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil‏

“God’s gracious self-disclosure in Scripture can never be adequately assessed by those who insist on being independent knowers.” ~D.A. Carson

Our original sin was choosing to pursue knowledge instead of God.

God will not now accommodate this sin by granting the independent agent to know Him and the power of the Gospel without humbly receiving knowledge in lieu of ravenously yanking it down from Heaven..

This would be God promoting the very sin from which we need to be set free.

“God in His great mercy refuses to pander to our unlimited lust to be gods. He has ensured that His own self-disclosure should be abundantly clear to those who by grace have eyes to see and ears to hear, but can never be as rigorously self-evident as a mathematical theorem where human beings control all the definitions and the rules of the relationships.  We walk by faith, not by sight” ~ D.A. Carson

day no. 13,188: get your crap together, it's going down soon‏

Isaiah 38:1

In those days Hezekiah became terminally ill. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz came and said to him, “This is what the Lord says: ‘Put your affairs in order,for you are about to die; you will not recover.’”

Few warning shots ring clearer than the one where you are told directly that you are dying and will die soon, so get your house in order.

This passage was preached at my brother Terry's funeral a few years ago.  I can remember sitting in that pew looking up at the pastor as he warned, "Get your house in order."

Is not this the call of every man and woman?

While not specific to us with regard to timeline, the warning is nevertheless specific in the general sense that all of our respective ends will come sooner than we desire and in the meantime we all have work to do, things we should do, lives we should live before our lives run out.

Get your house in order.

Put your affairs straight.

Don't put off 'til tomorrow what you should do today.

Repent.

Ask for forgiveness.

Get your will written.

Tell those you love that you love them.

Don't wait or it will end up being TOO LATE and you will go down as one whose house and affairs were out of order.

day no. 13,185 continued... black Friday

long lines.
early mornings.
great deals.

but i'll pass.

grateful for a paid day off with my family.

for realsies!