Yep, the Fun is Being Sucked Right Out!

What does it mean when you drive to work, park the car, and walk into work, work all day, clock out, then walk to the parked car, get in, turn the key, and nothing happens.

nothing.


at all.


oh wait. Something does happen.


When you take the keys out of the ignition.


The gauges all start up, the needles all move in unison to the right.

The oil gauge. The speedometer. The water temperature indicator.

Yep, every single indicator indicates the car is about to blow.

We are having fun now.

What Do You Do...

When you are so burned out, all you want to do is wipe it all away from the dry erase board of life, and take a "do-over"?

*sigh* I am so tired. How did things go from being so fun to having all the fun sucked out?

Ever wonder why you keep holding on at something hoping and wishing it was going to get better but it never does? and in fact, things get worse? and you think that it can't get worse, yet it keeps looking more and more grim? But, you keep holding on to whatever glimmer of hope you think is flickering.

Wow, it is amazing how God works sometimes. Katie just had me look up a verse she wants to give to a friend. Little does she know how God used that verse to speak to me just now.

"Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you."

Philippians 3:11-15

What Do You Live For?

What do you live for? Is it something to stand for? Is it everything you believe and more?

A new song that made me think.

Storyside B

Quenching the Spirit

Professional theologians are often accused of "quenching the spirit".

All who have thoughts about God are theologians. If you forward an email that says God will bless you if you do, that indicates something about your theology. If you have no belief in a god whatsoever, that is another indication of what your theology is. If you say angels have wings, or that the devil carries a pitchfork and has horns, that also is indicative of your theology.

Professional theologians are those who usually make a living studying things of God. They construct their theology from a lot of study and research. Professional theologians are very aware of common trends and are critical of theological ideas. Professional theologians are often accused of "quenching the spirit".

Do you replace faith with knowledge?

I'm wondering if some theologians are accused of "quenching the spirit" because they sometimes do!? Is it possible that some theologians actually do replace faith with "knowledge"? I think of the Pharisees of Jesus' day...they were the "thinkers" and knew their theology inside and out which blinded them to the true Theology they were witness to. It stood before them and they missed it.

Also, satan himself has knowledge of the Word yet more than anything he quenched and quenches the Spirit BIGTIME!

Are some professional theologians "threatened" by events of a supernatural God? Supernatural would mean that the event can not be explained as something that would occur naturally. Things like, oh...healing a blind man, the sun staying out and making daytime last for 24 hours, resurrection of the dead, and while many Christian theologians will believe those Biblical events, will they have faith enough to believe that they themselves can experience a miracle? Something that defies explanation? Possibly their own salvation experience? or a healing? a spiritual transformation? a "Divine Intervention"?

The Introduction to Theology study I'm working on has me pondering some things.

Thoughts on Blog Designs

I am no website designer by any means. I think looking at this blog makes that pretty clear. LOL Still, I like this blog design for the Sisters' Weblog.

As I surf many many blogs a day, I see a lot of different and creative designs. Seeing all these colors, banners, buttons, lines, shapes, fonts, plug-ins, blogrolls, profiles, and icons, I started wondering if people can learn anything about a blog's author, not from reading posts, but by examining blog design. As readers, do we make suppositions about the author simply through what we see in the blog's design?

I notice some blogs (Drama Queen's Guide to Life, Mystickal Insense Blog, Mommy's Busy...Take a Number!) have these really interesting modern "art-deco", cartoon looking characters in the header of their blog. I wonder if these characters are representative of the author? Do they share some physical resemblance at all, like in a caricature? Did they design these sites or have a professional designer build it from scratch for the author? I really find these type of designs interesting and nice.

Some bloggers opt to stick with the generic templates, possibly with minor tweaks, offered by whatever blog software they choose to use (My Opinion on Sports, i On Global Trends, Jazz Coffee). I wonder sometimes if they chose a template because it matches their taste? Or maybe they figure they can use it as a "launch" pad and learn how to tweak it to their taste later? That's kind of what I like to do. Or, maybe the look of the blog isn't as important to them as the content they can share on it?

Some authors have these wonderfully magnificent, visually stunning pictures or interesting artwork that immediately capture a reader's attention (One Man Bandwidth, Nature's Artwork, This is Not the Life I Pictured). Obviously these banners/headers are very cool. They are nice to look at and work very well to get a surfer's attention, probably enough so to hang around a read an entry or two. I wonder, are these author's feeling more "pressure" to write outstanding posts to live up to any expectations their blog design commands? Why did they choose that picture/artwork? Does it represent them in anyway, or is it just a pretty picture?

Some bloggers have gobs and gobs of things on their blogs; blogrolls, polls, scriptures, music, videos, "blinkies", buttons, weather pixies, clocks, puzzles, ads, etc. I call them "busy" and wonder if this reflects what goes on in the author's life? Some blogs are so simple in design, I can scarcely know anything about the author because there is not even a profile posted. Are these authors shy? hiding?

I'm a simple person, therefore I am partial to simpler designs. This blog demonstrates that with a simple header, a blog and one sidebar. The sidebar contains information pertinent to us, and hopefully if a reader is interested in learning more about the sisters, it is easy to find a quick profile. With some more investigating, it is possible to click on the "+" signs and follow some more links and discover even more things.

The design of the Sisters' Weblog is an important one to me, partially because I've learned a lot in "tweaking" templates and trying to make it "my own". It has been fun playing around with fonts and colors and stuff that is at least representative of myself and my friend Katie. This

"The shadows prove the Sonshine"

design is in green because green is my favorite color. The background design is of shadows. The two figures in the shadows are Katie and me. I took the picture as we were walking along in front of the Marshall County Courthouse in Marshalltown, IA when we were visiting in April 2005. It was such a sunny day and our shadows were so prominent on the sidewalk, I just snapped a quick picture. I played around with the coloring and contrast to make it workable as a background. The header design incorporates the shadows as well and I also included a picture of Katie and me, which, was actually taken in front of the courthouse that day. I cut the courthouse out of the shot and pasted the pic of us on the banner. In the upper right I included the words "the shadows prove the Sonshine" because while shadows are sometimes associated with dark alleys and dark times, in order for there to be a shadow, there must be light. Katie and I are in the Light, and shadows remind us of that.

We are sisters, not in the biological sense, but in the sense that we share a common bond through Jesus Christ. Our faith in Him make us sisters, sisters in Christ. We try to honor God with our lives and through our blog we want to glorify Him. We hope that people stopping by might be blessed by what they learn about us, and what they might learn about Him.

So, sometimes I am just curious as to why a blogger chooses the design that they do? Or why they change it? and why they change it again every week? or why I am sometimes, as the reader, given the choice as to what design I want their blog to be? Why is your blog designed the way it is? How does it represent you? or does it?

We're An Original

I was listening to a sermon (02/05/06/) today from Pastor Richard Sipe at First Baptist Church in Marshalltown, IA. Pastor Sipe is an amazing communicator, and in his sermon he made a neat analogy that I wanted to share.

Recently, Pastor Sipe had been on vacation and took a cruise. On this cruise he was introduced to a bit of the arts, a bit of "culture" as he says, and learned about lithography.

We all couldn't have the original painting "Daily Bread" on display on the walls in our home without lithography. He said that he learned that an original piece of art can be when someone else sees a piece of artwork and then makes a lithograph, which is a reproduction of the artist's original work. Then the creator of the artwork, the artist, comes along, looks at the lithograph and says "hey, that's pretty good" and then he signs it. With that artist's signature on the lithograph, it is now considered an "original".

Pastor Sipe went on to say that's the way it is with us:

We live our lives and then there comes a day where we accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and we say yes we believe that Jesus is the resurrection and the life, and we understand that Jesus cares so much, that He weeps for our pain, He weeps for our needs, He understands and He weeps because we have hopelessness and we need Him, and we turn to Him and the Bible says then we become a new creation and Jesus comes along and He signs His name on us. And we're an original. And we're an original child of God who has eternal life. We're an original.

I'm an original! Woohooo! I kind of like the image of Jesus signing His name to my heart. That's cool!

I'm an original!

Are you?

Pizza! Pizza! Pizza!

Justin, Katie's 15 year old, just tried to call to have pizza delivered. The funny thing is it is 8:50 in the morning!

LOL

I laughed and laughed!

The kid LOVES pizza and when Katie left this morning she left him some money to order pizza with today. I guess he just couldn't wait for LUNCH! LOL