Blog @ Joe's

Grasping Slippery Christianity

Joe — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 03:53:24 +0000

How is it that so often when one seeks to challenge Christianity, they focus on men, yet neglect to learn about THE MAN from which Christianity gets it’s name? Time and again I hear someone question the validity of Christianity based on an experience with either someone called a “christian” or an intellectual who feels they have evolved beyond the need of faith. Many times those learned intellects themselves were set upon their road by a choice made after a negative experience with a “christian”.

I would like to see those people step back for a time and forget about the Christians they know. Forget about the pastors they have seen and evangelists they have heard. Forget about religion, forget about political leanings. Forget about moral obligations and religious rules. Forget all these things and take some time, time to look at one person and one thing, Jesus Christ.

Look at Him alone and what He taught and did, then draw a conclusion. As with anything, one should know what exactly the problem is with Christianity, and to claim to know about Christianity without knowing about Christ is ignorant and presumptuous. To know Christianity and what it is about one must know who Jesus is and what He is about. So many Christians miss the mark completely and looking to them will only be a cause of frustration and further alienation from who Jesus is. When set along side Jesus, these bearers of His name fail miserably and only tarnish His image in the eyes of others.

Be honest, open, and fair; learn about the man Jesus and then make a decision. If one can truly look at Christ alone, nothing else, and then decide that Christianity is not for them, then so be it. There is nothing more to Christianity than Jesus Christ and trying to follow Him step for step.

A gadget gut stretching

Joe — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:23:42 +0000

Technology permiates our society and for me this is very much a love/hate situation. I’m actually typing this on my iPod, which is pretty sweet, and a blog in and of itself is quite techy. I geek out big time over gadgets and gizmos, and love the way they make life easier. However, somedays go by that I wish we didn’t have all this stuff. I feel like all these things that are supposed to make life easier actually make them harder, because we are expected to do more. What ever happened to waiting a week or two for something?

I wonder how much more laid back and less stressful things would be without them. To just slow down and do things old school. Perhaps our Amish friends are on to something.

Maybe sometime while on vacation I can try a tech “fast”. No laptop, no iPod, no TV, and cell phone just for emergencies. If anyone else wants to try, let me know your results.

Happy FALL! (tomorrow)

Joe — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 17:46:38 +0000

Tomorrow is the first day of Autumn, and I’m happy. I love fall, it is my favorite season by far. “Why” you ask? Well, I’ll tell you why. There are a few things in life that do not fall in to the “Really Important Things” category that I dearly love. Most of these things happen in fall. In a chronological order it goes something like this:

Football – I love football, especially Carolina Panthers football, and of course, Tarheel football. I also enjoy catching the occasional high school game.
Fantasy Football - This goes hand-in-hand with the previous one
BEMA Youth Ministries – Our church youth group fires up with the start of school and working with these “very cool” teenagers is super awesome
The Dixie Classic Fair – Everyone needs a good fair to go to, and the Dixie Classic is one of the finest. Technically an agricultural fair, it also features many sweet rides and some of the best food anywhere.
Christmas Kickoff - I start my Christmas festivities earlier than most, but a great family tradition involves me heading up to Lynchburg to spend the weekend with my good friend Adam and his family to watch Christmas movies and listen to Christmas music. This also means from this point on I am allowed to listen to Christmas music, which has been completely off limits since Jan 1, this usually coincides with LU Homecoming.
LU Homecoming – Always cool to head up to “the ‘Burg” and see how much things have changed and grown. Get in a good NCAA Championship Division football game, hit Texas INN, and go to TRBC Sunday morning.
Autumn Leaves - When the leaves are in full color it is the most beautiful time of year. I think it is great that God gives us this colorful masterpiece right before everything dies and turns grey.
Halloween – I love to see my kids in their cute costumes and of course, the “Candy Inspection” that as a good parent I must perform.
NCAA College Basketball – College basketball is my favorite sport by far, I’m a bleed blue Tarheel fan, so that would be expected. When my heels start playing I get happy.
Thanksgiving – I LOOOOOVE Thanksgiving, for obvious reasons, but it is really cool to slow down and remember what it took to get us where we are and thank the One who allows us to live in such a blessed country.
Christmas – now technically Christmas is a couple days into winter, but most of December is in Autumn and by the time December rolls around, I am in wide-open Christmas mode. Pretty much the first 24 days of December are Christmas Eve to me.

The Magic of Animation

Joe — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 13:13:27 +0000

I love the Fall! Yes, fall is such a great time of year. The weather is purfect, the waft of smoke in the air from burning leaves and fireplaces, the fair is in town, and the food. Fall food rocks! Chili, taco soup, chicken stew, and Brats of the tailgating grill. Mmmmm. Also, there are some great movies. A staple of my fall movie rotation is the Charlie Brown Trilogy. “The Great Pumpkin”, “Charlie Brown’s Thanksgiving”, and “It’s Christmas Time, Charlie Brown”. These movies are great and have stood the test of time. I enjoyed them as a kid and they had already been around for a while. Now, my daughter and I can sit down and enjoy them together. It is great hanging out with my little girl, even over movies and silly cartoons.

The Sentra Update

Joe — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 01:25:26 +0000

Here is a real quick update in regards to my car that the trash man hit. First off, he is no longer my trash man. He did eventually pay up, but dang! He gave me the run-around for weeks and was really giving me heck over this thing. I had to keep reminding him that this was TOTALLY his fault, that I was asleep when he plowed into MY car in MY driveway. Anyway he gave me the equivelent of what I would get if it was totaled, but I kept the car. So, I’m driving around a jacked-up 16 year old car with some cash in my pocket. I was hoping that I would be able to sell it as-is or scrap it to get some more out of it sometime in the not-to-distant future and put that towards something newer, but with our current economic instability that is kinda on hold. Still looking to find what I would like to get when that time comes, but that time may not be as soon as I hope. All in all I guess it worked out ok. The car still drives fine it just looks like crap, and I got he value for it. At least I wasn’t left walking, so it could have been worse.

Its a, its a, look look!

Joe — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 13:39:09 +0000

The weirdest thing that has ever happened to me, happened last night. I was at Myrtle Beach, SC and it was around 11:20 pm on Thursday, September 11th. My dad and I were sitting in the living room of our 16th floor condo and my wife was out on the balcony. We were all being rather quite as the Tarheels were beating the socks off Rutgers (go Heels) and we were winding down for the night, when my wife begins to exclaim “Look look, its-a its-a, LOOK!”. We immediately jumped up and went out on the balcony. Out over the ocean, at almost eye level for us here on the 16th floor, were two orange spheres. They were a color much like the sun at dusk, and they were probably 3 -4 times the size of a star. They were basically in a line a and relatively close together. I watched them for probably ten seconds when the one on the left winked out, a couple seconds later another light winked on to the right of the remaining light. It was lit for about ten seconds and then winked out again, then the other went out seconds later. The strangest thing I have ever saw. There was no sound or movement, they were perfectly still. My wife had already seen a third light before we got out there. My dad said that a year or two ago when he and my mom were here, they both saw these same lights, but that they were also moving, zipping around the sky at total random. They would go out and then come on in a different place. Unfortunatly it was getting cloudy when we saw them and we didn’t see anymore after this. My dad said the first time he saw them it was very clear.

I instantly came in and begain to research what I saw. I found no explaination, but many reports over the past three years, and most were within the last year and a half. The National UFO Reporting Center had many reports of the exact same thing I saw and they were all between 11:00 and 12:00, mostly around 11:30 pm. For those of you who are UFO informed you may be fimiliar with the ’97 Pheonix Lights, this is the closest thing that I can complair my experiance to.

Do I believe in little green men? No. Do I believe in unidentified flying objects? Yes. I saw three (or one) of them last night.

Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s trash

Joe — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 02:53:19 +0000

Some of you may know that I am not a morning person. For those of you who don’t know, well, I am not a morning person. I absolutely loath getting out of bed before 8:00 am, don’t ask me why 8:00 am, I’m just weird like that. Anywho . . . my doorbell rings yesterday morning at 6:00 am (too early for a stinking doorbell by the way). I’m thinking, “who in the blue blazes is ringing my doorbell at 6:00 am?” My loving wife suggests that maybe it is the garbage man. So I get out of bed and open the front door to see none other than the garbage man standing there. “Sorry to wake you up” he says, “but I just backed into your car.” “My Car?” I said. “Yeah. You wanna come down and take a look?” So I head to the driveway where my 1993 Nissan Sentra sits. Yep, he hit it alright and left the imprint of his two ton truck right across the entire rear of the car. My trunk was pushed up, dented both rear quarter panels, and the driver side quarter panel is buckled all the way up to the back door. In fact he “TAPPED” it hard enough to move it about 7 inches (I’ve got the marks on my driveway to prove it). The car is drivable, it just looks like some major white trash.

Here is where there is a twist in my tale. I’m gonna get it estimated and the guy is going to pay out-of-pocket. We have a State Trooper involved and I’m this guys customer, so I look for him to pay up. I’m just afraid the repairs are going to be a lot more than he expects. There will be an update after this is over and I’ll let you know how it all turns out.

Let’s fix this before it gets worse.

Joe — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:03:03 +0000

Well here we are for our semi-anual blog fest. Although I wish I posted much more there are numerous reasons I don’t. I will not waste your time by mulling through the list, if it bugs you, email me and I’ll give you a list. Now on the the real stuff. . .

I think I can say without any second guessing that 2008 has been one of the worst years in my entire life. Not that every waking second has been bad, nothing could be further from the truth, but this year has had more tragedy and personal pain than any other year that I can remember. Again, it is a very long list so I’ll pick it up here where we are now. My grandfather died three weeks ago, somewhat suddenly. He had a massive stroke and died six days later. He was 80 years old and he knew the Lord, so we are blessed to know we will see him again. It has been really hard on my dad for many reasons, but God is giving him strength along with the rest of us.

As you can see from my last post I was having problems with my back. I was very excited after the free adjustment, but the Tuesday after my grandfather died I could barely get out of bed. The pain came back with a vengeance. So this week I started what the Chiropractor calls an aggressive two week treatment. I am a little frustrated thought, because the results have not been nearly as dramatic as last time. I just hope and pray that this does work and takes care of it for good. The pain is bearable most of the time, but sometimes it completely stops me.

On a brighter note . . .

I’m on a short vacation right now at the lake. It is nice to have a couple slow days to wind down and give my brain a break. Also, we just got back from Camp last week and it went great. I got to hang out with 14 really cool guys for a week and it was awesome.

Is It In Your Head?

Joe — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 17:11:55 +0000

Hey, what do you know, I have a blog! Am I lazy, am I busy, is my life this boring? Sometimes any and all of the above, but this is so incredible I must share.

Some of you may know that I have been plagued with back pain since last May. I was working out and completely neglected my form. I have since payed the consequences and re-injured myself numerous times over the past year. I went to the doctor in the fall and he said it was a disk issue, either herniated or bulging. Take some ibuprofen and stay away from the weights, and golf, and basketball, etc. Well, that worked for about a month, and then I just decided to go about my business because my expanding gut needed to be addressed. (I’ll save that for another post)

On Friday we had a health fair at work, at which there was a Chiropractor. I was talking with him about my pain and he asked if he could take a look. He had me lay down on his portable chiropractor table and did a series of test. He managed to discover that it was related to my neck and somehow related to me sticking out my tongue. He cracked my neck and I saw IMMEDIATE results. No more pain. This has been the best three days (pain wise) of the last year and I LOVE IT! I am now a believer in, at least this kind, of alternative medicine.

I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

The good ole’ white stuff

charris52502 — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 21:42:37 +0000

North Carolina finally saw some snow today! I woke up at 6:15 this morning and it was pouring down at our house. It snowed most of the morning and we ended up with about 1 1/2″-2″ of the white stuff. Me, I DO NOT drive in this stuff. Call me a chicken but I don’t trust myself, and i really don’t trust the other idiot drivers out there that could plow into me. I especially don’t like the idea of Ashlyn being in the car with a wintry mix falling either. So Ashlyn and I stayed home today (I had brought my budgets home with me just in case), but first we had to get some playtime in. We headed out around 8am this morning with our neighbors and their kids for some fun. We both have yards and driveways that are downhill, and not to mention a can of baking spray to add to the fun I really wasn’t sure how Ashlyn was going to like being outside with it so cold and I thought she would be afraid of sledding. Boy was I wrong. We stayed outside for about an hour and she went in kicking and screaming. Joey got to play for a little bit before he went to work which i’m sure brightened his day. Hopefully we’ll get to see more snow before the winter’s over, but judging from the past couple of winters, it’s unlikely. But maybe God will surprise me Make sure to check out the pics of flickr!