Fire hose

Drinking from the Fire hose of Knowledge. A original term coined by the conservative movement. The definition reads "a time of study and instruction where the participant is inundated by a wealth of knowledge and advice, often resulting in voracious hunger, caffiene dependence, brain drain, and carpal tunnel syndrome."

Youth Leadership School

Today the bloggers are live blogging The Leadership Institute's (Li) Youth Leadership School in Raleigh NC. Right now we are listening to Darren Iwicki from Li talk on the real nature of politics. We fear that we might be inundated under the wealth of knowledge that is being poured upon us.

Ya know what I need?

Well... to make a long story short, this morning I got in a little bit of an argument with my mother. Just to be honest, I was in the wrong, and I lost my temper over something that was said, and said something pretty disrespectful. =( I regretted saying it as soon as I did, and we eventually got the problem resolved, and apologies were issued.

A few minutes later, as I was reflecting on what I had said, I realized that I'd said it entirely on impulse, without thinking, and it was my anger, not my true heart showing.

James 3 has a lot to say on the tongue, and most of it isn't good. The tongue is a something so small that can cause so much trouble.

So, I decided that if I needed one single thing, it would be a bridle for my tongue, if I feel really tired, or exasperated, or angry, or upset, I can clamp it on my tongue, and keep me from saying something ungodly.

But, unfortunately, there is no such thing on the consumer market. I guess I can only pray that God will help me think before I speak.

Family News and Prayer

I haven't gotten around to posting about this yet, so here goes....

Back in December, my Dad caught pneumonia. As is procedure, they took him in to get a chest x-ray. What they found was very startling; there was a five-inch growth in the cavity between his lungs. We rushed to the hospital for a CT scan, which was sent to the radiologist. We were very scared; our first thought was that Dad had lung cancer (even though he has never smoked), which is %98 fatal.

To make a long story short, he after a biopsy and PET scan, he was diagnosed with Stage 4 lymphoma.
He began Chemotherapy Thursday, and will have it every two weeks for six months, then possibly Radiation.

Please pray for my Father, that he would be healed of this, and for our family, as we adjust to Dad's sickness. The doctors have said that the Chemo will likely make him too weak to work more than a half-day, even from home, so myself and my older brothers will be undertaking some of the business work.

I know that God will not give us more than we can bear, and that all the trials are in order to test our strength, and I pray that He will let us learn all we can during this ordeal, and draw us closer as a family.

~The Two Young Men

You're SUPPOSED TO BE ENCOURAGING ME TO BUY THE STINKIN' ALBUM!!!!!

I was kindof surfing iTunes, so to speak... I was given a $15 iTunes gift card for Christmas, and I was looking for some songs by my favorite artists.

I usually read the album reviews for any album I'm interested in, but I've found quite a few official reviews on iTunes that didn't make me want to buy the album. Here's one for the Phillips, Craig & Dean album Top of my Lungs

"Christian Pop music carries with it twin dangers, and each is kindof a mirror image of the other: one danger is the risk of falling into saccharine sweetness; the other is the risk of treating sacred things in a casual, flip manner. For both of those reasons, pop songs about sin and redemption tend to succeed best when they focus on the Sinner, not the Savior -- in a pop context, you have to sing about Christ in general terms so as to not sound disrespectful, whereas you can sing about yourself in the kind of gritty detail that tends to make a song compelling. So how do Phillips, Craig, & Dean walk that particular tightrope? Pretty well, which shouldn't be a surprise, since they've now been doing it for about 16 years. On Top Of My Lungs, their sound is based in sturdy folk-rock, and when it fails sonically, it's usually because producer Nathan Nockels couldn't resist throwing in that dang string section where it doesn't belong (most egregiously on the slightly syrupy title track and the equally over-sweet "Saved the Day"). When it fails lyrically, it's because they sound too offhanded about their Lord ("That's my Lord"). Not surprisingly, they succeed best when they rock out about the path of salvation ("One Way") and about their own religious commitment ("For Your Glory"). Overall, Not bad at all. "

WHAT?!?!?!?!? These things may be true, but they don't make me want to buy the album. I enjoy PCD, but this honestly doesn't sound like a good album. and I know it's to the contrary, because I've listened to this entire album. * NOTE, if YOU WANT SOMEONE TO BUY THE ALBUM, MAKE IT SOUND LIKE A GOOD ALBUM!!! Whomever wrote that review pretty much failed.

Seriously, you're supposed to try and make the person reading the review WANT to buy the album.

~The Two Young Men

Man in a Manger

So.... first, let me say, Merry Christmas!

We all know of the picture painted in our minds of the nativity of our Lord Jesus, a baby in a manger.

We see Mary, seemingly non-exhausted, sitting by a manger. Joseph stands in the background, a small smile on his stoic countenance. The manger is well lit by a warm glow. The shepherds kneel in awe at the baby in the cradle, and a small line of lambs stumble behind them on thin legs. A donkey peers over Joseph's shoulder; you could swear that he's grinning.

It is a nice picture, but it is NOT the point of Christmas. Christmas isn't about Christ's birth, it's about a Savior coming to earth to save us. The awe in the shepherd's eyes isn't due to the fact that there is a baby in a manger- they have seen many babies in their lifetimes. Their wonder is at the Savior, God come to earth to save them.

We are all guilty of making Christmas about the baby- it is much more fun to tell of a special baby than to tell of His now grown body hanging on a cross in our place. We all have heard the first part of Handel's "Messiah", but few have heard the second half, dealing with the death and resurrection of Christ.
We celebrate Christmas with a month of fun- we decorate our entire house, bake cookies, host and attend parties, put up trees in our living rooms, carol in our neighborhoods...
But we are lucky to even give Easter more than a passing thought, maybe attending the sunrise service at church, or spend a day off.

But it is not the baby in a manger that is our salvation- it is the man on the cross. They are the same, Christ, but the fact that a baby is born will not save us. That the Son of God would die a horrible and agonizing death in our place WILL.
The baby is special because of His mission on earth. The Christmas story is not about a baby. It is the first chapter in the story that culminates on Easter Sunday, when Christ rises from the dead, taking it's pain for us, and enabling us to enjoy eternal life.

It is no simple baby in the manger. It is a Man. The Son of God. The Savior of the World. Our King and Lord.

We need to remember that Christmas is not the climax of the story- it is merely the beginning.
We celebrate Christmas not because of Christ's birth, but because he came to earth to save us.

A beast.... Vanquished

I have reason to celebrate!

I have Vanquished the Monster of NaNoWriMo (that's a fancy phrase for: "I OOOWWWNNNEED").

National Novel Writing Month, shortened to NaNoWriMo, is a challenge to write fifty thousand words of fiction in the month of November.

I clocked in at 8:52 AM, on November 30th, with 50,002 words. Immediately, I felt relieved, and glad to be done, but by that afternoon, I was wishing that it was still going on. I had time to do stuff without feeling guilty about my wordcount. wow. But I felt REALLY bored.

I'm glad to have taken this challenge head on, and won, and I plan to finish the current draft of my novel, Found, by late January.

I'd like to give a shout-out to my friends who also won, and a bigger one to my friends who tried, and did not finish. It is better to have tried, and failed than to have not tried at all.

I'd especially like to praise my older brother, who also writes on this blog. He just began writing fiction in September, and participated in NaNo. His AP classes and extra homework made it extremely difficult to write, but he still posted upwards of 15k, and never gave up. you've been a great help to me; having another writer of fiction in the house to talk to. Next year is yours to conquer!

And I would like to thank above all, my family, who understood that I wasn't going to be doing much other than writing, my parents, who went out of their way to encourage me and give me extra time to write, and my God, without whom this wouldn't have ever been possible.