What if I read the first line of Psalm 23 backwards? It’s equally wonderful

On Sunday I was part of this new Sunday School study and it was our first meeting. It was a basic overview, kind of like the first day of class. We talked about what we were going to study (the book of Galatians) and how we were going to do it (research some background, finding meanings of certain translations). I am pretty excited about this. It’s been a while since I really went deep into the word like this. There have been things similar, but nothing like this.

One of the examples to help us understand what was going to happen in the following weeks was to break down a line from the Bible and just see what we can learn and glean from it. We took the following line and studied each word individually.

THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD.

Pretty simple line. Very commonly used line.

So we broke down the line analyzing every word, starting with “The” then followed by “Lord” and so on. It was nice since we got to look at each word and what we define each word as. Combining it together after all of that made the meaning of the line that much powerful.

Where is my urgency? My friends are going to hell!

I remember my sophomore year. Or maybe it was my junior year. One of those years in college we invited a guest speaker to speak at fellowship. He was a pastor but admitted he didn’t feel like being at the meeting. He didn’t have the passion to preach. But he did relay one message. He was going to preach because he didn’t want people to go to hell. He wanted to share the gospel. He didn’t want anyone to leave without knowing about Jesus. He would not squander away the chance.

“I DON’T WANT MY FRIENDS TO GO TO HELL!” he yelled out. He said that at every opportunity possible, he would preach the gospel. He felt convicted to share the good news to anyone he saw. I admired that. Then I looked at myself and see how far away I am from it.

Where is my conviction. I sure don’t want my friends going to hell. Isn’t that enough already to motivate me to preach the word to my friends. Doesn’t that motivate me enough to at least try bringing up the good news? Instead I cost through life knowing that people I care about are going to hell.

That’s heavy. Salvation is that important to me. Yet here I am holding onto the word and not sharing it. Where is my urgency? Maybe I’ve been too careful for too long. Maybe I just need to trust God more.

That message still sticks to me. I still don’t know why I haven’t done anything about it yet.

I am saddened by what happened in Paris but I won’t be changing my Facebook profile picture to the French flag

** This isn’t addressed to anyone specifically. This is purely observational thought. I wrote this with nobody but everybody in mind. 

I don’t do viral things on Facebook. When people did the ALS bucket challenge, I didn’t do it. When people changed their profile to a cartoon, I didn’t do it. When same-sex marriage was legalized, I didn’t do it.

Now everyone is changing their profile pictures to the French flag, I once again won’t do it.

I am not against being public on social media with my concerns, sadness, emotions over things. I just don’t do it like this.

The first thing that bothered me about it is that the feature to change it says it’s a “temporary” change. So is our mourning temporary? What kind of message are we sending? For us to care about the aftermath of this senseless violence is only a temporary thing.

The instant you welcome something like this, a tragedy, into your profile picture, you are sending a message that this thing is important to you. But once you change it back to the normal profile picture you had, does this not matter to you anymore? Is your own face without the French flag more important than sending the message that you care?

Great night hanging out with MC Jin for a free concert ‘at his home’

https://www.instagram.com/p/9xItI7y1QL/

Last week I saw this post on Instagram and I knew that I had to attend. What’s cool about this was that the last time I saw MC Jin was at The Great Company during the summer of 2014. It was going to be cool to go back to this really cool place and see him perform.

I had seen him perform 10 years ago when I was at SJSU and last year during the 626 Night Market. But getting this intimate setting up close was pretty special.

The last time I was here I didn’t get a chance to really notice the graffiti along the wall. The neighborhood is in this dark part of LA with factories. But it’s a pretty neat looking exterior at night. Inside the building is mostly wood and brick but it has a real nice structure feel to it.

While we waited outside, he came out, met everyone and ordered a duck taco. He was all about that. Then he said we’d be getting in shortly.

That’s right! I saw ‘The Peanuts Movie’ twice already

As you know, I am a huge fan of the Peanuts. I love Charlie Brown so much. His heart is so warm and his optimism remains despite all his shortcomings. I was hoping this movie would capture that and it did beautifully. I liked it so much, I saw it twice.

It takes a lot of the simple messages all people go through and still make it relevant. I look at the classic scenes we grew up with watching the gang (dancing, kite flying, red-haired girl) and it still employed that into the story. The animation was really cute and the voice acting was superb.

The message of the movie was simple and at the end, I felt real good. My eyes watered. I was happy. This is why I love Charlie Brown and Snoopy and all the gang. They show us the innocence in the tough times we deal with daily. I recommend this movie. So good!

Why are Christians wasting their time complaining about the Starbucks red Christmas cups?

Some Christians Are Super Offended By The New Starbucks Red Cup Designhttps://t.co/QEhxRecsJi

— BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) November 8, 2015

OK, I just found out about this. Check out this summary of the nonsense in the tweet above.

First of all, I don’t drink coffee. I drink it occasionally but I never go to Starbucks because I want coffee. Never in my life have I ever desired to drink coffee. Most times when I do, I’m with people. I’m a social coffee drinker.

I am also Christian. I am a Christian who doesn’t care for coffee or what Starbucks does.

With that said, after reading the above story, I could not shake my head any more. If I did, I’d get whiplash. Is this really an issue? First of all, I didn’t even know Starbucks had seasonal themed holiday cups for Christmastime. I didn’t even know this was a big deal to people. Like if you showed me these cups, I wouldn’t even know they were supposed to mean something important.

Shame on you Twitter for replacing the ‘favorite star’ for the ‘like heart’

If you haven’t heard the news, Twitter has replaced the star for “favorites” and replaced it with a heart for “likes” throughout all their platforms including Vine.

Here is their official announcement and release:

https://twitter.com/twitter/status/661558661131558915

We are changing our star icon for favorites to a heart and we’ll be calling them likes. We want to make Twitter easier and more rewarding to use, and we know that at times the star could be confusing, especially to newcomers. You might like a lot of things, but not everything can be your favorite.

The heart, in contrast, is a universal symbol that resonates across languages, cultures, and time zones. The heart is more expressive, enabling you to convey a range of emotions and easily connect with people. And in our tests, we found that people loved it.

You’ve embraced hearts in a big way on Periscope, and we’re delighted to bring them to Twitter and Vine, making them the common language for our global community.