Stars

The other evening my family and I were discussing stars. I brought up the subject because I had just listened to a very powerful song by switchfoot called "Stars". I just wanted to share the song with you. I think if you pay attention to the words over the music you hopefully will understand the depth of what is being said. The stars show me who I really am. The music is a little hard.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv-5snutHG0

Winterjam - legalism

This past Friday I went to a Winter jam concert ( so totally awesome!!). In case you don't know what that is, it's a concert where between 5-8 christian bands all perform on the same night. I saw Newsboys, Third day, Tenth Avenue North, Fireflight, Sidewalk Prophets,Newsong, and Robert Pierre this year. Anyway, After Tenth Avenue North finished playing one of their songs (I think it was Hold My Heart. Scroll down to the bottom and listen to it from my playlist) The lead singer started talking a little bit about his background. Here's how I remember it.

"I need to be honest with you all tonight. I'm still recovering from growing up inside a christian school. When I was growing up it wasn't about enjoying God and living life for him; it was about being a better christian because if you didn't do such and such you weren't a good christian. It was all about being a "good" christian. All that we tried to do was know more than the other person to where we could prove them wrong if we didn't agree with what they said....

That was really thought provoking for me. I came from a legalistic background also; so it's easy for me to relate to what he was saying. We were to the point that we wouldn't listen to any music besides hymns, my sisters only wore skirts, and it was wrong to eat processed foods of any kind.
We were also judging people that did wear pants, ate processed foods, and listened to contemporary christian music. Now it says in the bible that we are not supposed to judge unless we wanted to be judged ourselves. Our excuse was that we were just stating the truth. It never registered that people didn't ask to hear about what we deemed "truth". I seriously needed to keep my mouth shut and just let other people think differently from me. I was the definition of pride back then. I am still trying to get over that but I do struggle with it on a consistent basis. We left that church because of an insignificant doctrinal difference and started going to a church where the 3 pastors were the definition of humility. I have learned so much and hope to learn a ton more. An encouragement to everybody - stay humble and don't follow my example. Sorry, I kinda got carried away. Hopefully through all my jumbled mess of words you caught something.

Hope this is worth something. - David

Walk

I volunteered today at the "Baptist Home", a local nursing home that houses over 70 residents. I could not help but thinking how blessed We are to have a life. I was joking around with some of the ladies that were there and they asked me to run, jump and do a foot twist thing that I do. I thought nothing of it and went ahead and did it. After I went home it struck me that they wanted me to do it because they can barely walk...my bad most of them walk only with the help of walkers. We are so blessed to be able to have the freedom of being able to walk. I never really thought about it before but that is a huge blessing in and of itself. I will really have to be more grateful about things like that that I take for granted.

Thanks for bareing with my scatterbrain. - David

Lead Me

My friend and I have been trying to learn a little bit of swing dancing lately. She has caught on pretty quick but I'm a little bit slower. Now, the interesting part of swing dancing is that the girl just follows the guy. What I mean is that the girl has no idea what the guy is about ready to do until he does it. There is communication going on the whole time whether it be through looks or the different signals. But, when it comes to my part as the "leader", I tend to become lazy. I often think to myself, "It would be so much easier if she led!!". But, in real life that can't be the case. Guys are called to be leaders. We are called to protect and provide for our families. Not just sit around watching TV and letting our wives run the house. We guys (I'm speaking for myself also) need to take an active role in our families. Married or not. So as an admonition to myself, I'll try to be a better "leader" in dancing. Scratch that. In my whole life.