I was on the way home today listening to the radio and the news came on talking about a shooting that happened in Colorado about 35 miles from Columbine. They were interviewing a pastor of one of the local pastors and he seemed rehearsed, not like he rehearsed his answers or anything, but kinda like he always has the right answers type of thing. He sounded like I am a pastor let me quote some scripture that fits the situation, but he hasn't been in the situation and can't relate to you. Anyway he said, "The entire book of Job is about the Lord gives and the Lord takes away and Blessed be the name of the Lord." The pastor follows this up with another statement saying, "And it's not our job to find out the reason for why something happens, the reason is in the mind of God and we don't need to know why as long as God does." Those two statements have a depth in them that we should all desire to know. The level of revelation contained in those sentences is amazing. If we could only live our lives through those truths, it would make things so much easier on ourselves. Anyway, I thought that I should share this with you. It's been an exhausting day...God bless.

EDIT: This was on a Christian Radio Station.

An interesting observation is this: In our Christian walk it seems that there is many times where God puts us in situations that are hard on us, He makes us do things that move us out of comfort zone. Just as we get comfortable its time for a new challenge. It’s interesting because we don’t know what we are doing and we don’t know how it applies to our calling. I think that what god is doing is simple; He is teaching us another farming technique. We may start out digging holes to plant seeds, or pruning the plants or harvesting the fruit, but we start out in one area of farming. The next thing He does is switch us to something totally different; we don’t get it because now we are climbing latter’s and picking fruit or driving a tractor to harvest wheat or corn. It’s important to remember that God has a plan and that even if we can’t see the bigger picture we don’t have to. At one point this was a really profound revelation but now its hard to duplicate…oh well.

I would like to say that God truly has blessed me these past couple of days. And there is nothing more to say i guess.

In our daily lives, as humans, we have many aspects of ourlives that require our time and attention. These areas include school, work, relationships, bills, and our spiritual walk among countless others. Each time we devote time to an area of our life we are juggling. We spend some time paying our bills and then we throw it in theair while we concentrate on work, then we throw that in the air as we devotetime and energy into our relationships before tossing that to the sky aswell. And this is how our life goes, one by one tossing each area of our life into the air and hoping to catch it before we allow things to get out ofcontrol.

It's amazing the messes that we manage to avoid - not without cost though. Every time we loft something into the air that thing, that area of our life now demands some internal memory dedicated to that issue so as to not lose control (we will be using some computer speak here -any techie's that want to contest some of my analogies please let me know). Most of us people seem to come without the required memory available to handle all of the things that we throw into the air. The next thing that happens is that we get memory overload and our life gets blue screened or we get this pop-up that says physical memory dump starting in 59,58, 57, 56, 55, 54, 53...ect. You get the idea. And that's when it all crashes. Our life turns to shambles and we are left in ruins. Hopefully we have our life stored on a backup hard drive with the ability to put everything back into place. For most of us, these crashes only happen once in a while and seem to be 'only' 'some' or 'several' of these areas of our life, as we are able to make several miraculous catches on our way down. Come to think of it we make better wide receivers than we do computers.....

As far as humans go we see varying degrees of skill when itcomes to juggling, sure we can point to CEO'S and other people who seem to have it together, but I assure you, they are dropping things to i.e. HP's CEO. This leads us to one conclusion, we are not capable of handling all areas of our lives, and my best guess says that we weren't intended to. As a matter of fact, my experience tells me that any time I focus to long or to hard on one area of my life, the other areas fall down. My personal experience shows me that as capable as I am as a person, I can truly only handle one thing at a time…and that’s tuff for me because by nature I am a multi-tasker. If I wanted to I could try to show everyone how much I have it together and hold off for as long as possible with dropping the ball, but the truth is, I can’t do it, atsome point I will fail – the question is, “How long will it take me to learn?”

See, this is where Christ comes in, as Christians we have this amazing resource at our disposal. We can set our lives apart, focus truly and solely on this resource and that resource will juggle for us. That resource is Christ. And let me tell you, he is a pretty good juggler. In my personal life, when I am sitting on the ground collecting everything that fell down, that’s when I usually give everything to Christ and things tend to start running smooth again. It’s when we start to take over that the problems start again. Most of us don’t even realize we are juggling again until things start to go wrong.

I am here to tell you folks, it’s a lot easier to juggle onething with two hands than the alternative. This is long, I know, it’s just my life on a screen. Hopefully it means something to someone…Good Night.

How many of you ever find yourself doing things out of character and at some point in time you realize what you are doing, you look at yourself and don't know why you are doing it, and you know that it can be stopped, and then you stop it??? This has been happening to me a lot lately...it intrigues me, what is God doing in my life? Anyway more later, hopefully with good news to share with all of you.

Well, good news...I passed my Real Estate Exam today so as soon as i send in my application and it's in the mail i am officially licensed to buy and sell real estate for consideration (the technical description). Also, we hung out in Michigan City a bit today and my lovely wife Autumn decided she wanted to play on the McDonalds playground, so being the good husband I am I told her it was ok under one condition...She had to take little Becka with her. Feel free to check out the pictures in my photo blog under McDonald's somewhere in Michigan City. We also hung out with some friends today, whom we lovingly call the Hemker Heads...it was fun, we had Chicken Parmesan. Alas, that was my day, it was a very good day.

Yesterday was one of those day's that was really high...and really low, but in the reverse order. There were some amazing things that I learned. I would really like to share some of the things, but not really, so I have compromised with myself and will share with you one trinket of new wisdom I gained. Here it is:

Yesterday both of my friends talked with me about seeing our life as a spiritual person having a physical experience, yea, yea we all know the cliché, right? But do we experience the cliché? One comment was made that people view themselves through there physical body but don't realize that if they lose a finger, arm, or leg they have not lost any part of themselves. As spiritual beings we are contained within ourselves, we are not our physical bodies, we are what is within our bodies, if we loose a part of our body that doesn't take away from who we are...it is difficult to write out revelation.

The other part of this whole thing is people. People who shine their lights. My friend also talked about people, Christian who have started off life bad but then had a salvation experience and turned there less than glamorous decisions into amazing ministry opportunities, things like drug clinics, single mother’s supports groups, prison ministry, ect. We don't want to go to prison so we can start a prison ministry, but you know the guy who has one has a heart for the people who he ministers too. Same goes for drug clinics and homeless shelters.

It's amazing to see these people's lights shining in the city one of the friends said. As you look around the city, do you see the lights shining? I was blown away at the thought of those people's little shacks and poorly funded ministries as being lights in a city. Does that do something to your insides? Does it completely change the way you see things? As a spiritual being who walks around the city how many lights are shining? As we allow the Lord to open our eyes in this way, and maintain a spiritual perspective...I think we would see the lights shine brighter and brighter, but those who are evil...are blinded by the light...

I am a physical person who once in a while has a spiritual experience, at least that's how I live. I think about everyone lights shining and I told my wife, it's like we are a bristle on a Christmas tree and all we see are other bristles, then one day God opens our eyes to a light next to us (as my friend did) and then we start to see one a little farther away, then another, and another. And as we grow in the Lord and develop relationships with these believers they open our eyes to others who are lights. As this happens we begin to see an entire network of lights and the string that holds them together. I have a suspicion that if we got the opportunity to get off of the tree and see it from across the room I think we would realize that all of the lights are off in the house except for the ones attached to the Christmas tree. And I think that if we stood outside at night we would be able to see the lights on the tree inside and if we stepped back even further I think we would only see I giant light glowing from inside a house down the road....and I think its a powerful image of what happens as we give up a little bit more of ourselves and begin to live our lives as spiritual people have a physical experience......

One more quick thought, it seems that we think about what it will be like once we get to eternal life, I’ve got news for ya, you received eternal life when you were saved, let’s enjoy the journey.

EDIT: My wife reminded me that in our original conversation I told her that we are also lights on the Christmas tree...this also works very well in the analogy, we just have to make sure that if we are going to be lights we have to make sure we are all the way screwed in (or connected to Christ)

My day started out with a meeting between the sales reps only at my store...at 8:30. not good... for me. I did get double chocolate pancakes from ihop as part of the deal, so that was good, the meeting on the other hand was not...lets leave it at that. I then talked to a friend for over 45 minutes on the phone and that was one of the best conversations i have had in a long time! Today was my day off in 8 days and originally i was going to work but decided 'no thanks' was a better option. Then it was off to a friends office to drop off some things i promised to give him, that turned out to be the second best conversation i have had in a long time and ended up being about 4-4.5 hours long...oops. Since i had not been planning on this detor it was now time for supper and grilling, which was nice. Then it was an after supper snooze which lasted not nearly long enough before i ultimately had to transfer myself to my bed, at which time i was jumped on constantly by a certain two yr. old someone, at which time i remembered i was expecting an email and that's how i ended up posting a new blog...nice huh?

I know i was listening to Shaded Red on an earlier post but i am still listening to them, they are simply amazing. Everyone reading should go out and buy both of there CD's, they are that good...and they will change your life!

I know most people don't care about the earlier parts of my day, at least in that much detail, but i must say, today has changed my life forever. Talking to those two guys today...it was a real blessing. Both guys actually have the same name, weird huh? But here is the thing, those two guys, i can't thank them enough, it's really cool to know people like them who just took an hour(s) out of their day just to talk. The one guy just let me sit in his office to talk to him in the middle of his work day and accomplished next to nothing...it's astonishing. I really appreciated that.

The mind blowing words of wisdom that these two guys shared will at some point be added in future blogs, but at this time..it's off to bed.

In our lives, Christianity, if we truly want it to be special, will be the hardest thing in our life, and marriage will probably be number two. So when you feel as though a Mack truck just ran you over, get up! I think lots of things happen to us all at the same time to see what type of character we have...Lord when this happens to me, give me the strength to stand-up and overcome it.

I think. I think that in life we like to carry things on our backs, things like financial issues, relationship issues, and spiritual issues. Then we focus on some while letting others slip. Then when we figure it out, when we realize it's not working, then we go to God. If we focus on Him all the time...like truly focus, it seems that all aspects of life are handled and we look good at juggling...until we take our eyes off God...then we look silly, that's right silly! I think it would be better if we always focused on God. I think this is why Jesus says My yoke is easy and My burdens are Light & whoever is weary and burdened come to Me and I will give you rest. This definitely rings true in my life.

Question of the day: What burdens are you carrying that you need to give to Him?

Or

Thoughts to ponder: What other verses ring home to you in your everyday life? What Biblical truth do you rely on?

Lately i have been caught up in the humbug of life (don't ask me what that is, i don't know). My mom's B-day was today, she is now officially older than dirt (lol) and...well that's it.

Next thought, i was reading the other day about the Columbine shooting that happened several years ago on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre, wow, that article is crazy and really makes you think.

Happy thoughts... Not sure if i have any, after that article though we need some, eh? Also, I have been thinking about writing about family thoughts in my blog but it's more of a deep thoughts blog...maybe we can adjust. Let's start with a 'question of the day' or 'thoughts to ponder' in all my writings from now on, ok? I think it's a good idea (lets hope i can come up with some). All comments will now be required to answer the question or ponder their thoughts in writing in order to comment ok? (like i could enforce that)

Question of the day: In the Bible it says that one of the signs that Christ is coming back will be that the moon will be bright red, like blood. Since the first time i heard that it has constantly freaked me out when i look at the moon sometimes. Like tonight, there was a red tint to the moon. This happens pretty frequently, does it freak anyone else out?

or

Thoughts to Ponder: I sometimes wonder if God uses nature to fulfil things that have been prophesied. Science tells us that when the Moon, Mars, and the Earth are all aligned correctly then the Moon will appear red due to Mars illumination. Does anyone else want this to hold off for a while before it happens again?

Now everyone knows the kind of thoughts i deal with on a daily basis, i look forward to hearing your thoughts.

I am going to start posting on my xanga site and I hope you all continue to comment and follow my blog over there. You can find it at www.xanga.com/mparrott84, please update your bookmark. Thanks.

mparrott84 @ Blogger.com signing off.

When opportunity knock, answer the door...Food for thought. It seems that in life, God will show you something, and then it's like, you know I really need to change that about myself (or rather let God change you since that's why He showed you what He did) and then BAM! It's test time. Like the other day, God showed me that the picture I have of life has a lot of stuff in it, nice house, car, ect. But then He's like, 'Is that what's important? Or should you rather desire Me and the calling I have placed on your life?' Then your like, you know I could give it all up to serve Him because that's what I want...And you meditate on it and begin to dwell on the things of God and not stuff, and then it happens, something pops up that you need (want) and your stuck in a rut. Like for me, here I am giving up everything I ever wanted and BAM! This brand new phone comes out that I really need (want) and I mean I really need it (want it). So I am stuck....Just thought I would let you all know, so you can buy it for me. :)

Another thought, 'Is the fact that we want stuff wrong, or is it the control that the stuff has on us?' Because first we want it, then we think about it, then think about it some more, then we buy it. But, we also have to pay for it, so we go to work to afford it and then the stuff gets us...Sad face :( If we can have stuff and not stuff us, then we are ok. Because when I go out and buy a new phone (cause you know I am really into phones and work at a phone store...Big mistake right?) then I take it home and its like 'wow this phone is really cool....And I still have all the same problems and disappointments in life that I had before...But the phone is cool....But now I have more disappointments in life cause now I have to figure out how to afford it....

Ok people, comment time.....You have been slacking lately. :)