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Saturday, May 27, 2006

Halo Party

I'd always heard of these famed "Halo" parties but thought, "Halo, bah." I'm not very good at most FPS (First Person Shooter) video games, and playing Halo 2 with my college buddies has proved no exception. However, when I knocked off work tonight, I eagerly went with my brother and some friends to a Halo 2 party at someone's house...

Amazing! Brilliant set up. 5 TV's, all connected by a maze of cords throughout the whole house...and even one set of cords leading into the backyard, where several players sat huddled around a television set in an outdoor tent!! We had about 12 people playing the same round at once...along with pizza, cokes, and other party food. A couple guys had plug-in microphones, so you could hear some of the outbursts that come along with killing and being killed. I must say not only was the whole thing just enamoring, I honestly did pretty well tonight. I'm only decent with sniper rifles and energy swords. Anyway, it's an experience I'd love to have again, sometime.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

[Weekly] Update

Blah, I realized I haven't blogged in about a week, and this is only a dutiful post. Let's see, What have I been doing? Not too much. Trying to learn the art of waiting tables at Cracker Barrel. I'm still training; hopefully I'll have it within the next couple days and be able to be on my own. The actual waiting of tables is the easy part. It's all the screaming and throwing grits and biscuits around and ringing up food behind the iron curtain that has had my head swimming. I think this will prove a valuable experience, though. Everyone should wait tables at some point...it will make you tip better when you eat out in the future!

Other than that, I'm about to read the last 20 pages of The Fellowship of the Ring and start The Two Towers. It's pretty sad that it took me a whole semester to finish that book...granted, I only had the time to read, like, 2 pages at a time. Give me a week off school, and it does wonders for my literary life.

I'm also reading through the Book of Acts with Amanda...who is in Houston for the summer. Reading the Bible over the phone just isn't the same as in person. In about a month, I'm going to fly out there to cut the summer pining away period in two. [Yeah, yeah, cry me a river, Bean.] Oh, I'm not complaining...love is patient and enduring...

Well, I need to go iron my manly-man server apron...

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Like, Wow

I am blessed with such amazing friends! I have to take a moment to honor several very dear friends: Nicole Augustin, Emily Byers, Kristina Chaves, and Shannon Songe. They drove all the way from Baton Rouge so I could be graced with their presence for the day!

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

An Enchanting, Engaging Evening

I will try to keep this short, but a couple of really cool things happened tonight during Amanda's and my date.

She surprised me and took me out to The Melting Pot in New Orleans. I'd never heard of Fondue dining before, and I'm assuming you maybe haven't either. Basically it's a laid back, yet semi-ritzy joint where you walk in and are escorted to a rather private booth with light jazz playing. (Nice atmosphere.) You have a 4-course meal, and everything is "cooked" on the burner on the center of the table. First is the cheese fondue, in which you melt the cheese in the pot and dip breads, vegetables, apple, etc. into the cheese dip. Next is a salad, followed by the main course, in which you place duck, lamb, chicken, shrimp, and other meats into the fondue sauce and cook and eat. Last is the chocolate sauce, in which you dip fruit, cheesecake, pound cake, etc. It is an exotic, scrumptious, and expensive dining experience (and Amanda paid this time, in spite of my constant arguing for 2 weeks...she'd been planning to surprise me...and boy I was happy!) It felt like some hedonistic Roman celebration...it took almost 3 hours to eat it all. I can't really do it justice, so visit the link to the website above. It was the most singular fun dining experience of my life. We had a ton of fun.

Next I drove her down to the Mississippi River, the perfect after-dinner romantic spot. Beautiful night! I'll skip all the particulars and go to the main thing that prompted this post. I got to witness something I've never seen happen before...

So I'm holding her looking out over the water and behind us there's this gazebo with several lights shining brightly from its ceiling. I prompted her to come up with me into the gazebo...I'm looking at it thinking it's got The Sound of Music gazebo scene written all over it. I embrace her and we start to slow dance. I mentioned how special a spot it was.....

As we left later on in the evening, I heard a voice from behind me, "Hey!" I turned around expecting to have a beggar asking for money, but when I saw this couple heading toward us, I noticed how nicely dressed they were, immediately rejecting the thought. I realized it was a young couple, perhaps three years older than us. The guy introduced himself to me and handed me a camera, asking me if I'd do him a favor and take some pictures of them slow dancing together. He said, "We're really going to get in the zone," or something, so I was like, "Hmmm." As they started to dance, I looked at Amanda to see what her expression was, and it dawned on me a second after it occurred to her as she gasped, "I wonder if she knows what's about to happen?!" And surely enough after 5 minutes of slow dancing and them smiling and whispering and kissing, down he popped on his knee, amidst camera flashes, and simply asked, "____, will you marry me?" Her response was timeless and priceless. Almost exasperatedly joyful, she breathed, "YES, YES!!" "Oh of course, yes!" In front of her was a beautiful ring in a lighted case. The rest is history. After they were done with their private celebration we congratulated them and actually met (haha) and walked to a hotel, exchanging email addresses and chatting.

There are some other particulars I found out that made the event even more special in my mind...but I won't disclose them, to protect this beautiful couple's privacy.

Monday, May 15, 2006

Cash is on the Way

I just got a summer job at Cracker Barrel! I'm excited about waiting tables. I think it's something I'll enjoy, since I like serving people and am an altruist (for the most part). I start Thursday, and that's a GOOD thing...necesito dinero.

Sunday, May 14, 2006

Volver a Casa

I have returned to Slidell for the summer! Exams are over...I'll wait to whine online about the grading once I get the results in. Anyone want to give me a summer job?

Monday, May 08, 2006

It's That Time of Year Again...the Final Exam Madness Audioblog, Oh Yeeeaahhh!

this is an audio post - click to play

Thursday, May 04, 2006

Heart Failure

Jeremiah 17:9, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? 10I the Lord try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings."

The heart is our problem. The promises we make are often respectable, the romantic things we say beauitful, and the intentions we declare honorable. But these spoken glories are often phantasmal. They are spirits with no body to inhabit. Words with no heart to back them up. An inability to execute.

God mourned to Moses of the Israelites' wretched state. They had just promised to do everything God had commanded them: a venerable and praiseworthy promise, indeed, to declare service to the Almighty! But, alas! God knew that there was no pure heart to reinforce this promise. They were talking off the top of their heads, saying all the right rhymes and moving their vocal chords with all the right graces. Yet the utterances from their throats might as well have been the bleatings of sheep or the scraping of a fingernail on a chalkboard...

"And the LORD heard the voice of your words, when ye spake unto me; and the LORD said unto me, 'I have heard the voice of the words of this people, which they have spoken unto thee: they have well said all that they have spoken. Oh that there were such a heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children forever!'" Deuteronomy 5:28-29 [emphasis added]


Oh that there was such a heart in me! To have the purity of desire necessary to perform what I know is right! It is like a man promising to provide for his family, a lover professing to always be there for his beloved, a friend promising to walk through hard times with a friend...we make promises we know we may not be able to keep but nevertheless, because of our love, feel compelled to make. What can we do about this disconnect between the heart and the mouth? The only thing that can save us now is a heart transplant. We need to pray for the heart of Jesus.

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Pitiful

I was about to go sleep just now but happened to listen to a song. The song, "Pitiful," reminded me of a scripture in Ezekiel, in which a baby is saved from the side of the road...

Ezekiel Chapter 16 is one of the most emotional, vivid, heartbreaking, and intense stories I have ever read in the Bible. It is the wretched story of a most unfortunate infant rejected by its parents at birth. A young baby is left for dead in the middle of a field. The mother's blood and bodily fluids have not even been washed from the baby girl. She is lying in the field "polluted in [her] own blood," without anyone pitying her. All who pass by leave her for dead, until one stranger picks her up and says, "LIVE."

He cleans her up, clothes her, and raises the child. He raises the child and gives her the best. She becomes a full-figured, beautiful woman with long hair (v.7). Because of her tainted past, no one will marry her, so this man, her caretaker, makes a marriage vow to her. He clothes her in the finest apparel in all the land, gives her beautiful jewelry, and parades her around to the rest of the world as a beauty queen.

Several years into marriage, she starts to sleep around and eventually goes into prostitution, leaving her husband. She is unfaithful for years.

Years later her husband finds her and strips her naked of all her beautiful clothing, as punishment for her infidelity. He has all the various possessions from her various lovers burned. She repents and he accepts her back, letting her know his covenant with her is forever.

This is our story. We are born into a world of sin, ourselves possessing a sin nature, damned as we came out of our mother's placenta kicking and screaming, into a world damned with us. Doomed to indulge in the sin nature ascribed to us by the fathers of our species, Adam and Eve, we all had hell to pay before we'd reached the age of being able to crawl. Christ Jesus saw our pitiful condition and left his throne in the skies to walk among us. He sweat and bled in the world he was so grieved with. He made us spiritually beautiful, adorning us with his divine nature. He commands us to be new creatures, being Christian, being "Christ-like," exhibiting the nature of God. Of course, we sleep around. Meaning, we sell ourselves to the things of this life. We use the talents, giftings, abilities, and beauty he has given us and we use it for such trifles as drink and sex and ambition and war and pride and lust. We are unfaithful to the One who fathered, married, and ultimately died for us. He judges us for our wickedness, exposes us for our ingratitude, and once we have repented, gladly accepts us back into communion with Himself.

As I thought about the song I'd heard and this story in Ezekiel, I felt my soul weeping. We are so frail and helpless to serve our Maker. As it were, we have been polluted in the pool of our own blood, lying helplessly waiting to be rescued from our apathy, our indifference to righteousness, our carelessnesss to observe the decrees of a holy God. When He does rescue us, and we're finally free, we backslide, throwing the shed blood of Christ back in His beautiful face. When we do this, we become the perpetrators of the nails permanently scarring His beautiful, outstretched hands. And yet again, as if saved a second time, He chastises us and receives us back, restoring us.

Even now, I feel the eyes of Jesus sweeping through the masses of humanity, searching for my eyes, desperately trying to make contact. And when those all-seeing, all-loving eyes almost catch mine, I find myself avoiding His glance. I look away. I turn my head and look at my feet, ashamed of my pride and my indifference to serving Him.

And we are indifferent. Did Christ die so we could observe Sunday morning worship and dutifully read the Bible daily? Or was he slain, perhaps, that I should enter into intimate friendship with Him, loving Him as I would a spouse or a brother, yet worshiping Him as the Essence of goodness itself? Because in practice we follow the former model, we are indifferent.

No matter how hard we try, we are still pitiful. Woefully unable to hit the mark. Even the most dedicated priest or minister will lust after a woman...will slip and curse with his mouth...will become offended with his good friend...will venerate Himself rather than God...will grow weary of loving Christ through our actions. Does Christ ever get tired of loving us? Then why, friend, should we ever grow tired of loving Him? Loving Him through spending time with Him, giving to Him, consecrating everything to Him.

May God help us to meet his gaze. As his eyes sweep through the crowds searching for only you, only me, yet everyone all at once, let us not look away. Look Him in the eye and realize He is breathing hot down your neck, pursuing you, wanting to love you, to adore you with beautiful clothing and show you off to the rest of the unbelieving world what it means to walk in His light and glory.

Oh that we could stop pretending that everything is alright! I sometimes imagine myself watching Jesus die on the cross, His eyes meeting mine. It probably would have appeared to most people that day that Jesus was the pitiful one, dying a wretched cross-death, slowly asphyxiating. But I believe that for everyone who looked into His eyes that day as he hung there...there was a heart-stopping, shooting pain through their nervous system. It is I that am pitiful. He is doing this for me because I am pitiful. I am too proud and self-loving to ever experience what He is going through. And so that fateful day, He hung there, being pitiful for us...bearing the shame we were meant to bear, Love itself crucified, paying the our debt which Justice demanded.

He took our place on the side of the road. As were being rescued from our polluted bloodbathed condition by the Father, He was taking our place on the side of the road, polluted in the stench of his own sweat and blood, rolling down his body and dripping onto the unworthy ground below.

And though we are filthy still, He is patient with us, continually washing the garments we dirty up so easily. And He parades us proudly as a Father would a daughter, as a husband would his beautiful wife...we may be pitiful, but He is proud. Proud to call us His own.

And so this story's ending has a most certain outcome, though it has no end. Its author pulls us out of the muck and the filth and the mud and the blood and says....

Live.


Ezekiel 16
"Pitiful" Lyrics

Monday, May 01, 2006

Current Listening: "Cadence" by Anberlin

Write down,to remind yourself on how it can be
Heartstrings, you're tugging at my heartstrings
Helpless, I have become so helpless to your touch
touch me somehow
Restless, you leave me restless
breathless wait for me

The closer I come to you
the closer I am to finding God
You're a miracle to me
The closer I come to you
the closer I am to finding God
You're a miracle to me

Burning, like Joan of Arc to see you, just to feel you
Cadence, I would dance with the dead cause I believe
yes I believe, yes I believe
Stifle, Paul said that you stifle him
again and again and again

And if these are my parting words
Then this, my last request
Hold me here, until I sleep
If I burn, then I burn for you

What author Stephen Christian says of the song:

"My brother Paul and I both went to the University of Central Florida together (and incidentally played rugby side by side for UCF). He majored in Psychology and I in Philosophy. To save money we rented a house with some friends in Orlando and me and Paul shared a room. Late at night we would have theological conversations ranging from the omnipotence of God to pre-destination. I formulated the line because the whole song is central to the holy spirit (hence; "the closer I come to you (the holy spirit), the closer I am to finding God), and one of the insolvable equations of God was the complex workings of holy spirit, and his involvement with mankind, and that my friend is where the line was created."

Hear it here.

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