When your first blog post of the new year takes place at the midpoint of March April it is fair to wonder whether you should be paying for hosting at all.
Nevertheless, I continue to do so. Sort of like that YMCA membership my wife keeps telling me I should terminate, only much less expensive!
So, I figure I’ll just take a few moments weeks to ruminate on where I am.
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And mad props to my Carolina Panthers for utterly destroying the Atlanta Falcons yesterday. They have finished the regular season with a thoroughly respectable 11-5 record; only the third winning season in the team’s eleven-year existence. In so doing they have also earned their way into the playoffs for the third time, and will face off against the New York Giants on Sunday, January 8 at 1:00pm. When I look at what I just wrote it’s hard to believe how frustrated I’ve been with this team at times this year. Perhaps I should be encouraged that their record actually is disappointing considering they had every opportunity to lock up their division and be seeded higher in the playoffs than they are. In other words, the fact that I believe they should have won all five of the games they lost leads me to believe that, despite it being a very rare thing, they have real potential to win through three rounds and into Super Bowl XL.
Yes, watching football is one of the worthless pursuits I engage in when I should be reading or doing something for someone else. Thanks for asking.
On to the resolutions!
Echoing my sister, who is more like me than I knew before she began blogging like a dervish, I desperately need to get my sorry self into bed in order to get my body and brain the rest they need. As she explains, so many of the other areas of self-discipline that we struggle with stem from a simple lack of rest.
Budgeting is something that I’ve really had a hard time getting a handle on. My wife and I did a great job of eliminating all of our debt with the exception of our house, but once we had done that we never took the next step to marshal our income in order to achieve our goals and plan for the future. It seems so simple: divide up the income into categories and stick to it. For some reason, though, I balk mentally whenever the time comes to get it done. That’s got to change this year this month.
Bible study is more than just reading the Bible. It involves poring over passages, consulting commentaries, and doing lots of cross-referencing. I aspire to this, but I want first just to get back to reading the Word regularly. I was amazed at how much stuck with me just from reading the Bible completely through once, so this year I’m going to do it again. Provided I’m on schedule, I can always do some side study, but the goal is to let every word pass before my eyes at least once.
Also this year I plan to go to the bathroom more.
Hmm… maybe a better way to say that would be that I intend to drink plenty of water. Typically, Mountain Dew is about all I drink and I drink it all day long. I also eat very little in the way of fruits and vegetables, notwithstanding tomato sauce on my pizza. Consequently I’m pretty much constantly dehydrated. Not healthy. Gotta change that.
Note that I’m not getting crazy and vowing to give up the Dew or anything. No need to lose our minds, here.
I really want to design my own WordPress theme this year. So far I have tweaked several, but I’d like to do one from scratch. I may have to get a little help with some nice graphical touches, but the nuts and bolts I can do myself.
Finally, at least for the purposes of this post, I aim to read a new book every month (don’t give me grief, sis!). Between Tim Challies and me, we ought to get about 132 books read! I should be able to read much faster than that, and I have in the past. The reality of it is that I’ve been lucky to finish one in three months lately. I’m shooting for goals I know I can achieve. Hopefully, I’ll exceed it because my book backlog is ridiculous and my wife won’t let me buy myself more new ones until I make a dent! (She loves me, though, and she bought me some really nice ones for Christmas, as did blestwithsons!)
Lots and lots of other things I hope to do better, more, faster, etc., but these are great places to start. I realize these are all self-centered, but that’s only because it’s all about me.
Just kidding. I have a fairly specific goal of improving an area of ministry in my role as a deacon. I also want to get more involved with our neighbors, but I haven’t given a lot of thought to specifics on that just yet.
So, there you have it. Some modest, but important areas of improvement in the life of SCPanther are on the table for 2006. Think I’ll get started right now by getting out from in front of this computer.
Happy New Year, everybody!
My grandfather, whom I always addressed as “Granddaddy” when I was younger, died this past week after a long period of decline that seemed to accelerate these past few weeks after he left his home of 90-plus years. I have struggled with what kind of post I wanted to write, but found that my sister has said about all I could have, and likely said it better.
Her recollections of our barn-exploring brought back fond memories for me, and I think there are a few other things I can add.
His house was so old, and my youthful mind so full of fancy, that I was sure that it must contain secret passages somewhere. Never mind that it really wasn’t that big of a house. It just seemed so because, well, because we were small, but also because we always went in from the back where the land dropped off a bit and we climbed a rickety set of stairs that rose above a cellar. Ah! The cellar was another thing that added mystery to the place. Accessible through full-sized doors, one on each side of the stairs, this was a perpetually gloomy, musty darkness, packed with relatively mundane things such as bushel baskets and tools. But the dim light at the front receded into blackness farther back, and the support beams of the house overhead were home to an intriguing sort of bee that built nests resembling a pan flute right on the surface of the wood.
Farm stuff can be really cool to suburban kids.
As for the man himself… the thing that always struck me about him was how slowly and deliberately he spoke. His was a life lived at a different pace than any I’ve ever known. To have a conversation with him forced one to practice patience, yet I never found it difficult (and I’m not a patient person). It just really gave me the sense that always being in a hurry is a foolish and largely unnecessary thing.
Some time in the last few years I made a point of asking him very specifically if he was trusting in Christ for the forgiveness of his sins. My sister pointed out his lifelong membership in the Lutheran church, but many people make a tragic error of assuming that their church membership grants them a pass to heaven rather than ever actually repenting of sin and trusting in Christ for the remediation of it. I’m glad I asked the question.
Like blestwithsons, I wish I’d known him better. I look forward to one day knowing him better, to knowing more fully who he is, than I ever could have on this earth. We’ll all be able to look directly on each other without having our vision obstructed by the baggage of mortality, further weighted by all of our ill choices and unfortunate circumstances.
How surprised I think we’ll all be!
What does it say about me that I still haven’t managed to finish Lewis’ Problem of Pain, though it is an interesting and not terribly difficult read, yet I’ve ripped through James Clavell’s 1210-page Shogun in roughly a week? Essentially, that my brain wants to be entertained more than it wants to be expanded.
Sort of like muscles, I suppose. You’ve noticed, I’m sure, that when your muscles are worked they tend to complain about it. My brain doesn’t hurt when it’s worked, but it does resist by leaping to every conceivable distraction within reach. I’ve just come off of a weekend largely spent watching football at both the collegiate and professional level. Aside from the sermon on Sunday morning, not a single moment was spent on anything remotely edifying.
On the upside, I did thoroughly enjoy the samurai epic and both my football teams thrashed their opponents. I guess I’ll just thank God for simple pleasures and proceed to bend the grey matter to more edu-muh-cational pursuits.
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