Looking forward to eating at Wings over Somerville. Since leaving Cleveland, I’ve missed the specialty wings restaurants like Quaker Steak and Lube and BW3’s. Too bad Wings over Somerville doesn’t sell beer. That would make it perfect.
Their grand opening is this upcoming Monday, I believe.
Okay, despite what some of you die-hard Dunkin Donuts coffee drinkers might think, their coffee is terrible. It lacks body.
If you are forced to go to Dunkin Donuts for some reason and want to get a decent drink, try their Turbo Hot. It’s their coffee with a shot of espresso added. It gives the normally watery coffee some oomph and at least makes it drinkable. But the Turbo Hot is $2.20 or so for a medium, which makes it much more expensive than a regular coffee at Starbucks.
So I probably won’t be attending business school this Fall. Three of the four schools I’ve applied to have turned me down. I’m waiting on one more to get back to me, but basically it’ll be a miracle if I get admitted there. This is a bit disappointing but at the same time, I knew there was a pretty good likelihood of it happening. I have two friends who also did not get admitted to the schools they applied to so at least I know I’m not the only one going through this.
I know it’s not the end of the world. I will probably reapply next year. Until then, it might be a good thing to work for another year, shore up our finances a bit and get more experience. I will also take the time to do more research on what I want to do with my career. Every business school asks you to write an essay on what your short-term and long-term career goals are. I thought I knew what I wanted to do, but during the past few months, I’ve had all sorts of ideas ranging from technology product management to investment banking to consulting. My intention is still to do something that utilizes all the ways God has gifted me in order to bless other people. The struggle is figuring out what the best balance is.
The disappointment I’m feeling is a little greater than what I might have felt two years ago because of my shift in ministry philosophy. I think most Christians believe that work is just work and church is ministry. I have come to strongly disagree with that and now believe that it should be the other way around: that *work* is ministry and church is just church (a.k.a. a place to have weekly congregational worship). Since I thought business school was a part of how God wanted me to grow in my ministry, it’s disappointing to have those plans sidetracked (at least for now). I still trust that God will continue to lead me in living a life of mission.
Our plans to move to New York City remain. In fact, they are probably expedited a bit since I’m no longer waiting until the Fall for school to begin.
Last night, I also started the extremely tedious task of tagging my photographs. It would be basically impossible to find any photograph among the 3,620 that I have on Flickr if I didn’t add tags. Even after working on this while watching a long movie like Babel, I only got through about 15% of my photographs. (BTW, Babel is an excellent movie. Not a *great* movie because I don’t think it holds up well with other “great” movies of this decade, but it was one of the best movies of 2006 and definitely worth watching.)
Most Highrock related photos, I’ve tagged with “highrock”. It’s kinda neat how it works. To get all the photos in my photostream tagged “highrock”, you just go to the URL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/peterskim/tags/highrock/.
Or all my dog photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/peterskim/tags/dog/
It looks like Flickr recently removed restrictions on bandwidth and uploads for Pro account, so I’m going to use it as a “backup” for my old film photographs. I’ve also been wanting to put these online, since they’ve just been sitting on CD-ROMs.
They are currently all “public” but if you want me to remove any of them, send me an email with a list of links to each of the individual photos you want me to remove. There are about 1,500 photos in the batch I uploaded so I’m not going to spend my own time going through each one to try to find what might be embarrassing or offensive to someone.
Enjoy!
I hate the idea of throwing books into the garbage. It reminds me of when the Nazis burned books during WWII. Books, in a way, represent the free expression and exchange of ideas in society.
But at the same time, we all need to reduce the amount of clutter in our lives and not create additional waste. I wonder if technology has gotten to a point where printed media is not needed or is even harmful to society because of the excess waste that is created in its production. These days, people can use the web to publish ideas. It is far less wasteful of our natural resources.
Yes, it is not as convenient to read ebooks on a PDA. But ebook technology is improving.
One alternative is for people to share printed resources more. I’ve been using the library more recently, instead of buying books.
I am going to throw a bunch of books into the garbage today. I don’t like doing it, but I don’t gain anything by holding onto them and they’re not worth enough to sell on Amazon.com or half.com.
This post is a continuation on my previous post entitled “Do Not Deny Self”.
Let’s start at a place we can all agree on. What is a Christian? I believe a Christian is someone who is human, therefore a sinner, but has made the commitment to repent of their sinful nature and welcome the Holy Spirit to dwell within them and guide their lives.
From that point forward, I believe there are two general philosophies one can accept: 1) negative and 2) positive. The “negative” philosophy focuses on the sinful human nature and causes the person to live their whole lives working to reduce their sinful nature. The “positive” philosophy focuses on living a life that is Spirit-led and fulfilling God’s mission on earth. You may say that categorization is overly simplistic, which I would agree with, but for the sake of argument, please try to follow me here.
Ideally, we should strive to be more holy as we live a life of mission. But I think it’s human nature to think simply. If you had to boil down the Christian life to one phrase, what would it be? “Make disciples of all the nations” or “Be holy”? I would say the former.
This leads me to my argument for why I believe Lent is unhelpful for a lot of people. The practice of Lent assumes that people have a problem “giving up” things in their life for/to God. I think the bigger problem is that people aren’t “giving” enough for/to God. What’s the difference? Once again, this may be a half-empty/half-full type thing but I believe “giving” is more honorable than “giving up”. “Giving up” involves getting rid of things in our life that we are in control of or have possession of for the purpose of decreasing what we have. In the eternal picture, that is not a lot, even for the richest of us. “Giving” has a much more positive connotation. “Giving” is about transferring things out of our abundance to others. What are we in abundance of? Not material wealth. We, as Christians, are in abundance of spiritual wealth. Christians have plenty to give because God is our Father.
This is a similar we’re-focusing-on-the-wrong-problem situation to my argument for why I think there is an overemphasis on rest. People use the whole “God rested on the seventh day” story to justify their theology on why people need to rest more. But I think the greater problem is not that we don’t rest enough. The greater problem is that most of us waste way too much of our lives on eternally insignificant things. Most of us spend 40+ hours per week in a job that God did not intend for us to do. That is what makes us tired, not being overworked.
I wish we could change the focus of Lent from “giving up” to “giving”. Instead of being self-focused and try to *give up* what makes us unholy, we should focus on the world around us and see how God might use us to *give* His love to it.
p.s. This may be hard for some of you to believe but the point of these posts is not to judge or to criticize. I am simply sharing some things I’ve been reflecting on as I consider how I should live my life.
The wife and I were a little sluggish getting ready yesterday morning and missed the bus to go to church, so we decided to go to the evening service instead. I’m glad that happened because the sermon by Tom Baskett, one of the leaders of the international student ministry at Park Street Church, was one of the best I’ve heard in a while.
Warning. He makes some pretty strong statements. He basically says that if you are not willing to live a life of mission, you are not a follower of Jesus Christ.
Tom Baskett – Matthew 28:16-20, “All Authority is Given to Me”
On the way home from church, after hearing a very inspirational and challenging sermon, I turned to my wife and asked her “Do you ever think about how to solve the world’s problems?”
I probably think about it at least once a day. My wife thinks I’m being “arrogant”. I’m not sure if that’s the right word. Maybe overly idealistic or optimistic about the role *I* can have?
I think I can do something. But I need to be careful not to get impatient. Or if it ends up taking a long time, I have to make sure not to lose sight of the end goal.
I think self-denial is a terrible life philosophy and one that completely rejects part of God’s intent for creation.
I believe that a core nature of God is God as the Creator God. The Creator God is who we first encounter as we read Genesis. Perhaps because I am an engineer and a photographer, I strongly resonate with the part of God that is the Creator God.
It is unfortunate to me that people strongly promote this idea of self-denial. They argue that we need to be afraid of “self”. That “self” is inherently evil. “Self” is always up to no good. “Self” ruins relationships. I can understand why people would come to that conclusion but in the end, I believe that denial of “self” is to deny God. Do we truly believe that God painstakingly made us even from our mother’s womb? If so, why should we continue to deny “self”? I think a lot of people think that since self-centered behavior gets in the way of relationships with people and God, we should just deny self. I would like to argue that acknowledging “self” can be an entirely God-honoring and God-glorifying act; and instead of seeking to deny “self”, we should strive to *redeeem* “self”.
Recently, I heard a story of someone who felt like they had to deny their pursuit of creative expression because they felt like it was for self-glorifying motives. While I think it is honorable that the person was aware of their sinful nature and could see how the creative expression that should be meant for God’s glorification was being used for his own glorification, I think there is something not right about that situation. Instead of denying the pursuit of creative expression, I would hope that the person would embrace the pursuit, fully aware of their sin, but hopeful that God would redeem his actions in the process.
I don’t think we need to wait until heaven to see the expression of creation’s glorification of God. God made us unique and gifted us with an abundance of skills and talent for a reason. I believe that when we act more like robots and automatons, we do not glorify God. When we express the uniqueness of who we are, we glorify God. Do not deny that. I would go as far as to say you are almost sinning if you deny the way that God created you. It’s like telling God “You messed up!” Express yourself. Do it for His glory. And even if you can’t fully do it for His glory, make that your intent and I believe God can and will redeem it in the process.
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