FRIDAY FUN DAY!!!!!! (on saturday)

I was digging up some old essays I turned in for College, ENJOY!!!!!

I recently read an article somewhere that quiche is the seventh most deadly killer in the world taking the life of more the 600,380 people last year alone. I thought to myself, "Why isn't this a bigger news story?" Where is Bono? Where is Kevin Federline? Why aren't they doing anything to stop this epidemic from sweeping the world clean of quiche-loving people?  Then I started to think to myself,

     "Dan why are you doing anything about this? All you ever do is feed the poor, fix cars for single ladies, build wells for third world countries, house illegal chinese immigrants in your basement, research cures for the common cold, volunteer at the local hooters, give free haircut to the homeless (even when they don't want them), and sit on your butt all day!!! Why don't you do anything?"

My feeling of guilt turned into a raging case of diarhea. While sitting on the toilet for 6 hours singing my favorite System of a Down songs, I came up with an idea how we could cure this quiche problem: Tonya Harding!!! She's tough, she's athletic, she's been known to get kicked out of bars for throwing stuff, and she hates faggy dishes of food. She would be perfect. I read the article again one last time to see if it said anything about Tonya Harding and it turns out they weren't talking about quiche at all, they were talking about Car accidents. Turns out quiche was never even mentioned in the article....Who's the goose?

Viva la revolution!

I have to be honest. Sometimes I think of Church as cheesy. Am I allowed to say that? Sometimes I look at the rut we get into and think church is worthless. We go on Sunday, dressed to impress and ready to stare at the worship team as they sing songs. We close our eyes as the pastor prays, then we listen to him talk about his educated knowledge of the bible afterwards we go home and get on with enjoying the rest of the afternoon. To me, this seems like a morning that could translated as worthless. But this weekly ritual is meant for two things: to create community and to feed us. If executed in the right heart, this is far from cheesy! It’s a downright revolution!

            Church itself has nothing to do with the clothes we wear or the day of the week we attend. Church is intended for people who want to be in community with others who share a hunger and thirst for knowledge and a love for God. But it’s also intended for so much more....


Thank you to my 'community' for being so authentic and thirsty!

After two days off...

Sorry I didn't blog in two days.....Here are my current thoughts...

Bono had a chance to speak at a national prayer breakfast in front of our nations political leaders. He said something to the equivalent of the fact that he wanted to be with the poor because that’s where God is. God is with the poor

            I think we want to worship a God that sits on a thrown, demanding worship because of his greatness. It’s much easier to have that picture of Christ then to have the picture of us walking past a stinky, homeless, alcoholic, meth head and know that THAT is where God desires to be and that He would choose to love that person over sitting on a thrown. What I’m trying to emphasis is the point that GOD is with the poor, the widows, the sick, the needy, the BROKEN. We are blessed in the fact that he is with us!!

            So where is God? We often find God when we are forced to our knees. For those of us who claim to be Christians, our closeness to God probably came from when we realized we were broken. Which usually doesn’t come unless something major happens in our life. So where is God. If he favors the poor, the broken, the needy, Are you willing to be with the poor, the broken, the needy? Like bono, It’s not as difficult as it seems. Being in Christ’s presence doesn’t exactly mean you have to sell everything and live on the streets. But a good start to living in God’s presence comes when we let go of our own desires and pride and fill that void with God’s desires and pride. The less we are, the more we can be filled by God. That is more fulfilling then anything else we try and fill our broken lives with.

FRIDAY FUN DAY!!!!!!

I decided that the coffeebean community needs to lighten up a little bit. So friday is now "Friday Fun Day!!!!!!!!" so let me tell you an interesting story......

So everyone tells me how CRAZY it is to drink 5 energy drinks in one night....I didn't believe them so I decided to give it a shot and boy was I in for a shock (literally). It all started when I was relieving myself in Mrs. Jonsons garden and I thought " this just isn't cutting it for a tuesday night. IT'S TUESDAY!!! IT's TIME TO PARTY!!!! How can I let a tuesday night go by with out a party" That's when it struck me that I don't know a mrs. Jonson and I haven't been able to relieve myself in three weeks. So I went to the super market where they were having a sale on tube socks. I skipped right past the frenzied shoppers as they fought over these quality socks at a reasonable price and I went staight for the oranges but they were all sold out so I bought some tube socks instead. As I left the store I thought how great Tuesdays always were and now as I got closer to the age of 48, they just weren't the same. Anyhoo, back to the energy drinks... So as I was in the parking lot this shifty eyed man that stood about 6'8" and weighed anywhere between 100 and 120lbs. came up to me and wispered sweet nothings into my ear. After we giggled together for about 25 minutes, he asked if I wanted to by some weed from him, I polite declined by punching him in the Knee caps and asked if he had anything that would be more exciting for a tuesday night? He said one word.."Rockstar" I said five words "I will take five please" he said six words back to me " That will be ten doll hairs" So I paid the fatty and got the heck out of there. I guzzled down all five of the energy drinks as I sparatically ran throughout the parking lot of the supermarket. I dodged around cars. weaved in and out of the shopping carts scattered around and ended with tackling an old lady before she got in her car. I got really hurt by doing so but at least we both had a good laugh about it. About an hour into finishing the last of the energy drinks, I noticed that my hair had grown past my shoulders but large chunks had fallen out, I started speaking in a langauge that nobody could understand, and I was uncontrolably crying and singing at the same time. some lady tried to help me but as I went in for a hug, I accidently twisted her head right off of her body. I decided it would be best if I just ended the night and my life by going to the zoo and wrestling a giraffe. Of coarse the giraffe won and beat the living crap out of me ( literally ) but when I got up, My hair was at a normal length, I was speaking in Spanish again, and I wasn't singing anymore ( although I was still crying a lot). I realized that the only way to come off of such a high as that was, is to kill yourself and then you will come back as a normal person!!! This is a picture of me from that night....

Where is GOD?!?!??!?

            I feel like this whole ‘God is Love’ conversation has left a lot of people depressed or even angry because in some situations it’s hard or even impossible to see that God loves. We live in a very broken world and in many cases there is no love to be found anywhere. This lack of love comes from an inward looking lifestyle where people care more about themselves then anything else. We all do this. We are all broken.

In that brokenness we often look to how things should be or how things are supposed to be. If only the world were how it’s supposed to be. If only there was no greed. If only there was no starvation, if only I was born to a richer family, if only I was 5 years older, the list of “if only “ goes on FOREVER. We have all these preconceived notions of what we think the world needs to be…Or how God needs to be.

            If we live in a broken world and God is love, then where is God? ? I can only imagine how many times that question arose during hurricane Katrina, The world trade center crashes, the malaria breakouts in Africa, the daily bombings in Iraq, the  day my dad lost his job, the time my mom walked out on us, when my boyfriend dumped me after after I had sex with him, when my brother committed suicide. The list goes on and on. Where is GOD? We ask this question quite often. But the answer is always the same.

Hebrews 13:5-6 “ I will never leave you or forsake you.”

Where is God?  

James 1:17 says that “every good and perfect gift comes from above, coming down from the father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

 Mother Theresa worked in what other people called “ a Godless place” she once said that God is in the darkest crevasses. So where is God? We expect God to be on this High and mighty throne, eating grapes and having angels fan him with there wings and massage his feet. And by all means, that’s where he belongs he should be up there. We should be praising him and Bowing down. But he’s in the slums, with the poor , in September of 2005 he was in the super dome crying with the Katrina victims who lost their house. On 9/11 he was running around the streets of new york whispering “it’s okay, I’m with you”. Every day he’s in the clinics in Africa giving strength and wisdom to the overworked doctors fixing the malaria problem, with every car bombing in Iraq God is crying out “it doesn’t have to be this way”. And right next to him is a person saying “where is GOD?!?!?!”. You see as much as Christ deserves to sit on a throne all day and be worshiped (keep in mind the omnipresence of God) he’s down in the slums loving on his favorite people. 

THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD!

Jarret Stevens wrote a book called ‘the diety formerly known as God’ where he discusses the numerous ways we view God. Whether good or bad, we all have these ideas of who God is. ‘God the Father’ or  ‘God the kind old man’ some of these images bring about negative feelings of who God is and what he’s all about. I don’t have the time or the venue to discuss the many characteristics of God, but there is one true thing I know about God’s character. God loves stories. He is the author of the best selling book of all time! The bible isn’t the only place where we here stories of God, but it’s a great start. I feel like the bible is the preface to our personal stories. Whether we accept that fact or not, it’s where we start out. To understand my story, I have to start at the beginning and my story doesn’t start in the 80’s (yes I know I’m old) it starts in Genesis When God created mankind and walked in the Garden with adam and eve and there was the purest form of relationship between them. God is Love and God loved Adam and Eve and to complete what Love truly means, Mankind not only accepted God’s love but they put it into action by loving others. This great story now begins. God loves mankind and mankind now has an outlet to not only accept God’s love but express it. SPOILER ALERT. Adam and Eve begin living an inward life where they look to better themselves and leave God on the back burner. Their actions allow them to see shame in themselves and they hide from God. A wall begins to be built. Adam and Eve hide. Fastforward. God still desires relationship with mankind. God, more then anyone else, realizes that man has stopped itself from the purest form of Love. God’s love is ever flowing down to us but when we live inwardly, we have no way of accepting God’s love. If we don’t allow ourselves to accept God’s love then the only love we give others is an artificial, carbon copy of love. If all of mankind is giving ‘artificial’ love to each other, no one is actually experiencing ‘true’ love. It all starts at the source of Love, God. Remember, God is love. In the purest sense of the word, true love can only come from God. With that, we see this epic story begin in the bible where God pursues mankind and mankind does life on it’s own, only to call out for God in times of struggle. 




What do YOU think?

We are broken (part 2)

In the book of Ecclesiastes, the teacher goes into great detail about all these great things that at one point or another, he has put his heart and soul into only to be let down and realize that whatever ‘it’ was, is meaningless. As wise as he is, he pursues great paths. He tries the highest roads and endures the lowest of roads. He educates himself on every subject possible. This teacher is driven to find the answer to life’s most important question, “What is it all for? What is life all about?” His conclusion at every new turn is that it’s all meaningless. Life is meaningless. Done? End of Story? It would be easy for the pessimist in all of us to stop right there and say ‘great’ (sarcastically) I guess I’ll just ‘be’, I guess I’ll just ‘exist’ until life is over. It seems like if the wisest man to ever pursue answers to life came up with the conclusion that life is meaningless, then we have the ability to just do whatever can make us happy until life is over. Let’s just do whatever we want right? After all, we are only a dot within a dot within a dot. We will be forgotten 5 years after we die anyway so what’s the point?

            Awesome, now that we are all mad and destitute, let’s study that! What is the point? The teacher ends Ecclesiastes saying that we should love God and serve God. He says this is the ‘whole duty of man’. Okay, but that’s not fun though. Is there any other ‘duty’ that we could take on instead? Well, I guess you could assume yourself to be smarter then the millions and millions and millions of people who came and went before you and you could assume that it would be different for you. I guess you could take a chance and live life for yourself and hope that life turns out meaningful for you without God in the picture. Maybe you’re different then all of mankind when it comes to this? But let’s be honest, you’re a dot within a dot within a dot. Sorry to keep bringing that up, but until we understand that, we still think that life is all about ourselves. And if we live an inward looking life, we waste years and years of what God could create meaning out of. I’ll say it again, we have the opportunity to not live into a meaningless life and it comes from understanding who God created us to be.