Perspective Check + Update

God's been teaching me quite a bit lately, and also reminding me of some things that I have forgotten. I thought I'd share a few of them:

1. Make God the focus and top priority of my life. It's easy to tell myself that I have many important things to do besides "Christian-y" things - school, work , time with family. All of these things are good, but they cannot be allowed to supersede God as number one. All of them should be done in, with, and through Him. My plans, hopes, and dreams will not ultimately satisfy by themselves; they must be submitted to God's will for me to achieve true contentment, peace, and joy.

2. Develop a hunger and thirst for the Word. I often don't feel like I want to get to know God better, and my Bible and prayer time suffer because I am distracted by other things. I need God to give me the strength to thirst for His Word, to be like the tree in Psalm 1, planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season, and whose leaf does not wither. Staying in the Word is an act of the will (the new nature's will by the power of the Holy Spirit).

On another note, I passed Prinicples of Supervision DSST last week so I now have 78 credits! By the end of this month I hope to have three more as I am planning to finish my Film and TV Narratives as Public Communication class. I also was accepted at Thomas Edison, so I am planning to enroll sometime in the next few months! Besides school, I am staying involved in the music ministry and the live sound engineering at church and working on A/V installs and recording sessions as they come up.

God bless you all!

~Mac

Random Happenings and Accomplishments

I was thinking about doing a "remembering 2010, goals for 2011" post but after reading everyone else's excellent posts on that topic, I don't think I can compete. So I will list some of the things that I have done over New Years:

1) I attended a New Year's Eve Gala with the family. We went to our friends' church and used their fellowship hall for a dance! There were about 60 people there. We danced line and circle dances, a polka, and the broomstick waltz. Nothing like ringing in the new year with three plus hours of dancing! :-)

2) New Year's Day we had our unit celebration for our homeschool curriculum. Each student picked an ancient culture to represent, gave a presentation based on the culture, and made a food of the culture - my favorite part :-D

^ My sister's AMAZING phyllo spinach triangles from Greece!

^ Leek soup from Egypt.

^ Greek salad! :-)

^ My laden plate (clockwise from top): Greek salad, chicken couscous from Israel, noodles from China, flat bread from India, squash from North America

45 minutes later . . .

what a great curriculum huh? :-)

3) January 2nd I sang a duet for the offertory for our church as part of a wonderful New Years service :-)

4) I went to a book study Monday night. A group of about 12 guys are going through Crazy Love by Francis Chan. A challenging and thought-provoking book!

5) Random accomplishments:
* I made my bed completely by feel in the dark Saturday night
* I tied my tie while singing a hymn during choir rehearsal Sunday (good thing I can tie ties without a mirror!)
* My brother and I made two batches of "mookies" (man cookies) Monday afternoon. We taped ourselves doing it and made it into an impromptu cooking show/MythBusters episode.

Vita - Via Media

The rough translation of that is "life - the middle way".

It's one of the things I've been thinking about a lot lately. It seems as though everything in life, all our decisions, our beliefs, our opinions, is about finding some kind of Biblical, ethical, moral, or responsible middle ground between two extremes, neglecting neither.

Faith and works. Works and faith. Which is more important? Neither! One must have faith to be saved, but faith without works is dead.

One other thing that has become important in my life is future career choices. I have to find some kind of balance between doing what I love (music, audio and video production) and what I can use to best support my family. At times, these two interests seem to be in direct conflict - musicians and audio engineers have a hard time finding work and making money, but it seems like God has gifted me in those areas.

Balancing relationships and service with school and other personal pursuits is something that we must all deal with and decide about. It can be very hard to decide between building a relationship with friends or siblings and being "productive" and moving towards earning a degree.

How about you? How are you finding the Via Media?

~Mac

My Busy Life . . .

I almost feel like a "normal" person, hurrying from one activity to another (lol). These last few days have been quite busy!

Thursday night, we attended a surprise party for a friend. He was surprised to say the least!

Friday night, my brother and I went to a Halloween party for our church's community groups. It was a costume party, so my brother and I went as the Blues Brothers :-) We had a great time - there was good food and a sweet dance floor with disco balls and a sweet sound system (that I helped install!)

Saturday I went to a local CollegePlus! gathering. We had lunch, hung out, and shopped for and filled our boxes for Operation Christmas Child! :-)

Sunday our family helped with our church's first Reformation Celebration. We had a skit, games, activities, candy, and dinner. It went very well, and several people said that they had a great time!

Today was of course voting day! So I went to the polls this morning. Now I have to study because I have a test coming up tomorrow morning, followed by a coaching call and choir practice.

And of course, through it all, I've been doing chores, working on my eDrum build, and studying for other classes and tests.

It's been one of those weeks . . .

~Mac