Monday, November 16, 2009

I'm back - Give it to Him!

Man oh man. How ridiculous is your life when you don't have time to sit with your laptop and spill your heart to the cyber-world? Pretty ridiculous. Wanna know what I've been up to? Well I'll tell you - it's none of your BUSINESS. Haha, just kidding, that was a quote from my new favorite show, "Community". You should watch it.

When life gets really busy I start to get confused. It never makes sense to me because I can tell someone, "I'm just soooo busy" and then have no idea why. I mean last week was pretty crazy but I don't really have anything to show for it. I love the saying "going through the motions" because I always picture an uncoordinated adult doing some ridiculous choreography and looking miserable the whole time because they feel they have to do it. Story of our lives sometimes, right?

Now, I'm not a deep or wise person, but sometimes other people bring me to a place where wisdom is dangled in front of my face. A group of us just finished reading through The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller and this quote has (surprisingly) been floating around in my head the last few days:

"What makes you faithful or generous is not just a redoubled effort to follow moral rules. Rather, all change comes from deepening your understanding of the salvation of Christ and living out the changes that understanding creates in your heart."

I don't really have any smart add-on to that quote, but it makes me think about how often I watch the disciplined go-getters of the world achieve all sorts of great things and wonder how I'll manage to do anything of great importance. The backward and sweet reality is that God calls us to seek a deeper understanding of His Grace and live in a state of humble thanksgiving that transforms. I think that's something I can almost do. God help my unbelief.

**This marks the end of my serious post**

Last night I needed cash to go watch my friend Drew's band play. Since I use a Kentucky bank it's always a decision between paying the ATM service fee or buying something random at Wal-Mart and getting cash back. This time I chose to run in and buy some blank CD's which I kind of needed. I went to the self-checkout and realized that there was an employee standing literally 3 feet away, right next to me just watching. This made me nervous. I was having a hard time scanning. I must have looked so confused because the angry older lady began growling, "Use the other SCANNER!" in a very mean, "You're-an-idiot" kind of voice. I tried to get cash back and was in a hurry to get away from mean lady so I accidentally typed in $100 instead of $10. I panicked and immediately pressed cancel, so it just finished the check out without giving me any money. So here I am, standing next to Ms. I-Have-The-Temper-Of-A-Smokey-Mountain-Grizzly, just trying to decide what to do. I had to get that cash. So I looked at the checkout for a minute, then began to back up an look around at all the cheap crap by the check out, still right next to Grizzly Bear. I tried to act as though I needed this stuff and almost bought a Tide to go pen, but it was just too expensive. I finally found a thing of chapstick for 97 cents, took it over to the same checkout and proceeded to purchase the chapstick with my debit card, this time pressing the preset $20 cashback button so there would be no complications.

Take that Grizzly - I got my money, and a surprise thing of chapstick!

I'm sorry for how long that story was. Here's the latest word mix-up by my friend Marissa:

"How long does your paper have to be Marissa?"
"I think 900 pages."
"Wow, that's a lot of pages."

I'm almost finished with my first song recorded at Samford. I'll post the link when it's done.

-Joshua

2 comments:

  1. Props for the Jim Carrey reference in the title

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  2. good book. i once heard a cool quote about how people always use the excuse and tell people that theyre busy, but that none of us really are...at least not to any point that should keep us from doing any of the things that we should. so ive tried not to say im busy a lot. but its kinda hard.

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