I make a “birthday poster” for each of our kids on their birthdays, then we put them on the birthday poster well. 🙂 So, I just finished Julia’s, and thought I’d share it here. She’s ONE today! (March 11). We’ll have a fun day today celebrating her first year of life!
We love our little Julia Gayle! She’s awesome! 🙂
For those of you who may find an article about the Bills and/or Sabres interesting, or worth the read… I finally posted something to my BuffaloBills.com blog for the first time since the Bills’ season ended! 🙂 It’s called Are The Bills Following in the Sabres’ Footsteps? … and… well… that’s what it’s about. 🙂
Just thought I’d let you know. If you know what RSS is, here’s the feed for the blog I keep there.
Go Buffalo! 🙂
This is from another friend named Chris… and as someone who now spends a good deal of time offering “tech support” … I found this to be quite hilarious (and quite true to modern times…) 🙂
(It’s in Norwegian, by the way… so, you’ll have to read the English sub-titles…)
Enjoy…
My YouTube-watching friend Chris sent me a link to this one today. His church produced this video for a sermon series on prayer. It’s pretty funny 🙂
Enjoy…
We’re in the book of Luke now, me and the boys, and today we got to the story of Jesus being led by the Spirit out into the desert where he didn’t eat for 40 days. First of all… that’s just insane. That’s a really, really long time to not eat. And one of the best lines in the whole Bible follows the statement of that fasting fact… “And he was hungry.” You think? 🙂
So what ensues is a little battle between Satan and Jesus. Satan tries to trick Jesus, and Jesus doesn’t buckle. He defeats Satan with his knowledge of Scripture and his pure “Jesus-ness”. I remember from many decades ago now, in my Children’s Bible (the big brown one with all the cool drawings…) seeing the epic battle unfold. Jesus in his flowing white robes (standing tall, and regal, looking none the worse for wear, even though “…he was hungry”) and Satan looking ugly and menacing, with his tiny little horns protruding from his red skull cap or whatever. It was quite obvious who was the good guy and who was the bad guy… and it was even more obvious who would be the victor.
As I was reading the story again today, I couldn’t help but wonder, why was Satan even trying? Didn’t he know that Jesus was God? I mean… Jesus made everything (I think that’s in Colossians) so… that means he made Satan… (Lucifer, or whatever you might want to call him) and, so, they knew each other, right? What made him think he had a chance of tricking Jesus into giving in to a desire for food, or power, or anything else? I mean… he’s God, right?
But that’s when I thought… maybe Satan understood Jesus more than we do sometimes. I’ve mentioned this before on the good ol’ blog… we are prone to over-deifying Jesus (if that were possible). Like in my old Children’s Bible. Jesus was clearly deity there. Totally unaffected by his humanness. One could argue, he seemed not even “human” at all. And we tend to do that to Jesus, whether in drawings, or in our relating to him. We remember that he is God, but we forget that he is our brother. A person: body, soul, spirit… just like us.
It seems like Satan understood this, and was trying in every way he could to get Jesus to fall… because he could. In Hebrews it says Jesus was “tempted in every way” as we are. That means there had to be a chance he might choose poorly. It wouldn’t be a temptation if in his God-ness he could just be perfect without even trying. No, Jesus was (and is???) very much a human being, just like us.
So what does that mean? Is there wisdom to be gained from the Devil? Can we maybe understand Jesus more from seeing what he thought of him? I’m not sure. Perhaps I am reading too much into it. (I can do that sometimes…) 🙂 But, it seems that he knew something about Jesus we tend to forget. He’s so much like us. And I do think that’s amazing. It means he can totally understand us, and relate to us… and I think that’s exactly what God wanted. What an amazingly cool connection we have to him. He’s not some super-man… He’s just like us.
There’s not really a big “point” to this post… I just found it really interesting that the Devil thought he could trick Jesus… he was really trying, so, it seems like there was some chance he might be able to. Or so he thought.
It definitely would have been strange to “hear” Jesus say the words, “The Devil made me do it…”
Ok… so THIS is really the video Chris sent me. Just wanted to be totally honest…. 🙂
Good stuff. Enjoy.
Our friend Chris passed this along to me, and I thought it was worth sharing. I love this percussive guitar stuff. And this particular guitar is really crazy looking to boot!
Enjoy!
I went for my morning walk today, despite the couple inches of snow on the ground from a persistent late-winter blanketing we are getting this week. (AND I AM LOVING!) 🙂 I was up pretty early to help Julia and then just decided to head out for a nice brisk walk with my iPod shuffle to keep me company.
About half-way through the first part of my walk (I walk 1.3 miles east, and then turn around and walk the 1.3 miles back home for a total of 2.6 miles…) I was just enjoying the podcast I was listening to when I noticed an older lady shoveling her driveway. It’s been warmer the past couple days (even though it was snowing) so I knew that snow was heavy for her! When I got closer, I noticed she was even older than I thought, so I stopped my iPod, and said, “Good morning!”
She looked up and smiled at me, and returned my greeting. I said, “Can I help you with that?” pointing to her shovel and the snow-filled drive-way. She sort of laughed and said, “No, no… I’m fine. I just do this for my neighbor.”
(At that point, I was very impressed…) 🙂
We talked a bit more about our neighborhood, the weather, and shoveling snow. I asked her once more if I could help, saying, “I’m out here to excercise, so I’d be glad to do it!” But she refused again with a smile, and so I said good-bye and continued on.
The rest of the walk was filled with a few more out-of-the-ordinary events – including a visit with an old friend, and giving directions to someone who was lost. But what I wanted to write about here were the thoughts that circled about my head and heart during the moments following my brief encounter with my nice elderly neighbor.
Why did I stop to help her? Was it so I could invite her to my church? (HA!) 🙂 Was it so I could just tell her that God loves her? Was it simply to show her that God loves her? How about just because I should? Or maybe because I know Jesus did so much for me, so I should do that for him, and for others? Was it guilt-induced, or an obligation (to God) or even due to an expectation that I or others have put on myself to “do the right” thing as a Christian?
Nope. 🙂
As I was walking away, I realized that I had absolutely no agenda, or any other reason for helping that lady other than I could, and it was a nice thing to do. 🙂 That’s it. I didn’t want anything from her, or of her. I was not meeting anyone’s expectations (including my own)… I wasn’t repaying some cosmic debt I owe to Jesus for “all that he has done for me”. I was just loving her. Just to love. Just to be nice.
It’s nice to be nice says Pig Will. (long story…)
So what I ended up thinking was (and perhaps this was prompted by Holy Spirit, perhaps not) are we able to love in proportion to how much we know we are loved? If we really get how much God loves us, how much we mean to him… are we then all the more free to just love people as our Father loves us? Not necessarily because (read: post-facto) he loves us… but more “in the same way as” he loves us.
I really don’t have any conclusions on this… those were just my thoughts. I would really love to hear yours on this…
Do we love other people in proportion to how much we know we are loved?
I came upon this article today in my RSS news feeds… and I just thought it was fascinating how hard people try to bring down Jesus. Those on “the right” will say it’s because they don’t want to submit to the authority of God and Scripture, but it just seems like it must be more than that? I mean… this is fascinating and all, but, what can we learn from archaeology 2000 years later that would disprove historical accounts? It can certainly confuse (though I don’t think this particular “finding” seems that legitimate) but… how can it “disprove”?
Well, it’s an interesting story nonetheless. 🙂 You can read the article here.
I told the story a day or two ago about Alex saying that Ian was not his brother anymore, so I would like to balance it with this little anecdote…
Ian was practicing his piano after lunch as I headed back up to the office. I stopped at the top of the stairs to leave a little note for Ian on his computer. I opened up a new page and in big font typed:
Hey Ian!
You’re a
great piano player!
And I love you! 🙂
Love, Dad
I haven’t heard yet if Ian has seen that, but when I went down for a little bathroom break just now, I noticed that the text had been slightly altered. It now reads:
Hey Ian!
You’re a
great piano player!
And I love you! 🙂
Love, Dadand alex
It’s subtle, so check again if you didn’t catch it the first time…
Alex apparently saw and read my note to Ian, and wanted to chime in that he agrees! 🙂 How awesome is that. First that Alex is such a good reader, but more importantly, that he loves Ian enough to add his name to a verbal pat on the back.
I love our kids! They are awesome. 🙂
