Life Is Good

This past Sunday afternoon as Jennie was heading out the door she announced that the Sunday evening meal was going to be cereal. I was a little bummed out until a few hours later when I was shoveling Frankenberry into my face.

It was a fun dinner. The kids were excited because we usually don't get the unhealthy cereals and also, for years, I'd described to them my favorite childhood cereal: Count Chocula. Even Jennie was mildly amused, enjoying her crunchy treat (likely well coated with non-nutritive cereal varnish). On bowl two, as I was finishing up the Count Chocula induced chocolaty milk, I was thinking about enjoying life and God's blessings.

Here are a few ...

* Count Chocula and Frankenberry.

* The Red Sox winning their division.

* The Red Sox ending the season with a better record than the Yankees.

* The Red Sox making the playoffs.

* Cool weather and fall football.

* Watching Josh enjoy fall football, pre-game jitters and all.







* Watching Hannah cheer for her brother and finding her niche in the 'heavy lifting' department.











* Enjoying a beautiful fall day at the farm.

* Enjoying Caleb enjoying Prophet.


* Finding solitude in the woods and communing with God on a cool fall night.

"a God who intended to create beings like us"

"the odds against a universe like ours emerging out of something like the big bang are enormous....I think clearly there are religious implications."

"it would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us."

- Physicist Stephen Hawking

1) Stephen Hawking, quoted in John Boslough, Masters of Time: Cosmology at the End of Innocence (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1992) 55.
2) Hawking, A Brief History of Time, 127.

Step of Faith

One of the basic tenents of Christianity is the belief that God answers prayer. The Bible teaches that God is powerful and prayer makes a difference. Here is an excellent prayer from James Emery White's book A Search for the Spiritual that anyone can start with .....

"God, I am not even sure that I believe you're there listening to this, but if you are, I want to find you. I really do want to know the truth. If you exist, please show yourself to me."

Do Blogs Violate The Bible?

A prudent man keeps his knowledge to himself, but the heart of fools blurts out folly. (Proverbs 12:23 NIV)

A man of knowledge uses words with restraint.... Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent, and discerning if he holds his tongue. (Proverbs 17:27 and 28 NIV)

When words are many, sin is not absent; but he who holds his tongue is wise . (Proverbs 10:19 NIV)

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By rights, this should be my last blog entry. Oh the wisdom of shutting up! These Proverbs were penned by Solomon, a ruler considered to be one of the wisest in ancient history. They came from this past Sunday's sermon at church entitle 'Lip-O-Suction' which was based on the Bible verse in James which says "be quick to listen, slow to speak". The sermon did make me pause and consider if blogging is really a positive activity. Am I just shooting my mouth off, showing my stupidity?
It made me think back about why I created this blog in the first place. We live in a culture that is filled with activity and distraction. We keep ourselves so busy that it's easy to just float along and amuse ourselves. We never turn down the noise long enough to consider if there is more to life than all this. What is the meaning of life? Where did we come from and why are we here?
I believe that we are God's creation, created for a purpose. God's primary purpose in creating us was so that we could have a relationship with Him. I created this blog with the hope that readers would take a moment to turn off the noise and consider the God whole loves them. My goal has never been to spout off my own opinions (although sometimes I fall into that trap) but to do what I could to turn our attention to God.
The Bible teaches that God has revealed Himself to us through his Son, Jesus. To learn more about how Christ brings us to God you can click here to take the Life Hound 8 Minute Challenge

Mouth In Motion Before Brain in Gear - Workplace Edition

It's not easy being a Massachusetts Yankee living in the south, even though diversity and tolerance promotion seems to be the first agenda item at my company's staff meetings these days. Today we had a diversity ice breaker. Raise your hand if you're a male, raise your hand if you're a female, raise your hand if you were born in the south, raise your hand if you were born in the north, raise your hand if you were born outside of the United States. Then this wiseguy co-worker leans over and quietly says: 'Hey, being born in Massachusetts IS considered being born outside of the United States"! That was a swipe at Mass's liberal reputation.

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There is one thing that I don't understand about the corporate world. My company will kick off a big initiative. It will be an important, high level project that is frequently talked about by management. But then they ask for 'volunteers' to help with the project! What's with this volunteering approach? If you're sitting around and have time to volunteer for stuff maybe they don't really need you anyway! Let's take the first three people that volunteer and eliminate their positions. See if the company can live without them!

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I think the government needs to adopt one practice from the corporate world. That would be the concept of billing your time. Whenever we get asked by a project to assist with research or do analysis, we usually ask for a project number to bill the time to. I think the government should do the same thing. This would have been nice during General Petraeus's testimony before congress. The guy is supposed to come in and report on the situation in Iraq and instead our elected representatives waste at least 100 minutes of his time. He listens to congressman dis the Iraqi government, his microphone doesn't work, and protesters are allowed to disrupt the hearing. All this occurs before he even gets a chance to say his first sentence. Petraeus should have been allowed to bill that wasted time to congress. What a joke.

Life Hound Stories

The Lord has blessed me with some great kids. This is my son Josh enjoying a smore on a recent family camping trip. Josh is a great kid. He is very active and loves all athletics. He is currently playing football. Josh is into Transformers and loves to play with his brother and a friend from the neighborhood.

Josh's story is the latest on the Life Hound Stories page. Click here to read it!

Oldsters - Memory Lapse

An elderly couple had dinner at another couple's house, and after eating, the wives left the table and went into the kitchen. The two gentlemen were talking, and one said, "Last night we went out to a new restaurant and it was really great. I would recommend it very highly."

The other man said, "What is the name of the restaurant?" The first man thought and thought and finally said, "What is the name of that flower you give to someone you love? You know... The one that's red and has thorns."

"Do you mean a rose?" "Yes, that's the one," replied the man.

He then turned towards the kitchen and yelled, "Rose, what's the name of that restaurant we went to last night?"

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"LORD, make me to know my end and what is the extent of my days; Let me know how transient I am. "Behold, You have made my days as handbreadths, And my lifetime as nothing in Your sight; Surely every man at his best is a mere breath. (Psalm 39: 4-5)

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A theme throughout the Old Testament is the brevity of life. This is hard to imagine when we are young but as we get older we realize what people mean when they say 'time flies'. Yet God has an eternal purpose for each of us and wants to build a relationship with us that never ends. You can learn more about having a relationship with God by taking the Life Hound 8 Minute Challenge