Friday, January 25, 2008

With great sadness I see it all come crashing down

So I have a flare for dramatic titles sometimes...

I've been reading "I Love You is Back" by Derrick C Brown. He's a damn fine poet. I enjoy is writings, I love his music, his spoken word makes me laugh and think.

My brother works at a local coffee shop and I found out tonight he know has a drink named after him (if you ever go to the Music Cafe order a Bobby Latte). I had one for the first time tonight. It was awesome. My second favorite (or possibly third) favorite coffee drink. The Hazelnut Latte at Ebenezers is still boss.

While enjoying some conversation with a friend and writing some poetry I watched the Power Puff Girls Movie. Despite what your current state of laughing The Power Puff Girls are awesome.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Word

"But suppose we seek to be made right with God through faith in Christ and then we are found guilty because we have abandoned the law. Would that mean Christ has led us into sin? Absolutely not! Rather, I am a sinner if I rebuild the old system of law I already tore down. For when I tried to keep the law, it condemned me. So I died to the law—I stopped trying to meet all its requirements—so that I might live for God. My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless. For if keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die."

Galatians 2:17-21

Monday, January 21, 2008

Seeing You Off The Edges

So I have a couple things to say tonight. The first is my gut reaction and some reflection to a sign I saw today. There's a church on Old Georgetown road as you're coming into downtown Bethesda that always has something on it's sign out front that makes me laugh. And honestly I don't take too much of it seriously because it's always something that seems to me be nonsense. But today it caught my attention. Today it read "The church is a hospital to the sinner, not a resting place for the saints". Simple and to the point. And my first response was something to the effect of "those bastards". It's sad that I went there and here's my initial thought behind this; that the church is there for those who need Jesus. Let me defend myself. I'm not saying people don't need Jesus and I'm not saying that church shouldn't be a place where people can come to the Lord but... I feel there is a large portion of churches that have made the church a place where people come to the Lord and not a place where Christ followers come to get feed and encouraged. I think we often let the church do the job of getting people saved and not having people get people saved. I always go back to Acts where the people got saved and then came into the church. Not came into the church and got saved.

But that's not really the point. I actually reread this a couple of times and thought about it. And actually... I agree. I think it's really sad that I went to the sinner as the unsaved and it's unfair. Because I spend most of my day sinning. As a Christ follower I sin just as much as someone who's not. And all sin is equal in God's eye. So just because I'm not sleeping with my girlfriend doesn't mean I've gotten off free for the day because I did look at that girl on the street lustfully. No one's a saint. We're to strive to be like Jesus, to achieve perfection but we all fall short of the glory of God. And so I like the idea that it's a place for sinners. People who want to get better.


Second idea of the day has to do with the way God works. Which I must say frustrates me from time to time. In a nut shell, God had answered a prayer he'd put on my heart many years previous to the answer. The answer came in the form of a friendship and relationship built on the desire to be more honest in our walks with God and a desire to learn more about him. This relationship has been in limbo for many months now and it was very frustrating to me why, because I couldn't figure it out. But I had finally made peace with it and put the situation behind me and was looking forward... until tonight. I read this verse.

"Now I am coming to you for the third time, and I will not be a burden to you. I don’t want what you have—I want you. After all, children don’t provide for their parents. Rather, parents provide for their children. I will gladly spend myself and all I have for you, even though it seems that the more I love you, the less you love me." (2 Corinthians 12:14-15)

It instantaniously brought me back to this relationship which I had thought I'd put behind me. Sometimes God isn't ready for us to let things go... and sometimes I have to ask why?

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Hope Springs Eternal

Don Miller is my favorite writer. He has two books that I highly, highly recommend, "Blue Like Jazz" and Searching for God KNows What". Great books. Don speaks at Imago Dei Community Church in Portland, Oregon from time to time. Don completely honest and real when he speaks and next time he comes remotely close to the DC area I'm going to see him.

http://api.monkcms.com/Clients/download.php?sid=7&url=http://www.imagodeicommunity.com/ekkmedia/our-hope-in-the-eternal-glory-of-god.mp3&mediaBID=68648

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Tonight, Lets All Make Love in London

There are moments when God wants you to do something that doesn't make sense. He speaks to our lives like the parables in the Gospels. They seem to get right to the point like we'd like them to but when you think about it things make sense. I really struggled trying to figure out why I was supposed to change my eating habits in such a big way. It didn't make sense but it felt right, like I was supposed to do it. And then it struck me that it was a discipline issue. I'm not the most disciplined person in the world and I think this was a way to get me to think about my choices and discipline myself in one area to help be more disciplined in others. It's weird and it's been tough but I'm going to stick with it.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Dear Metro Rail

So I want to file a complaint to whomever is in charge of the DC Metro Rail system. Please take note. I am not one to complain about public transportation because I love it and not having to drive in the city is great. But we have a problem. I understand inflation happens and prices have to go up with the changing economy, I got that. But rider ship can't be hurting that bad can it? I mean you are how people get to and from basketball and hockey games. You will be the method of travel to the new baseball stadium. A large group of people even take the train to the football games. To maintain quality of service as a reason for raising your prices is a pretty bad excuse. And here's why I say this... it took me an hour to go from Shady Grove to White Flint. An HOUR! That's only a 10 minute drive. It's normally a 10 minute train ride. 1 HOUR! Thankfully Jer parked at Friendship Heights and I didn't have to go through the construction on the way home. I lost my mind today and decided to try and take a chance on Metro again... and there's a Capitals game. You know it's a bad idea when you get on the train and it's completely full at Shady Grove. The price to ride is increased, the price to park is increased and you're doing construction every week causing major delays! This is not working for me. Our relationship might soon be coming to an end and that saddens me deeply. But let's try and get it together. This doesn't have to end. Get your shit together. Make the price of riding worth it to the customer.

BP

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

DC

So about this time of year as we settle into winter my playlist shifts from Christmas music into a steady diet of shoegaze, post-rock, and classical music. I pretty much surround myself with music that warms my heart and soul in the cold weather. But so far this year I've been listening to a lot of MxPx, Fugazi, Beauty Pill, just good old punk rock and DC music. The last year and half I've really fallen in love with DC. I've always enjoyed DC and enjoyed living so close to it but lately I love being in DC and saying I'm from DC. I don't think there's an explanation for it. We have a great music scene and a great music scene history (Bad Brains will always be a DC band!). DC's pretty awesome.

By the way, if you live in or with Metro distance of DC you should be at Fort Reno this summer seeing free local music.

Thursday, January 3, 2008

To Be Myself Completely

So it's 2008. So far I have only one complaint. The coffee maker at work has yet to function properly in this new year. It just won't make a good, strong pot of coffee and it's breaking my tired heart. Terrible.

So I'm going to outline a couple of goals for the new year. It's been asked why I make my goals public and there's a simple answer, I need to write them down. I make them public because it seems to make more sense to my little brain if I write them in a blog instead of opening up a word document, which actually does make sense because I will never reopen word documents that I've finished writing. Plus it allows those who read to ask me how I'm doing. So here we go.

Number 1, I want to smile more. I know it seems simple and easy and a dumb goal for the year but it's mine. Because I'm a nice guy. Seriously I am. I'm a lot of fun and super nice, and kind of cool but I don't smile often and thus the appearance of me being awesome is lost. Ask anyone who knows me, I am the bee's knees (will anyone not named Dustin Mills get this?). So I want to smile more and give off a friendlier appearance.

Secondly I'm going to finish things I start. I side tracked and lose focus and never finish things I mean to finish. I have a lot of half done projects from 2007 that need to be finished. So I guess before I start anything my goal is to finish things that I've yet to finish.

And lastly I want to continue to be open and honest with people. I did a little bit of that in the latter half of 07 and it was real good for me. What's the point in keeping my struggles and problems to myself? All it will do is bottle itself up until it reaches the point where I explode, which sucks. What do I lose by expressing my struggles and problems with others? Because everyone has their trials and issues and things that get them stuck or their questions. If people look differently at me because I can be honest about my problems then those are people I probably don't want to run with anyway. Where all the same.

I think my biggest goal in 08 is to continue to discover who God is and what he has in store for me. To keep asking questions, to keep learning and growing, to keep meeting people and loving people.

These aren't all my goals but the ones I want to share publicly. God Bless.