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| But I’m almost a professional bowler. OK, my average is somewhere around 110, which puts me in roughly the 7th percentile of all bowlers, and probably the 1st percentile of people who care at all about their bowling score, but let me explain. Once in awhile, I do the same thing that makes professional bowlers the best; I roll strikes. Sometimes I get two or three a game, and other times I get two or three in a row, after which I eat poultry sandwiches for a week. The only difference between me and a professional bowler is consistency. You see, I don’t sometimes do what other professional athletes do. I don’t sometimes hit 450-foot home runs off of 98 mph fastballs. I don’t once in a while evade three 6’9” superhuman giants to sink jump shots. I can’t circumvent sand traps and lakes and sink tiny dimpled balls into holes 600 yards away in only three swings of a club. I never blow through 300-pound linebackers who can bench press my truck to make touchdowns. And I certainly can’t run a mile in under four minutes, unless I’m running on the back of a flatbed truck. (The guy who ran 27.89 mph should have worked smarter, not harder.) But I can take the same ball, at the same distance, and hit the same pins that the professionals do. They never knock down eleven or fourteen pins at a time--only ten, just like me. Now you understand. And if you’re at least as coordinated as my friend Caleb was when he was five years old, I’ll bet you’re almost a professional bowler, too. Congratulations. | | |
| My Thoughts: - My wife, our home, and I are in three different states. Together, we've got 6% of the USA covered all at once.
- We now live in Arkansas, whose capitol building is a scaled-down replica of the US Capitol. That's either really cool or really unoriginal.
- I'm currently taking a course on Information Operations. My observation of the day: Suicide bombers are by nature a dying breed.
- I have only two choices: to live radically or to waste my life. There is no middle ground...for passions operate on momentum and behaviors become habits -- so if I indulge selfishness, selfishness will devour me -- and godliness is only ever pursued with an undivided, fully-committed heart. But my life has already been bought with an unthinkably great price and I am not my own, so I really have only one choice.
- My best friends are having babies. Congratulations, Sam and Joe! (Not me; another Joe.)
Their Thoughts: - "Growing up is when you start doing the right thing -- for everyone -- even when it hurts." from Lars and the Real Girl
- "Father, make me a crisis man. Bring those I contact to decision. Let me not be a signpost on a single road; make me a fork, that men must turn one way or another on facing Christ in me." - Jim Elliot (quoted by Jeff D)
- "Faith is believing in advance what only makes sense in reverse." -Philip Yancey (also quoted by Jeff D)
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| Apparently, almost 26 years have passed since I've joined this human race. I'm told I've spent a month less than most here, since I spent a whopping 10 months in my mother's womb. I was waiting for just the right time to make my entrance. I know that lots of things have happened in those almost 26 years, but for about a month every year, that seems impossible. Christmas time is, and I expect always will be, my favorite time of the year. Christmas time has an energy and joy all of its own, and it doesn't seem to care that almost an entire year has passed since people last celebrated it. There is a mysterious quality about December that seems to link all the years together. Beginning on Thanksgiving, I always feel like I get to pick up where I left off on New Year's Day eleven months ago, as if Christmastime exists on a parallel universe and was never interrupted by the months between; we leave one realm and reenter this glorious other. The movies stay nearly constant (It’s a Wonderful Life, though my family refuses to watch that with me, A Christmas Story, the original set of which I’ve visited with my family in Cleveland, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and Home Alone) while a few new classics come along once in a while (The Grinch and Elf.) The people change slightly: my grandma, the former matriarch of my childhood holidays, died several years ago, but the rest of my family is still here. And there is a newcomer to my Christmas experience that has made it sweeter and richer than ever: my fiancée, Kate. Last Christmas was my first with her, though we were separated that day to be with our families. (Her giant family has made Christmas even richer and more interesting, by the way.) If we can help it, that will be our last Christmas apart. And this year, if the Lord of Christmas tarries His return till then, I will marry my precious Kate just 9 days after Christmas. Christmas still has all the same richness and beauty as before: triumphant choruses, rich hot chocolate and egg nog, unending Christmas parties and white-elephant gift exchanges, fresh Ohio snows, winter sports, familiar Christmas movies, the countdown and anticipation of Christmas day, and the excitement of excusing myself from work to spend generous amounts of time with family and friends. But this Christmas is infused with a certain wonder and beauty I've never known before: it means it's finally time I get to marry Kate. Christmas + Kate = Happiness. Praise God for Christmastime! | | |
| One of the writers of my pastoral counseling course is a terrible writer. Read this sentence, which is rather typical! "The image bearer in whose mind error and deception have been dethroned and the truth of God's Word enthroned is empowered through the indwelling Holy Spirit to decision in ways that reflect the desire to dehabituate and rehabituate behavior patterns that facilitate the fulfillment of God's command to engage the challenges associated with the imitation of the heart of God as revealed in the person of Jesus Christ (Eph. 5:1)" For the record, yes, he made up two words in this sentence. He's written a few books, and his books are edited rather well, but his unedited notes are like this. Editors are priceless. | | |
| Nancy Astor: “If I were your wife, I would poison your coffee!” Winston Churchill: “And if I were your husband, I would surely drink it.” I’m really glad I’m not marrying someone like Nancy Astor | | |
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