Art for Nerds

I saw a great flicr album of art for nerds... here is one for you guys



Most of them are pretty funny. Some of them only Jimmy will understand. Enjoy! (warning, a couple are not so friendly).

sNOw....

Arg… its 29 degrees outside and almost no chance of any precipitation. What does it take to get some snow around here? If its gotta be cold, why not add something to play in?!?! God? A little precipitation here?

geez…

Some people are just never happy

"Pope Benedict XVI canceled a speech at Rome's La Sapienza university in the face of protests led by scientists opposed to a high-profile visit to a secular setting by the head of the Catholic Church. Sixty-seven professors and researchers of the university's physics department joined in the call for the pope to stay away protesting the planned visit recalled a 1990 speech in which the pope, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, seemed to justify the Inquisition's verdict against Galileo in 1633. In the speech, Ratzinger quoted an Austrian philosopher who said the ruling was 'rational and just' and concluded with the remark: 'The faith does not grow from resentment and the rejection of rationality, but from its fundamental affirmation, and from being rooted in a still greater form of reason.' The protest against the visit was spearheaded by physicist Marcello Cini who wrote the rector complaining of an 'incredible violation" of the university's autonomy. Cini said of Benedict's cancellation: 'By canceling, he is playing the victim, which is very intelligent. It will be a pretext for accusing us of refusing dialogue.'"

so Cini doesn't want the pope to come, but then when he doesn't show up, says that he is just 'playing the victim'... geez...

Onslaught

Hey, just thought I'd share this great new game... its by far the best flash TD I've ever seen... its got lots of controls and lets you upgrade the towers stats individually. Also, a nifty feature for us procrastinators, is that in the settings, you can increase the time factor so it will play faster.... 400% baby!!

so far, i played twice and got to level 85 on the circles one... see what you guys can do :)

http://www.freewaregames.net/onslaught-game.asp

:)

Connection between good works and God's will

So I was reading in Matthew 7 today and I read that you will know a tree by it’s fruit; an apple tree can not produce oranges, by its very nature, it MUST produce apples. So a Christian will be recognized by their fruit. A Christian MUST produce the good works of study, prayer, fasting, giving to the poor, worship, sharing the good news of Christ…. those things don’t save a person, instead, they show, they give evidence that the person is really saved.

All that is the foundation for what Christ says next. He says that when its time for judgment, only those who did God’s will are going to get into heaven. Many, however, will stand before God and point to the fact that they were uber Christians. They were leaders in Billy Grahams ministry and taught Sunday school all their lives, and didn’t miss a Sunday at church for 20 years… and God will tell them to go away because he never knew them. This is interesting because he just said a Christian will be know by their fruit. But now he is telling those who had much fruit that they weren’t Christians. Why?

This can only mean that the doing is not enough. You can not earn your way into heaven. You can’t twist Jesus’ arm and make him let you into heaven because you deserve it. No. The source of our good works must be from God calling us to it. WE must be doing the will of God, not the will of Stephen. That’s a scary thing. How many times do I really ask God for wisdom in doing something? Not once or twice but over and over to test his will. Do I fast and ask God to give me discernment about what I am to be doing? Or do I use human logic to figure out the best solution and then ‘ask’ God what he wants the night before I do what I have figured out? I think most of the time I just ask God to approve Stephen’s plan. How many times is my plan actually formed because of the information I got from him?

I think that its so important for me to remember in all the things I’ve been thinking about in the last year about us needing fruit in the Christian life, that all this fruit must come from God, the vine. It must all come from God. All the good works must be God’s ideas, not mine. (I’m not sure how that connects with the fact that we are supposed to do everything in scripture because I don’t know that we really have time in the day (even if we did nothing but that) to do all the things we see in scripture. But I’ll work on that…)

I can not DO all the stuff just for the sake of DOING. I need to do the things God has called me to. If other things fall by the wayside, so be it. I must be about doing God’s things, that I receive from God’s will.

(just as an ending side note… part of the sermon I heard on Sunday from Romans 12, when the pastor was talking about laying yourself on the alter and putting yourself and your life and your plans on the alter and letting them die so that God’s plan and will for your life can actually happen … he showed us that in the passage, the RESULT of that was that we would no longer look like the culture around us. The result of that was that you would be able to discern God’s will. So if we REALLY want to know God’s will for our life, first we have to stop looking like the culture around us.)

True Importance

So I heard a message this morning about the fact that we can not earn God’s blessings. Although we try to do all the right things to get God to love us more, it just wont work. He is crazy about us aside from what we DO. Instead, in thanks and gratitude, we are supposed to put our lives on the alter as living sacrifices. We are supposed to put him above ourselves. We are supposed to make his priorities, our priorities. And although most people say they are too busy to study or pray, we could find if it was truly a priority. The pastor said that if something important came up, we could find the time to do it. Therefore, no matter what we say, the truly important things will always be given time and resources in our lives. And if we don’t put time and effort into God then he is not really a priority in our life.

This is all so true. If God is important to us, we will find time to spend with him. If God is important to me, I will make time in my schedule to pray. I will carve out space for studying his word. I will give up a television show so that I can go out and share the gospel with someone, or bring a homeless guy a meal. I will hit the snooze 1 less time a few times a week so I can memorize my weekly verses. All of these are such basic, entry level things when it comes to being a follower of Christ. But so many people struggle with them. Why? Because serving the poor is not a priority in my life. No matter that of everything Jesus talked about over 50% of his messages were about helping the poor (I’m not sure of the exact number). No matter that James shows that true religion is seen when we help those in need. That’s ok, I gave my offering in church and now it’s their job; now can pacify my guilty conscience. Yet, if ‘the church’ were truly doing its job, there would not be rampant homelessness. If the people of God were truly doing their job, more single moms would not have to be working 3 jobs to put food on the table. There would not be droves of elderly ladies sitting at home for weeks on end with no one to talk to.

So I rant and rave, but what can I do? What if I took one evening a week to go out and spread the love of God? It would be easy to get a ridiculously long list of people that need help from my church. There are homeless people to feed. There are single parents who could use their lawn mowed, windows washed, or dishes done. There are youth who are desperate for someone to pour into their lives. There are young parents on my street whose marriages are struggling because of the new baby and could use a date night (and yes, there is more than enough room in my budget to not only provide the babysitting but the dinner as well… if I can find the money to out to eat, I can find the money to send someone else out to eat). There are elderly ladies who are sitting at home alone and haven’t talked to anyone in weeks. I could find a house in my neighborhood that needs their lawn mowed and go tell them that I just wanted to share God’s love in a tangible way and mow their lawn with no strings attached. I could go tutor a kid afterschool. I could invite everyone on my street over to my house for burgers and provide all the food – meat, sides, and yummy deserts. I bet there are some people that could really use a reminder that God loves on them and cares about them…

These are simple things. They take very little time and very little money. These are things I can do… these are things you can do…

Will we lay our lives down on the alter? Or will we continue to spit in God’s face and tell him that our plans and desires are more important than his?