Ok. So I read Dell's blog the other day about not wasting your life, and it got me thinking about it again. I have thought about that particular subject on many occasions and (unfortunately) forgotten about that subject for long stretches of time. this time I would rather not forget.

I've been asking myself lots of questions since yesterday, and this is what I thought: When determining if you're wasting your life or not it would be wise to first identify exactly what would cause your life to be a waste, and secondly determine what would make it worth it's while. When I asked myself what wasting life is I realized that it is any failure to spend our short amount of alloted time on this earth in any other practice than glorifying God and enjoying Him forever, which would be the very thing that would make our lives NOT a waste. According to that standard we've all wasted our lives. We've all sinned. We've all sought to put the gift before the Giver. We've all spent our time in self-enjoyment, self-worship, and self-glorification. Yet what are we that we should be glorified? Where is the value of man that he should merit anything? This isn't why we're here. Dumb as it is that I heard this on a comedy show on tv (there's some of my wasted time), one character said, "there are millions of stars, and millions of planets in the the universe and they revolve around a single point...... and that point is not you.". It's true. The sun doesn't rise in the morning because I tell it to. The stars don't shine because of my power. Yet I live my life as if time had no claim on me, as if death were no issue, and as if, and though we don't say it, if we searched the darkest corners of our own hearts we'd see, we think that WE are the gods. When we spend our lives on anything less than God's glory or our enjoyment of Him, we're saying that we are sufficient on our own. That our glory matters more than His. That we can find enjoyment and satisfaction in ourselves. It's a scary picture, and one that I paint for myself far too infrequently. It's not that I want this to be the state of my life...but I forget. I SO quickly forget. I'm SO quickly blinded by what I want. But what I want won't satisfy. What I want will leave me wondering if there might have been more that I could have gained from this life before I die. So now we've got to move to what will be a satisfying, unwasted life......

There is only one way to not waste our lives. He must be the treasure, He must be the aim, and His must be the glory. We need to lift our eyes up from muddy paths of life to see the One who is infinitely worthy of our Lives, infinitely worthy of our praise, and who infinitely loves to shower Himself on us. For He is the only thing that satisfies, He is the only thing that turns unworthy, wasted lives into beautiful songs sung for His glory. And that's what our lives can be. That's what I long for my life to be. I'd like to look back on my life one day and know that the time that I had was spent on the one thing worth spending time on: Him.

Now here's where talking meets action. what am I going to do about it? what are you going to do about it? We live in a world that loves to waste life, even our own nature would urge us to waste our lives. But here's the question. will I go away and forget again? I don't want to, but it has to be more than just not wanting to. People have done terrible things though they "didn't want to". Often that terrible thing is the easy way out though the hard way will have less consequences. We need to be committed to it. We have to be willing to forsake what we want to do what He wants. And we need His help most of all. We need to pray daily and ask that we would be aware of what we are doing, how we're spending our time, and why we're spending it the way we are. We need to soak ourselves in His word. We need to help each other. It's not a one step solution, it's a lifetime of war against what our flesh most wants, with what our souls most need as the goal. Wasting or not wasting our lives is a lot less complicated than a lot of more complicated things, but it's by far the hardest to achieve and I think there are only a handful who have done it. The more fierce the struggle, the sweeter the crown, and as for me, I want to forsake the world in this life and make Christ the treasure I seek.

Today I started to work again.
But this time at a desk.
I came home and I had a headache, but I wasn't tired.
Then I came home and got a nice backpack for driving on my scooter.
Tomorrow I'm going to have a nice quite time at starbucks before work so I'll post a good/serious post tomorrow.

html code is intense. too much to remember well.

I had an energetic burst last night.
First I wrote 2 songs (well sort of two songs, I never finished either of the melodies, and the lyrics could use some work), then I practiced scales on my guitar even though I hate doing scales, then I went upstairs and watched whatever it was that my sister was watching for a bit, came back down to the dungeon at around eleven started playing guitar again, then at about 12 I decided to do something useful and I edited the ceremony of the wedding I'm working on. 3 hours later I slept.

And I start a new job tomorrow. I never like starting jobs. It's all great after a few days, but the first day always seems gloomy.

here's one of the songs I wrote.

You are faithful,
God of Almighty the first and last,
The Unchanging,
Everlasting, Your Word will stand,
You light the sky,
On each new day,
As Time flies by,
You are the same,

You are faithful God,
You are faithful God,
From everlasting to everlasting
You remain, my faithful God,

You are faithful,
Much more faithful than I can see,
In my weakness,
You will give me the strength I need,
And though I fall,
You're always near,
And when I call,
You always hear,


out.

GOODBYE SAN DIEGO>
CHURCH//
THEN NORTHWARD>

San Diego.
It should have a song.
When I say San Diego I want to sing it--but there's no song that I know of.
So we're here and we have been since last night and I will be until sunday afternoon and from then on I won't be here until I come back.

Out.

We made it to San Francisco.

We arrived at 1:30pm yesterday after driving 15 hours straight. ( except for a breakfast stop a lunch stop and a couple of leg stretching stops.)

We left our house in Vancouver at 9:00pm last night. I only slept for 30 minutes at 5:00am then we had breakfast.

When we finally got to the hotel we went for a quick swim then had a look at the sights. Basically there's a couple of big bridges, a lot of steep streets, one crooked street, some wharfs, and overall the place just has a lot of character. One thing it doesn't have much of is restuaraunts. We first walked for an hour to try and find something better than McDonalds or Burger King, then gave up and tried the car but even after driving for another half hour we could only find a couple of places to eat.

Now I think we're leaving in a few minutes so..

out.

Well, tomorrow we leave for the USA. Not till evening though because we plan to drive all night and stay in San Francisco the next day. One note here-I don't plan to take the classic picture of the steep hills with the street car. No way. I've seen that one too many times. Yeah.

I really wish we could film a bit with our old Super 8s, but we don't have a projector so it's kind of useless.

I wrote a christmas song today. Kind of random. Music really isn't finished at all, and nobody has seen the words so I don't really know if I like it or not, but I'll show the lyrics.

The Love of God came down,
To make His home with men,
Upon a starry night,
He left his glorious throne,
And with His coming here,
The Hope of all these years,
Was born to us this night.

O awake my soul and sing,
What amazing love,
What amazing love,
Arise and shout His praise,
What amazing love,
What amazing love this is.

Look in this manger He,
Humbles Himself to lie,
The One who cast the stars,
Into the black of night,
And angels sweetly sing,
To Him, the ageless King,
As heaven stands in awe.

The only crown He’ll wear,
Is still to come ahead,
Upon the bloodstained cross,
He’ll suffer for my sins,
But now in peace He lies,
Living to one day die,
To ransom souls to God.






there.

out.

So betty is gone.
Or going I suppose seeing as she most likely hasn't taken off yet.
I drank an Ice Cap.
It's the most coffee I've ever consumed at one time and I have terrible breath.
The caffeine isn't doing much except that when I talk, i talk louder and faster.
And I don't really feel like sleeping-yet.

My dad preached on the Holiness of God today out of Isaiah 6 and it gave me some thoughts so I wrote a song when I came home. I don't really feel like grabbing the file of the other computer so I'm going to try to remember it.

Glorious,
You wove the starry skies,
Your beauty's overwhelming,
Wonderful,
All-powerful and wise,
Transcendently above me,

Holy, Holy, Holy,
God Almighty,
Angels hide their faces,
But by Your grace You've brought me near,
Holy, Holy, Holy,
You are worthy,
Of my praise forever,
Glory, I give glory to you God,

Judge of all,
I deserve Your wrath,
But You've shown me mercy,
Through the blood,
You shed on my behalf,
You've ransomed me completely,

...yeah. So I think that's how it was. I'm pretty sure at least. And if it isn't, this version works ok.
Ok, now i'm tired. Good night and good luck.

cool.

did a small amount of writing:

I’m weak and frail,
Like the grass the grows,
Then blows away,
Yet I’m deceived,
To think I can know,
All that need,

Oh crush my pride,
Open my eyes,
And I will sing,

I need You, how I need You,
Every day,
I need You, how I need You,
In every way,
I need You,
Be near me I pray,

Before I knew,
The place where I stood,
Before Your throne,
You left all glory,
Out of Your great love,
To die at Calvary,

And in Your blood,
And in Your tears,
I have seen that,

----------------
In other news:


today I (supposedly) "stole" my mothers visa card (or at least that's what the camera place thought), blew out a tire, changed one, got a headache, and went to ikea to eat cheap hot dogs and buy pillows with holes for your feet. Now being rather worn out I decided to skip the movies for tonight and stay home and write, and I'm pretty happy that I did.

Oh, and I fell out of a tree while camping. It was a perfectly safe tree too. I was pretty confused when I hit the ground. It didn't make any sense.....

what can I say? life is crazed.
read psalm 1.

out.

Busy day. Camping tomorrow.
I'm trying to rent a second camera for the wedding i'm filming on saturday. that's basically the scoop.
out.

Mt. Cheam

This was a super good hike. If you go straight up the face of the mountain it's an 11 hour round trip, but if you're slightly out of shape for that kind of thing (or just lazy) there's an old logging road that goes half way up, and around back where it only takes about 3 hours to reach the summit. we took the lazy road.

Once you get on the logging road it's a ghetto 30 minute drive full of potholes and trees and other obstructions. My friend and I road in the back of the pickup while his dad drove.....it was pretty crazy. But after a while you start to rise above the level of the trees, and when you reach the parking lot and take a fairly short walk you end up in a beautiful alpine meadow. It looks like something straight out of pictures of the Alps. Wildflowers and bees and a little clear blue lake in the middle. Gorgeous. That's not the kind of wilderness we're used to seeing in Vancouver because you have to go pretty high up to get out of the rainforest, so it was a new experience for me, and I was completely digging it.

Skip ahead about an hour, and we've climbed high above the meadow, and you can see the little lake down a few hundred feet below. I'm huffing and puffing and about to die, but I have hope because from the angle we were at it looked like the peak wasn't that far off-I was wrong. It wasn't the peak at all, but rather it was beautiful alpine meadow #2. Not quite as nice as #1 because as one goes higher there are less flowers, and there was no lake, but there was a little bit of snow which was a nice treat. When we got up there, instead of heading straight across and back onto the upward trail we walked to the edge of a cliff that went down the side of the mountain and looked across to this other mountain that was right next to the one we were on, and just as we looked a big cloud blew across the spot we were standing and it was the eeriest thing i've seen in a while. It basically just blocked out the light and heat, and it was like we were in a totally different place.

Later we got going again and finally reached the summit. The view wasn't as good as it could have been because we were above the clouds, and they rolled down below blocking the sights. But it was still amazing, standing up there thousands of feet above the valley floor.

And josh has the camera in DC. so no pictures. it was painful to be seeing it all, and not having a camera. I would stop every few minutes and be thinking "right there in front of me is the greatest picture I've ever seen" but I had no camera.

but anyways......
it was good fun;.
out.

Hiking in 30 minutes➜
OUT➜

I'm sure I've put that one up before, but I like it a lot.

This is the second to last day that I'm working at my current job.
It's like 5:20 am right now.
I wish I could post a picture, but josh took our camera with him to MD for the week so I have no new ones.
I'll post something good after work.

Sorry that there haven't been any good posts lately. I've been really busy, and this week promises to be no different. So basically I'm going to post now then go plan out a way that I can get everything done.

Hmm....Nothing too interesting has happened of late. Josh and my dad went to the worship conference this morning.......and......it's raining. Those are really the two extremely interesting things that people that read this blog probably don't know.

It rains all winter in Vancouver but in the summer we usually have droughts, so I'm surprised that it's raining. And there's the nice smell of hot pavement getting wet.

I'm working my last day at my current job on friday, then have 2 weeks before my new one starts.

On saturday I'm hiking some mountain with some friends. I don't really have a clue what mountain it is, but I here it's reasonably big which is concerning me because I am of the general opinion that no one should ever have to walk uphill for more than an hour.

Also on saturday Damaris is coming. I'm guessing that I won't be picking her up because I'll probably be being air lifted off the mountain with a severe case of asthma.

Then then on tuesday our youth group is going camping.

Then on that saturday I'm filming a wedding.

Then the next tuesday ( I think ) I'm driving with Josh and my dad to San Diego.

Then I come home start the new job and hopefully normal life will resume.

outs.

No comments?????

What???????

Is this the end of life as we (or I rather) know it????????

I'm tired. I worked from 6:00am-4:00pm. I don't really know why. I just told them I would for some insane reason.
I'm not really a cowboy.
I do like to eat grilled cheese-in fact, I had two for lunch.
Youth tonight.
Need to go pick songs.
Hopefully I won't fall asleep in the middle of discussion.
Maybe some chocolate covered coffee beans would help me out....../..
out.

Socks 2

Maybe we should wear socks on our hands in the winter instead of gloves.....