Nonsensical Ramblings of Mark

When I was saving money for graduate school I worked a couple of jobs. One was at a pizza shop where they pretty much just trusted me with making chicken wings and the other was driving a van for a social service agency. This was well before the widespread adoption of GPS technology so I mainly just got lost and made all of my riders late to every appointment they had, but I digress. I had to transition my van-driving job to an interesting fellow named Marvin Bopp. He had a curious habit of talking about things that I was only marginally interested in. If that wasn't bad enough just when I thought that the "talk" (it wasn't a conversation mind you) was over he would continue by saying "And the reason I say that is..." and would offer me insight into why he just said what he said. That was one of the longer weeks of my life. Well every time I want to give detail about something I just said I like to start by saying "And the reason I say that is..." ...

It is incredibly hard for me to self-examine. I don't know what the deal is, but I seem to go blindly on with whatever I am involved in at the moment and then...there it is...something I should have had taken care of. I am busy looking at others an assessing their needs and what they need to work on and too often neglect what I need to do or pay attention to for me to be more Christlike. I think that this is one of the reasons why I appreciate it when people offer me the gift of redemptive criticism. Like a lot of people, I despise the criticism of a rough edge that I may have here or a method of ministry that I am engaging in there. Yet there is something that I love about the look in the eyes of someone who is offering me input or even admonishment for God's glory and for my benefit. I almost want to cry as I fill my lungs with the sweet air that permeates their counsel because, well, it's the stuff of heaven. It is the very act of God in this all too often wasted life of...

The wire and web is rife with the news that this is the day that Geocities is shutting down. I have a special place in my heart for Geocities as that was the place I chose to put up a website that touted my agency's services and the like when I was fresh out of college and taking the social work world by storm circa 1994 or 1995. I remember using an early version of Microsoft FrontPage to construct the website and embed all of the navigation in the graphics on it and use a rather interesting FTP client to get all of it on Geocities' servers. The fairly maddening thing was that, at the time, FrontPage turned all of my text and graphics into one large GIF with an image map for the navigation and links. That's right - not an a tag or href to be found on the whole thing. At any rate, when the web and I were young it was a different world. Not a better world, necessarily, but a different one. Please excuse this nostalgic sigh **sigh** as the first seeds of my geekiness were sown...

My wife and I have been co-directing our 5th and 6th grade Wednesday night club for boys and girls called Champions. We have been utilizing a new preteen curriculum to structure the topics that we are introducing and discussing called Grapple from Group Publishing. We have been impressed with the material as its relevance to where our clubbers are is absolutely undeniable. It is interesting to talk about "loving" and "sacrificing" for their siblings and exploring reasons why their parents "always say no". Well, we had a parent step in as a substitute this week and she encouraged me even further when she mentioned that we must have been at her house because the topic we were going over was spot on to what they were dealing with. Not only am I impressed with the topics, but the way they are approached in the material is solid and Bible-focused as well. It is nice to be able to help our clubbers discover who God is and how He relates to them through His Word...

I just wanna to know - am I pulling people closer I just wanna be - pulling them to You... Steve Taylor, I just Wanna Know Lately I have been finding the ministries that I have been engaged in more interesting and more fulfilling than work. This is a usual thing for me, but it has been much more acute lately and that fact got me thinking a bit. I am positive that God wants me to serve and that He wants me to use the spiritual gifts that He has given me in that service. The trick, for me, is twofold: I need to find just as much satisfaction in Him as I find in serving Him and I need to measure the effectiveness of my ministry against the great commission. If I could find just as much rest and fulfillment in communing with and contemplating Him while not thinking about the next topic I need to teach, or how I am going to build "wonder" and "discovery" into my next lesson I think that would make my ministry more genuine and heartfelt. It would certainly bring me to lov...

**Click** That's the sound of something finally making sense to me. Usually the **click** is something that should have been comprehended by me already but for some reason it alluded me. Well, I heard a sermon on Sunday that finally put 1 Corinthians 9:19 into my head and heart so much so that I think I understand it for the first time. Of course, understanding the Scriptures and doing the Scriptures are two totally different things, but that is for another time. For me I see this servanthood or slavery as part of the deliberate, focused love that I need to have to help people begin or deepen their relationship with God. I need to, within Biblical parameters, make sure that I make less and less of me and more and more of others. Of course, this may mean that I relinquish some of my preferences or even some of my rights as a free man in Christ so that I can move closer to someone and help them realize who they are in Christ. That relinquishment is the loving thing to do. Of course i...

Well, I did it. A friend of mine put a bug in my ear a couple of months ago about racing in the Run for Hospice 5K last Saturday morning and I actually followed through with it. It was a cold morning as the race started at 9:00 a.m. and I was not thrilled with the course. The hill in the first mile was, shall we say, formidable and it was intimidating to a lot of people including me. At any rate I was hoping to get a time around 30 minutes as I am generally running a 10-minute mile when I run during the week. I started out pretty fast (given the hill) and recorded a 9:16 first mile. I was hoping to get a 9:30 to 10:00 so that I would have something left at the end and that I wouldn't be walking past the finish line. The course curled around and the second mile was almost all down hill and I held back a bit pacing myself behind this bald guy that looked to be substantially older than me. My friend was way ahead of me so I was on my own. Well, that guy got a little slow for me so I p...

In an earlier blog post I wrote about a group of people that gathered in a conference room near me at 9:00 a.m. every day to engage in what I call the Daily Guffaw. They seem to always be saying something funny in that room because it erupts in laughter continually. I think that is why I love my iPod so much so early in the morning. Well, there is another, albeit smaller, group of people that gather on the other side of my cube and engage in what is known in my head as the Daily Gripe. It is hard to not get sucked into all the griping and moaning that they do. Not that I would complain along with them - no - I am much "too spiritual" for that. Rather, it is hard for me to maintain perspective after listening to them complain so much. It is easy for me to become a pessimist about the company, my job security, the state of the economy, car repairs...you name it. See how Christ-like I am? Well, one of the Daily Gripers just left to pick up her car from a repair shop and slung a ...

There are some haunting lyrics in a song composed by Philip Glass called A Gentleman's Honor that make me quake at times: Horses in the air Feet on the ground Never seen This picture before... ...Horses in the air "Whose baby is this?" Never seen This picture before I think I am so shaken by these words because they remind me of the words of Christ when he says to those who beg him to recognize them to depart from him because he never knew them (Matthew 7:23). As terrible as it would be for me to be unrecognized by my earthly father, I can't, and don't want to, imagine what it would be like to be rejected by my heavenly Father and His Son. Thankfully He does not recognize me based on my good deeds but rather through the finished work of His Son on the cross. That gives me a hope and a peace that I am, indeed, known.

Man plans, God laughs. Wow. These past couple of weeks have been extremely intense for me. More so than usual to the point where I think that there isn't much more that I can take before I crack. Thankfully I am not teaching this Sunday in our HighPoint kids program or I think I may have to resort to setting fire to things. Or maybe not. At any rate the gift that this season (hopefully that's all it is) has given me is a new perspective on time. Especially on redeeming the time that I have been given. This business has got me practicing the purposeful use of my time. I am not a planner by nature, but I would not have gotten through this business without sitting down and mapping out a course. I am still not quite out of the woods, but I am in a place now where I can point to achievements that were wrought in a deliberate use of my allotted time. Now I know that my planning a course in my heart is subject to the steps that are directed by God, but (I hate the word but because it ...

I have never been more convinced in all my life than I am right now in: the sufficiency of the Scriptures for the pursuit of the life that God intends me to have my continual need of a Savior in my life to offer me a countless number of salvations from all manner of death my need of relying on the Holy Spirit to lead me into the knowledge I need and provide the strength I need to build His kingdom the utter inability of any other religious or human system to bring about the heart change that I need The bitter taste of the fruit of my half-convinced life still lingers in my mouth. And I have stared straight at it in a mirror that I never knew existed. As ugly as it was, the reflection I saw was a gift. Dad, help me embrace what you showed to me.

One of the gifts I have given to my oldest son, Will, is my gnat-like attention span. I have a laptop that has a screen saver that displays various scenes from one of Will's favorite DVDs ( The Rise and Fall of Tony the Frog ). The first two sentences are related so stick with me. My wife asked him to go into the living room and get a pencil out of their supplies box and my laptop happened to be there. After he hadn't appeared for a while, and after she had determined that he should have had sufficient time to locate a pencil, my wife knew exactly what was happening: Nan: "Will?" Will: [Trotting into the room with pencil in hand] "Yes?" Nan: "Were you watching Daddy's laptop with The Pond on it?" Will: [Smiling] "Yeah." Nan: "Sit down, please." It was all a very good-natured exchange, as most exchanges are between us and our children, and Will happily got back to work on the assignment that he was given. As he began to work ...

The classic line when getting dumped by a boyfriend/girlfriend is "It's not you...it's me." Of course this never confers the comfort on the "dumpee" that it is supposed to but it seems like the right thing to say. Well, there has been a lot going on lately where I am having a hard time sorting out what is my fault and what is the fault of the others involved. My inclination is to point to some deficiency in me. I mean, I know my issues and screw-ups better than anyone (save God Himself) and I realize that any one of the thousands of them could contribute mightily to the situations that have been happening lately. But, I need to be as objective as possible. It is not always my fault or even 60% my fault, or 30% my fault, or... It just always feels like I contribute more death than life; more destruction than building; more rot than ripe. I want to do what's best, when I am not too lazy. I want to be other-centered, when I am not too busy trying to maipula...

My wife and I had no "alone time" on our 14th wedding anniversary yesterday. Now, normally, this would send me into a pity party, but I got to thinking about it and, of course, there is more for me to be thankful for than I originally saw. The day started like any other day - my wife, with little help from me, got the boys ready for school and out the door. Now the very fact that I have a wife that is more than willing and more than capable of doing this is a blessing that not everyone shares. There are plenty of single people out their that ache for a wife that would do this. There are even some married people that long for a spouse that has this level of dedication, loyalty, and love. I've been given a great woman by a greater God. Now, about those boys; those enfleshments of our love - I couldn't ask for more than I have received. They're healthy, friendly, intelligent, gifted...all of that rolled into two bundles of energy that actually don't mind going to...

I guess I take so much about God and His Word for granted. It is quite natural for me to do so because He, His Son's blood, and His Word never fails. I cannot tell you how much peace that brings to my heart. I simply cannot imagine a god who did fail, whose words were only marginally successful, and who made a way for us to be saved that only worked a few times, or off and on. I can't imagine the chaos that would be born as a result of that or the amount of restless nights I would have wondering, if I was not to make it through, whether I would be with him. There would be no trust, no life, no foundation...there would be nothing in a god that impotent. But He is not that and the more I enter into what He isn't I get a glimpse of who He is. The more I think about life without Him or life with a different god I see the life that I have now. I want those glimpses to make me take less for granted. I hope they do. I am so glad He made me in His image and not the other way around...

There is no possible way that I could die to myself with any amount of regularity if it wasn't for the work of the Holy Spirit in my life. We are involved in a couple of situations (one a bit more private than the other) where God is serving, on a silver platter, an unprecedented opportunity for some fellow believers to die to themselves. I know that when I talk about dying to myself it often is in the context of not sitting down when there are other things to do or not spending $300 on a used snowblower when there are other things we need to invest in as a family...those are the normal things and they are presented to me every day. Every once and a while, though, God brings a situation into my life that shakes me; staggers me at times. And, along with the situation (usually it is some type of conflict) He offers me an invitation to a deeper more profound relationship with Him that can only be accepted by dying to myself. To my shame I have often rejected His invitations. Yet, when...

I was, and still am, a huge fan of the Twilight Zone. It was 50 years ago today that it premiered and I remember the late nights that I stayed up to watch the show and the impact it had on me. I was also into the spin-off shows that the Twilight Zone inspired like Monsters, Amazing Stories, Tales from the Darkside, and, to a lesser extent, Night Gallery and the The Outer Limits. I don't think I am overstating this a whole lot, but the show had an influence on me actually coming to Christ in my college years. I think there are numerous reasons why this was the case. For the most part, the Twilight Zone showed me the weakness of the reliance on both sensory input and the interpretation of that input to discern what is truly real. Through the experiences of the characters that the show put forth it pointed out how weak we as humans truly are and the effect that the impotence we wield had on not only the individual, but the people that interacted with them. The Twilight Zone  also open...

A while back I applied to host a launch party for Windows 7. It was going to be an all-geek affair with a functioning copy of the new Windows release there for people to try and the discussions would focus around wireless networks, XML, Linux (of course), the lack of LAN support in the upcoming release of Starcraft II, and all manner of technology. I may have even thrown in some cool geek-related door prizes and the food would consist of cheese curls, pizza, and Mountain Dew. Of course we would have set up the live video feed so that my brother in law and fellow geek in arms presently living in Georgia could attend. Well, I received an email yesterday that crushed my plans as I slept. A portion of the pain is reproduced below: Thanks for your interest in hosting a Windows 7 ® Launch Party.  There was great response to hosting parties and numbers were limited. As a result many wonderful applicants like you could not be selected. I guess I should be happy that they recognized that I was...