So tonight Autumn and I watched Catch & Release...Which mid-way through people may think that it's depressing (which it definitely could be) and disappointing (the story) and felt as though they had already seen the movie since most of the trailer happens in the first 10 min or so of the movie...But then, it goes down hill from there. Typical guy girl stories, but these ones are more real life than typical movie stories. This story is all about people hurting others by what they say and what they do...Autumn says it was kinda sexual, which I didn't notice because I was busy feeling sorry for the guy that was too good for the girl that was too good for another guy who ultimately was much better than anyone thought (and I must say I kinda predicted it about half way through). By the way (spoiler warning) the girl we all thought was great (but not good enough for the one guy) ends up being with a guy that was not good enough for anyone (not even the girl that was portrayed as scummy, though he was somewhat close to being good enough for her). But here we are thinking we are watching a good movie, the directors thinking they are directing a good movie, and the actors thinking they were acting a good movie, but all were wrong. It was a bad movie, and why? Because it was real life stories all over again, people making Romeo and Juliet mistakes (not the same ones, but the same type of mistakes, namely stupid ones), and because the movie tells us that scummy guy and supposedly good girl that's not good enough for a guy (maybe not dead guy either) get together and we (the audience) are suppose to be happy about it. But we are not happy about it...we are definitely not happy about it. And to show we are not happy about it, we will blog about it. And the movie stinks!

This week has been good and bad...David is out and we are spending allot of time together, which is good; I am on a 3 out of 4 days off from work deal, which is good; I am getting a new phone for Autumn and am very excited about that, which is good; I am having my worst sales month in my Sprint history, which is very bad; They are implementing new (read: stupid) rules at work, which is bad; and so the story goes.

This weekend we are going to be spending allot of time in Goshen going to the Elkhart county fair. We are going to the rodeo and the demolition derby...Which definitely makes me sound like a hick! However, I am not into hick things, this is just a family tradition that we grew up doing as a family...Which makes me sound even MORE HICK! Ok, ok, so I grew up in Indiana...I refuse to be a hick by association, which brings me to my next though. It's time to move.

It has been a nice weekend, first I got off around 5 on Friday and went to a softball game double header (In which I got a hit or walk in every at-bat). Then we headed for the Frey household Friday night late. We spent the night and went to a family get together where we had grilled chicken that was absolutely amazing, then we went back to the Frey house again to spend the night. Today I went to work, got off at 5 and then went home to have taco's...can't get much better than that. The only down side to the weekend (and hence the title of my blog only the weekend instead of good weekend or something similar) is that my phone went out completly, that's right folks, my phone no longer does anything that you would expect a phone to do. This includes things like make calls, text, internet, or voicemail. What can I do? Everything else (my phone is a PDA), which doesn't do me a whole lotta good. I am working on getting it swapped, but it's still a disappointment. Anyway, for a while I will be disconnected from the world...oh well. Moving on I guess. Have a good day.

There was a comic on TV last night who said he got dumped on April Fool's Day, he said it was really confusing. He said it's kinda like walking in on your dad wearing a dress, you think it's a joke...but it's not. It's real. And then you cry.

I thought it was really funny, and wanted to share.

I can't believe I am doing this, my site is no where near where it needs to be in order to be functional, but I would like people's thoughts on it, I encourage all of you to go check it out.  You can find my site at myChristianConnection.org hopefully you like it.  Just so everyone knows and understands...there will definitely be errors on the site, probably most of them I know about, some that won't be fixed immediately only because I don't have much time to work on it, and some because I am still new.  As it gets better I will let everyone know and then you can all begin sharing it with friends, co-workers, and Church members and then hopefully the site will grow.

I encourage you to go ahead and sign up and register on the site so that you will be able to visit the forums on the site.  There is a forum titled site feedback, if there are errors and stuff I encourage you to leave the info in the forum and not on this site or my email box, only in the forum on the site please.  Please feel free to disregard the forum thread titles and such and just go ahead and try them out as I am looking forward to seeing how they respond.  That's all for now...Later.

P.S. I haven't remembered my funny post yet...I don't know if I will at this point, let's hope so, it would have been super funny.

So today I had these customers, right?  The kind that have been hounding me for a long time.  They call me on my personal cell phone (like I don't have a life...and the store doesn't have a number) all the time.  I even saw them outside of work once and it was the same thing...Why isn't my phone working?  So today, after getting to the point that I can take it no longer, I give in.  So  I make the necessary arrangements and got some phones together to swap their (broken???) phone.  So I am suppose to get off at 5pm (the earliest time in weeks, maybe months) and they call me and are like, 'Matt are you still at the store?' So I said yea but I am suppose to be leaving now, how can I help you?  And they are like hey, we are just down the street (yea, uh huh...) can you wait on us?  So I stand around...forever!...and then when they finally arrive they have no CLUE about what phone they want...At this point I am FREAKING OUT!!!  Just decide all really, gosh!  So they finally decide and I give them the phone and they are like, 'Aren't you going to transfer our numbers?'  And I was like, sure I could but...YOU NEVER ASKED ME TO!!!  Again, FREAKING OUT!!!  Oh yea, I almost forgot, their kid wouldn't stop running around, pulling all of our stuff off the pegs, and yelling as loud as she could.  I was like, 'Can you make her stop there are other customers in the store?', and they are like 'isn't she cute?' to each other, GAG!!!  So yea, they finally left around 6PM, SHEESH!!!  That's my funny work stories Part 2.         

To my sister, brother in law, and niece.  
P.S.  This post was a joke.

My brother is currently doing an internship (in Hawaii) and while he is gone he has been blogging...he is a pretty good writer and seems to lay out his thoughts very well.  Recently he blogged about the idea of coincidences...and it seems that in Christian circles many people don't believe that they exist.  Anyway I posted a comment on his blog (found here, the Coincidences blog is here), and then he did a follow up blog titled coincidences part 2 (found here)and I really wanted to post a follow up in response to his thoughts, so that's what I am doing.  I want to preface this with a statement, I am by no means bashing (or attempting to bash these beliefs or statements, only to respond to them).  I may end up posting a couple different posts to thoroughly explain myself, however I haven't decided on that for sure.  Here goes...

When I started to really build a relationship with Jesus (not merely religion anymore) things started happening in my life that never before happened.  Allot of things sort of fell into place so to speak.  But this wasn't just bingo follow Jesus and have a great life, this was a relationship.  As a result of my relationship with Him I would daily surrender to Him, I would pray that He would guide my path, and I would trust him.  It was during this time that I decided that I no longer believed in coincidences.  It was not because it was the 'in' thing to do, it wasn't because I heard of others that I heard had stopped believing in coincidences, and it wasn't because I found it in the Bible.  Rather it was because I had found that since I had surrendered my life to Christ it was like someone else was pulling the strings or planning things out (pretty novel since I had surrendered and asked for God's guidance, huh?).

A couple instances that my brother used were from a book by Rob Bell were he was questioning certain things, here is an excerpt from his blog...
    "In the Nooma "Rhythm" Rob Bell is talking about how one of his friendswas pulling into a store parking lot, and someone pulled out of a front row spot just as the friend was pulling in. "This just proves," thefriend said, "that God loves me."  Another person was talkingabout two sick people and how one of them was healed and was rid of their sickness and how it just proves the God cares for us. "But," RobBell says, "I'm standing there thinking about, What about the second person. Why didn't God heal them!" A third person needed an item in a store and it just happened to be onsale and the third person says, "This just proves that God really is there for me."  "If God is so powerful and loving that he canopen up a parking spot or put an item on sale for us," Rob says, "thenwhy isn't He solving more important things, like earthquakes andhurricanes."

Here are my responses, not to go back and forth but to explain why I believe these could be real examples (since similar things happened to me that I also attributed to God).  As far as finding parking spots, this sort of thing would happen to me also, sometimes I would be coming home late from church after praying with some people and I would have had prior appointments that I promised to be at, at a certain time.  Pulling in to a parking spot only to find someone backing out to leave, to me was God's grace.  The sick person who was healed was part of God's ordained plan, maybe someone was saved as a result or that person became a missionary, and as a college student I didn't have money to throw around.  When I went to the store and found the book on sale I had hoped to buy for my friend, only to find out it was now the exact amount I had in my pocket was God's way of saying to me that He was in control of my life.  

Rob brings up some points, why wasn't the other person saved, and why can't God find better things to do that save parking spots...unfortunately they are misguided at best.  I don't know why God didn't save the other person, and don't find it productive to question God (not to say I don't).  However, to suggest that I am not the apple of God's eye or that I am not the most important thing to Him is very offensive.  Remember, He would leave the 99 to find the one...besides, hear me clearly, HE IS WORKING ON THE IMPORTANT THINGS AS WELL to suggest God is neglecting the important things in order to save my parking spot is to suggest He lacks the competence to be God!

Moving on from here, because while I have my disagreements with Rob this is not about him, it's about the idea of coincidences, and following up on my brothers posts...I want to respond to the part 2 post...Since Ant (as I affectionately call him) said this 'I believe that thinking that all coincidence is God-ordained is ridiculous.' Maybe we need to look at what a coincidence is, here is what Websters says...
    Websters as Main Entry: co·in·ci·dence 
    Pronunciation: kO-'in(t)-s&-d&n(t)s, -s&-"den(t)s
    Function: noun
    1 : the act or condition of coinciding : CORRESPONDENCE
    2 : the occurrence of events that happen at the same time by accident but seem to have some connection; also :     any of these occurrences

Based on this definition I believe it is totally conceivable and probably that all (appearances of ) coincidences are God-ordained!  Why?  Glad you asked...if a coincidence is an occurrences of events happening at the same time by accident but seem to have a connection doesn't it beg the question of how?  Maybe, just maybe God is up there putting things in place and guiding the life of one who is totally surrendered to Him?  Could it be that God is so sovereign that He puts things into motion to accomplish His will in our lives?  I mean really, isn't that what we have asked Him to do?  Is it so surreal to believe that He would answer our prayers, especially when they align with His will?  Now let's respond to points 1-4.

1.  I agree as a Christian we need to show people the light...The light of Christ Jesus...as un-biased as we can.
2.  Not only is it not illogical to hold to a belief that coincidences do not exist (to the Christian who has surrendered his life to follow Christ) but it is to some, illogical to not to believe it.  To believe in the Bible as the sovereign Word of God and to hold that God Himself is all knowing, all powerful and omnipotent, how can we then not believe that He would place in motion, things large and small to accomplish His divine will?  To believe anything else would be borderline blasphemous.
3.  Agreed.
4.  This point I disagree with completely, see my blog so far.  But also because the will of the one who is completely surrendered to Christ is one that is laid down at His feet.  At this point while we still have free will, we have given that to Christ to do with what He pleases.  At this point, He is in control, and at this point He is going to ordain the footsteps of that Christian in order to accomplish His will.  This is how it has been done throughout the Bible, all the main characters are examples of people who have given themselves to God (/Christ) and have only accomplished great things through surrendering, not by any talent/gifts of their own.  These people tell us that in their stories.
In addition to this, I think part of God's love language to us is/can be the little things done in our life.  This could be something small as getting us through a parking lot faster, or it can be something much larger, but to discount the simple coincidence is to discount one way God can show His love to us.  To say that coincidences are/can be just that, is to limit God yet again.  I find it incredible the way's we limit a limitless God because of the lack of our own understandings.  While I was in college I tried to take all my preconceptions about God and throw them out the window.  I tried to look at everything and ask myself  "Why couldn't that be God?  Is there something that conflicts with what I know of the Bible that would lead me to believe otherwise?"  I tell you what, it wouldn't be a bad idea for us to forget who others say God is and to actually find out for ourselves who God is.  Not only who He is in the Bible/world today, but to who God is to you!  I pray that every person find out who God is to them and don't let anyone take away the things God has told you or shown you about Himself.

The last thing I want to say is this (and this may be why I post more on these thoughts) I think the major problem with discounting the belief that there are no coincidences is this: there is to much emphasis put on free will and not nearly enough emphasis put on God's sovereignty!  The reason I have not decided whether to write more on this topic or not is because I for one will admit that I am no expert on His sovereignty, so that topic is quite a bunch to bite off.  However I do understand why it trumps/negates the free will argument (and in some instances trumps/negates free will itself...or appears to, see pharoh arguments).

I will end this blog with this, I appreciate the dialogs and love my brother, but on this topic he is wrong  (I say that in good humor Ant)

P.S. Mom, you cannot possibly agree with me whole-heartedley and with him at the same time (since you wrote, and I quote 'Well said, and with passion! I agree whole-heartedly!') so if you agree with me you must go back and modify your comments to him.  Otherwise you need to state your disagreements, which will also be wrong