The ultimate status symbol for the coffee lover. Too bad Starbucks employees can’t make something as simple as an Americano worth drinking. Oh well…
Filed under: Miscellaneous
To me, Peking Gourmet still stands as the best local Chinese eats, hands-down. That’s despite their occasional rude service, their suspiciously quick timing from order to delivery, and the overall weirdness of Chinese people who speak Korean far better than me (though that’s not saying much). The Kungpao Chicken just can’t be beat.
I know everyone loves vacations but this break is already starting to wear thin on me. I’m ready for 2010.
Tina has been spontaneously breaking out into “ghetto” speak at a more frequent rate these days. I like it. She makes me laugh.
God is far too kind to me. Hope would be an unimaginably hope-less thought without Him.
Still waiting on my Kungpao but I’m fresh out of things to write. Peace.
Just came back from Thanksgiving Communion & Potluck. I’m in a particularly grateful mood. Thankful for:
1) My wife. She’s beautiful, serving, humble, kind, gentle, prayerful, gracious, and absolutely remarkable. Everything I’m not.
2) Berean Community Church. A church family in the truest sense. A place of instruction, encouragement, fellowship, laughter, food, and sharpening. Not perfect but wholly beneficial to me.
3) Pastor Peter & the Elders of BCC. Pastor Peter has been a father to me in bringing me up in the fear and admonition of the Lord, a mother to me in his patient nurture of my growth as a pastor and more importantly, as a Christian man. The elders are exemplary in their faithfulness to the church and to their own homes. They are concrete examples of godly leadership.
4) College Ministry. They allow me to extend my adolescence and not feel bad about it. They’re enthusiastic, teachable, and continually maturing; all qualities that a disciple should never outgrow.
5) Jesus. He saved me when I was dead in my trespasses, hopelessly lost, and a child of wrath. He humbled Himself to the point of death, even death on a Cross. He ransomed me and gladly welcomed me as a fellow brother in the house of God. He was raised for my justification. He is supremely worthy of worship, all-sufficient in His saving work, and gracious in His continuing intercession. I’m grateful He sent His Spirit to illuminate both heart and mind to learn more about who He is. I’m thankful that He is patient with me in the ongoing struggle to become more like Him. I love Him.
Filed under: Miscellaneous
I’d like to date myself.
…No, not in that way.
“Date” in the sense of stamping myself in a particular time period, when Rob Van Winkle was still Vanilla Ice, and when the arrival of new volumes of The Boxcar Children and Encyclopedia Brown were anticipated as heavily as the next “Harry Potter” or “Twilight” book is today.
Most of the collegians I regularly interact with will have no clue what to make of the following. The last 2 digits on their DOB begin with 9. Others will know exactly what to make of the following and won’t mind hopping on the nostalgia train.
Garbage Pail Kids: This extended my infantile humor well beyond the point of acceptability.
Pogs: To this day, I’m still not sure what this was all about. What I do know is that my saved lunch money budget, previously allocated for Marvel Cards, was temporarily allocated to these Hawaiian imports in junior high school. SLAMMER!
Super Lemon: Unnecessarily sour. Unreasonably expensive. Unexplainably delightful. $1 Sunday offering was typically reserved for this. I’ve since repented.
Slap Bracelets: So dumb, yet so cool. I still remember closing my eyes right before the moment of impact, knowing the stinging sensation of the recoil around my wrist was only a split-second away.
Trapper Keepers: These just screamed: “Too cool for school.” They also wouldn’t last a month before peeling on the edges. Mead needed to offer at least a 1-year warranty.
Hypercolor T-shirts: With applied heat, they’d changed colors. Legit. NOTE: both before and after colors were usually of the neon, pukish variety.
These days I’ve been neglecting this blog like it’s my sister. Things have gotten slightly busier as of late with the school year in full swing. In addition to heightened ministry responsibilities and an increased schedule of meetings, I’ve been preparing messages for CCM (on “The Wrath of God”; don’t ask me how I get assigned topics like this) and Berean. As a result, I haven’t had a ton of time for leisure reading or for blogging but I hope to return to it when things settle down a bit next month.
My hair is disgustingly long. I lost a game of Scrabble to James Lee and so I won’t be cutting it for another couple of months. Not even for a trim. I seriously fear what it’s going to look like. Thankfully, I’m able to cover it up by wearing my Angels cap and concealing the Chia Pet-style mane that’s beginning to grow. As long as they don’t get knocked out of the playoffs, I can go on using my handy red hat as a means of shielding and protecting others from seeing the abomination that is my hair.
College group is growing. Fast. Lots of people. Lots of souls to care for. Please pray that God would grant me wisdom by His Spirit and a growing grasp of His Word to minister adequately to all of them, and to any others that are entrusted to my care. I’m very blessed with the privilege of helping to lead this group.
I received an e-mail this morning from Anthony Locke, asking about the best way to mark up his Bible. The first thing that came to mind is a story P. Peter Chung told me when a Jewish Christian visited our seminary. He was explaining some of the differences between Jewish believers and us Gentile folk. One humorous thing he mentioned was that Christians tend to treat our Bibles like coloring books! We aren’t afraid to mark all over them, spilling highlighter ink liberally, and jotting down whatever pops to our minds when we’re reading through the Word. I don’t think he said this to discourage the practice, only to draw a contrast between that and the typically “clean” look of a Bible carried by a Jewish believer.
I don’t actually mark my current Bible. I’ve grown accustomed to marking down my observations and thoughts in a handy Moleskine Cahier (I know, an overpriced indulgence). Either way, interacting with any text through physical markings, be it a Bible or a book, is a helpful way to think over, process, and reflect on the information that you are absorbing.
So if you’re in the habit of marking your Bible or plan to start, I’d advise the following:
1) Try not to underline unless it’s a specific verse that is particularly meaningful. Why? Because you’re going to find that every verse is meaningful (after all, we’re talking about the divine, Spirit-breathed, Word of God) and pretty soon your whole Bible will be underlined! In other words, be selective in underlining.
2) This is related to the first, but bracket verses and sections that are unified by one single thought. This is a lot more efficient than underlining 7-10 different lines of text. For example, Malachi 2:10-16 is a single unit of thought, whereas v.17 introduces what follows in chapter 3 in the next unit of thought. I would put a little mark on the top, left-hand corner of the v.10 and then a little mark on the bottom, right-hand corner of v.16. This way you can break up the flow of a narrative, epistle, or psalm and understand its structure and organization with minimal markings on your Bible. This is also helpful because the chapter and verse divisions of the Bible do not typically correspond with the actual breaks and structure of whatever you’re reading (these reference notations were inserted at a later point in history and are not Spirit-inspired).
3) If you’re secure enough in your manhood (women need not worry here) and don’t mind carrying the extra baggage, use different color pens. Coordinate different colors for different purposes or ideas. For example, you may want to use a blue pen to mark devotional-type passages that have been especially meaningful to you. You might want to use a red pen to mark verses that you might use for apologetics-related discussions (e.g., John 1:1, 14; Col. 1:15-20 as verses that defend the deity of Christ), and a green pen to mark verses that cover a particularly meaningful theme (e.g., God’s patience; prayer; etc.). Again, colors and topics are customizable. You can keep a handy index of the colors and their corresponding categories in the front or back of your Bible. And in light of advice #1, I’d circle the verse numbers rather than underlining the entire thing.
4) Get a journaling Bible if you want to record more extensive thoughts down. Most Bibles don’t provide enough space in the margins to jot down anything more than a word or a short phrase. Journaling Bibles provide more space for lengthier exposition and reflection. Also, they typically come stocked with thicker paper to prevent bleed-through. Or if you’re an overachiever and really want to go for the extra mile, make a “blank Bible” (inspired by Jonathan Edwards). I actually made one of these before with a friend but I never ended up using it. I was simply too terrified of messing up because it took so much effort to make. I ended up just giving it away.
5) Don’t use a normal pen or highlighter. Invest in a Bible highlighter or marker to compensate for the typically razor-thin pages that most Bibles are made with.
Anyways, those are my two cents. Many of the same principles can be adopted for most other kinds of books. If you have further suggestions, I’d welcome your insight in the comments!
Filed under: Miscellaneous
CHINA TRIP: Some of the (very few) collegians who read this blog were asking me to post up my thoughts/reflections after coming back from China last weekend. Though I’d love to do that, it’s going to have to wait until a face-to-face sitting presents itself because of obvious security concerns. But in keeping it general and vague, the trip was refreshing and fruitful.
MY COLLEGIANS CARE (SORT OF…): Because P. Peter is on sabbatical this month, I’m pulling double-duty with the weekly Bible studies. Last night was the first opportunity I had a chance to teach BAM (Berean Adult Ministry) and it was nice to see some older, but still beautiful and vibrant, faces. We continued our Minor Prophets series after a few weeks off, resuming with an introductory overview of Malachi.
After the Bible study was completed, I decided to make a Costco Gas run on my way home. Thankfully, I made it just in time before the pumps were closed. After filling up and feeling mighty proud of saving pennies on the gallon, an unexpected thing happened. I put the key in the ignition, gave it a turn, and nothing.
Car battery dead.
No cars around, shops closed, and no one to help. Thankfully, I have AAA and gave them a call and they said they’d be 15 minutes in arriving. In the meantime, I took a picture and posted on Twitter so that a couple people could commiserate with me in the minor inconvenience.
Sad, huh? Check out the orange cones in the background, blocking all outside help.
Anyways, Sharon Lee (crazy college Sharon) noticed the tweet and she and I exchanged a few texts:
Haha, a little amusement while I waited.
Anyways, she got her revenge:
And now I’m getting mine =)
Filed under: Miscellaneous
For what it’s worth, I’m beginning a blog. I frequent blogs daily and have appreciated them as a fresh take on the old-fashioned use of writing to share personal thoughts. But up to this point I’ve been reluctant to begin one for a number of reasons. For starters, I’m not sure if I have enough insightful things to write. I try to reserve whatever lessons God is gracious enough in leading me to for face-to-face conversation or the teaching opportunities I have in ministry. Meager scraps that they are, I have to use my few nuggets of wisdom sparingly.
“There’s nothing new under the sun.” Now that’s unfortunate news for someone who has entertained the idea of blogging. After all, there will always be somebody else more qualified and better equipped to articulate whatever is on my heart to say. All that I manage to say, has already been said and anyone with an internet connection and rudimentary Google skills can find it.
Moreover, I’m busy. Who’s not? There are enough posts in an already overloaded internet world to try and scan through on a daily basis so am I doing myself or anyone else a favor by adding more to the heap?
Finally, there’s the host of problems inherent to blogging itself. I.e., it can be narcissistic, it doesn’t foster accountability, etc.
But in the end, I’ve given in. At this point, the potential good outweighs the bad. I noticed recently that I don’t pause enough to reflect because of the rapid pace of life and ministry. Writing can serve as an ideal antidote. After all, writing is an avenue to being more thoughtful and analytical and that will benefit me from both a personal and pastoral standpoint. If all goes then according to plan, blogging will help more than it will hurt.
In the end, my expectations aren’t high but here goes nothing.
