A Theology of Homecoming Court

I have yet to develop a theology of fame. Let me explain myself.

Recently, I was selected for homecoming court. So here I am, one of two sophomore class representatives. So I'm just left staggering. I've found, when I'm thinking about it, that my mind goes one of two places. I either am puffed up, and feel like I somehow earned this honor, or I sink into a place of utter inadequacy and depression, and all of my faults are made glaringly obvious in my mind.

My question is, how does one develop a worshipful attitude through a popularity contest like homecoming court? How does one worship God through an honor bestowed by men? I have no idea. How did King David continue his lifestyle of being "A man after God's own heart" while people were chanting "Saul has slain his thousands, David his tens of thousands." I would say that the reason is just that God has given me the talent, and then this is just an honor by men acknowledging my talent, but I know so many other people that are so much more talented than me. I know so many people with more charm than me, more wit, more prowess athletically, more leadership skills, more musical talent. So why on earth did I get so many votes?

One other thing that gets me is trying to figure out why God gave me this gift, when I have so many other gifts that I would so much rather have. I have so many things that I want that only God, in his intervention, can give. And I know so many people who wanted this honor so much more than I did. I wasn't even thinking about homecoming court, frankly. There were plenty of other things that I was thinking hard and praying hard about. Those remain unanswered. So what is God trying to tell me? Why does God bestow me with honor when I would be happier with anonymity and an awesome girlfriend? (Random side note, at this point, my dad had already met my mom and was just biding his time before he asked her out. I feel so old.)

The more I think about life, the more I realize that everything boils down to how much I trust God. God is soaring above me with a birds-eye view, while I'm floundering around in tall grass that I can't see anything until I step in it, but I can look behind and see where I've come from and all the crap I've stepped in. Not only that, but He has my whole life planned out. I don't go anywhere that He hadn't planned me to go. So here I am, in a place that I'd never planned to be, and frankly wishing I was somewhere else. I know for a fact that this is not the right attitude to be in at all. If God has me here, this is where I'm supposed to be. I could not be in a better place right now. That's a comforting thought to have.

I haven't really come to a conclusion in all of this, but I think I'm moving in the right direction. My best bet will always be to continue an increased focus on God. I'm always returning to Hebrews 12 when I run into a big brick wall of life.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. (Hebrews 12:1-3)

Right now, I've got everyone from Abraham to Gideon, to Enoch, to Rahab, keeping an eye on me, sitting in the stands as I run this marathon called life.

The answer to my question posed at the beginning turns out to be simpler than I thought, but still difficult. I need to fix my eyes on Jesus. He wrote my faith, he is perfecting my faith. I need to throw off all of the sin that wraps around my legs and trips me up. All of the pride, as well as all of the self loathing, because both come from a lack of trust in God.

When my focus is on Christ, everything else follows.

Old and New.

I noticed something today. Blogging is very similar to scrapbooking, especially if there are photos involved.

I noticed this because i started using the scrapbook that i got as a graduation present to record my adventures with Polaroid. So far, it's just the Polaroid that they took when I first moved in to Cornerstone, and a bunch of undeveloped Polaroids, because the chemicals in the film that was in my new old Polaroid camera are all dried out.

So I'm thinking that our children are going to view our blogs like we view our parents' scrapbooks. I also realized that i have a running log of my life since starting college, in the form of my Facebook! But Facebook has made it very difficult to go back very far on your profile, which is stupid, if they're going to gum up their servers with all our public personal information, they might as well make it available to us.

The End.

The Trip to Iowa.

I spent a while on the road this weekend. About 24 hours. Actually, I made the slightly depressing realization that i spent just as much time on the road as at my destination. Fortunately, it was worth it.

I drove 12 hours to Iowa with my friend who had just come in on a plane a few hours earlier. Being fortunate enough to have inherited a fraction of my mother's common sense, I drove the first leg. We had a fairly uneventful drive except for Jordan winning an awesome rubber ball filled with water and sparkles, and the thunderstorm. or should i say, The Thunderstorm.

We were headed towards Cedar Rapids, which is a good sized city that comes out of the blue in the middle of the cornfields. All we could see in the distance were dark clouds, and flashes of lightning about every two seconds. Then we drove underneath it. When that happened, there were sheets of rain coming down, and visibility was nil. and then came the hail. It was awesome.

[BTW, i have video, but it needs some editing cuz it's so long, but i've spent the past hour or two trying to find a decent converter so i can edit it, and i'm having no luck.]


Our next stop was a little place called:




Yep. We had to drive 4 miles off the freeway to Williams, Iowa to fill up at this place. one of my favorite parts of this gas station was this:




We got to Nate's house about 1:30 Iowa time, which is 2:30 our time. And we slept.

The next morning, Nate's family left before we did. Obviously. I didn't even see Nate that morning. Nate's dad heated up some bagel and egg and cheese and ham delicious sandwich, all the while making sarcastic wisecracks at Nate's friend Bryce, who was his best man, and who was at the house that morning... i don't know why.

Josh arrived at around noon, the wedding was at 2:30. We had a bit of a scare, because Jordan and I were on our laptops, and all of the sudden Jordan looks at his laptop and yells "HOLY CRAP! IT'S AFTER TWO!" Me and Josh freak out, i glance down at my laptop clock which says 2:13 or something like that, and then Josh says, "Is that Iowa time?" we breath a sigh of relief, and pull out our cell phones. 1:13. Josh: "Welcome to Central time, guys."

The wedding was great. If you've ever been to a wedding before, you have a good idea of what happened. It was nice to see the ceremony, because it would have been weird to come back to Cornerstone, and have Nate all of the sudden be married.

After the wedding, things started to get super interesting/weird. Because Jordan and I couldn't leave until the next morning, we didn't really have anything to do. Nate suggested that we go to his family's after party, so we could eat something and have something to do. Well, it did keep us entertained...

The highlight was the hayride full of about 40 of Nate's relatives, about 70 percent of them being slightly intoxicated. It was interested to say the least.

One uncle's favorite joke was: "what do you say on a hay-ride? 'HEY!!!"'

So we proceeded to yell "HEY" at everybody we saw. Hee hee.

We then made our awkward appearance at Nate's friend Blain's house, for his bonfire. Let's just say that throwing fireworks into a coffee can filled with ignited gas is a great icebreaker. So towards the end there was some great conversation, and I had a great time.

We hung out with Nate's family a bit after we got back, so we got to bed later than we wanted, so we left the next morning later than we wanted. I don't know how we thought we were going to leave by 8 in the morning anyway. We're crazy.

The drive back went great, it was mostly in the daytime, which was nice. We even had the pleasure of stopping by Amy's house to take a break, eat some food, and hang out at the beach for a bit. It was a nice break. For some reason Jordan got super hyper when we got to Amy's house, so he was fine on the way home.

And then i got home. And here i am!


The End.

Good Gravy! I just climbed out from under my rock and realised I have not updated this since they invented sliced bread... You would not believe how insane my life has become. Stupid Global Warming!.

I am so busy with setting fire to people wearing Crocs, selling my soul to Google, just generally being a nuisance to anyone unfortunate to cross my path, my day seems to be a litany of stuff and giggles from work to sun down and beyond. I am wearing my budgie smugglers. deal with it.

I hope you are having a good life I will make more of an effort to blog more often until the nice men in the white coats come back. Peace! No Joke!.

****

I found an automatic blog post generator.

Ch-ch-ch-check it!

Downtown Adventures with Logan!

***note***
So, Logan convinced me that Xanga would be better for a blog, because you get more traffic, and more publicity, and more access to other blogs. My problem comes in because

1. Most other blogs are trash
2. The good ones like one I read yesterday are compiled by people who think it's a good idea to add a picture to a blog post about the helpfulness of internet filters, and that picture is a guy looking at a playboy cover on a computer. And you can see the playboy cover! Arg!
3. The kind of traffic i'm looking for on my blog is not from BettyLopez telling me that she wants to "get to know me better." *gag* and on top of that, it was probably spam. gag spam.

so that is my reasoning for switching back to Blogger. But i liked my post, so I have it here.

*****

Today was a good day to be the subject of my first xanga blog post.

I was sitting on my behind all day staring at my computer screen, on Facebook, just like usual, when i noticed my friend Logan's status: "Fountain area across the library in downtown is enjoyable. Good place to read, relax, enjoy sun and mooch off the library's WiFi. Join me?" It sounded like a great time to me! So after a series of events to coordinate my leaving, off I went to downtown!

Parking in downtown Grand Rapids is an interesting experience, although i managed to find a spot nice and close to the library. Unfortunately, parallel parking a 15 passenger van is no picnic. After scootching back and forth about 7 times, i managed to get into the spot. Parking is free after 5, so i was happy about that.

Logan had said he would meet me in the café upstairs in the Grand Rapids Main Library. So I got to the third floor, after passing a group of teens rehearsing a choreography number. Logan was nowhere to be seen, but there was a signature Cornerstone laptop sitting at the table, so I parked my own Cornerstone laptop at a table next to it. Logan arrived shortly after I sat down. After a confusing moment of him getting his laptop mixed up with mine, he showed me the message on his laptop screen that had been hidden when his screen went black from inactivity. It said "BRB Thaddaeus" but, i had assumed as much.

Once we were settled in we had a good time chatting about life, twitter, and our favorite youtubers. Chris popped up on Skype, so we had a nice, slightly confusing chat about cows and chocolate milk and tuition and the like.

At about quarter to nine, the intercom started making announcements about the library closing, so we decided to pack up and move to the park outside the library. It's really pretty, it has a nice fountain, and a large population of skateboarders. They weren't so pretty, but they were decent at what they did. We both unpacked our laptops, and realized that we had been using our batteries in the cafe, and now our batteries were dead when we needed them. So, we decided to find a coffee shop or something with WiFi and outlets.

We got halfway out of the park when this guy, mid to late 20's ish stopped and asked if we "had like a dollar." He was most definitely slightly intoxicated. His story confirmed this. Apparently he and his friend, who wandered up later rolling up some white paper with some leaves in it... yeah... had come from Muskegon on a bus to go to a party. They had partied it up at the BOB, the guy I was talking to had gotten "blacked out drunk" and woken up at 2 this afternoon. They just needed a few more dollars for their bus fare back to Muskegon. I'm pretty sure that they were telling the truth, since his friend made it obvious that they didn't need the money for drugs, they had plenty. So, I decided that this was a"Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you" moment (Matt 38:42), and not a "If a man will not work, he shall not eat" moment (2 Thessalonians 3:10), and gave him the last 5 dollars he needed for his bus fare. At least I hope it was his bus fare. I'm thinking it was. Oh, and Logan gave him the 20 cents he had left in his pocket.

After that, we went on our coffee house quest. We were looking for the Biggby on Monroe Central, so I decided to head towards where I thought Rosa Parks Circle was. As we were walking, we heard some loud music. "Oh yeah," I said to Logan "If we stay too late we'll end up running into the Clubbing crowd." "I'd rather not stick around for the clubbing crowd" he replied. I had to agree. So we kept walking. But as we kept walking, the music got louder and louder. Pretty soon I could pick out the melody. Thriller, by the late great say-nothing-but-good-about-the-dead Michael Jackson. Logan speculated that it was coming from Rosa Parks Circle. We found out that it definitely was. There were a bunch of people gathered there, and finally it clicked. It's Tuesday night! And all the swingdancers were lined up in a group doing the Thriller dance. After that the swing music started up again and I saw how great it was. I really want to do that this year, it looks like a blast.

We met a few of Logan's friends who were there, and then we finally managed to find a little coffee shop run by a guy with a sweet accent, and it had WiFi! So we sat down and plugged in, and I let the poor abandoned on skype Chris know we weren't dead. So we continued what we started in the library, I started my Xanga, and drank my iced hot chocolate, which is delicious. Then a bubble popped up that said i should plug in my computer. Weird, i had it plugged in. But sure enough, the green light on the cord was not green. Bother. No power. Me and Logan passed his back and forth, which tided us over, and then we realized it was definitely getting dark and late. And plus, the coffee shop was closing. And we didn't really know how to get back. After going around the block and ending up back at Rosa Parks, we found a way back. Much simpler than the way we came, to be honest. We felt kind of silly, but now we know the extremely easy way how to get from the Library to Rosa Parks circle and back. Those are two great places, so it should come in handy.

I found my way back to my car, and Logan went to his bus stop. My judgement was clouded by a very full bladder, or else i would have offered him a ride home. But, hindsight is 20/20.

Now I'm here, not being able to sleep, and posting to my new Xanga blog. It was a good day. Let's do it again, @logan_nguyen!

Switching!

On the advice of a certain friend named Logan, (railleries.xanga.com) i am switching over to xanga. you can find me at captainthaddaeus.xanga.com! Hope to see you there!

Well, it's been a while since i updated this thing, i'm not even sure who reads it, i suppose it's mostly for getting my thoughts out.

Have you ever felt stagnant? Like you aren't moving anywhere, you're just sitting there getting warm and providing a breeding ground for mosquitoes? I've felt like that lately, I'm just itching to get out somewhere and have an adventure. But what I realized is that, unless you're Bilbo Baggins, adventure doesn't come knocking at your door. You have to seek it out. You have to go have an adventure to have an adventure.

I took a walk a couple weeks ago. I was feeling especially stagnant, and bored, and wanted to do something. So I grabbed a Susan B. Anthony dollar, and out the door I went. I was determined to have adventure. And what better way to have an adventure than to have no control over where you go? That's what I thought anyway. So every time I got to an intersection, I would flip the coin. Heads was right, tails was left, and if it started rolling i went straight. Unfortunately, i just ended up going around in circles. My second time down the same street, I got fed up. "I'm just going around in circles! I wanted Adventure!" I thought to myself. I saw the metaphoric parallels to my life, which probably contributed to my frustration. Then this voice in my head said:

"Well, what are you going to do about it?"

Profound. Here I was, playing the victim, when the responsibility was in my hands all along. So, I headed for downtown, because that was where i was wishing the coin would lead me in the first place.

From here, the story gets less profound. I start towards downtown, and see a giant Catholic church. I decide to do what I've always seen people do in the movies. Just waltz right in and sit down. So I did. It was absolutely gorgeous. I just sat there, taking it all in.

Then my cell phone went off.

I didn't even look to see if people were glaring at me. I just sat there for a bit, and decided to make a break for it. I grabbed my camera bag, slung it across my shoulder and headed out the door. I fumbled my way through crossing myself the best that a Baptist kid could, and went outside. Turns out it was my dad, asking me what I wanted from the ice cream man. So I called him back, and headed for home.

The End.

Will More Posts Follow???

Lent is over, He is risen! The period of fasting is over! So... i'll see if maybe i can update this sometime, right now, it's late, and i don't feel like it. I may not ever, because it was just a crutch to try and replace facebook. We'll see how things turn out.

This is A Test, This is only a test.

Ok, so Word 2007 has a thingymajigger that posts from a word document to your blog. I gotta see if this works. Here goes nothing…

So This Is Goodbye...

So, my good friend and roommate made an interesting, wise, and insightful observation... this blog is just replacing my addiction to facebook with something else instead of God, which kind of defeats the purpose of a fast.

It just goes to show how prone i am to find idols. It's easy to judge the Israelites for Baal and stuff, but Baal, Facebook, what's the difference? If we love anything more than God, it's an idol. so everytime i put off my personal time with God because i was on facebook, it was like making sacrifices to Baal. Interesting to think about.

So, all that to say, this is the last post until Easter. I'll continue this then, because this is really fun.

See ya around!

Random Picasa Post!

So, I figured out how to blog straight from Picasa! And attatch a picture!! Let me just throw this out there: Google is amazingly awesome. Everything they have is so integrated and wonderful. And it's all free. Who would have thought that one of the most biggest moneyfilled-est corporations in the world runs by giving away free stuff! That's awesome. So i'm assuming that the point is that you take an awesome picture, and then you're like, "ooh! i want to blog about this!" and then you do. because you can.

So anyways, i'm just sitting in my hammock, back from seussical rehearsal, waiting to go to set build at 7. I love this hammock. A lot. Thanks Jeff! My friend Jeff got me a hammock from Ecuador. Best 15 bucks i've ever spent.

The problem i'm seeing by beginning this blog while i don't have a facebook is that nobody knows about it. I'm pretty much just talking to myself. Maybe i'll write the url on our markerboard. Oh look! I'm below the picture! Possibly... it could be formatted different.

Another Seussical update, since it is my life now... I'm trying to have a good attitude, and i'm getting better at it. It's hard, and now we've gotten to the point where the directors aren't happy with where the actors (aka me) are at, performancewise, so it's getting difficult, because now i'm under a lot of pressure to work my tail off. Which i guess is fine, we really want this play to be good, and i haven't been performing to the best of my potential.

But giving 100% is such hard work!! And that's true of anything, whether it be school, relationships, God, cleanliness, etc. But that's what we're called to do

Alright, enough deep thoughts, my friends are kicking me through my hammock in order to get me to go to dinner..,

TTYL

OW!

First Post!

So, I got kinda bored, because I gave up my Facebook for lent, and I enjoy writing, and I've done a bit of video blogging, so I decided to give this a whirl. I believe that's how I opened my first video blog too, "give this a whirl." A trend has been set...

Anyway, God's been doing a lot in my life lately, and I've just been trying to learn from Him and take things one step at a time. Life is crazy sometimes, I'm in the musical, I broke up with my girlfriend, and I've been learning over and over that I'm not the one who's in charge.

Seussical. Wow. So, it's got some heavy choreography. Now, i'm not one for choreography, i hardly know how to spell it. (side note, i've given up on capitalizing my i's, because i'm a lazy american college student. I think that spell check fixed it though.) I can hardly line dance. Seriously. As soon as i get the hang of the four steps involved, the song is over. So now, i've got awesome people teaching me, and i'm starting to get the hang of it, i've loosened up, i'm not afraid to move my hips as much anymore... gasp! I can hardly call myself a Baptist! jk. Seussical's fun, and i still have some time to hang out with my friends that aren't in the musical, which is most of them. Such is life. It's not exactly a highlight of my life, but it's pretty fun.

Honestly, one of the biggest highlights of my life right now is my philosophy class with Prof. Stevens. He's pretty much insane, but his insight on life is worth every penny of tuition that i'm borrowing from my later self. I can go into more of what i've learned in that class in a later post, when it's fresh in my head and i feel like a philosopher. Those should be some interesting posts.

Well, it's REALLY late, fortunately i get to sleep in, but I will come back soon.

More to come, friends!