Welcome to my Tumblr

This is something I have to constantly remind myself to...

Mon, 21 May 2012 13:38:04 -0700

This is something I have to constantly remind myself to do…

"As a leader, you never assume control of the issue. They (employees) own it not you. You coach and..."

Sat, 05 May 2012 14:33:00 -0700

“As a leader, you never assume control of the issue. They (employees) own it not you. You coach and you mentor, but you make them decide and act. If it’s their plan, they’re more likely to make to happen. I helped add what I considered the most important ingredient: mutual respect and a feeling of togetherness.”

- Brian Baker physician and colonel in U.S. Army

"Great leaders don’t build platforms to escape from people; they build platforms to serve..."

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 13:53:42 -0700

“Great leaders don’t build platforms to escape from people; they build platforms to serve people.”

- Jon Acuff

Shame.

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 17:24:44 -0700

Shame.

Easter 2012 Art and Imagination The Church needs artists...

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 13:24:00 -0700

Easter 2012

Art and Imagination

The Church needs artists because without art we cannot reach the world. The simple fact is that the imagination ‘gets you,’ even when your reason is completely against the idea of God. ‘Imagination communicates,’ as Arthur Danto says, ‘indefinable but inescapable truth.’ Those who read a book or listen to music expose themselves to that inescapable truth. There is a sort of schizophrenia that occurs if you are listening to Bach and you hear the glory of God and yet your mind says there is no God and there is no meaning. You are committed to believing nothing means anything and yet the music comes in and takes you over with your imagination. When you listen to great music, you can’t believe life is meaningless. Your heart knows what your mind is denying. We need Christian artists because we are never going to reach the world without great Christian art to go with great Christian talk.

-Tim keller

"You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to..."

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 16:39:00 -0700

“You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.”

- J.K. Rowling

"Wrestling with God is not a bad thing. It’s impossible to wrestle with someone who is far away from..."

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 17:12:00 -0800

“Wrestling with God is not a bad thing. It’s impossible to wrestle with someone who is far away from you. You can only wrestle someone who is close to you. Sometimes we interpret it as failure, but I think God sees it as intimacy.”

Perspective

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 13:53:00 -0800

Sometimes you have to take a step back in order to really see the beauty of something. From the ledge of the Grand Canyon, Beauty shines bright as the sun. She wears a dress of granite and sky with sparkling shoes made of rushing river. Her eyes shine bright as the sunbeams shade the giant cliffs and valleys with color and shadow, revealing scope and texture. Her hair smells like wildflowers in the crisp desert wind. It’s difficult to stand on the ledge of the Grand Canyon and not notice her blinding presence.

But if you hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and lay prostrate with your face against the rocky floor, you may notice that your awareness of her will soon begin to wane. You may find that all you see down there is rock. Maybe some dirt or a crawling bug. These are the threads of her dress, but up close, it’s easy to lose her essence in the details.

I find this to be true of art.

Art is not created in ivory towers or scenic overlooks. The actual creation of beauty happens down into the valley with the dirt and the bugs. Art is created with blistered hands and stained clothes. The true artist treats each thread with the same care that she has for the whole dress. But down in the dirt, it is easy to lose perspective over time. It’s easy to start seeing rock rather than canyon, thread rather than dress–easy to be so focused on the single word in the lyric, that you can lose sight of the song, of why you even make music in the first place.

It is easy for the student to forget why she is in school at all. She is lost in term papers and quizzes, but loses perspective of what it means to be human in the blur of her frantic motion, and her experience as a student is limited by her narrowed perspective.

It’s easy for the dad to forget that in changing diapers and scrubbing dishes, he may very well be ushering the Kingdom of God into the world.

Sometimes it is good to step back and remember the bigger picture. I think that this has something to do with what Lent is about. It’s about remembering who we are and why are here. Lent is hiking up to the ledge again. It’s reminding us of our humanity again. We paint crosses of ash on our foreheads to remind us that we come from dust and to dust we shall return. We give up things we like as a way of taking a step back from the blur and chaos of our lives, taking a clean look at what we have set our hands to, gathering strength for another day of work in the valley.

So to all of us with weary and blistered fingers, I pray that we would find the strength to take a step back–to hike back up to the ledge again and remember the bigger picture of who we are and why we do what we do. We are sewing a dress—a dress that is the essence of goodness and beauty. It is like a Kingdom. It’s like a wedding dress. And when we remember this, may it fill us with courage to take a few deep breaths of that crisp desert air and descend once more into the valley where the work gets done.

-Gungor

"Saints burn way more grace than sinners ever could."

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 13:46:34 -0800

“Saints burn way more grace than sinners ever could.”

- Dallas Willard

"You want to know where God lives? He lives at the end of your rope."

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 11:32:00 -0800

“You want to know where God lives? He lives at the end of your rope.”

- Dallas Willard

Photo

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:18:57 -0800

"If deliverance is all I desire for God for, when trouble disappears, my desire for God will..."

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:11:28 -0800

“If deliverance is all I desire for God for, when trouble disappears, my desire for God will disappear.”

- Louis Zamperini

"Great comfort rarely brings great growth"

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:52:00 -0800

“Great comfort rarely brings great growth”

- John Ortberg

"Trouble can reveal my character. Trouble can also be an opportunity for the growth of character."

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 17:10:04 -0800

“Trouble can reveal my character. Trouble can also be an opportunity for the growth of character.”

- John Ortberg

Nick Benoit: Joy

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 16:22:50 -0800

Nick Benoit: Joy:

nickbenoit:

Writing this was one of the things that helped me lay claim to Joy this season.

Through many ups and downs and questions and answers I came a little closer to understanding Joy as something that is permanent, inexhaustible, and steadfast, a new status that is Truth. Truth that is independent of…

Nick Benoit: Potential

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 11:33:46 -0800

Nick Benoit: Potential:

nickbenoit:

I recently started reading Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. It’s a biography of an olympic runner and World War II survivor named Louis Zamperini.

(If you haven’t gotten a copy of this book yet, you really should. I haven’t traditionally turned to histories or biographies for my recreational…

"I have had the experience over and over again that the quieter it is around me, the clearer do i..."

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 11:09:04 -0800

“I have had the experience over and over again that the quieter it is around me, the clearer do i feel the connection to you. It is as though in solitude that should develops senses which we hardly know in everyday life. Therefore i have not felt lonely or abandoned for one moment. You, the parents, all of you, the friends and students of mine at the front, all are constantly present to me… Therefore you must not think me unhappy. What is happiness and unhappiness? It depends on so little on the circumstances; it depends on really only on that which happens inside a person.”

- Bonhoeffer’s final Christmas time letter to fiancee
Maria von Wedemeyer, December 19, 1944

At the Beginning of a New Year

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 11:04:57 -0800

The road to hell is paved with “good intentions.” This saying, which is found in a broad variety of lands, does not arise from the brash worldly wisdom of an incorrigible. It instead reveals deep Christian insight. At the beginning of a new year, many people have nothing better to do than to make a list of bad deeds and resolve from now on - how many such “from-now-ons” have there already been! - to begin with better intentions, but they are still stuck in the middle of their paganism. They believe that a good intention already means a new beginning; they believe that on their own they can make a new start whenever they want. But that is an evil illusion: only God can make a new beginning with people whenever God pleases, but not people with God. Therefore, people cannot make a new beginning at all; they can only pray for one. Where people are on their won and live by their own devices, there is only the old, the past. Only where God is can there be a new beginning. we cannot command God to grant it; we can only pray to God for it. And we can pray only when we realize that we cannot do anything, that we have reached our limit, that someone else must make that new beginning.

Circumstances

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 11:05:01 -0800

My faith and walk with God isn’t based on circumstances.

New Year's Text

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:49:51 -0800

If we survive during the coming weeks or months, we shall be able to see quite clearly that all has turned out for the best. The idea that we could have avoided many of life’s difficulties if we had taken things more cautiously is too foolish to be entertained for a moment. As I look back on your past I am so convinced that what has happened hitherto has been right, that I feel that what is happening now is right too. To renounce a full life an its real joys in order to avoid pain is neither Christian nor human.

-Bonhoeffer to Renate and Eberhard Bethge,
written from TEgal, January 23, 1944