Coldplay and Understanding God

I'm fully aware that Coldplay isn't a Christian band, but bare with me.

Three years ago, I wrote a blog titled Free Will that discussed the nature of our God-given freedom to choose what we do with our lives.  I believe that this blog will be understood without reading Free Will but if you're up for it, I believe it would be a good read to understand this blog a little more in depth.

This morning, on my morning commute to work, I was listening to an old Coldplay album I hadn't given airplay in a while.  Specifically, I was listening to Warning Signs off of their Rush of Blood to the Head album.  Here are the lyrics:

A warning sign, I missed the good part then I realized
I started looking and the bubble burst
I started looking for excuses
Come on in, I've got to tell you what a state I'm in
I've got to tell you in my loudest tones
That I started looking for a warning sign

When the truth is I miss you
Yeah, the truth is that I miss you so

A warning sign, you came back to haunt me and I realized
That you were an island and I passed you by
When you were an island to discover
Come on in, I've got to tell you what a state I'm in
I've got to tell you in my loudest tones
That I started looking for a warning sign

When the truth is I miss you
Yeah, the truth is that I miss you so
And I'm tired, I should not have let you go

So I crawl back into your open arms
Yes I crawl back into your open arms
And I crawl back into your open arms
Yes I crawl back into your open arms

This song brought to mind a lesson that I learned a few years back that I thought I'd share with you, whoever you are.  The lesson is this: Give Glory to God for the good things He does despite whether or not you believe He did them.

A few of you may be nodding your head in agreement but I imagine that most are wondering what I mean by that.  Either reaction is okay.  I've done both.

I'm very logically minded.  I need things to make sense using reason, logic, and facts.  This is a neurological requirement.  I believe wholeheartedly that God made me this way and that He is not in the least bit bothered by it.  He isn't bothered because He literally is truth and knows quite well that, using reason, logic, and facts, I will find Him over and over again.  And, He likes to be found.  And, I like to find Him.

In my experience, I found that I could pretty easily explain away with natural occurrences what others would call miracles.  In fact, it was the first thing that came to mind when hearing about or seeing one of these so-called miracles. I would immediately know how that could occur naturally.  Early on in my Christian walk, I would even write off these miracle stories as fake.  Perhaps the people telling them or claiming a healing were, in fact, feeling healed.  But, feelings are subjective and cannot be corroborated by others.  So, I didn't think people were intentionally lying.  They were just being naive.  I know I'm not alone in this.  Admit it.  If you're not there now, you were at some point before.

But, what I have come to realize is that there is some real truth to the cliché that God acts in mysterious ways.  It's not that God is trying to be mysterious.  It's that He's operating in such a way that maintains free will.  (This is the part of the blog where I hoped that you chose to read the Free Will blog I linked to at the beginning of this one.)  He is operating so that there is no definitive proof.  See?  If He intervened in our lives in such a way that there was literally no room for doubt then there would be literally no room for choice to disbelieve.  Imagine if He just showed up at your door all shining in incredible glorious light and looked you in the face, grabbed your hands and instantly made you 18 years old again.  We'd have no room for disbelief.  Our choice to believe or disbelieve would be gone.  It seems like a good thing on the surface.  But, if our choice is removed from the equation, then our free will is lost.  If free will is lost, then I no longer can choose to love Him.  If I cannot choose to love Him, then I am forced or programmed to do so.  And, we all know and understand that robots cannot be made to love us.  Love inherently requires the choice not to love.

That said, when I witness someone experiencing a miracle or hear about one second hand or even witness coincidences in my own life.  Even though my brain still goes straight for the natural explanation, I know that I have a choice right then.  I can choose to accept my brain's interpretation or I can choose to believe that God miraculously intervened.  There is no cost to believing the latter.  It takes no special effort.  In fact, accepting a natural explanation is no more than believing that God didn't do anything which is disbelief by definition.  I have the opportunity to give God the glory in all things.  Conversely, I have the opportunity to practice disbelief in all things.

Now, since I made this life change a few years back and began to give God the glory and accept that these are instances of miracles, I have experienced a renewal of perspective.  It's difficult to describe exactly, but I feel that I have been blessed considerably by God for giving Him credit for good things.  It wasn't easy at first.  I admit that I was forcing myself to ignore the possibility of a natural explanation, but it got immensely easier to the extent that I even see now that it's the logical response.  God has to act a certain way to maintain our free will.  One might even suppose reasonably by this logic that God has the ability to move more obviously in people's lives who are more grounded in their choice to love Him since this increased exposure doesn't affect a change in their free will, just a confirmation of it.  This brings to mind Psalm 34:8 "Taste and see that the Lord is good."  You know once you've tried.  You can't know till you do.  That's not to say that everyone who has tried has stuck with it.  We all still have free will to choose.  But, we must first choose to accept that God is good before we can see God's goodness.

The Coldplay song written out above reminded me of my own struggle to accept God's goodness in action.  'I started looking and the bubble burst. I started looking for excuses.' 'You were an island and I passed you by, you were an island to discover' 'When the truth is... I miss you'  I love the redeeming quality of the end of the song.  It is true of how God waits patiently for us to come around, giving us opportunity after opportunity most certainly not because we've earned those opportunities but because of His great grace.

So I crawl back into your open arms
Yes I crawl back into your open arms
And I crawl back into your open arms
Yes I crawl back into your open arms

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Nice Weekend

I really enjoyed this past weekend.  It was jam packed full of things that I really enjoyed.  So much so, in fact, that it's almost hard to know where to start.  I suppose that chronologically is best, so here goes...

The weekend before last, while camping in Texas, I managed to bust a hole in the passenger tail light of Jodi's car.  I bumped it with the cooler's plastic wheel while trying to load the cooler back in the truck of the car.  The plastic of the tail light was the weaker of the two plastics, evidently.  It wasn't a hard bump but was more than sufficient to require a new tail light.  I say all this to say that the blinker also quit working and made me nervous because the bulb looked fine.  However, I bought some replacement bulbs after work on Friday and that was the problem after all.  So, that was a relief.  A good start to the weekend.

Goodbye, 84 body.  We hardly knew each other.

Saturday morning was a nice homemade breakfast with my family followed by the sale of the body to my 1984 Ford F150 at full asking price.  Woo hoo!  As mentioned in the last blog, I had it listed for sale on Craigslist and while I had talked to lots of people who claimed they wanted to buy it, I started to wonder if I would get it sold since no one had made any effort to actually see it in person yet.  I'm glad to make the space and liquidate the unnecessary asset.

I had time to mow and weed eat which is a huge chore, but one that I kind of enjoy doing.  While doing the weed eating, I listened to Leeland's new album, Invisible.  It was available to stream for free for the weekend only.  It's a great album!  We went ahead and pre-ordered it.  It is set to be available on July 22.  Afterwards, some family showed up to come with us to a church fireworks display to which our neighbors had invited us.  It was good to get to hang out with them and get to know them better.  They're a really nice family.  The children got to play on inflatables, the fireworks were fun to see, we had some good food, and got to spend some time with family and new friends.

Lyric successfully frog hopping his way across the balls.

Sunday afternoon was a small watch party at Qdoba to see the Euro 2016 final match between underdog Portugal and host country France battling it out on the pitch.  Portugal's star player, Cristiano Ronaldo, was injured shortly after the game began and despite making a valiant effort to continue on through the pain, he reluctantly and emotionally called to be taken off.  Without their captain, Portugal held off France well into extra time when a Portuguese substitute managed to blast in a goal from almost 25 yards out.  It was an unlikely goal from an unlikely source, but it was the only one of the match and it gave Portugal their first ever major tournament trophy while breaking a 41-year run of France defeating them.  It was certainly an amazing game to see as well as a satisfactory finish to a summer of international soccer watching.  With Copa America complete and now with Euro 2016 over, I go back to being a non sports-watcher.  Not that I'm complaining!  While I enjoy the tournaments, I'm equally looking forward to all the things I will have time to do now.

After the watch party and a stop at Lowe's for some trim, we headed down to Busiek State Park to hang out and let the kids play.  It was a nice finish to a nice weekend. :)

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Invasion of the Body Snatchers

1984 Ford F-150 before I did anything to it.

Two months ago, I wrote about how I brought the '59 body home from it's temporary resting place.  It seems like yesterday, but doesn't everything?  Either way, I've started the project of reviving the '59 Ford by putting its body (the only thing I have left of it) on the frame of the '84.

It's been going pretty well so far.  I have the entire '84 body off and listed for sale on Craigslist.  I have had several people interested in it, but no trigger-pullers yet.  It's a really decent body, actually.  I never cared much for the seventh generation (80-86) F-series Ford trucks.  Of all the different models, it was my least favorite.  But, owning this one has changed my mind a bit.  Fourth generation F-series has taken it's place as least liked.  That's as far as I will go.  In my opinion, it's far too modern in styling to be a classic, yet it is also too dated to be considered modern.  It's in that no-man's land in-between nice and neat.

Removing the bed.

Back to the project, I rather easily got everything off but then felt the brakes get hit when I started on the cab.  Taking on a project like this takes a certain level of craziness.  Stupidity may certainly substitute, as well, but all along the way, one just has to hope that it's the former and not the latter.  Once to the cab, I started to get a bit overwhelmed when trying to figure out all the wiring.  The only solution was to completely dismantle the dash.  There was no way I was going to make sense out of any of it without seeing the big picture.  So, that's what I did.

Everything removed.  Cab resting on back of frame.

Here's the cab precariously hanging from my makeshift lift system comprised of pallet racking, several well-used and fraying ratchet straps, and a come-along.  It's partially sitting on the back of the frame for peace of mind.  I left it like this overnight because I understood that someone was coming the next day to buy it from me.  But, since that deal fell through, I rolled out the frame and lowered it back to earth. I half-suspected that I would find it on the ground the next morning full of broken glass but, much to my relief, that wasn't the case.

With the entire '84 body removed, I have dropped both fuel tanks and started the tedious task of cleaning the frame and preparing it for paint.  This will take some time, but I've got a pretty good little jump on it, so I suspect that if I keep up the pace, I may have the whole thing painted in the next couple weeks.  Then, I'll get to start the task of placing the '59 cab on it.  That's super exciting but equally as intimidating.  There will be a ton of measuring involved and some customization to make the body mounts work.

Rear of the frame with rear gas tank.  So much cleaning to do!

Once the frame is all painted, my plan is as follows:

1.  Jack up the frame to get it all level and resting on blocks.
2.  Set the cab on the frame where I think it should go.
3.  Attach the front clip to the cab.
4.  Line everything up where it should go using shims.
5.  Measure all the gaps at the connection points so I know what thickness of bushings to get.
6.  See where the current mounts are located versus where the cab will require them to be.

Hopefully, with some Ozark ingenuity, I can make the current cab mounts work for the '59.  If they won't, then I'll just have to add some new mounts where I need them.  Only time will tell. Until my next update!

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Family, Fun, Food, and Futbal!

Last Saturday was my 37th birthday and we celebrated it how I wanted to celebrate it and then some.  For months, I've been looking forward to Copa America Centenario which, if you didn't know, is an international one-time tournament with countries from all of the Americas to celebrate CONMEBOL (South American Football Confederation) turning 100 years old.  The kick-off game was last Friday night between USA and Columbia.

USA may have lost that match 2-0, but I still really enjoyed the game particularly since for the first time ever I got to watch from home.  We signed up with Sling TV which is a really awesome app.  We get to try if for free for 7 days and then it's only $20 per month for the basic package (a trimmed-down version of a standard cable package).  For an additional $5 per month, I got the sports add-on package which included Univision Deportes Network.  All of the Copa America games will be aired on this channel.  The only caveat is that it's in Spanish, but that doesn't really matter since I don't care to listen to commentators anyway.

Fox has the broadcasting rights to Copa America and the only way that I could find to get the channel was to get cable or satellite.  Fox does have an app called Fox Soccer2Go for $20 per month which supposedly allows you to watch sports games broadcast by Fox on your phone or tablet.  However, I read a bunch of reviews and nobody likes it.  Complaints are everywhere that the app freezes or kicks you out almost all the time.  And, I didn't want to watch it on a small screen anyway, let alone if it is going to be so buggy that I'll miss parts of the games.

So, I'm really liking Sling TV.  Unlike, Fox Socer2Go, I can watch a game live or I can stream it later.  Plus, Jodi likes it too since it also has HGTV.  And, when we're done with it, we can cancel it.  This is how easy it's supposed to be, but never is, with cable or satellite.

Sorry for the infomercial, but clearly I have enjoyed this new concept of having affordable, no-nonsense "cable".

My birthday celebration was awesome from even the night before.  Friday night, we had brats and dogs on the grill and ate outside enjoying the beautiful weather we have been having.  Jodi worked her butt off making 20 lbs of fajitas that we had on Saturday and were amazingly good.  I will forever judge all other fajitas by this new standard.  Then, she surprised me with a mulberry cobbler that her and the children picked from our mulberry trees.  If you've never had it, you're missing out. We watched four more games between Saturday and Sunday and still had some time to piddle around with a few things that I wanted to do.

Overall, it was a very relaxing and delicious weekend enjoying some great international soccer from the comforts of my own home.  Even Cute (our cat) got in on the action.  Here she is getting extremely upset about a bad call the referee made.

Cute and I share a birthday.  I forgot to mention that she turned 2 on Saturday.

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Hot Wheels Collection Organization

From the blog: a Low and behold life (link in 1st paragraph)

My wife found a really nice solution to store our son's HUGE Hot Wheels collection online.  I can't recall if it was Pinterest or Google Images where she found the photo, but regardless of where it was seen, it's true source was from a blog called a Lo and behold life.  They repurposed a wooden shoe rack from Bed Bath and Beyond into a really cool and useful shelf system for their twins' toy cars.

We decided to give the DIY project a shot. The shoe racks were available at our local Bed Bath and Beyond store, so we picked those up last Friday.  We commenced to painting them the following day using our new handy dandy Wagner paint sprayer.  It took Jodi some trial and error with the sprayer to figure out what works best, but she had everything painted in record time.  She also used a ton of paint in record time.  I expect that we will get the settings all optimized the more we use the sprayer.  However, right now, it appears that there's a trade off of paint usage to speed and ease of application.  Maybe, I'll do an official review of this sprayer once we have used it a lot more and figured out how to better balance ease and efficiency.

We hung our shelves differently than how our inspiration did.  They connected two shelves in tandem so that each shelf was wider than the cars.  We stuck with one shelf because the vast majority of the cars easily straddle the single shelf.  By straddling the shelf, the cars don't roll around when you take them down or put them up like they would if they were sitting on their wheels.  This makes them more stable on the shelf.  And, as a bonus, we were able to make twice as many shelves as we would have otherwise.

With the cars having to straddle the shelves, however, I was going to have to space the shelf out from the wall about a half inch.  I could have bought spacers or used washers or something, but the cheapest and most customizable option was to get a 30" PEX water supply line from Home Depot (pictured to the right) and then cut it up with a utility knife to make the perfect length spacers for this application.  One of these lines is only $1.58 at my local Home Depot store.

Here's how our shelves turned out.  Lyric loves them and meticulously placed all his cars on the shelves himself with pride.  Now he has easy access to all his cars.  He can see them all, so he can pick which ones he wants to play with.  And, he'll have fun putting his cars up when he is done.

We also built a bunch of shelves out of pallet wood that was being discarded at my work.  I snatched it all up  and Lyric and I made a bunch of shabby-chic shelves in no time.  

All the shelves displaying his Hot Wheels collection.

A little more detail to show the shelves spaced off the wall.

   

Two of the shelves we made from pallet wood being held up by standard shelf brackets.

  

Four more super-long shelves for the craft room.

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Free Euro 2016 Score Sheet Poster

Free Printable UEFA Euro 2016 Score Sheet Poster

I created a free Copa America 2016 Score Sheet Poster and then I was asked to create a similar Euro 2016 poster, as well.  I couldn't resist a perfectly legitimate request.

Here are links to the full-sized, high resolution PDF and PNG versions of the score sheet pictured here to the right.  They're pretty big files because I designed them to be printed at 24 inches by 36 inches.  Staples will print this as an "engineering print" (black & white) at that size for only $3.  Printing in color is best so that you can see all the flags correctly, but it's more expensive.  So, to each their own.

If you haven't used this sheet or one like it before to keep score of all the games then you are missing out.  By keeping track of all the outcomes, it adds a level of excitement to the entire tournament.

I've also added some links in the drop-down menu above just in case.

As always, this is free of charge.  I hope you enjoy it!

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Headlines

When I have a down moment at some point in the day where I'm not doing anything specific, it's not uncommon that I hop onto Google news or my local KY3 news site to see what is happening in the world outside of my little bubble.  Today, I did this, and read no articles.  Instead, I had a comment for several of the headlines without even getting into the article.  I thought that I would share my comments and the headlines for which they were made.

To whom are you apologizing?  To Republicans?  I thought it was well understood that it could only be Republicans who voted for Donald Trump in the primaries, in the first place.  So, it looks like they got who they wanted.  No apologies necessary.

Ok.  Let's get things straight.  Hillary better be targeting them with her scope's crosshairs because, of the Republicans that don't like Donald Trump, 100% of them are staunchly against another Clinton presidency of any gender.  Sorry, Hillary.  They'd rather write in their own names for the presidency than vote for you.  They may dislike Trump and fear what it means to have him become President, but its a fear of the unknown.  They know exactly what nonsense you would bring to the White House and will avoid it tooth and nail.  They'll come around eventually and support their party for the sake of  'merica.

What about the paradox of "new fossils"?  Come on, science, every time you try to solve a problem of logic with your world view, you create ten more.  Do some root cause analysis and quit trying to shine up and clean your piece of poop.  It's not going to clean up.  It's poop.

Was the usage of the word "crack" here a pun?  Combined with the photo, I can't help but wonder if they're attempting word association here to get people on board.  A week ago they're writing in support of a high school junior girl (probably 16) who thinks she's a boy and wants to give her access to all boys' things like bathrooms and such.  So, a 16 year old is old enough and wise enough to decide what sex she is despite her biology, but that same teenager isn't trusted to make the decision of whether or not she should smoke a legal substance?  Hope she doesn't get the crap beat out of her in that boy's bathroom.  Welcome to the world of boyhood, little girl.  You'd probably be safer taking a "crack" at that pipe.

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