Journal

According to livescience.com they polled a lot of people and a lot of scientists to find the “Top 10 Greatest Mysteries of Science.”  It’s not surprising that in the top 5 you’ll find:
-Where is the rest of the universe?  only 4% of the matter and energy in the universe has been found.  How could they even know that?
-What drives evolution?  what is evolution?  That sounds made up…
-Who are you?  -I’ve been asking myself that for a long time now…
-How did life arise on earth?  -sounds like the evalootion question or however you say it.

Granted, I’m being ridiculous with my commentary, but really- it sounds like everyone’s looking for a beginning, and an ending and “science” has yet to yield solid results.  Really, we don’t even know how gravity works.  Still!  If we’ve only come this far in decades and generations of modern science and research, it doesn’t sound like we’re going to have the time in our lives to get to the conclusion.  Don’t get me wrong, I love science and nerdy things, but my faith hat hangs on God.  Searching for answers is just too much fun, but honestly, I don’t “believe” in science. 
Here’s a nerdy article: here
Just reading this makes me believe a lot of scientists believe in God but just don’t know it.

I’m a dork.  These are my ramblings.

Hello, friends, fans, and family.
Last night Mike and I had the opportunity to hear the heart of some of our fellow christian music artists about the current rising global crisis.  To my surprise it’s not famine, it’s not AIDS, it’s not financial deficit either.

I know I’ve blogged about this before and sorry for repeating myself.  I realized during this conversation we had recently that I am in a band that has a platform (although modest in size) to speak and “fight the darkness.”

This growing crisis is human slavery.  It is said that there are now more slaves in the world today than in any point in history.  This slavery isn’t working in fields or factories.  Children are being sexually abused.  And this isn’t an intangible reality.  This is a virus of the most evil nature that manifests itself in India, China, Africa, and just a few months ago even in my own back yard of Nashville, TN.  A local motel was raided and 8 girls were rescued from a prison of a room filled with mattresses.

I could fill this page with statistics and heart breaking, disgusting stories, but I’d rather fill this page with hope.  There are facilities and institutions in place that are making a change.  They will not be quiet and they are shining their light where there is no light.  Please, educate yourself on this subject that not many know about.  The church is oblivious to this situation and we must not wait for the government to deal with it like the last time.  Slavery is real and it pays less in our generation.

I’m excited because we’re working with other artists to help fight this poison that has silently crept into the streets of our world.  Pray that those who are oppressed will be saved.

God will break the chains.  He will deliver.  Allow him to work in you to fight the darkness.

www.ijm.org

www.thehomefoundation.net

So, there’s an age-long conversation about going to church I’ve been witness or exposed to.

My whole life I’ve known that it’s good to go to church.  A few days ago Heather and I read why…

¹³ “If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath
and from doing as you please on my holy day,
if you call the Sabbath a delight
and the LORD’s holy day honorable,
and if you honor it by not going your own way
and not doing as you please or speaking idle words,

¹⁴ then you will find your joy in the LORD,
and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land
and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob.”
The mouth of the LORD has spoken.

-Isaiah 58:13-14

There’s a lot of cool moments in there.
If I keep from doing as I please then…
I will find delight in the Lord.

So take that, eat it, digest it, and absorb it’s nutrients.  One thing I’m working on is the 2nd and 3rd to last lines.  What does He mean?

-Jeff

“Delight yourself in the LORD
and he will give you the desires of your heart.”
-Psalm 37: 3-5
How often do I use this passage to get what I want?

“What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something   but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”
- James 4:1-3

With Psalms 37: 3-5  I must say that I am often guilty of James 4:1-3.
A long time ago a friend revealed a stunning revelation in delighting myself with the Lord.  It goes like this:  God is a jealous god.  You delight yourself in Him (he’s your joy).  So, shouldn’t God give you Himself? He’s what I want right?

Wow.  Never thought of it like that.

Dwell on these passages.  But not on these lyrics of an old Janis Joplin tune:

Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends,
So Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?

Hasta la pasta
-j

As some of you may know by my few twitters and text messages to my close friends I was greatly dissapointed with Transformers 2.

Growing up, I was a Transformers dork.  My brother and I had all of our personal drawings of each character taped to our bedroom wall like crayola’s ode to robotic wallpaper.  I have not lost touch with my roots since that time.  I thought the first movie was pretty good.  I thought the love story was worthless and shallow.  It would have been much better if Megan Fox didn’t exist in the movie but were replaced by nerd girl that had that innocent, helpful, and dorky class about her as they both realized through their out-of-this-world experience that they were both fond of each other.  The transformers had that crass dialogue about them, some of them were just as hot-headed as I remember, and there were many old characters I fondly remember back in front of my popcorn bucket and myself.

Alas, I was drawn into a packed theatre for the sequal.  Without exhausting your reading skills on here, I’ll just say I was greatly dissapointed.  Not only with the film, but with the audience as well.   As a once childhood cartoon brought to modern film, it wasn’t handled well.  The advanced robots from another world came and most of them chose (the good guys, mind you) to assimilate the characteristics and syntax and crude discourse of unintelligent earthlings.  As a child I just don’t remember my heroes cursing and making sexual gestures or comments.  I would even argue that robots are asexual beings to begin with, so their lust for humans wouldn’t be plausible or possible.  Am I being overly conservative?  I don’t think so, I just thought the self-aware robots and the writer would have better taste.   Where’s the class?  The heart?  I had no connection to any character.  If they died, I wouldn’t be sad.  If they took a stand, I wouldn’t support them.  Outside of screenplay preference,  there is a deeper moral issue that was a rude awakening

When Megan Fox first appeared straddling her motorcycle there was a vast cheering like a male chorus throughout the room.  One fellow even stood up clapping like a proud mother at her son’s first piano recital.  Throughout the film, there where many comments behind us from men oogling about her as though she were a feast to be taken.   It were as though we were in the theatre when the Gremlins take over the city and are all watching Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs  in 1984’s “Gremlins.”

I suppose I just didn’t realize how lustful some can be.  I hadn’t considered that a television show of old could lose it’s innocence when adapted for the screen.  I guess I’m just sad.  I love art, elegance, excellence.  Not pop culture, but I suppose it sells.

Autobots- roll out.