Snow

Request to the local Seattle media: when there is a forecast for snow or if it does indeed snow an entire inch or so (perish the thought), could you please not report the event as if the fifth horseman of the apocalypse has arrived? Please? I'm sure it is ratings driven but the fear-mongering is getting out of hand.

You've been Rick-rolled

In our cynical and apathetic world, it is rare when true beauty breaks through the weathered and worn cracks of our banal existence. True beauty brings a welcome shower that quenches our thirst and cleanses us from the dirt on our hands. The world looks different to us in light of this beauty. Instead of walking through life staring at our shoes, we have a new spring in our step. Instead of being bent over under our heavy labor, we are able to stand tall, come what may. The sun seems to be shining that much brighter. The birds are chirping. Even the dirt on which we stand is a miracle!

We live life expecting so much and hoping for so little. Having a glimpse of true beauty changes all that. May we all be changed.

The means never justifies the end

"You have gone far wrong. Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth. What you now call the free play of inquiry has neither more nor less to do with which the ends of intelligence was given you than masturbation has to do with marriage."
--C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

Growing up, there was a parsonage next door to the church where my Dad was pastor. In front of this parsonage was a wooden staircase leading up to a second-story entrance to the home. One day my brother and I, in a fit of pre-teen mischievousness, thought it would be fun to peel back some of the shingles that we could reach on the parsonage roof from that second-story entrance and fling them as far as we could into the parking lot below.

As I reflected on this memory, the immediate question I had was, "What were we thinking!?" We knew what we were doing was a) wrong and b) would get us into trouble shortly. Yet, we still did it and thought it was pretty fun as well. I can only speculate now what our immature motivations were at the time but undoubtedly the thrill of doing something risque factored into our behavior. In our clouded minds it felt good on some level to peel back the shingles and see how far we could throw it. We were also at the age where we were trying to push at established boundaries to see what we could get away with. Would we really get into trouble?

I have made these evaluations of the pre-teen me from a distance, looking back at my childhood memory with disapproval and disdain. Obviously I've come a long way since then. But have I? Sometimes I wonder how much I have really grown up, if at all. Maybe I just do a better job of hiding my true motivations now. How often I am faced with a decision or situation that requires personal effort on my part (helping my wife when I'm tired, the list goes on and on), and knowing how I should respond (yes! objectively knowing!) I instead passively choose what is easy and comfortable for me (usually to my own detriment I might add).

I read the above quote (passed on to me from a friend who had said it had haunted him for years) in a similar context. "Questions" are certainly a buzz word in Chrisitianity these days. Questions are good in the sense that they are a means to an end. However, as Lewis points out, questions lose their value when they become an end in and of themselves. "Questions" can easily spiral beyond their useful purpose and instead become feelble and immature attempts to justify myself before God. Questions should not be asked if one has no intention of finding an answer. Instead they become a convenient excuse for my own laziness or indecision and I use the same naive rationalization process I used to justify tearing perfectly good shingles off a roof and throwing them down to the ground.

A wonderful first week of baseball.