Monthly Archives: August 2008

Daily Walk 365 – Day 2

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For it is God who is working among you both the willing and the working for His good purpose. — Philippians 2:13 (HCSB)

That seems a bit awkward in structure… unfamiliar, shouldn’t be since Bobby’s camping out in Philippians on Sunday mornings, lets look at some different translations.

for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. — Phil 2:13 (NIV)

Hmmm… Maybe its because this verse is tucked between such awesome parts of Philippians (verse 2:5ff — “your attitude should be like Christ’s” and 2:14 — “do everything without complaining or arguing”) that I’ve missed it as I breeze through. But its still seems odd phrasing. Can Eugene Peterson do anything with this?

That energy is God’s energy, an energy deep within you, God himself willing and working at what will give him the most pleasure. — Phil 2:13 (Message)

Hmmm. The exhortation to change your attitude (v 2.5ff) seems to also join with Christ in allowing God to work in and with ourselves towards His will. The book adds another quotation (as it does for most of the days… but I won’t always transcribe it here) that seems important as I dwell on this passage.

In God’s plan, God is the standard for perfection. We don’t compare ourselves to others; they are just as fouled up as we are. The goal is to be like him; anything less in inadequate. — Max Lucado

Max always does a great job of clearing things up. Though the exhortation to perfection is a bit disconcerting to those with a perfectionist bent, it is good to realize that our model isn’t our friend, neighbor, mentor, teacher, or critic. Our model is Christ, who when faced with disappointment, exhaustion, pain, and indecision, reached out to God (or as yesterday’s excerpt mentions — call out to God). Even in our imperfection, that method is open to us, thanks to Christ’s sacrifice. And in calling out to God, we also have to be open to listening, hearing and allowing God to work in us and through us towards His purposes, not ours.

I don’t do that enough, may I do it evermore as I run this race.

Peace.

Daily Walk 365 – Introduction and Day 1

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The new school season started today, and yesterday was promotion Sunday.  As I walked into my class, I found a nice present from our Family Minister: Walking with Christ Every Day: 365 daily devotions for men

I wasn’t expecting it, but with the summer winding down, and a few more classes on my schedule (Sunday and Wednesday, and participating in Sunday evening and some blurry Men’s-ministry-that’ll-happen-someday-soon) I’ve been really dwelling on the fact that I’m not that great at two things I used to enjoy immensely: Blogging, and spending time with God. (not necessarily in that order)

So this welcome present, presents an opportunity for me.

  1. Get reconnected with my Savior.
  2. Wonderful blog fodder.

So while I may not actually blog about my daily reading, I’ll keep up my daily reading, and if the spirit moves, I’ll blog about it with the above title — Daily Walk 365 – Day # (If any of my two readers are bored enough to search for this later).

I blog in bursts, so don’t get too involved in reading these that you don’t suddenly get whip-lash reading another post on Survivor strategy, or Lost mysteries.  I blog for myself, you know.

Anyhoo, I hope you enjoy, Day 1, below the fold

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Summing up

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I want to start something new that will hopefully use this blog other than a sucking black-hole of dullness.  But first I’ll quickly summarize what’s happened since the way-to-big tv was bought.

  • It was TOO big.  Conventional wisdom is get the biggest TV in your budget, that is bunk, it should be get the biggest TV that won’t overpower your room and doesn’t make it seem like a big dark cave with a glowing window to other worlds.  Not to say I didn’t LOVE the escapism quality, but this is the living room not a media room.  We needed balance, so we took it back and got a reasonable 46″ LCD and it fits into the room much better.
  • Kids arrived safely from camps, over nighters, and other activities.
  • We didn’t swim as much this summer, a bit longer of a drive, and a longer available season (instead of the Texas pool only open during summer hours season) made it less of a priority.  But we’ll be swimming more during the fall and winter when our pool is still open.
  • School shopping was abbreviated, and we’ll continue with clothes shopping as the budget allows instead of a huge suck from our wallet.
  • All the kids are in school, can you say HALLY-LOO-JA!
  • Co-ed Softball for Angie an I start tomorrow.  I’m still considering whether a season ending injury the first game is a good or a bad thing.

And that pretty much sums up the last month of Summer.  So have fun with that.

Funny thing happened on the way to the theater

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So we got Danny and Brenna off to their 4 day camp, then back home with Lauren and MJ.  Lauren went over to a friend’s house and so MJ, Angie and I were playing on  our computers.  Angie decided we’d sneak out to see Kung Fu Panda with MJ.  But we got a late start and couldn’t make the movie show time.

The next show would start after we’d have to pick up Lauren, so we worked out some logistics, then decided to go to Cosco to fill our larder.  After grabbing some frozen stuff to put in our freezer in the garage, we figured had a bit of time to do some window shopping.

Wait, need to esplain, no it is too much, will summ up: Our current HDTV has lost one of the color channels.  Unless we like watching smurfs or leprhchans (blue of green) watching our TV had become a little frustrating.  Especially, if like Angie loves to do, you’re watching a home design show and they decribe a vibrant yellow that looks like a muddy green.  So yesterday it was sorta like the TV commercial where the wife says, yeah, we need a new TV, and the guy grabs his keys.

We went to Conn’s, mostly because we have good credit history with them (about to pay off three kitchen appliances we bought in ’05) and started looking.  Our current TV is a 28″ HDTV CRT, and so we started out at around 30″ and just kept going up.  We liked a 46″ LCD, and so asked the salesman to run a credit check.  While he was doing that we wandered to the rear of the store and found some absolutely lovely DLPs.  The price for DLPs is much less than an LCD, the cost is a bit more space (can’t wall mount) and a DLP does have a bulb that will wear out.  So while we were watching the pretty pictures, and wondering around the small furniture section, the sales guy comes back and says, you can pretty much get what you want (he ran the high end of the LCDs we were looking at).  I respond with, “That’s a bit scary.”  We talked with him a bit about the DLPs, then it was time to get Lauren, and try to make the show.

Only we waited to long, by the time we got Lauren and headed back to the freeway, the clock had again ticked past and we’d get to the theater too late.  So back home to do research and discuss some options.  We use our living room to host a weekly American Idol party when that’s in season, and so that was part of the discussion.  We talked viewing angles, and flexibility of rearranging, and sizes, and by the end of the time, we’d pretty much agreed on a moderate sized LCD in the middle of our price range.

We set off to Pei Wei to eat, then back to Conn’s to make the buying decision.  We got back to the store, and start to look and narrow down.  The one I liked from my research was a bit about our agreed upon price point, and so we hemmed and hawed, and wound up back in the back with the DLPs, and a nice console that met Angie’s standards.  The console ended up being out of stock, and then looked at the DLPs a bit more closer, the one we liked was a 60″, but next to it, the same model and features was a 65” a hundred less.  We bit, then added an upscaling DVD player (not ready for Blu-Ray yet) and some cables, and we’re out the door.

We had to drive to almost Irving to pick up the behemoth after dropping off the kids, to clear out the van.  The box filled up the back of the van (with the seats folded), and setup was a breeze.  We obviously need to do some rearranging, and maybe buy different furniture for it.

Once we placed it in the room, we realized how absolutely ginormous this thing is… Turning it on, was surreal, crisp vibrant colors, deep fine features in 1080i from the Verizon FiOS tuner.  MJ, just wanted to play a game, so he hooked up his SpongeBob game contoller and got lovely 16bit quality pixelated video that he played avidly.  Still have to test the Wii and hookup the upconverting DVD.

As you can see from the picture, about 4 of our old screens would fit in the screen size of the new one.  We’re a bit overwhelmed, but I think we can adapt. :)  (link to the TV at amazon)