My Life in Fort Wayne - Tuesdays

It's kind of hard to believe, but I've already lived in Fort Wayne for 6 whole months. As with living anywhere else, I've developed a certain rhythm of life, and because most of you have no idea what I actually do in Fort Wayne, I thought it would be a good idea to do some short posts of what I actually do every day. So every day this week, I'm going to be posting a short blurb of what that day normally looks like.

Tuesday - Meijer Day

6:45 - 8:00 - Wake up, eat, do QT's, drive to work.
Tuesday mornings are usually my fastest mornings. Because I (usually) shower Monday nights after summer league, I don't need to Tuesday morning. I also don't usually pack lunch on Tuesdays, as I'll describe below.

12:00 PM - Cafeteria Salad Day
I try to buy lunch from the cafeteria minimally, but it's nice to just not have to pack lunch every day of the week, and I've determined that Tuesday will be my day to eat from the cafeteria. The main reason I started doing this is because I don't buy many fresh vegetables because I usually don't eat them fast enough before they go bad, and the company cafe has a pretty awesome salad bar. Pasta salad, chicken salad, olives, banana peppers, sunflower seeds, onions, green peppers, raisins, cranberries, and freaking amazing croutons. Random: I decided today that I'm going to bring my own bottle of salad dressing and keep it in the fridge here. It should make my salads much cheaper, and I'll be able to stuff more goodies into my paper boat.

Big, delicious salad I ate today for only $4.67. 

While I'm on the subject, I might as well describe what I normally eat for lunch. If you are reading this and you don't care about what I eat for lunch (if you are anyone but my mother), feel free to skip to the next, uninteresting section. I sometimes make mac and cheese and add some frozen vegetables and sriracha hot sauce onto it. Other times I eat a ghetto canned soup and crackers combo. Every once in a while, I bring in frozen vegatables along with a tv dinner and microwave them. I also often bring in leftovers from whatever I cooked the previous night, which often includes some hamburger/tuna helper or Rice-a-Roni, that I've added extra pasta and/or vegetables to.

6:00pm - Meijer Trip
This may surprise you, but I actually dread this weekly Meijer trip. This is mainly because I'm starving by the time I arrive at Meijer and I'm tortured by the piles of unattainable foodstuffs that I wish I could just open and stuff in my face. I always shop hungry (bad idea), but I usually keep a shopping list to try and keep myself focused. 

I'm also sorry to disappoint all of you there that I am unable to carry all my groceries into my apartment with only one trip. It's quite hard when you live alone and need to carry bags of food, along with soda and bottled water, while needing to close the trunk, lock the car doors, and unlock my apartment door. So between being excited to eat salad along with not being able to "one-trip" my groceries, that's two strikes against my manliness. Sorry to disappoint guys. Maybe this is why I'm still single.

[Random aside: I actually won't be making my weekly Meijer trip today because I was just notified that Sam's Club will be having an open house this weekend where non-members can go in and "try" the Sam's Club experience. I figure I'll just go blow my food budget over the weekend instead of today.]

7:30pm - Cook. Eat newly-bought snacks in a hunger-craze while cooking. Eat half of cooked meal due to previous superfluous consumption of snacks.

8:00pm - Bedtime - Relax.
Tuesday nights are my only completely free nights, so it's nice just to stay in, watch some TV, play some AOE, read some books, or just derp around on the internetz.

And there you go. That's my Tuesday. Probably the most "boring" day of the week, but whatever. Quiet nights are nice too.

Random: check out this sweet pennant I bought at Lids.com on clearance for only $2.00 with free shipping. Slickdeals win!

It's always nice coming home to a package at your door

My Life in Fort Wayne - Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays

My Life in Fort Wayne - Mondays

It's kind of hard to believe, but I've already lived in Fort Wayne for 6 whole months. As with living anywhere else, I've developed a certain rhythm of life, and because most of you have no idea what I actually do in Fort Wayne, I thought it would be a good idea to do some short posts of what I actually do every day.

So hopefully, every day this week, I'm going to be posting a short blurb of what that day normally looks like.

Monday - Summer League Day

7am - Monday Mornings - Worst mornings ever.
Monday mornings are difficult. Sometime it's because I sleep too late on Sunday, trying to prolong my weekend. But really, most of the time it's just because it's Monday morning. I've developed this weird, unproductive routine that happens most Monday mornings. I get up, eat some breakfast and do my quiet times. Then I go lay down and take a nap. That's right, folks. I take a half hour nap half an hour after waking up ...at 7:30 in the morning. I usually end up getting to work a little later than usual, but the nap is totally worth it! I actually didn't take a nap this morning, and I've been feeling uncharacteristically tired all day today. Coincidence? I think not!

8:30am - 6:15pm - Work
Not much to say here. Work is work.

6:30pm - 9:00pm - Ultimate Summer League
For those of you who don't know what summer league is, it's basically just like IM sports, where you are on set teams for a set number of weeks (10, for us), and you compete every week against whoever you are scheduled to play. At the end of the season, there is a playoff tournament, and teams are seeded according to their regular season performance. Some of the teams in our league are pre-formed, and some of them are draft teams (meaning, team captains drafted players).

I'm on a draft team, and I'm pretty sure that our team is the best draft team, despite having a mere 3-5 record. Around half of our team is inexperienced and haven't played any level of organized ultimate, so we had a pretty steep learning curve the first few weeks. But we've played pretty damn well for being a draft team. We had the most difficult regular season schedule in the entire league, but we still managed to score double digits in all but one loss (games are to 15). We lost our last playoff game and are out of contention for the championship, but it's okay. We actually beat a 4-1 team in the first round of the playoffs, which was awesome.

So I actually wrote this entire post (except for this part) beforehand, and I just got back from my summer league game. HOLY CRAP. WHAT A GAME. We had already beat this team 15-8 in the regular season, and we didn't like them. And we still didn't like them. They called a lot of travels and ticky-tack fouls on us. They were actually 0-4 in our division. But they jumped off to a 8-3 lead. We cut the lead down to 2, at 10-12, and we finally tied it up at 13-13. Games are win by two, and we started trading points, with us taking advantage and then them coming back and tying it up. With hard cap at 17, they took the last advantage at 16-15, and we tied it up again making it 16-16, universe point. We lost universe point. But oh man. What a game. I actually cramped up a few times in that game, I stretched out, came back to play, and finally cramped out at universe point again. So did our best handler. But damn. What a game. Two and half hours. Universe point. Both of my calves are super tight right now, and I can barely walk, BUT I FEEL SO ALIVE. It's been a while since I've felt this deep competitiveness come out from inside of me, and I love it!! I was planning on taking a picture of us playing to post on here, but I completely forgot. So please accept this crappy picture of us trying to figure out our team cheer.

Red Team!!!

9-10PM Go Home, eat, watch a little TV, read a little, shower, sleep.
There are few things better than some Meijer-brand Flavor Ice after a long ultimate game.

Best $2.99 I've ever spent

My Life in Fort Wayne - Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays

It's been a while, Barnes and Noble.

I went to Barnes and Noble the other day to look for a book to give to my Little Brother as a birthday gift. I had already bought him a Calvin and Hobbes collection from Amazon, but I wanted to also get him something more "productive" like an interesting history or science book, because he's mentioned before that he really likes to learn. 

Walking through the store, I couldn't find the science section for the life of me, as the entire store seemed to be either recent bestsellers, teen fiction, or non-book products. I eventually gave up my quest for the science section and just asked one of the employees there, and she led me to this hidden corner of the store, a crevice with only two bookshelves worth of books. Many of the books there were by Dawkins and Hawking and dealt with topics relating to science and religion, sparking my long-neglected intellectual interest, so I momentarily paused my gift shopping to go see if there were any philosophy books I could take home to read. Again, after trekking through the store many times, I couldn't find the philosophy section. Asking the attendant to help me again, she led me to a literally waist-high, half empty bookshelf. This was the philosophy section.

I'm convinced this is an accurate representation of the Barnes and Noble I visited.

I tend not to be one of those generational, temporal snobs that goes "OMG KIDS THESE DAYS. FAITH IN HUMANITY LOST. EACH GENERATION GETS WORSE AND WORSE. I DONT WANT TO LIVE ON THIS PLANET ANYMORE", but I would be lying if I said that I wasn't a little sad for the state of our society.  I don't care much what kids read, because they're just kids. But it was really weird walking through the store and seeing so many adults browsing the teen fiction sections and sitting down reading near those sections. Maybe this all has to do with the relatively lower education level here in Fort Wayne.

On a somewhat more positive note, it was nice walking through a bookstore again. Browsing in an actual bookstore is so much better than browsing an online bookstore like Amazon. It's nice to actually see how thick a book is, to pick it up and feel its weight, and to flip through the pages. This may sound kind of weird, but it was a nice feeling being able to once again "judge a book on its cover" (along with its back cover and infolds). Amazon is great, but it's often impossible to tell what a book is like and if its good or not, even from reviews (there are a lot of dumb reviewers out there).

After an hour and a half of wandering around and looking at my own stuff, I finally found a book to get Jobe. It's a non-fiction book on ninjas that was surprisingly heavy, with a lot of drawings and illustrations and stuff. It was pretty cool, if I can say so myself.

Justice for Penn State

The NCAA just lowered the boom on Penn State. Sixty million dollar fine, 4 year bowl ban, all 1998-2001 wins vacated, and a reduction of 20 scholarships per year for four years [src]. For some reason, it feels too soft, too harsh, and just right all at the same time.

The $60 million fine, post-season ban, and scholarship reductions feel just about right. The University, the "system" that is responsible for the coverup of these horrendous, perverse actions will suffer massive, mainly financial, losses. We're hearing about decommits from football recruits, and I wouldn't be surprised if general enrollment plummets these next few years. It may be a long, long time before PSU as a university as a whole recovers from this.

The vacation of wins from 1998-2011, 112 wins in total including six bowl wins and two conference championships, seems a bit harsh. The intent of the vacation is clear - it's a straight shot at Joe Pa's win record, dropping him from first in wins to 12th. This aim at Joe Pa is warranted, but hugely unfair to the players that played in those 14 seasons, who had nothing to do with the coverup. It's unfair to the fans, who witnessed the wins first hand. I've always been a big opponent of vacating wins, as it's completely retroactive. If there's one thing this whole Sandusky/Paterno fiasco has taught us, it's that you can't change the past, which I think the NCAA is trying to do.

But for some reason, this all still doesn't feel like enough. The people really responsible for this haven't received their due punishment. Joe Paterno has the refuge of being dead, Sandusky is still alive in some prison somewhere, and others responsible for the coverup haven't even charged criminally yet. There's part of me that wants so bad for Joe Pa to be alive to face the music, to take the stand, to suffer further public humiliation for his failures. The taking down of the statue isn't enough. The renaming of the library (which hasn't happened yet) isn't enough. And let's not even get started on Sandusky. Lifetime in prison for him isn't enough. Execution even seems merciful for the man who raped little boys and made them perform oral sex on him. My stomach turns just at the thought of it.

These sanctions are a good start, but I can't help but feel like justice hasn't yet been served, that the students and former players are being punished too harshly while Paterno, Sandusky, and the others involved in the coverup aren't being punished enough.

Justice can never be fully dished out in this life. We can take comfort in knowing that Paterno and Sandusky will one day have to answer to their Maker, and will have to answer the God of heaven and earth, Righteous Judge, the Creator of the broken little boys, face to face. Thank God He is a God of Justice.

Joe Paterno and the Depravity of Man

Less Dreaming, More Prayer

"It's a great thing to want to do great things for the kingdom of God. However, it's a terrible thing to want to be great in the kingdom of God." - RC Sproul

I really don't know if other people are like this, but I daydream a lot. I'm not talking about the "Secret Life of Walter Mitty" sort of temporary complete detachment from reality, but when my mind wanders or when my eyes are closed and I'm trying to sleep, I drift off into my dreams.

My imaginations are exactly what you would expect from a young guy who struggles with pride - they usually consist of me being some sort of hero. Sometimes it's me being a hero in sports, where I hit some game-winning shot or make the game-winning layout. Other times, I defend some beautiful girl's honor and win over her heart. As I've grown spiritually and started thinking much more about the kingdom of God, many of these imaginations often become imaginations of the great things I would do for God.

Some of the more "dangerous" and obviously sinful imaginations are easier to recognize and suppress immediately. These are those imaginations of being some famous pastor or a sacrificial missionary-martyr. They could often also be as simple as doing something good for the Church and getting a lot of praise and recognition. These sorts of dreams, though extremely tempting to me, are easy to recognize and fight.

It's the imaginations of more imminent works for God that often prove more problematic, especially when God brings something to my mind that I should do that would actually be pretty admirable. For example, upcoming meetings and conversations, or some evangelism or invitation that I'm hoping to make often bring this sort of imagination/dreaming/speculation to my mind.

Recently, as I was driving, God brought one of my old friends to mind that I thought I should encourage to return to church when I got home. In itself, this was a very good thing that I was excited to do. However, I sort of drifted into imagining my conversation with her, and what it would look like. I imagined the different things she would say and how I would respond. Then it sort of hit me. What was I doing? It's good to be prepared for any conversation, but what was the point of allowing my imagination to run wild with simply speculating at the conversation that would happen? If I actually cared about this friend, shouldn't I be spending the time to pray for her, as I know that it is only God who will actually be able to change her heart? Is this dreaming as opposed to praying a symptom of doing good works out of pride rather than love? Am I more concerned with winning God points than I am with the restoration of someone's soul? The more I thought about it, the more I realized how much more time I could spend praying as opposed to imagining myself doing something "good" for God.

Prayer matters. Prayer works. I know it. I've experienced it. I know God is sovereign over all. But still I always seem to fall back and rely on my own effort, on my own wisdom and eloquent words instead of the power of God (1 Cor 2). Instead of drifting off into dreams of how I'm going to evangelize to some specific individuals, I need to lay it all in front of God, the only one who can actually do anything about it. Dreaming won't do any good. But prayer will.

[Thinking about it, this "Less _______, more prayer" seems to be a good formula in general. Less complaining, more prayer. Less self-reliance, more prayer. Less fear, more prayer.]

Not getting anything out of sermons?

How's your obedience been recently? I've found in my life that when I am actively battling sin and doing my best to live blamelessly that I usually get the most out of Scripture and sermons, and it is when I'm steeped in sin, my conscious isn't clear, and I'm waffling spiritually that my Bible reading most often feels dry and sermons are hard to sit through. The following quote and book excerpt were especially poignant to me as I've thought and struggled through recent spiritual "funks." I know the "I don't get anything out of sermons" sentiment is commonly felt, especially with us young people, so hopefully this can be of some encouragement to you, as it has been to me. 

"God does not grant fresh revelations until there has been a complaince with those already received." - A.W. Pink

An excerpt from The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

"'Only those who obey can believe, and only those who believe can obey... The truth is that so long as we hold both sides of the proposition together they contain nothing inconsistent with right belief, but as soon as one is divorced from the other, it is bound to prove a stumbling block. 'Only those who believe obey' is what we say to that part of a believer's soul which obeys, and 'only those who obey believe' is what we say to that part of the soul of the obedient which believes. If the first half of the proposition stands alone, the believer is exposed to the danger of cheap grace, which is another word for damnation. If the second half stands alone, the believer is exposed to the danger of salvation through works, which is also another word for damnation.

At this point we may conveniently throw in a few observations of a pastoral character. In dealing with souls, it is essential for the pastor to bear in mind both sides of the proposition. When people complain, for instance, that they find it hard to believe, it is a sign of deliberate or unconscious disobedience. It is all too easy to put them off by offering the remedy of cheap grace. That only leaves the disease as bad as it was before, and makes the word of grace a sort of self-administered consolation, or a self-imparted absolution. But when this happens, the poor man can no longer find any comfort in the words of priestly absolution - he has become deaf to the Word of God. And even if he absolves himself from his sins a thousand times, he has lost all capacity of faith in the true forgiveness, just because he has never really known it. Unbelief thrives on cheap grace, for it is determined to persist in disobedience.

Clergy frequently come across cases like this nowadays. The outcome is usually that self-imparted absolution confirms the man in his disobedience, makes him plead ignorance of the kindness as well as of the commandment of God. He complains that God's commandment is uncertain, and susceptible of different interpretations. At first he was aware enough of the disobedience, but with his increasing hardness of heart that awareness grows even fainter, and in the end he comes so enmeshed that he loses all capacity for hearing the Word, and faith is quite impossible.

One can imagine him conversing thus with his pastor:
"I have lost the faith I once had."
"You must listen to the Word as it is spoken to you in the sermon."
"I do; but I cannot get anything out of it, it just falls on deaf ears as far as I'm concerned."
"The trouble is, you don't really want to listen."
"On the contrary, I do." 

And here they generally break off, because the pastor is at a loss what to say next. He only remembers the first half of the proposition: 'Only those who believe obey.' But this does not help, for faith is just what this particular man finds impossible. The pastor feels himself confronted with the ultimate riddle of predestination. God grants faith to some and withholds it from others. So the pastor throws up the sponge and leaves the poor man to his fate...It is now time to take the bull by the horns, and say: 'Only those who obey believe.' 

Thus the flow of the conversation is interrupted, and the pastor can continue:
"You are disobedient, you are trying to keep some part of your life under your own control. That is what is preventing you from listening to Christ and believing in his grace. You cannot hear Christ because you are willfully disobedient. Somewhere in your heart you are refusing to listen to his call. Your difficulty is your sins." 

Christ now enters the lists again and comes to grips with the devil, who until now has been hiding under the cloak of cheap grace. It is all-important that the pastor should be ready with both sides of the proposition: 'Only those who obey can believe, and only those who believe can obey.' In the name of Christ he must exhort the man to obedience, to action, to take the first step. He must say: 'Tear yourself away from all other attachments, and follow him.'...The traunt must be dragged from the hiding place which he has build for himself. Only then can he recover the freedom to see, hear, and believe."