Category: personal

first, let me wish a happy, happy, birthday to alycia austin. even though you are in costa rica and soon to be peru please remember that you are very important to us (the same goes for your whole family). we miss you around here.

secondly, i figure i would tell y’all that i ran my first 5k race this evening. the twilight classic 5k was earlier tonight and yours truly was a part of it. tonight during the race i discovered that running a race is very different from just running around my neighborhood. the first reason for this is that there are lots of different people involved (my favorite are the “hey look at me i’m an impressive runner” guys – what posers). i’ve never run with people before so it took me a little while to get used to the idea of being passed by or passing someone else (there was probably more of the “being passed by” than the “passing” on my part). the second reason it is very different is that there is allot more adrenaline going through your body durig a race. these two things factored into me not running my regular pace. the fastest i had previously run three miles (a 5k is actually a little longer at 3.1 miles) was 29:53 (or 9:57/mile). by the time i had hit two miles it was only 17:00 which means i was running 8:30 miles. this was way to fast for me and my body decided it didn’t want to continue at this rate. so quickly my mind (who wanted to continue running 8:30 minute miles because it would look impressive to beat my previous personal best time) and my body (who wanted to run a much slower pace and didn’t care a lick if i beat my personal best time or not) had a debate. my mind called my body a whimp hoping to guilt my body into running and my body responded by agreeing and promptly shut down. debate over. my pace slowed down considerbly.

after knocking down a few elderly men and women to make sure that i wouldn’t be last to finish the race i ended up finishing the 5k with a total time of 28:58 (9:19/mile). if you look in the paper tomorrow you’ll be able to see it for yourself.

[tags]running, 5k, race[/tags]

part of ministry that i really love is making visits … especially hospital visits. it always seems to happen that i get the chance to be involved within significant moments during my weekly (and sometime more often) visits to each of our baton rouge hospitals. i may not like the traffic getting to the hospitals but 95% of the time i love the visits.

todays visits were not hugely amazing but one was quite funny. i went to visits an elderly woman who could barely hear anything. of course, since her lacking of hearing is more age related than anything she has never consider the possibility of aquiring hearing aides. this means that my short visit with her consisted of my shouting, her responding that she couldn’t hear me, and then me shouting louder. the conversation went allot longer than the content conveyed within it would normally taken. i think all that the lady actually was able to make out from all that i said was “hi!.” of course, everyone else in the wing knew exactly what church i am a minister of and why this lady was on our prayer list.

you may not know this but they don’t really like you shouting in hospitals. thus when i left the lady’s room i was given tons of nasty looks and a couple of “shhhh’s”. i guess they hadn’t been any of the nurses taking care of the lady i visited.

i’ve been trying to become a runner over the past nine weeks. i committed to cool running’s couch to 5k plan with the goal of running a 5k race at the end of the summer. well i’ve finished the training program and the summer is over so now it’s time for the 5k race. this saturday, after the youth ministry works on mr. lamm’s house, i will be running in the club south runners’ twilight classic.

i wanted to see how fast my blazing self is compared to those that race in last year’s race so i looked at the race results from last year’s run. i discovered that there were 184 men that ran the twilight classic last year and based on their times only 155 would have beaten me. of course, most of the them were either over 80 or below 10 but that doesn’t really matter. more than likely i won’t be the slowest runner out there. there are at least 29 men from last year that are slower than me. in some countries that would make me a speed demon. therefore i believe that i get to taunt the slower runners. ahhh. the smell of nowhere-near-victory-but-still-not-losing.

btw, i also can run faster than 46 of the women that ran last year. i believe i may taunt them too.

No motive, even that of affection for anyone, can justify the doing of evil. But to help someone in need, a good work may sometimes be left, or a better undertaken in its place. For in so doing, the good work is not lost, but changed for what is better. Without love, the outward work is of no value; but whatever is done out of love, be it never so little, is wholly fruitful. For God regards the greatness of the love that prompts a man, rather than the greatness of his achievement.

Whoever loves much, does much. Whoever does a thing well, does much. And he does well, who serves the community before his own interests.

thomas a kempis, the imitation of CHRIST, chapter 15.

there’s a story about the writer g.k. chesteron, whose conversion to CHRISTian faith caused a stir in great britain at a time when smart people (and chesterton was brilliant) weren’t supposed to believe. so he’s standing on a street corner in london when he’s approached by a newspaper reporter. “sir, i understand that you recently became a CHRISTian,” the reporter says. “may i as you one question?”

“certainly,” says chesterton.

“if the risen CHRIST suddenly appeared at this very moment and stood behind you,” the reporter inquires, “what would you do?”

and chesterton looks the reporter square in the eyes and replies, “HE is.”

brennan manning, posers, fakers, & wannabes, p. 115.

over the past two years pam and i have been struggling with what it means for us to live simply. we don’t have our answers at this point and we definitely aren’t living simply yet but we are being challenged by what we are learning. we’ve been inspired by some amazing people and thoughts, such as:

• richard foster’s – freedom of simplicity
• the simple way community in philadelphia
• lonni collins pratt’s – radical hospitality
• edith schaffer’s – l’abri

there are many other people, books, and thoughts that have been challenging how we have thought life should be lived.

right now, pam and i are trying to figure out what all this means within our lives. we see living simply as vital for our spiritual development but we’re not completely sure what a simple life looks like. we’re not planning on turning amish (though i have huge respect for them) and i don’t believe that we will be joining a commune anytime soon (though the thought of an intentional community is pretty appealing sometimes). we are just trying to sort out what we have been experiencing for the past couple of years.

what has been changing for us has been:

• a growing desire to practice hospitality within our lives.
• trying to buy less things that are new and not buy anything if it’s not necessary – just because we can buy something doesn’t mean we should.
• trying to make allot more of the things within our lives – our latest desire has been to develop the world’s most perfect salsa recipe.
• make the times we eat out or buy resturant food special occassions – i.e. eat out allot less (has anyone nocticed how often people in baton rouge eat out?)
• live on less so that our income doesn’t determine our lifestyle.

these are just a few of the things we are working on bringing into our lifes. we don’t always accomplish them but we do try. they won’t make us simple but it is at least a start.

it doesn’t take a genius to see that religious people to be more narrow than broad.

brennan manning, poser, fakers, & wannabes, p. 90

we hang out with the “street kids” in diriamba, nicaragua every year when we go to nicaragua. as a part of this we give out as many basketballs as we can. in order to do this, we have to have the basketballs. so if you would like to bring a few or even a hundred basketballs to the church i’ll make sure they get to the “street kids” and they will be very appreciative.

the goal of work is not to gain wealth and possessions, but to serve the common good and bring glory to GOD.

richard foster, the freedom of simplicity, p. 149.