Decisions, Decisons

Our good friends Zach and Laura Hanlon offered to watch Fiana on Friday so we could have a date night. We had dinner and saw "The Dark Knight". As we left I called Zach to let him know we were on our way home. The first thing out of his mouth was, "I'm busy doing something can you call back... you'll see when you get home." Needless to say I was caught a little off guard. As Rachel and I walked though the door the first thing out of his mouth was. "Ok, which build is better." As you can see, Zach and Laura had a little "Lego competition" with Fiana's blocks. The next 10 minutes was spent explaining our decision in the most technical way. I'm leaving it up to you in my very first poll. Which one is better?

Realizing the Freedom

I am still exploring all the new applications on my iPhone through the "App Store". If you don't know what it is here is a quick briefing. Apple gave a challenge to third party developers to create software for the new iPhone 2.0 software. Over 250,000 answered the call. One of the applications someone created is called "Pandora-The Music Genome Project". What you do is enter the type of music or artists that you like and it creates a "radio station" without interuptions. It is awesome and the best part it's totally free and legal. No reason anymore listening to the radio or XM radio. It was in the morning so I thought about listening to praise music. The first song to come on was "Better is One Day" by Chris Tomlin. This is one of my favorite worships songs of all time. First of all it reminds me of my time serving at Hope E. Free church with the youth group. (Shout out to Goat!) We had a little worship band going and this was one of our songs. After a couple of minutes pondering about my time there, my thoughts moved on to the meaning behind this song. What a way to start your morning thinking about God's presence and how holy He is. This song declares his presence is so beautiful to spend one day is better than thousand days elsewhere. Now that thousands elsewere might be pretty good but God is better. Many people especially christians think God's presence, heaven, will be a time just sitting around singing Kum Bah Yah. Truth is quite the opposite, I believe we will spend the time enjoying and lavishing in God's glory. Period... Many will think, dude...so boring. But imagine our life today and the perversion of sin. The ability to sit through the evening local news and come away positive is almost impossible. What a relief they set aside 30 seconds to talk about a positive story and it's about a child fighting for his life due to cancer... Really?? That is why our thoughts need to be on God and not the things of this earth. (1 John) No matter how hard we try and find satisfaction through the fabrication of man we will always come up short and dissapointed. To the alcoholic it's one more sip to find happiness, to the millionaire it's one more dollar, and to a man it's one more night in bed with another woman to be happy. All of this leads to something else...more. Through God's own Son we can find joy and true satisfaction knowing that we are loved. Which was demonstrated by Christ's total sacrifice for my sin on the cross. If you have never experienced this I would encourage you to not immediately "talk to a pastor" but first reach out to God. Ask Him to reveal Himself to you, and He will. If you seek God, you will definately find Him. It is worth it, because better is one day in His courts than thousands elsewhere.

She Has a Little Daddy in Her

One of the great things about living in North Carolina is the beautiful weather. Unfortunately the beautiful weather is often accompanied with hot and humid conditions. However today was unique since it rained all day, and thus moved the humid conditions away. After dinner we went for a walk in our neighborhood. Evidently Fiana had a lot of energy built up. As soon as our front door opened she zoomed onto the porch hooked a right hand turn down the sidewalk. She was a girl on a mission with nothing to hold her back. Well except for one thing......her balance. She is a great walker, a mighty fine one if I say so myself. The art has been mastered so well that she has decided to try and take on running. It is still in the developing stages and so she fell down, actually alot. We counted 7 times. Even though she fell down a lot we never heard a cry or wimper, even when she broke the skin on her knee. Every time she fell, with out skipping a beat, she picked herself right up and moved along. Talk about making her Mommy and Daddy proud!

A Second New Beginning

My wife and I went to look at the new Toyota Prius one day. As we were driving off the salesmen started his pitch about how great this car is. He continued with the story about two guys at a gas station who each owned a prius began asking each other, "How many MPG are you getting?" Then proceed to try and "one up" each other with a higher number. That is how I feel with my new iPhone 3G.

I"m sure you have already looked at the photo and noticed how long the line was. As I entered the Apple store the first thing out of the sales specialist mouth was, "How long did you wait?" With an anticipated grin I responded, "5 hours and 20 minutes. Although it was quite a heafty wait, it was all worth it. Not just because I got it on opening day, but because of the whole experience. I got to know a couple guys and a little glimps into their life. One guy was a lawyer who represented companies in disputes with labor unions, and the other was a young married man still in college. I really enjoyed the conversations we had during the 5 hour wait, and never would have crossed paths with these two people in my normal day to day life. As we were standing there and discussing how long our wait had become. We talked out how "opening day" can become a trophy in experience for our new mechandise. He explained how he has more pride because when he looks at his new prized posession. There is a lot of effort and memories behind it. When he plays his brand new Xbox 360 and friends ask how long he's owned it. There is a story associated with it and more glory beacuse of the amount of work that went into it. I would have previously laughed at some one who told me waiting in line was work, but now I'm a believer. My legs and knees felt like they had ran 10 miles.

The next time I see someone with the new iPhone 3G. I can't help myself but ask if they got it on opening day. If so you can assume the follow up question. I bet our discussion will then lead to stories about our time on line.

I doubt anyone can beat my time of 5 hours and 20 minutes, at least I hope not. :-)