Subwoofer turned DOWN

Ok. I just turned down my subwoofer. Total RA musical interventions avoided in 2009: 1.

Anyways. Just figured I should throw up some shots I took at the basketball game last night.

Mid lay up. The dude's got some hops

Big man lookin' a little scared

I don't know who this guy is, but he looks really funny

Bailing Out

The Freebie

Night folks.

The End of the Beginning

These past few days have been nice (if busier than expected) settle-in days for school, but now the real deal starts. I don’t really have anything to blog about tonight, but I figured all three of you who read this could probably stand to read some more of my amazingly awesome writing.

Anyways… I’m thinking about doing an Obamablog sometime soon. I’m kind of strung out on the ridiculous amount of media that this guy gets and I don’t really want to contribute to it, but since my readership is so massive I might as well eh? It’ll at least help me get my thoughts out of their random spaz patterns in my head and into a relatively concrete order.

I also realized that my writing isn’t very good. At all. I’ve been reading some of my friend’s blogs lately and they’re really good. Maybe I should learn how to write well too? I guess it couldn’t hurt the whole journalism degree thingy.

I kind of like this whole blogging thing. I don’t really like my blog, but I like the blogging thing in general. It’s just kinda nifty. It’s like being pen pals with the whole world. Or all three of you who read this. Either way, I can’t find the stamps so this will have to do.

I need to go turn down my sub now. It’s pumping out some gloriously loud tunes way too close to my RA’s dorm room.

Roll out.

School?

Oy it’s freaking late. I’m back at school. I’ve been here since Thursday night. But I haven’t had time to so much as log on here until now. So busy so suddenly. Oh well. Well I’m ridiculously tired. I’ll try and blog for reals tomorrow.

The End.

Snowboarding and the Center of God’s Will

Howdy folks. I haven’t done an official Mike rant on here yet, so consider this the first.

For those of you who don’t know, when I’m home I work at a big (think 7500 people) church that does a lot of multimedia integration. Mostly I create/edit videos and do some still stuff for their video department. Anyways, about a week ago I was editing a video of Stormie Omartian and she said something that i hear way too often in Christian conversations: “The safest place you can be is in the center of God’s will.” I want to know who the heck came up with that crap.

If you really think about the statement it makes no sense. Jesus called us to be revolutionaries – people who would put themselves on the front lines and willingly lay down our lives for Him. The missionaries who daily risk their lives in countries that forcibly oppose Christianity are most definitely not in the safest place they could be. And I’d like to see someone willing to argue that their not smack where God wants them to be.
And what about the disciples? If anyone knew God’s will it was them. I think that all but Judas died a brutal death for their faith in Jesus. I’m 100% that they all died that way (maybe I should have paid more attention in New Testament), but I seem to remember hearing that in my NT class. Either way, you can bet that safe was not adjective used to describe their day-to-day lives.

Does God sometimes protect those who follow Him? Absolutely. David was often spared from Saul while Saul was hunting him during his time as king. And anyone who has read any amount of the Old Testament doesn’t need to be told that God has protected Israel from everything under the sun countless times. Despite all that, I’d say that more often than not, God’s will has led to more danger than safety. And that’s not a bad thing.

I’ve heard some people say something like, “Well it varies by person. The disciples lived the safest lives that God had in store for them.” Or “They are safe in an eternal sense.” Whatever. Maybe those make sense to some people, but it’s the phrasing that confuses people. If you tell a congregation that the center of God’s will is the safest place they can be, odds are they’ll believe that you meant safe in a physical, comfortable, I-like-my-bed sense.

For some reason people seem to think that God puts a priority on our comfort and safety. I’m thinkin’ that God’s plans our a little bigger than our lifestyles.

On a related note (sarcasm), my love for snowboarding doubles everytime I go. And I’ve been boarding for like 9 years. Do that math. Stevo and I jumped off a lift last week. On purpose. Let me just say it was pure awesomeness of powder. In the effort to remain visual, here’s some photos from a recent Snowbowl trip with the gang:

Stevo grabbin' some air

Stevo layin' on the brakes

Nate flies high

Nate on the landing

Nate goin' down

Riley's little blooper air

Serious biffage by Michael

Mobilized

Hey folksies,
I’m sitting here. Bored at work and thought I’d see how the whole wordpress for iPhone thing worked. I’ve completely botched this video I’m working and really don’t wanna finish. Oh well. Guess I should probably do it anyway eh? Anyways…. Back to work. I’ll write a real post tonight.

Adiós.

To Hell You Ride

AKA Telluride. As in Telluride, Colorado. Just got back today. It was fun. Dave (little brother) ended up with a grade two concussion after biffing a grab snowboarding. He couldn’t remeber anything from that entire week. Now he has most of his memory back, but he still can’t remember the last half of that day. Pretty funny stuff. Anyways… Yay for pics:

This is why I love telluride

Dave on the nose grab

Dave eats it

Dave unconcious

On the Slope

End.

09

Ok folks. New year, new blog. We’ll see what happens with this one. I’ve tried this blogging thing once before and failed miserably. I’ve heard good things about wordpress and photos so I’ve decided to try it out and see what happens. I have absolutely no idea what this is going to look like. Maybe I’ll have lots of deep, revolutionizing ideas, maybe I’ll just spurt random useless information, who knows… I am going to try and include at least one photo with every post though. Still trying to figure out this whole wordpress deal so for now you just click on the photo to see it bigger. So here’s tonight’s:

Torches+Boarder

Torches+Boarder Dos

Out front of the lift

Those are from tonight here in Telluride, CO (yay for snowboarding!!!). The ski patrol folksies skied down the hill with torches. Pretty sweet. For the whole 5 minutes it lasted, haha. Anyways…. New years. Thinkin’ about stuff I’d like to do this year (aka resolutions/goals/hopefulnesses/etc):

-BIBLE! Daily!

-Photo a day

-Find a church in Cali

-Create a “click” moment in some one’s life (ask me about this one if you’re curious)

-Lose 20 lbs*

*So… coming from someone of my… umm…. fatness this might seem like a standard goal that I would set and fail at every year. But I’ve never actually set a goal to lose weight.  And I could stand to lose A LOT more than 20 lbs, but we’ll start with that and see what happens from there.

I think that’s about it for now!

Roll out.