Category Archives: Life
How to Get Toilet Paper Out of Your Tree
I am a former 15 year veteran of Student Ministry. Some people call it Youth Group. I hate that term. It’d take another post to understand why. In 15 years my house has been the subject of pranks. One morning I woke up and there was a goat tied to a tree in the front yard. I live in the ‘burbs. Then they forked my lawn. Google it. They post-it noted my car. All of it. No that glue doesn’t come off easy. They Christmas wrapped my car. They shaving creamed a message on my garage. They snuck into my house while I was on vacation and rearranged the whole house. The living room was in the kitchen. The kitchen was in a bedroom and so on… The thing I actually dislike the most is when they toilet paper my house. Its the most boring. The easiest to clean up. So here is how you clean it up:
- Pick up all the stuff off the ground you can roll
- Rake up all the other big pieces…if it gets dirt in it it actually helps.
- Get out your hose. Turn on high. Blast everything else out of the trees. TP dissolves in water.
- Take a picture. Maybe this should have been #1.
That’s pretty much it. Not rocket science. Imagine you could do the same thing in your life with interruptions. What if you had a simple strategy for reacting to a mess. Maybe you could use the TP method?
- Respond to what you know must be done first. Eliminate clutter. The big pieces. Start with the easiest of the hardest.
- Get some tools to help you cope with what remains of the clutter. Tools look like people, God, a Bible, counselors, friends, mentors…
- Have some fun with the problem. Blast away and play. (yep the hose part)
- Remember your trial for it is sure to find you in some form again.
If you are in a mess now. Let me know. The best thing I can do for you is to pray for you.
How do you handle a surprise mess?
Boba Fett. $15K. Really?
Do you have an extra $15,000 available? Didn’t think so. However. If you by some chance answered yes than I have a deal for you. You can buy a never released prototype Boba Fett action figure from Star Wars. You remember those little toys. Han Solo, Luke Sywalker, C3PO, Darth Vader – the gangs all here. The beauty of the prototype is the real firing missile! Only the coolest bounty hunter of the future has that. Most models sold did not have the missile due to potential choking hazards. Still interested? Heres a picture of 15k added value:
Value is a crazy thing. Today, instead of telling me why this is sooo worth the investment, think about things in your life that have value. Measure them using these three questions:
1. How will this (thing, person, object, ideology etc…) help my community to flourish?
2. How will this help my faith to strengthen?
3. How will this bring glory to God and not me?
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. – Philippians 2:3 and 4
The guy who bought a similar prototype did so at Comic Con for 17K. 17. Yes. Se-ven-teeeen. Thousand. Dollars. Here’s what he said post purchase, “my girlfriend is going to kill me”. Well, probably not kill but pretty sure she is re-valuing her profile at match.com right about now. Today, know what you value and why. Here’s my working standard measuring tool. Not perfect. Not always met. But in place:
1. Family over work.
2. People over programming.
3. Humility over pride. Still working this one out :)
4. Bonus: Han Solo over Boba Fett ;)
How do you measure value?
Hope. Belief.
Hope is the belief that your dream can be a reality. I’m at an airport watching jerseyed-up football fans scream (really loud) hope toward their teams on the giant flat screen while I wait for my plane. Watched a guy look hopeless as he struggled to decide on what sandwich to order. Bro, it’s an airport. It all tastes the same. Watched a sales guy offer two free flights if I signed up for a credit card He was hopeful I’d take the deal so he could make money. That kind of hope is temporary fix stuff. The, I hope to feel better right now. And, I hope there is milk in the fridge. Possibly, I hope we have waffles tonight.
The hope I’m blogging about is hope that is deeply connected to desire and fulfillment. The kind of thing that your soul yearns for you to know when your mind is in disbelief that what God planned for you, he set in stone. Hope is an interesting emotion. It springs eternal. It joins faith and love. Maybe it’s why my favorite movie of all time is The Shawshank Redemption, a story of rescued hope.
At the end Red (Morgan Freeman) says this as he exits prison.
“I find I’m so excited I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it is the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend, and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.”
Hebrews 6:19 says that hope is an anchor to the soul. An anchor. For deep water. For your deep hope.
I hope.
The Help – A Review from a White Boy
The Help, by Kathryn Sockett is a slice of life from Americas racist past. My wife started the book version, The Help. She’s a reader. Then Sunday we watched the adapted movie. I’m the visual learner. Can I say that I was one of three guys in the theater? Ten minutes in and the story that was heavy female casted was speaking to both genders. Whats not to like about this movie? Great acting. Effective script. Authentic accents. (pet peeve: sound like the place you are representing in a film.) Most of all was this: Believable unresolved plot. 
Hate based on pigment is wrong. There is no place for it. I have no time for it. As a white guy from Miami I cannot truly relate to racism. There is no majority in Miami. There is no minority majority in Miami. We are a melting pot filled with nations, cultures and deep culture. Miami is a blending of color that forms a mighty current . My 11-year-old is doing a project on culture. She asked me, ‘what culture am I?’. My answer was: South Florida. Our culture is every culture. We grew up on black beans and rice, being the only white kids playing basketball in the parks in the ‘hood, surfing at the beach, and speaking Spanglish (that’s english and spanish in one sentence). I grew up with black, spanish, white, and etc… friends. It wasn’t until I went away to school in Alabama that I saw racism in the eyes of some. Not all, but some. The Help, brought back some of those college memories. Those memories are stories. The story is important and a good story is what made The Help memorable. Your story is no less important.
Whats your story with racism? What did you take away from The Help? If you are follower of Christ - what was your take away from seeing persecution on the big screen to your story with Christ?
You Want Me to Pray? When?
There are lots of things to pray for. At night when my family can sit down, and be in the same place, at the same time, in between wrestling matches involving my 8-year-old and 3-year-old, music coming from my 11-year-old’s room, dinner, showers, cleanup, rainy SFLA, and the occasional Hurricane update, we talk through a bible verse and after talking about it we pray. Whew.
Have you ever felt like your life was so crammed full of stuff that you can’t figure out what to pray? How can we speak clear words to God when we can’t get past, “kids, sit still at the dinner table…”. Have you ever wondered if maybe the reason that God has not answered your prayer is because you have not voiced it in the right way or with enough passion? Of course.
God says through the Bible, pray non-stop. So then it makes sense to understand that we are to talk (pray) to God all the time. And if that’s true then it means that our all the time is even when the 3-year-old and the 8-year-old are wrestling through the chaos of life. Dont wait to pray. Pray all the time.
A little extra…
Here is how God answers prayer:
- According to his desire and plan.
- With your best in mind.
- With a, ‘yes’.
- With a, ‘no’.
- With a, ‘not yet’.
God hears you and responds.
