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Generally a Bad Option
I try not to generalize. Its quite often not very fair to people. Generalizing not only usually involves making a lot of assumptions but also judging people based on a few key elements. Generalizing can often paint a more extreme version of a person, good or bad. Whether you start seeing someone through rose-colored glasses, or a negative outlook, it’s not good. This is because it’s not the whole truth. Seeing a real (because an actor’s characters don’t count, but the actor does) person as something else is a bit of a lie. Also if you lump someone with a whole group you leave out what makes a person unique…
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Cold Turkey
Quitting things is hard even if its tiny habits like looking at your phone in bed, or eating candy. I imagine that a lot of people wouldn’t recommend it, but it’s been helpful to me in the past, that is, quitting something cold turkey. The ideas is that by quitting it completely is that you don’t have leeway to over do your limits, and that you can realize stark differences in your habits/lifestyle with certain changes. The first time I can remember trying it with food was with a mediocre snack cake, it was something my family kept in the pantry and we all liked it too much. So one day I…
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What’s Behind the Tradition
I went to senior high Sunday school with my youth group student’s this morning. We actually watched a film made for kids much younger but it had some very helpful elements for explaining the traditions we have at Christmas. First off was explaining the name Christmas, this comes from early, mostly Catholic, churches celebrating Christ’s Mass which celebrated Christ’s birth, Christmas simply combines the two words. As for the chopped down tree in your house, that comes from a German tradition where people had been worshipping a maple tree, but then Christian missionaries where able to convert them and then encouraged them to use the fir tree as a symbol…
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White Elephant
Everyone who’s been to a white elephant party knows that although the gifts aren’t always intrinsically valuable, the funniness/goofiness/oddness of the gifts makes the experience of the exchange valuable, and often times people find value in things other people don’t. Mind you some gifts at these kinds of exchanges are still quite dumb, or useless. It really goes back to the phrase “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”, and “value is in the eye of the beholder”. Preferences are different between different people, and I believe this game challenges what value can be to a certain extent. People are unique obviously and so are their senses of humor, and their…
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Decisions, Decisions, Decisions
I don’t like making them, but I’m trying to get better at it. 7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. 1 Peter 5:7 When I am facing tough decisions, I get flustered quickly, because I wonder a lot about the consequences of my actions and if its really God’s will or not. I’m still learning this lesson but I take comfort in this verse. Decisions are tough but its what our lives here are built on. Keep on making decisions as promptly as you can, while making sure you’re as informed as you can be about your decisions.
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Do Hard Things
Last night’s Praxis Wednesday was more interview preparation, and we collaborate with other Praxians about questions we might be met with; we developed and stories and ideas together. As I’ve touched on before, Praxians are the kind of people who take on a challenge and do hard things. We do what no one expects, go above and beyond, and keep pushing ourselves. The challenge we had on the call was to think up hard interview questions to ask each other, so we could be better prepared for if similar questions are asked on a real interview. It was good to think through stories and experiences and hard things we had…
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Unexpectedly Wonderful
I went to my tenth GracePoint student ministries Christmas party last night, between being a student and a volunteer, and being a part of senior and junior high groups, I’ve had my fair share of these parties, and I’ve loved every minute of it. It’s fun to dig out my “ugly” Christmas sweater, and find old, funny things from around the house for the white elephant gift exchange, and see who will “pick” my gift. After the party, I got talking with the pastor. I’ll be leaving soon for my apprenticeship soon and I wanted to touch base with him about the direction I’m headed. We got to talk about what…
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Creating Value
Creating content is one thing, creating value, on the other hand, is a whole other level. If you’re ever on YouTube or really any social media site, you’ll see “creators”, or “influencers” all over and the content they’ve created. Sometimes that “content” isn’t actually very valuable, and I try my hardest not to watch those videos, or look into those posts, because if they’re not valuable, suspicion has it they’ll be a waste of my time. I have been developing a lot of projects for Praxis opportunities lately. I’ve learned a lot about not just doing work for rubrics, but instead doing work that is actually helpful to a given business. …
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Intentionalism
Out of curiosity, I was looking at some minimalism videos on YouTube yesterday. The concept intrigues me but its far from perfect. But I noticed that one of the videos featured the two gentlemen behind “The Minimalists” podcast, and they were talking about minimalism being more than a word and that there’s no right way or wrong way necessarily to go about it, then they noted the word “intentionalism”. I really like this. I cleaned out my closet again yesterday, I had held on to a number of items that I realized no longer had any chance of fitting, being helpful, useful, or having potential. From old purses, to shirts…
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Learning Takes Time
Sometimes I forget that certain lessons have taken me awhile to learn and that sometimes others still have yet to learn a lesson. I have learned a lot in my life, but I don’t have all the answers. Often I forget about how God not only has his perfect timing for me, my learning, but others as well. It sounds almost obvious, but I’m trying to remind myself that others often will learn things in time and that often even when I was told something for the first time it was sometimes hard to grasp. That is to say that I need to give others grace for their mistakes and…
