It's OK to have sorrow...

I wanted to write a blog about my thoughts on the last few weeks in Pelican Rapids, but quite honestly, didn't have a clue where to start. There were too many jumbled up thoughts going through my mind the whole time I didn't know what to write about. That was until I read a sermon by a guy named John Piper.

It just so happens that the weekend of the bus accident, my brother was home visiting and we were talking and he recommended that I check out some media by Johnny P. First of all, I will give you a bit of background behind Johnathan. He grew up in a Baptist family and is now a preacher at Bethlehem Church in Minneapolis, MN. He is the founder of a most interesting theology which he calls Christian Hedonism. The main principle behind Christian Hedonism is the belief that God is most glorified when we are happy and delight in him. So, out of curiosity mostly, I checked out his site and found an interesting looking sermon in text form on the main page.

In his message, John talks about sorrow and how godly sorrow is not only possible but available to us if we are willing to look at things from the right point of view. After all, Jesus, himself, wasn't without sorrow. (Matthew 26:38) Therefore, godly sorrow is possible. John talks of two things governing whether or not sorrow is good. Cause & Outcome.

Cause
In a nutshell, If the cause of your sorrow is from something that is not "right" then the first half of godly sorrow is occuring. If we experience something that is not good, not kosher, not moral, not "right", we are already noticing the right things as we know that there is something better, something greater than this. One way a band I know of showed this lesson with a song entitled "The Shadow Proves the Sunshine". When we are going through life and we hit a "shadow" - a dark spot, misfortune, catastrophe, etc. - then we are experiencing merely a shadow in the great awesome light and love God has in store for us. This is the point in time in which we need to put our trust in God 100% that He will take us out of the mess and show us His glory. Which brings me to the second half of godly sorrow, Outcome.

Outcome
I find this part of sorrow incredibly important. What we do after a negative event is what can make or break the godliness of the sorrow. Since that Saturday, I've heard more than once, "This sort of stuff happening to a town like Pelican Rapids will do one of two things to each individual person. They will either blame God and give up being a Christian OR they will look to a higher power for guidance and therefore strengthening their faith. For each and every one of us should make a decision, "Should I go on with my life the way it was before the accident, get back to normalcy OR should I learn and take something from this to strengthen my faith?" I think if we choose the latter it can speak volumes to both believers and nonbelievers. I guess what I'm trying to say is, " If people see how Christians react to disaster, that being, trusting in the Lord, knowing that there is something greater than what is happening, and believing that God has the power and will use it to take you out of the mess; then, those people witnessing this will have to notice your faith, and hopefully increase theirs because of it.

We've all gone through a lot in the last couple of weeks, but we can trust in the Lord. He will take us out of the shadow. (Psalm 28:7)

You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your reaction to it.
- Rob Bell as the apostle Paul

Kansas Golf Trip - Day 3

Lawrence, KS --->Omaha, NE (211 miles)

YES, another promising day for golf. We got to sleep into 7:30 this morning. Outside the sun was shining brightly as expected. The continental breakfast included a donut, toast and about three bowls of fruit loops. The day's schedule included 18 holes of golf at Eagle Bend once again, and after that we would eat and travel back to Omaha for the night. The first tee time of the day was at 9;38 so we got to the course and started chipping at about 9:20 or so. The weather was noticeably colder than the day before. It wasn't anything too significant, but it was definitely chillier. It was probably from the 20 M.P.H. North wind that we were in. Still, the high was in the mid-60's for the day.

For this round I played with Andrew and my father again minus a Brian. My front nine smelled similar to the farms we passed going through Iowa. I couldn't get into any rhythm whatsoever. Through that though, I got my first birdie of the year! It came on one of the toughest holes for the wind we were in. It was on hole #9. I was very happy about it.

The second nine was a little better than the first, and I ended up having the best back nine of the group. The highlight of the back nine was definitely hole #18. My father, Andrew, and I might have been playing a gambling game(if we would have been it would've gone something like the following). IF we were gambling, a few events could have doubled the bets... 3 times. So on this hole we were playing for two dollars a point in a 5 point per hole game(5 being the maximum amount of points). Andrew and I were on the same team and we ended up playing the hole almost flawlessly (Andrew with a par and a birdie for myself. My father on the other team played the hole flawfully. It turned out that both Andrew and I won 5 points each of dearest daddio. It was kinda funny because that's ten dollars for the both of us from him. Whoops. :) OK, I'll stop bragging now...sorry.

Score : 88

Putts: 36

Greens in Regulation: 6/18

Fairways: 3/14... yikes again

After the round we piled into the cars and headed off to find something to eat. As it was Good Friday, we were looking for something for lunch without red meat in it as directed by Grandma Ripley. It turned out to be a challenge, but we ended up finding a McDonalds that provided us with some delicious fish sandwiches. Unfortunately, every trip must have its end and it was time for us to depart from Lawrence. As we left we saw a landmark... well if it would be a landmark if I was into watching cars driving in circles. We passed the purple colored Kansas motor speedway which I noticed was HUGE! But thats about all it had going for it. After that my trip from Lawrence to Omaha was pretty uneventful other than the Jesus Christ Superstar Soundtrack that I was listening to at a fitting time of year.

Once we got to Omaha we sort of relaxed and ended up going to Applebees for supper. The shrimp alfredo was pretty good. And those events bring me to the present time in which I am blogging because our game of 31 got cancelled due to lack of interest. Tomorrow's plans are still up in the air because there might be some nasty weather moving in. Golfing in the 30's isn't my favorite. So I might end up in Pelican a bit early. That way I can say that I got sunburnt and frost bit in the same weekend :).

Kansas Golf Trip - Day 2

Omaha, NE ---> Lawrence, KS

Thanks Mitch, you are the reason we don't need an alarm clock. Oh well an early awakening gets the worm or something like that. I took the first shower and got out of the room to go to get some breakfast. As with the custom of Southern hotels, this hotel had some delicious biscuits and gravy served for breakfast. This is one of my favorite parts of the trip. What made the morning even better was a sunrise rivaling the sunset from the night before shining through the windows of the lobby. It was very impressive (see picture). I got the internet to work that morning and promptly finished my NCAA bracket on facebook before we left (UCLA beating Kansas for the Championship by the way).

We got on our way at about eight o'clock towards the forecasted high of 68 degrees. The three hour drive seemed to go by very quickly as I was writing the previous post during it. Something noticeable from Omaha onwards was that there was absolutely no snow on the ground.

We arrived at the second McDonalds of our trip at a little before noon. This one was unique in a different way than the previous one. This one was in the middle of the interstate. That's right, right in between the North-Bound and South-Bound traffic there was a McDonalds!

FINALLY, we arrived at the golf course, Eagle Bend. It was everything that I remember it being from 3 years ago. It was excellent to be able to chip and putt on GRASS!!! My foursome was comprised of me, my father, Andrew, and Brian. My first hole of the year was a bogey sadly, but I came back with a par on the second.

My Stats:

Score: 90 (Not bad, but definitely could've been better)

Putts: 39 (Bad, needs to get better)

Greens in Regulation: 7 (So-So)

Fairways: 3/14..... YIKES

But the day was all in all a success because I got to golf. It was awesome and great to finally get out golfing. Once we got back to the hotel we decided to go to eat. My golf group walked to a steak house and I had a delicious ribeye.

That's what brings us to the present time!

Oh yeah, the high for today was 69 degrees!!!

Kansas Golf Trip - Day 1

Pelican Rapids ---> Omaha, NE (435 miles)

Ahhh, finally the day has arrived. This day was more than a little hectic as I still needed to pack for the trip as I had gotten home very late the night before because of the Section Championship for Basketball. Fortunately, Mrs. Evenson who was my sixth and seventh hour teacher excused me to leave during seventh hour to pack and to get things ready.

The group was saddened to the loss of our oldest golf team member LaurelLee. She had been looking forward to this trip since Fall of '07. It was too bad that she got sick this week. Nevertheless, we departed on the longest leg of the journey, from Pelican Rapids to Omaha. We left a warmer than usual Pelican Rapids at about 4:30. The first 150 miles or so were quite uneventful to say the least. I mean, there isn't too much to see around Eastern North Dakota. Things got a little interesting when we saw a weather system moving in. Being as how flat everything was, it we could see the weather moving in from miles away. The rain came hard and it turned a downpour before long. Things were not looking good for a golf outing the next day. One of the coolest things of the night happened next though. In the distance to the West I could see the sun breaking through the clouds. The complete sun was on the horizon and if I wouldn't have been in one of the flattest states in the Union, I wouldn't have been able to see it. It was one of the coolest sunsets I've ever seen as it was a bright red and purple light through the fog. Interestingly enough though, as fast as the rain started, it suddenly stopped right before we got to Sioux Falls, SD. We would be picking up Andrew at Larry's Truck Plaza just south of Sioux Falls. Truck Plaza is a generous name. It was more like a gas station and an outhouse for a convenience store. Next, we looked for a “safer place than Larry's” to park Andrew's car. We found a K-Mart (easily better than the shady looking Larry's... I'm serious). Nearby we at our din din at the fine establishment of McDonalds. There was something odd about this McDonalds... something very odd indeed. In Andrew's words, “Is this the gender confused McDonalds?”. There were not one, not two, but three ladies with shorter hair than Andrew. I had some double cheeseburgers and a Shamrock Shake. :)

Back on the road there was nothing that was too exciting. Andrew joined my father and I in our truck and we caught up and talked about Kansas trips in the past. I enjoyed having another being in the car and my father enjoyed having someone in car to talk politics with. We stopped a real “Truck Plaza” for gas in Sioux City. I bought some Twizzlers there, and it was the best choice I made all trip. They were as soft as Twizzlers could be. Almost the consistency of pudding.

After a total of seven hours driving, we arrived in Omaha, home of the Quest Center(which will be hosting NCAA tournament games on Thursday and Saturday), Rosenblatt Stadium (home of the college world series), the Comfort Inn, and King Kong's Burgers and Fries. Checking into our rooms we were all exhausted as it was already 11:30 PM. After being disappointed by the wireless internet not working, I went to bed and found that even the littlest kid like Mitch Egge can still make a snore that rivals grown men.

Kansas Golf Trip - Overview

The next few blog posts I have will be a summary of the golf team's trip to Kansas. This is partially out of finding new things to write about and secondly out of sheer boredom. :) In any case here are some of the facts concerning the trip.

• The group includes the following: Me, Conner Paul, Casey Bruggeman, Mitch Egge, Abby Feist, Michaela Gray, Nicole Hanson, Allen Ripley, Doug Bruggeman, Al Corrigan, Brian, Connie and Andrew Evenson. LaurelLee Loftsgard was planning on coming but unfortunately was sick the day we left.

• We plan to play three 18 hole rounds of golf. Two in Lawrence, Kansas and the other in Omaha Nebraska.

• Round trip we will have played 3 rounds of golf, traveled 1292 miles, and swore at our golf balls countless times.

What World Are You Living In?

Sometimes it takes a friend to say something to make it click.

The whole premise of the book "Rumors" (which I can now say that I am finished with after a good 4 months or so) is dealing with the "worlds" we live in. The obvious world we live in is of course Earth. This world includes society, mother nature, friends, family... this is your everyday life, what you wake up and jump into. The other world the author focuses on is our spiritual (unseen) world. This world includes you and your spiritual life. The unseen elements. The things that aren't tangible, and you need faith to know they exist. Your relationship with God is a huge part of this world as is your afterlife beliefs.

The idea that Philip Yancey promotes in his book is a need for us to mix the two worlds. We need to look for ways in which we can overlap our spiritual world into to the physical world that we experience everyday. There isn't a need to separate our spiritual life from our physical world.

Here's where the friend comes in. She was leading our weekly Bible study and was talking about incorporating God into our college decisions. Towards the end of her talk she talked about the importance of involving God into everything we do. This means asking God for guidance on even the littlest of things, praising God for the most mundane of things, and thanking God for everything. This is when I made the connection to "Rumors". Both my friend and the author are right.
We need to make God the center of everything we do. After all, He is the One who we need to aim to please. Whether we are choosing which college to attend or what to do on a Saturday night, we should ask for His guidance. The more we can incorporate God into the mundane of our life, the more the stresses of life will be relieved. We can trust that God will lead us on the right paths.

"In all your ways acknowledege Him, and He will make straight your paths."
-Proverbs 3:6

Why I am not writing new posts :)

One idea I wanted to try out was just letting you know what I've been into lately. Let's see.

Books:
Rumors - I've been really getting into Rumors of Another World by Philip Yancey lately. It is extremely thought provoking, but requires very attentive reading. Meaning, if you miss a couple of sentences you will most likely miss a good point Yancey points out. The last couple of chapters have been about sin, grace, forgiveness, guilt, etc. There have been many tremendous analogies that I've read in the last week it's almost overwhelming. Blog posts on these analogies and thoughts coming soon!!!

Confessions - Another one I have been glancing at is a book called Confessions by a dude named St. Augustine. It could quite possibly be the most difficult book I've ever attempted to read. After all, it is written in the 90's.... 390's that is :D. This book (or series of books rather) was recommended to me by a certain Philip Yancey! Even though the book is difficult to understand at times, he certainly has some great points for a guy who lived 1600 years ago!

Musak

The Morning Of - This is one of the most random finds for a band I've ever had. I found them on top of the charts on purevolume.com. From the first song, I could easily tell they were Christian. The six-some has at least 3 vocalists who sing very good harmonies and a female lead singer who I believe could sing on Broadway. Check out www.purevolume.com/themorningof

Flight of the Conchords - Flat out entertaining. Favorites include: If You're Into It and Most Beautiful Girl in the Room

I apologize if you were looking for one of my normal posts. One will soon come...

Some recommended reading...

Donald Miller's very interesting take on God's plan for us and how we need to give up control to the one in charge.

The Not-So Amazing Race...

Why are humans so obsessed with competition? Why do we need to be better than others so often? Try this experiment: Turn on your tv. What do you see? A reality show? A sporting event? Politics? Each of these have a thing in common. They are all about some people being better than the other. This fundamental virtue of humans is undeniable. We need to be faster, stronger, smarter…. BETTER than others! This is extremely evident by the way we treat professional athlete and movie stars. Because they have a talent for beating others, they get to an almost godlike status.

Donald Miller brings this up frequently in his book “Searching For God Knows What”. In his words, he calls it “The Lifeboat Theory”, and the basis of his idea is this: You and about 10 others are in a lifeboat. The weight from the amount of people is too large and the boat is starting to sink and take on water. One person will be chosen by the group to be abandoned. This person will not be saved. The point he follows that with for the rest of the book is – We all don’t want to be that person that has to be thrown from the lifeboat. So, in everything we do, we must make sure we aren’t the type of person that the group would want to turn on and give a toss overboard.

This may include putting others down to make them look like a good target. Or showing off what our individual skills are to prove our worth to the group. In a way, I believe this explains bullying. When someone thinks they are in danger of losing ground to others, they will do something drastic, maybe as far as pushing around a lower ranking person to do two things: (1) Push the other person down and closer to the edge of the lifeboat. (2) Show off the bully’s strength and worth to the group.

What makes it so hard in this world to build each other instead of trying to rise above them? Imagine how much happier, productive, and trusting the world would be if everyone gave up on trying to be better than each other, but instead helped them to get better. Yeah sure, you might be looked at by some as “weak” by the people still competing. This is the driving force of competitiveness and aggression in our culture. You and I both don’t want be seen as weak. What our world needs is people who can help others and ignore the rest of the world who are calling them weak. We need to find the common thread of basic humanity and look less at differences. You will be amazed at how much more you appreciate someone and their WORTH to you when you ignore your differences and focus instead on your commonalities. This will take the focus off of changing the world for the better but changing ourselves for the better world. A different perspective will make anyone look better or worse, it’s up to you.

This Is Your Life (Continued...)

Ok. So after reading my last post, hearing other viewpoints on it, and picking ideas up through daily life (friends talking, reading, etc.) I would like to elaborate a little further on the subject. First of all, I will not recant what I feel about being your own you and being the person who makes you come "alive". This is central to human happiness, meaning, worth, and human LIFE really. Finding the thing that gets you "on fire" for what you are doing is the important thing, then it's just a matter of following through with it.

The thing that has come to my attention though is one that I maybe shouldn't have overlooked. Yeah, you should definitely try to be the person you want to be, but at the same time, you should look for what God has planned for you. The reason I chose to elaborate a tad more on this is because it might have seemed a bit self-centered on what we can do in our lives. It's true you should not let others tell you what you can or can't do, but there is One you should listen to whenever you have the chance and He is the one who created your life, its choices, and most importantly its PURPOSE!!! You may think that your purpose may not have as much significance as another's, but just because someone seems like their purpose in the world is greater than yours doesn't mean what you do isn't as important. Rather, where would the most influential people be without the others below them holding them up. I believe carrying out God's will in this world is a group effort without one person being more important or valuable than another. A great passage about this can be found in 1 Corinthians 12:4-6 and then again in verses 12-26.
Having said that, I have a very nerdy analogy, but it really worked for comprehending things for me. Picture this: A rock band. Broken down further into individual instruments, broken down further into individual notes (i.e. A bassists low G, a drummers snare drum). Individually these things don't make the greatest music, but together, they can make something nothing of them could make on their own. Here's the connection, all of us have our note, our pitch, our CALLING. The song (God's Will/Plan) can not take form unless they all fit together. Not one is more important or more of the lead, but all are necessary to making the song as good as it can be. What we all need to do is find what note makes us add the nicest sound to God's plan; find where the calling for our lives is needed to make harmony with the rest of the song. *

*Please excuse the corniness of my analogy, it's what came to mind :D

This Is Your Life

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
- Gil Bailie

A lot of people end up asking the world what to do with their lives. The tendency is to hope that somebody else will tell us who to be. In this society there is a lot of expectations put on people to be something that may actually not even be in the best interest of even that person. I’m not saying that I have everything that I want to be figured out. Instead, what I am saying is that I hope that I can be the person who truly makes me “alive” as Gil Bailie says and not what anybody expects me to be. “Alive” in this sense can be described as acting instead of reacting; choosing where to go instead of “flowing where the strongest current pushes”. These currents being: Friends, Family, Peers, Hardships, and just society in general. In the words of Jon Foreman, “This is YOUR life. Are you who YOU want to be?” This is very true and a big part of my life. As much as I can, I try to think of how I can make my life mine. Tasks like these can be incredibly difficult for anyone, especially teens though. How many times can you honestly say that you make a decision at school/work/etc. without worrying about what others might say or think about your actions? For many (including myself) this number is very low. It really shouldn’t be that way. Our focus for finding what to do with each of our lives should be finding something we are passionate about and becoming that person instead of what ANYONE else is passionate about or thinks is important.

Just to confuse you I’ll throw this extra tidbit in. So if you are for some reason going to listen to my advice and not listen to what others have to say about your life, why are you taking my advice!? : )