How Easy..... And Yet How Hard...

Life takes many exciting turns. Sometimes it jumps with leaps and bounds, keeping us on the edge of our seat, and then other times, it meanders along, peacefully taking each gentle curve. One of my favorite set of paintings is called 'The Voyage of Life', by Thomas Cole. It's housed in the National Gallery of Art, in Washington D.C., and he does an amazing job of representing what life is like. You can view all four of them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Voyage_of_Life

If you are like me, you have started the transition from the carefree life, portrayed in the "Youth" stage, to dealing with the trials of life, and actually working through everything, as portrayed in "Manhood." You have some of the worries of the second, but you still have that optimism from the first. Right about now is when we have the most dreams and ambitions for the future, and when most of those are usually crushed.

So what do we do about this? How do we maintain that optimism, that bright spirit, while still facing the real world? Is it even possible?

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like the world tells teens to not care. Live life for the eight years they are in high-school and college, and then after that, settle down to a job they will probably hate, a house with a mortgage, a wife we'll probably end up divorcing, and kids who will grow up, only counting the days until they turn 18. This is what the world wants to tell us about life, and how we are supposed to live it.

Fail. Epic fail.

So here's a thought: What if you had a job you actually looked forward too? Just to pick on one of those illusions of life. Some people say I'm weird, but I wake up in the morning, and I am happy to go to work! I truly enjoy my labors, and I look forward with great anticipation to being able to serve people! I see that as one way God has given me to use my talents and abilities, and I am able to glorify Him through the use of those said talents and abilities!

So here is just something to think about. Instead of dreading whatever you dread, whether it be school, or work, or exercising, or whatever! Instead of groaning, complaining, dreading, and postponing that said thing, look forward too it! Anticipate it with great joy! Think of that one thing as your way to glorify God! This is your purpose in life, to do ALL things as unto God, and He will bless you. In fact, He'll not only bless you, but He'll use those things you were dreading, and use them for His glory! How cool is that?

So now you have something a little bit more applicable... Now go do it!

~unclejoe

Lessons from a wee one...

Today is my nephew Mikey's birthday! And because it's his birthday, I'm gonna share something related to him...

So a few weeks ago, my family took a trip up too Cape Cod for one of our friend's wedding. It worked out so that my sister, her husband and their two kids, (my nephews) rode up in the van with us. I had the amazing privilege to have nephew number 2, Mikey, sitting next too me the entire way up and back. It was during this time that Mikey, my now one-year-old nephew taught me a little bit about life and how to trust someone.

The main lesson he taught me was how to trust properly. His personality is such that if he has the few things he likes, he is very happy. In fact, he is so happy you would think he had just eaten an entire cookie bowl. I'm still not sure what it was though, but something about the 11 hour car ride seemed to bother him a bit. He seemed slightly scared about the whole experience, especially for such a long duration.

His solution?

Grab my hand. Seriously. That's all it took. So for probably 80% of the trip, I was holding my nephew's hand, and making sure he knew he was safe and secure. It was because of this that he knew he could sleep in peace, and he didn't have to worry. Every so often, I would put my hand back in my lap, and usually no more than 30 minutes later, he would wake up, start clawing on my shoulder, and continue to do so until he had my hand again.

It was while all this was happening that I thought of how we are with God. All it took was to let Mikey hold my hand, and he would just look up at me, giving me the most adorable smile ever. As I sat there holding his hand, I thought too myself, "Why don't I have someone to hold my hand?" But then I thought, "wait a minute, I do!"

Isn't it amazing that we do have someone we can just grab hold of, and know that everything will be okay? We can have trust to know that He is so much bigger than us, and will protect us if anything goes wrong. He'll clean up after us, He'll insure that we have food to eat, and He'll make sure we have everything we need to sleep. In short, He can be everything I was to my little nephew. Mikey knew that as long as he was holding on too me, he was safe, and in the same way, I know I am safe as long as I just hold onto God's hand.

So that is the main lesson that my nephew has been teaching me. Trust. To give everything up too the Lord. To know that I can just depend on Him, and place all my troubles and problems in His care, and He'll take care of them better than I can. He'll clothe and feed me, give me a place to lie my head, and make sure I have a shelter. But more than that, He made sure that I have eternal life. He went above and beyond the call of duty, and insured that I had everything I would ever need.

I have someone to hold my hand.

Do you?

The Beginnings... And An Experiment...

With dread, I realized that I neglected this blog, yet again. This is a problem, especially since I really like the idea behind a blog like this, and the topics that have yet to be discussed...

It was while pondering the strange fate of this fairly new blog that I came up with a very interesting idea... A friend and I were discussing the different ways we might bring teens together. We were hoping to create a network for teens to support and encourage each other, as well as maybe even begin to provide physical assistance to areas in need. This was several months ago. More recently, (today) another friend and I began to discuss how much time is "wasted" through Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, and the other two dozen social networking services.

While musing upon these two separate ideas, I decided to put them together: What if there was some means through which teens could do something useful, in the median of social networking? Something that takes as much time as they want to put into it, and provides some output?

My mind switched into high gear, and began racing around the track of ideas. When I put both of those ideas together, along with this blog, I came up with the obvious solution: Find other teens who are willing to give this blog a try. If you have a handful of teens who are willing to post, at a minimum, once a week, you could have daily content, thus generating traffic, and thus getting whatever it is you have to say out to the world. Plus, by having multiple writers, it provides some accountability for posting. The idea is to pair teens together, and let them start their own blogs. Every two dozen kids, you give them a blog. They create their own network, and then you can create another network of the authors.

So I decided to put this idea to the test. I invited several of my friends onto this blog, and (hopefully) they will begin posting. I am hoping to provide a place where both kids and adults alike can come to be encouraged, inspired and uplifted through Godly advice, suggestions and random thoughts, but all with a Godly worldview as the framework, and the Bible as the foundation.

Hopefully the test will prove successful, and we can launch a forum for the sharing of ideas, resources, etc. I look forward to seeing these projects through, and if you want to help, let me know!

Textbooks and more... Have we adopted a Don't Ask-Don't Tell policy?

So I know it has been quite a while since I last posted, and due to an influx of what is generally referred to as life, I have been previously occupied, and now find myself with free time to begin blogging more. Today, I just want to give a few thoughts about textbooks.

We all use textbooks, right? Everyone has had some kind of education in their life, and odds are that you used a textbook at least part of the time. Unfortunately for us, the way our education system is set up, whatever the teacher's views on the subject are, you will have to conform to those views in order to pass the class. We place ourselves underneath instructors, and many times, their beliefs and value systems don't line up with ours. We very often find ourselves in the position of either having to disagree with the professor, or just be quiet and pretend not to notice.

Textbooks are often used as sources for many things, and people, especially students, take the information inside of them for granted. In some cases, like with my Calculus textbook, this can be done without too much uneasiness. Math isn't really something that changes from person to person. But when you start looking into books that have more subjectivity in them, you enter a dangerous ground. While many people accept most science books for granted, many of them have inherent flaws in the knowledge that they enclose. Take Physics for example. The first chapter of my textbook deals with units; time, weight, length, etc. A pound is a pound, right? An hour doesn't change from person to person. I was agreeing with everything in the book up until the time when they discussed how old the earth was. I'm sure you can guess what's coming. Current "Scientific" approximations currently put the age of the earth at about 3 billion years. We've all heard this, and from the Christian point of view, we know the complete opposite. But how many of us actually say something about this?

Many of us, and I am guilty of this as well, have adopted what the Army calls a 'Don't Ask-Don't Tell' policy. We aren't asked our views on controversial issues, so we don't tell them. I did this very thing the first day in Physics class. The professor went through the table of units, and off-handedly mentioned the age of the earth. Inside, I knew I should say something, but instead, I allowed myself to be convinced out of it. 'Don't be a fool' I told myself. 'You have to spend the rest of the semester with these people, probably longer. Don't make a bad first impression.' I was thinking inside, and too my shame, I held my peace and allowed that statement to go unchallenged.

Throughout our entire lives, we will constantly be facing a barrage of contrary beliefs, ideals and morals. People are constantly making statements that they believe are true, and unless someone says differently, that is what they accept as the truth. Unfortunately, the Christian worldview has been almost completely forgotten, and people have been writing and rewriting their own versions of morals and absolutes. Academia was one of the first stones to fall, and many people within the halls of it are professing atheists. This means that most of the textbooks we have today were and are written by people who, in some cases, have openly stated that they are anti-God.

While I don't have any helpful tips or an answer to this problem, I do exhort everyone to think about what they are accepting as true. When you are reading a textbook, or any book for that matter, try to analyze every bit of it. If we lower our guard, it allows false truth to take seed, and once it has claimed some land, it is increasingly hard to reclaim it.

Another thing that I have seriously been thinking about is career paths. Most of us will have some career field that we will spend most, if not all of our lives following. Many of us will have gone through higher education to get a degree to follow that career. But how many of us have thought of passing our knowledge and worldview onto the the next generation? I was waiting for a professor a few months ago, and as many of the halls are lined with bulletin boards, I was reading all of the posts. One of them was a flyer on how to become a professor. Looking more closely, I found that at the community college I attend, you can become an adjunct professor if you have a 2.5 GPA in you're field of expertise, meet certain background information, and pass two tests, with the SAT being able to count for one of them! This means just about anyone could affect the lives of anywhere from 30-200 students per year, and even more if you become a full-time professor!

Most people say that professors are in Academia for that one bright student that comes along every 5-10 years. I would beg to differ, and say that there are some professors that teach because they know they can make a difference, and they have realized that the foundation of everything someone will do in their life is set while they are in school. So ask yourself this; are you willing to take on a part-time job, to pass on what you know, to the next generation? Many people spend their lives just trying to get ahead, thinking of the next year, or sometimes, the next 5 years. What they should really be doing is thinking of the next 100 years. We are setting the stage for our children's and grandchildren's world. I don't know about you, but that makes me think a little bit harder about what I want to do with my life.

Just a few thoughts for you to consider...