God’s Judgement

Just reading Isaiah 24 today.  The thought hit me…  What if everything that I’ve always been told about God’s coming judgement was really just God allowing us to reap what we’ve sown. 

God doesn’t need to burn up the earth, God doesn’t need to cause famines, catastrophes etc…  We’ve done a pretty good job of creating our own messes by forsaking the life that God wants us to live.  A life that is good for ourselves, good for our neighbors and good for our world. 

If the world is destroyed.  I don’t believe it would be by God’s doing.  It would be by us.

Jesus Messiah – Milan Vineyard

Here’s the second track from our CD. Manny Begley sings the lead on this one. The rest of the tracks are almost done and the CD should be out in a couple weeks.

Marvelous Light – Milan Vineyard

Here’s the first track from a CD our worship team is putting together. We made the CD to give away to visitors. Hope you enjoy.

Kris or Adam?

I’m still reeling in the euphoria of last nights AI finale.  Wondering if what I watched was real or staged (Much like Tattiana’s award situation).  Rueben – that was a great look.  LOL!

I read this article today and found it interesting.  I’m sure there’s a lot of people on both extremes of the fence day.  Really mad or Really happy.

Personally – I was really happy.  For the first time ever I actually voted.  (3 times for Kris).  My wife and I were taunting each other just before the results.  She was for the other competitor.  The loser.  I was for Kris.  The winner.

I’ll be honest, I fully expected Adam to win.  But I couldn’t let my wife know, so I held fast to my prediction of Kris stealing the crown from the would-be King.

When the announcement was made there was silence for what seemed like a half an hour in heaven my house.  We stared at the TV screen in disbelief.  I triumphantly shouted!

Reading the comments it seems like it was a love or hate thing for Adam.  It was like that for our household.  My whole family loved him.  I hated him.  To them Adam was the superstar and Kris was the adorable runner up.  I never saw it that way.

Don’t get me wrong.  Adam has a lot of talent.  I really liked about three of the songs he did on idol.  Usually the stripped back ones.  But he lost me with his constant screeching.  The first time he did it I was in awe like everyone else not many people can do that, but he never stopped.  Almost every song, he would jump off the melody and went two or three steps or octaves above (just because he could).  Note From Bono: “Simon – WTF was that!” I don’t blame Adam entirely.  Everyone, judges and fans encouraged him the whole way.  They practically handed him the title every week.  (which made detractors of Adam even more emboldened in their hatred).

What it came down to for me was two things:  Music Style and Performance Style

If I have the option of listening to a Kiss/Gun’s and Roses/Iron Maiden CD or a Seconhand Seranade/Daschboard confessional/John Mayer/James Taylor/Carey Brothers/etc… etc…  I choose the later every time.  I’m not a fan of heavy metal, hair band, eighties metal, screaming shouting rock.  I like the singer song writer, acoustic, laid back easy going songs that have feeling and emotion.

The second thing.  Every time I watched Adam I felt like I was front row at a show on the Vegas strip.  Or watching a modern version of the Rocky horror show.  It was a circus, a spectacle.  It was not real.  Never felt genuine. It didn’t seem to fit today.  If this was circa 1985 he wins hands down, but it’s not.  I felt like I was watching a guy made to be a broadway star trying to become a rock star.  After the entire season of watching AI, I feel like I know nothing about the kind of person Adam is.  I feel absolutely nothing for him.

Kris’ performance style was completely different.  (Not necessarily better)  I hope that’s clear for everyone I’ve completely pissed off right now.  But it’s the style that I liked, the style I would choose.  I feel invested in Kris.  Connected to Kris.  I feel like I know the kind of person he is.  I feel like he is the person you see on the stage and I like that.  He’s real.  He’s genuine.  I’ll never see him in Vegas.  Maybe not in a huge stadium.  But i could see him a small theatre in A^2 or maybe the DTE theatre.  I would enjoy sitting down with him over coffee.  Talking about life.  Playing the guitar.

So Kris or Adam?

And whose CD will you buy when it comes out?

Why I became a Mac fanboy (Windows 7, VNC issues)

So I just got a used PC from my brother-in-law, which I’m excited about.  I’m planning on using it as a media server.  Would love to hook it up to my tv and use the tv as a monitor.

I’ve loaded Windows 7 on it.  Which looks pretty slick.  But I’ve been trying to do a couple things with it that have me really frustrated. 

The main thing I want to do is enable screen sharing from my Macbook to the PC.  I’ve just about conceded that I won’t be able to use my HDTV as a monitor, but I don’t want to add another monitor.  I just want the PC to be a server and I want to be able to control it and make changes to it through my Macbook.

I’m having some problems.

On my Macbook it’s easy.  My Macbook actually has it’s own built in VNC client.  I go to my system preferences and turn on sharing.  Go to finder, connect as server, type in VNC://Whatever IP address is.  And it works.

Not so easy with my PC.  I started with the firewall/network settings.  Allowing certain things that I thought should be allowed to have access to work…nothing.  Then I basically allowed everything to have access…nothing worked.  Then I tried turning off the firewall…still nothing.  I’m at a loss.

I need someone to help me that knows a lot about setting up VNC on a windows PC.  I know it’s possible.  It probably isn’t that hard if you know what you’re looking for.  But once it again.  It’s for reasons like this that I switched to a Mac and I’m loving it.

If you think you could help me please leave a comment and contact info.

Haylie…

My wife asked me to write a paragraph or two about my daughter, Haylie (12 Years Old), for some project of hers at school.  I spent some time thinking about it and here’s what I came up with.  It might be over the top for her assignment, but oh we’ll see.

I love Haylie.  She is my only daughter, my firstborn.  She is the best thing I’ve ever done.  She is the most important thing I’ve ever been a part of.  Yet I know I cannot take credit for the person she is, the person she is becoming right before my eyes, the person she will be.  She is mine, but she is uniquely her own.  She is mine, but she does not belong to me.  She is my life, yet she does not live for me.

Because of Haylie, I know what it means to love and be loved.  Because of Haylie, I believe in things like goodness and beauty.  I see them every time I look at her.  She gives me hope for a better tomorrow and I look forward to sharing it with her.

I could not imagine a world without Haylie.

Without Haylie my world would cease to exist.

My New Desktop Wallpaper

I get bored with my computer desktop very quickly.  I try to find things I enjoy, things that are beautiful and things that are typically uncluttered.  I don’t usually like real photos for some reason, I prefer something a little more abstract and colorful I guess. 

So here’s my latest desktop wallpaper.  I usually like to have the same wallpaper on my work computer and home computer – a little anal maybe, but I like the consistency. 

Practically speaking it’s a little busier then I tend to go for, but it doesn’t seem to take away space on my desktop.  I can still see my dock and all the icons I need.  I like space.  I like order.  I hate clutter on my desktop – it stresses me out.  I hate looking at someone’s desktop and seeing a hundred shortcuts.  Picking a desktop wallpaper takes forever for me.  I tend to obsess about it. 

Artistically the picture is very beautiful.  First, I love the colors.  Second I love the images, to me they capture what life is all about.  The beauty, simplicity and innocence childhood and the craziness and complexity of life merged into one image, one story.  It’s a little intimidating.  You feel like you’re the little boy surround by the huge world sometimes.  But you’re also reminded to look at the world through those child like eyes…reminded to not lose that innocence, that sense of awe and wonder.  That sense of adventure and endless possibility.  You’re challenged not to see the ugliness, the danger.  Not to feel the fear or anxiety that seems to be pressing in around you.

Way too much for a wallpaper I know.  That’s why it takes forever for me to pick them and I change them pretty quickly.

If you want to check this or others like it out, here’s where I found it.

Thoughts on Easter…

This Easter was good. I’m not implying that past Easter’s were bad per se, just that this Easter was once again meaningful in a good way. And I imagine every Easter is a little different, things strike you differently each year depending on where you’re at in life.

This year one of the messages of Easter that seem to capture my attention was suffering. We don’t like to suffer. We don’t want to admit that suffering is a big part our lives, a big part of the world in which we live. And we certainly don’t want to believe that as Christians we are called to embrace suffering. But I was thinking about it… Thinking about my suffering, how it doesn’t compare to the suffering of countless others around the world, though it’s still suffering to me. And yet at Easter, Jesus entered into the world’s suffering. He didn’t have to, but he chose to. That’s the kind of God I would want to serve. One that knows me, because he knows my suffering, because he’s felt the weight of it, bore the pain of it. Been crushed by it. And yet he did not fear it – did not complain about it – did not shrink back from it – did not strike out from it.

The other thought on my mind was resurrection. I need the resurrection power, the resurrection life of God to breath life into many areas of my life. There are parts of me that are dead. There are parts of me where Old Creation is ruling. There are parts of me where the Darkness rules. I need God to speak to me like Lazarus. I need to live as a New Creation, I need the light of God to overcome the situations where the Darkness seems to be in charge.

The story of Easter is simple. Love wins. God wins. The Darkness tried it’s best, but could not overcome, could not comprehend the Light. New Creation has begun and life is our hope – our promise.

Walking into work this morning it’s easy to slip back into the Old Creation, but I’m trying not to forgot. Trying not to wait another year to think about Easter and what it means every day.

Cliche

Went to my daughters play last night. It was great. Everyone did great, especially my daughter. I was very proud. It was funny the actors they had: your typical white surfer boy that spoke a gnarly langauge and used dude a lot. A homeless person peddling their wares. A gypsy with a terrible Romanian accent. A ditzy air headed female or two and a black kid dressed like a pimp that new how to strut his stuff. Oh, and he was the criminal. One word to desribe, cliché.

I watched a new show the other day, Kings. Looks really promising. But what’s up with making jonathon gay. Or having the token black actor to round out the leading cast as Samuel. Cliché. I’m beginning to wonder when blacks and gays will grow tired of getting one part per new television show. More then grow tired. Become offended.

Words like journey, experience, relevant, authentic. Becoming a cliché.

I tried listening to some messages this weekend while on my drive time to and from work. Cliché.

What’s good about cliché? (Because there are some good things.) You like it. Your comfortable with it. It makes you laugh, enjoy it. You know what to expect.

But what’s bad about it? I think it’s when the cliché’s become a parrot of something or somone else. Or worse a cheap parody of something true something good. And the cliché ends up killing the real the original. The real thing, the good thing. And it looses it’s value, it’s meaning, it’s impact.

Getting tired of my iphone…

I know it is almost blasphemous to think it let alone say it. But I’m starting to get really fed up with my Iphone. Actually, I love the phone still, but I don’t know if I can take much more of the crappy service. It’s really starting to annoy me. Lately I’ve just been in places where I needed to make calls or send a text or email and I can’t because of no service.

When my contract is up…I think I’m making the jump back to Verizon if things don’t change.

Which makes me very nervous. My wife just got another phone (yes again) it’s an LG dare. Not a bad phone, but not anything like my iphone. I’ve also played with a Blackberry storm, a few WinMo devices. I’m sorry to say this but after +1 years no one has come out with a viable alternative to the Iphone. It just goes to show how truly amazing a job Apple did when putting together the Iphone.

So 1 year from now when my contract is up, I hope there’s a few phones out there to choose from.

What’s important to me is this…

1.) Phone use, availability, reception. I have to be able to make and receive phone calls, email and texts anywhere.

2.) Easy access/integration to your music, movies and pictures. Managing the Iphone through Itunes is a breeze. Plus there’s no problems using it on a mac (for obvious reasons) I’d even be willing to install a VM of Windows on my Macbook if I had a good phone alternative. That’s how frustrated I am.

3.) Ability to surf the internet in a similar experience to computing. Browings the internet on the Iphone is amazing, I’d hate to do it any other way.

The app store is great, I love it… but I could easily do without it if I had a phone that just did all the things I wanted it to. We’ll see. I’m not going to do anything for about a year…except pray for more towers.

AT&T (I mean God) are you listening.