I mispell things!
i am about to finish richard foster’s book “freedom of simplicity” and i need to say that with only two chapters left it is an amazingly butt kicking book. any book by foster is inherently prophetic but always within a real world context. foster offers workable solutions to changing from a complex to a simple life. it is going to take me months and months of conversation with my wife to figure out what this means for us.
god bless america … and noone else!”
the statue is in memphis at the world overcomers outreach ministries church and cost $250,000 to erect. now that’s tithe money that i think some one will have to answer for one day.
i’m just testing right now to see if my “post by email” option works.
i’ve stopped posting as much over the past two months because i’ve
been focused on other things. some of these are:
1)i’ve been focusing on my photography –
which is just too much fun.
2)i’ve decided that i want to run a 5k (and then maybe move up to a
10k, etc.) and i started coolrunning.com’s couch to
5k training program. this week i am running 2.5 miles sunday,
tuesday, and thursday (i’m on week 7).
3)it’s the summer and therefore the youth ministry has me jumping
all over the place.
still i enjoy typing into this blog and my other blog and so i’m
starting to do it again.
Statue of Liberation
Originally uploaded by rcooper.
something is really wrong with our faith when we combine national symbols with the symbols of our faith. the powers of rome and judea feared what CHRIST represented because they saw that HE was dangerous to their hold on power. this doesn’t seem to really fit in with the MESSIANIC JEWISH REVOLUTIONARY that the new testament portrays.
now don’t get me wrong. i love my country. i haven’t been all over the world but i’ve been to western europe, easten europe, and central america and i like the system we have here in the u.s. of a. better than anything else i have experienced. yet, i don’t like it enough to worship it. being a citizen of the united states is not where my first loyalty lies. nope it’s a different kingdom that holds my highest loyalty and i constantly struggle to make sure nothing else (money, power, consumerism, etc) gets in the way of that loyalty.
i can’t see that a “statue of liberation” would be a good thing.
i haven’t blogged in forever (which is about two to three months for me. this is just a quick entry to say that i will begin blogging again and to point you to this very cool photo. a community decided it wanted to re-enact seurat’s “saturday in the park with friends”. way cool idea.
i haven’t blogged in forever (which is about two to three months for me. this is just a quick entry to say that i will begin blogging again and to point you to this very cool photo. a community decided it wanted to re-enact seurat’s “saturday in the park with friends”. way cool idea.
i’m ready for it to rain here.
i know this is not much of a post but it is what i feel right now. there is just something about rain every now and then that is good for the soul. i used to live in mobile, alabama and we had amazing rains. mobile is one of the rainiest cities in the united states. it averages 63.96 inches of rain a year (about 4 more inches annually than baton rouge receives). i remember the strong storms we would get there. it was great. of course, you would also get the gray days where it would just mist and drizzle all day long. yet it was the thunder storms that are my favorite.
i could go for a good thunderstorm (without electrical damage) now.
we are going to play laser tag tomorrow (wednesday, june 14th) at laser tag of baton rouge (http://www.ltofbr.com/). we will leave from the student center @ 4 p.m. and it will cost $10 (this pays for three games & a small drink – if you want to play video games or get anything else to eat or drink you will need extra money). after this we’ll head back to the student center for “the view” (our weekly youth worship service – 6:15 to 7:30 p.m.).
i know haven’t posted in awhile (okay quite awhile). all i can say is “sorry” or i could possibly say “deal with it!”
anyway i’m posting today and that counts for something.
i have wanted to walk/run a marathon for about 6 years now. at one time pam and i were beginning to train to walk a marathon but pam had surgery on her trachea twice in three years and that killed that. i haven’t done anything since then. about 6 weeks ago i noticed that i had been putting on significant weight. this was pretty easy to see because my clothes weren’t fitting anymore. it was at that point that i decided to do something that i had previously had no interest in doing … workout. in the past i have always played racquetball and worked on houses to keep my weight down. unfortunately, i can’t convince my former racquetball partner to play anymore and those i can’t really get a good game going. so six weeks ago i went into to work out and found out that i actually liked it.
after three weeks of walking on the eliptical machine, pumping iron, and using the tread mill i thought it would be interesting to consider starting down the “walk a marathon” path again. after a little searching i found (via pam) a great plan for going from couch potato to 5k runner. it looked good and i decided to start. i’m on week three right now which means that i run 90 seconds / walk 90 seconds / run 3 minutes / walk 3 minutes etc. the 5k race i’m hoping to run is twilight classic on august 19th. i’ve got plenty of time before that.
if you desire to see how i’m doing on this thing you can view my running log here
i haven’t posted in forever but i’m winding down right now and thought i would try to jump start my posting. it’s been a busy week and i’m pooped. the walters (friends and youth volunteers) have agreed to host a bible study and pre-goof off time at their house. we had ten there tonight and that was 5 more than i was worried we would have.
numbers aren’t everything (in fact, many times they aren’t anything) but you got to have a little something to get started. numbers become all the more noticeable when you go from a large group to a small group because of church issues. nobody seems to remember that we had 20 youth on wednesdays nights when i first got to baton rouge 6 years ago because all of those kids have graduated now. now we have 40 coming on a wednesday night but it seems really small because everyone has gotten used to 110-120 coming on a wednesday.
so now we’re a smaller youth ministry and it’s taking awhile for everyone (myself included) to get used to it. to try and help everyone get excited about things again i’ve been doing allot of fellowship activities over the past week. this means i have spent a ton of time with various teens. i’m not complaining because i love doing that. it just soaks up allot of time and allot of nights.
tonight i didn’t get home till 9:40 p.m. not a terriblly late night but i was waiting till i got home to call my mom and wish her a happy birthday. i had texted her earlier in the day because my phone was having really weird signal issues as i went from place to place to get stuff for the bible study tonight but i couldn’t call her because i couldn’t get reception. i don’t even really know if my mom knows how to check text messages or not (this one may have been the first text message she has ever recieved). when i got home i needed to spend time with my youngest son who was struggling with a major headache. my the time we got him to bed it was past my parents’ normal bed time. happy birthday mom, sorry, it’s been a long day.
