BigCat’s Blog of DOOM

After my last bit on being lucky I’ve thought a lot, and have arrived at a few ideas or questions worth tossing around.

I’ve been struggling with the idea of Kingdom blessings, or unearned grace that is realized on earth. It is easy for me to idealize heaven and understand that I didn’t do anything to deserve eternal salvation, but it is a little freakier when you start realizing your whole life you’ve been experiencing unearned blessings.
( Silliness on being lucky and lazy )
Hmm….long again, and rambling, so I’ll put a nifty cut thinger in here, and mark this up for reading later when I’m past this part of my life and helping someone else w/ some similar feelings. Read it if you want, if not, that’s cool too. Feel free to suggest ideas I haven’t thought of

Why is it that sometimes feeling like I’m a super lucky person almost makes me sad?

I feel like everything worthwhile I’ve done (or that has happened to me) in my life is something that fell in my lap. My my degree (I literally got into my major when I probably shouldn’t have, and I definitely got my degree by the good graces of some friends and their friends that are profs.), my amazing roomates who I potlucked to get my freshman year, my best friend was sort-of randomly inserted into my life later that same freshman year, my co-op experience, my wife, my new job, etc.

Well, we were reading this passage in Romans during small group about how suffering leads to perservearance, perservearance leads to character, and character leads to hope. During this time I got to thinking about how I seem to be a guy that has a lot of hope. Right now my wife is freaking out about starting school, and not having secured housing yet (we are having some problems with this place we want to buy). I’m of the mind that it will work out OK, and we’ll have some kind of housing at the end of september. I have no doubts that when we decide as a church to buy property that we will be able to do it and it will be an exciting time for our church. I have no doubts that our church is going to reach 100 people by lent next year (maybe easter sunday…I’m not really clear on that part).

But why do I have this hope, if I’ve never had that much suffering through which I perserveared, and subsequently developed character, and gained hope? Well, I figure that I hope in the continuation of my good luck. Hasn’t failed me so far in anything major yet, so why worry about it. Isn’t this a bad thing? Shouldn’t I have to suffer for my belief in the gospel? If I’m not suffering does that mean I’m missing something major God is telling me to do? Did I possibly inherit this character from my families suffering, and did I inherit it at such a young age that looking back now big problems seem small because I was in-fact small at the time they happened?

Or, is God building something continually in me, and this is not in fact luck, but devine providence to guide me to some place.

Well, I got some data that supports the luck thing, cuz I was lucky even when I was pretty heavily sinning and turning away from God late in high school and early in college. And, I seem to have data to support the God thing, from when things got bad (not because I lost my luck, but because I was depressed with some random things…and I was severely sleep deprived for the better part of a year) and then they got better when I went back to the Church. (Capital C).

So, I suffer with this idea that I may be missing something because I have derived my sense of hope / faith from erroneous sources. That concerns me a lot lately. But, my faith that things will go well has served me well, so I’m not about to become a super pessamist (even though I’m pessamistic at times) to try and fix the problem. Also, I believe hopeful person is objectively more useful in society…but that is neither here nor there.

Well, that is enough of that. More brain spilling out on the page here…so take it how you will.

Thank you,
And Goodmorning.

Current Mood:  giddy

The president takes an MS attack as Alan Alda, who plays a Californian Republican Senator announces he is running for President. OHHH HOW SWEET!!!

It smelled of old writing, the idealism that birthed a show with intollerable politics made tollerable by acknowledging the point of the opposing side as well as the necessity of partisan ideals to protect the country from extremism.

A Republican who can carry California, and a long shot hopeful in the midst of a wash of worthless politicing bastards. A glimmer of the shattered gem of old appeared within the turds of episodes that ultimately boiled down to droning of the preachy souless TV democrats pushing agendas around elections.

Season 5, watch the first 3 or 4 episodes, then the episode called the “Supremes”.

Season 6, watch the first few episodes, up to the peace summit at Camp David, then watch episode 9, called Impact Winter.

The mere mentioning of Alan Alda’s name as a special guest in that episode shot shivers down my spine.

Now, if they could just clear up the crappy camera work (this show has never been amazing w/ the cameras, but it is worse now), then it would make me very very happy.

Also, Firefly is a show I’m now describing as “a hoot” or “just plain ol’ fashion FUN”. Watch it if you have a chance and you want something kinda like a western meets star trek…..with pistols…..in space….and no lasers…..OK, the lack of lasers is bother this nerd more than a little….I’m sure you won’t mind, it just buggs me.

Man, I’ve been swamped lately with stuff at work. Normally I think that would be a good thing, but now I’m starting to wonder.

Right now any time my boss doesn’t want to do some prototyping, or work up a diagram or anything he puts me on it. Well, that means I’m pretty much constantly doing that because my boss runs into stuff like that all the time.

I wouldn’t mind so much, but he comes by every once in a while and asks me if I have some other part of my job description going, or some other project done yet. It is super frustrating because I’m constantly floating and never have time to help anyone else. I’m susposed to be doing quality improvements, and working on other peoples stuff too.

On top of that, we sent a bad cable to a company, and he is all over my ass about it since I worked on the pin-outs for the cables, but the kicker is when I prototyped the cable, it looked OK, just too bright. My boss looked at it and said it would be OK since they have a brightness controller built into their panel. Well, it turns out that it is actually two incompatible systems, and only part of the information is getting into the panel, so it looks too bright and washed out. This is all somehow my fault even though he is the one who said it was OK. Of course, he doesn’t remember ever seeing the prototype cable I tested.

They don’t pay me enough to shit on me like that. I’m gonna start making calls again to the recruiters in case my meeting in september goes bad.

This place needs someone to manage it, and help the owner with this stuff, cuz I feel like I’m wasting my time, and no one in the whole building has any idea what is going on half the time. I thought he was making smart decisions by hiring me as an overhead position, but now I’m wondering why he hasn’t hired a manager yet to oversee employees, cuz he sucks at it, and it is pretty obvious.

Current Mood:  bouncy

Last night I went out with Lauren to get a few things that we needed (and a few that we didn’t) before we left. I picked up a new pair of jeans for the upcoming winter since my favorite pair has a hole in crotch, and I picked up a new pair of shorts cuz my favorite pair is starting to wear holes in the seat. But, before that we picked up a couple of braclets for the “Until” campaign, that seeks to find a cure for aids. I’m also using it to talk about the One campaign that is trying to end poverty in Africa and create a more open economy to help the world.

Sometime I’ll post about how I reconcile the idea of a more open ecomony with the fact that currently if you weaken the American Economy you are weakening the global economic structure, but since I feel this argument is going to be refined at my family reunion / wedding this weekend, I’ll hold off for a bit.

The best part of my shopping trip was stopping at the Cingular kiosk and asking when the nokia 6682 will finally be available (I’m buying one as soon as it comes out…so no more bad jokes about how I’ll never buy a new phone). The guy says that he is hearing a couple of weeks…which is pretty standard for “I have no idea” amongst cingular reps. But then he whips out a working 6682 off of his belt, and I’m all jaw dropped w/ the “HOLY SHIT!” look in my eyes. Apparently Cingular did a training session where a rep from each store/kiosk got one of these phones along with the GPS unit that goes w/ it. The phone is sweet, and it is smaller than I expected. Not much bigger than the phone I have now.

I also bought the book “Hearing God” at Jeff and Dave Lin’s recommendation. I’m hoping that makes good plane reading.

Finally, if people would please take a look at this beta project I’m working on for the church. I need to know if it looks right in a bunch of web-browsers (for you slobs who don’t use Firefox). Ignore the wierd pictures in the gallery section, since that is just a friend of mine’s art, my art, and my wedding pictures. That will someday be populated with actual pictures from the church. Also, don’t go too crazy downloading Jeff’s sermons, but if you are actually interested in hearing them (none of which are labeled correctly at the moment, so you won’t have any idea what they are about until you listen to them) go ahead and download them. I would like to get a rough idea of what our average bandwith usage is going to be…and my website has a good bit of bandwith. Also, later tonight, or tomorrow I’m hoping to put the last two weeks of MP3’s up of Jeff’s preaching…I’m a little behind with my trip planning and what-not.

So please comment with any flaws you see in the website, please don’t comment with “I dont’ like how you did *insert certain design element*”…cuz I don’t care….unless you are someone who actually has stock in what is going up on the final site (which is pretty much Jeff and Q….and maybe some of the other church plant team). Also, please no comments are my good friends art…his views are not the views that our church has, or wishes to express in any way.

Thank you.

The new job title has kept me super busy the last couple of weeks. I actually am going to have to post a spreadsheet of my current priorities on my cube somewhere, so people can see where their stuff falls, and make more formal requests for use of my time.

It feels really good to be useful at work, but I would rather feel useful for spreading the Kingdom. I’m praying for a more pointed sense of direction, or purpose, on what to focus on at work, and outside of work that will help do more Kingdom good.

In my head I’m really torn about how to feel about the first year of being on a church plant (or just shy of a year). On one hand, I’m kinda bored with doing lots of little things that don’t seem to be my in my areas of strength instead of doing some more substantial things in my strong areas, but on the other it has been good to be out of a leadership role, and see how I handle it. My verdict of handling the situations is that it would be good if God either A) show me what he wants me to do and put me in a position to do it, or B) show me what hard things he wants me to deal with so I’m not always suffering from feeling antsy about, bored over, or disconnected from our plant.

Hmm…I suspose that is all for now.

Current Mood:  frustrated

I hate being patient. I am generally very patient in very specific contexts and the rest of the time I’m extremely impatient.

Does anyone every wonder when the “not yet” part of Kingdom theology is going to become the “already” part. I feel like I’m missing out on something there, and I’m getting a little tired of waiting around for it.

Sometimes I feel like I’m always a day late and a dollar short when it comes to experiencing the kingdom. It is like I’m missing something inside myself, and I miss the waves as they go by.

I pray for vision, for something to do, something to work towards, something to believe in that I feel passionately about. More often then not I’m left with half-way feelings of passion, or fleeting moments of passion, and not a vision or dream to follow. I pray for miracles, for the kingdom to come powerfully in peoples lives, and all I’ve heard or seen is stories, like old ghosts fading away into the past. I pray for courage and boldness to be more pro-active, and push harder for your kingdom to come, only to see it fade away with my fleeting passion, and my faith be reduced to less than a mustard seed. (Aside: What does faith the size of a mustard seed really look like?)

As you look into my sorry dough eyes you should see a man crying out. Crying out “When Lord? When will your servant finally ditch this fearfull little impateient voice in my head to which I am constantly a victim of its folly, so much so that I am prevented from ever seeing you grow back a mans missing limb. When LORD, WHEN? WHEN’S GONNA BE MY TIME?!”