New Year, New Start

The Spring 2008 semester is about to begin here at Western and I've just returned from a three week vacation. It was the most restful three weeks I've ever experienced and it was probably the first time in the last year that I've felt relaxed at all. I needed that. Badly.

For the last few months I've lost the motivation to blog. Maybe I'm getting tired of it, maybe I'm boring now, or maybe it just takes a lot of time and thought to make post after post and I'm just too busy trying to focus on school to do it on a regular basis. Perhaps it is the beginning of the end for my humble blog, or perhaps it's just another phase. Who knows? We'll see I guess.

I come back from break feeling different, though I'm not sure why. It's a strange feeling. A kind of more mature feeling. A feeling that I'm growing up and starting to look to the future in a very practical and hopeful way. Perhaps it's because I'm in my last stages of college life and many of my friends here are slowly being phased out of my life as they approach the end of their college lives.

Maybe this feeling means something, maybe it's nothing at all. Who knows, this feeling could fade like so many countless others in past years. But then again, it could be the beginning of something new.

And if I am becoming different, if I am changing, I hope it's for the good.


Oh yeah. I'm digging Conan O'Brian's beard too.

Fall is Here

It's the first day of November and Fall is back in its full splendor. I think I'm officially changing my favorite season from Summer to Autumn. Early Autumn, when the air is crisp and the leaves are gold and crimson. Not late Autumn, when the trees are naked and dead, and the leaves are rotting, and the snow begins to fall, hinting at the hell-frozen-over scenario that is to come.

Right now, we're in the middle portion of this season. The air is still crisp, and pumpkins dot the landscape while the smell of apple cider fills the air. But it's getting colder and darker. It will get even darker...er after the time change this weekend.

I leave you with the image of me scraping frost off of my windshield this morning and hoping that the heat would kick in as I am driving to class.

It's coming, people.

The Kindness of Strangers

I'm reading Donald Miller's book Through Painted Deserts right now. It's about a road trip from Texas to Oregon that he and his friend Paul went on years ago, and the things that were going through his mind at that time. It's been a good read, even though I'm still near the beginning of the book.

It turns out that the old Volkswagen van that they took on this trip broke down on their first day out. They pulled off the highway and headed into a small town to get it fixed, only to find out that there was only one mechanic there, and he was out of town that day. However, the people they talked to informed them that there was a man in town named Ben that owned an old VW van just like theirs, and that he might be able to help them.

So they followed the directions to this stranger's house and met him. Immediately upon hearing about their car trouble, Ben went about fixing their van with no apprehension whatsoever. It turns out it was an easy fix, and they were on their way in no time. They promised to send him a postcard from the Grand Canyon when they got there, and he enthusiastically gave them his mailing address so he could get it. Then he waved them off and they continued on their journey.

This story reminds me a lot of what my fellow travelers and I went through on our way to Colorado last March. Our van broke down on our first day and we had to rely on the kindness of strangers to get back on the road again. It was absolutely amazing to see the ways that people blessed us that day, and it touched us in a way we'll never forget.

The kindness of this stranger touched Donald and Paul in a way that undoubtedly affected them for the rest of the trip and beyond. And perhaps it's affected everyone who's read this book as well.

Fifty Years

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the launch of the first man-made satellite into Earth's orbit. Sputnik was launched on October 4, 1957 and sparked the space race to the moon landing that revolutionized technology, defined American and Soviet patriotism, and stretched the boundaries of human achievement.

Here's a link to the USA Today article on the anniversary

You Might Be An Engineer If...

I found this list here. Almost every engineering student at Western should be familiar with it already, but here are some signs that you might be an engineer (or an engineering student).

You Might Be An Engineer If...

• You have no life - and you can PROVE it mathematically.
• You enjoy pain.
• You know vector calculus but you can't remember how to do long division.
• You chuckle whenever anyone says "centrifugal force".
• You've actually used every single function on your graphing calculator.
• It is sunny and 70 degrees outside, and you are working on a computer.
• You frequently whistle the theme song to "MacGyver".
• You know how to integrate a chicken and can take the derivative of water.
• You think in "math".
• You've calculated that the World Series actually diverges.
• You hesitate to look at something because you don't want to break down its wave function.
• You have a pet named after a scientist.
• You laugh at jokes about mathematicians.
• The Humane society has you arrested because you actually performed the Schrodinger's Cat experiment.
• You can translate English into Binary.
• You can't remember what's behind the door in the engineering building which says "Exit".
• You have to bring a jacket with you, in the middle of summer, because there's a wind-chill factor in the lab.
• You are completely addicted to caffeine.
• You avoid doing anything because you don't want to contribute to the eventual heat-death of the universe.
• You consider ANY non-engineering course "easy".
• When your professor asks you where your homework is, you claim to have accidentally determined its momentum so precisely, that according to Heisenberg it could be anywhere in the universe.
• The "fun" center of your brain has deteriorated from lack of use.
• You'll assume that a "horse" is a "sphere" in order to make the math easier.
• The blinking 12:00 on someone's VCR draws you in like a tractor beam to fix it.
• You bring a computer manual / technical journal as vacation reading.
• The salesperson at Circuit City can't answer any of your questions.
• You can't help eavesdropping in computer stores... and correcting the salesperson.
• You're in line for the guillotine... it stops working properly... and you offer to fix it.
• You go on the rides at Disneyland and sit backwards to see how they do the special effects.
• You have any "Dilbert" comics displayed in your work area.
• You have a habit of destroying things in order to see how they work.
• You have never backed up your hard drive.
• You haven't bought any new underwear or socks for yourself since you got married.
• You spent more on your calculator than on your wedding ring.
• You think that when people around you yawn, it's because they didn't get enough sleep.
• You would rather get more dots per inch than miles per gallon
• You've ever calculated how much you make per second.
• Your favorite James Bond character is "Q," the guy who makes the gadgets.
• You understood more than five of these jokes.
• You make a copy of this list, and post it on your door (or your blog!)

Faith, Hope and Love

We give thanks to God always for all of you, making mention of you in our prayers; constantly bearing in mind your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father.
- 1 Thessalonians 1:2-3

I found this passage the other night and it peaked my interest. In these verses, Paul is greeting the church in Thessalonica and makes a point to encourage them in their "work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope". The trio of faith, hope and love appear in many different places in the Bible, but I found the way Paul pairs up work, labor and steadfastness alongside the three very refreshing and a bit encouraging.

I think it's good to be reminded that while we walk with Christ, it is not through Him alone that we begin to have faith in Him or hope for the future, let alone love for others. It takes work on our part in order to achieve these things. We must be active in our faith, hope and love. We don't always have faith, but we need to work at it and take a step when it feels like the world is falling out from under us. We don't always want to love our neighbor, but we have to keep loving when we don't feel like it, because love is more than a feeling. Hope wanes in the night, but it's when it begins to fade that we need to grasp onto it the most.

Like anything else worth accomplishing, faith, hope and love take work and time. But remember that we are not alone. Through Him, all things are possible.

What Every Christian Should Know #6

Here is #6 of Keith Giles' monthly series, TOP 10 THINGS EVERY CHRISTIAN SHOULD KNOW (But Probably Doesn't). Interestingly enough, this one correlates perfectly with what the Xperience is doing this year. Giles talks about how he and his wife planted a church a few years ago and they decided to create a "house church". This is almost exactly what our ministry is doing at Western right now. You have to believe me when I say that this wasn't planned at all and I just randomly picked today to update my blog with this bit of his series. Here's a snippet:

When we first told our friends what we envisioned doing, many looked at us as if we had three heads. To be honest, I felt like I was insane whenever I tried to explain it to people. It just seemed so crazy and so "out of the box" to me, because no one I knew had ever done this before. I had grown up in the traditional church. I had been licensed and ordained in the denominational church. My entire Christian experience was totally connected to the modern, organized way of doing church. To step outside of that structure in order to follow our calling seemed uncertain at best, and downright terrifying at worst. This was what it felt like to be a pioneer, loading up the buckboard with supplies and heading West into the great unknown with only your family, a few provisions, and a lot of faith.

There are times when people say that we have left the Church. In fact, more often that not, whenever I hear someone refer to those in the house church movement, it's to say they have "left the Church". This illustrates one key misunderstanding that I'd like to clear up.

If you have surrendered your life to Christ and have an ongoing, daily relationship with Jesus, then you ARE the Church! This means you cannot leave the Church. You can decide to worship in another way, or in another place, or outside the walls of an established, organized expression of the Church, but unless you break fellowship with other believers, or turn away from your daily walk with Jesus, you cannot, and you have not, "Left the Church".

And another:

So, if you ever feel called to change the location of where you worship, or if you feel the need to change churches, or perhaps even to join a House Church, please never forget; You ARE the Church! Church is not a meeting you attend or a building you gather in. You are the Church as long as you have surrendered your life to Christ and you daily seek His face and follow His teachings. If you gather with other believers, in a gymnasium, under a tree, in a home, by the beach, etc., then you are the Church and you can never leave it, unless you completely turn away from Jesus and abandon the Faith.

One of the most amazing things I've discovered in leading a House Church has been in realizing that we are called to be the Church and not to attend one.