Highs and Lows

I love to read.

I love to write.

But sometimes, I feel like I just can't.

It's because nothing interests me at the moment or because nothing has given me that nudge to write.

I'm in that moment write now.

I'm in that moment where I I don't have the patience to read anything.

I barely have the patience to write this entry.

But this time will pass soon enough, it has before and I will go back to reading and writing.

Until then, I will enjoy the nothing that I do.

Because when that time comes again, it seems I cannot get enough of reading and writing.

We Are Not Meant to Live Like That

I love to travel.

I love to travel and do mission work.

Because of those two loves, I work a lot of side jobs to try and raise money to travel without it affecting our usual income.

Next summer, the plan is for the entire family to go to Australia. I usually go by myself on my travels, but while planning this, my wife showed an interest in going and that means our children will go with us.

One of the side jobs I have taken up is working at Amazon in Jeffersonville and it's been a long time since I have worked in a factory.

For the last 20 years, I have taught and coached and I realize how blessed I am to do something that I enjoy, I really do.

But it has been reinforced by walking the aisles of Amazon.

So many of the people there seem to have the "life" sucked out of them by doing what seems like meaningless work.

I look at aisle after aisle of "stuff" that Americans are buying to be shipped to them and wonder what does working here bring to their life?

Money to pay bills?

Extra money to travel?

Or to just exist?

I don't know, each person is different, but I can tell by the conversations I have had and the reactions to people when I say "hello" is that they are no overly happy to be working there.

It would be nice if there were more things that could encourage workers there, but they just do not seem to care about that sort of thing.

So people will work there and quit because human worth is more important than filling some quota.

It's unfortunate, too because Amazon could be so much more.

Their CEO, Jeff Bezos, is worth $150 billion. He has to spend $28 million per day to NOT make money on his already historical sum.

What I would do with that much money would effect so many people.

But who am I to judge?

Maybe he is doing the same things I would do, he just doesn't make it known.

But I can tell you, as a sociologist/psychologist it would help so much the morale of his workers if he did something outrageous because we are not meant to work/live like that.

Fill the Void

“He [God] has also set eternity in the human heart…”  Ecclesiastes 3:11  

“You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.”

– St. Augustine 1

“What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.”

- Blaise Pascal, Pensées VII(425)

We search for so many things in this world to fill a void that we all have.

We fill it with money, cars, our house, women, men, friends, basketball, drugs, alcohol, work, music, our family, and even church itself.

Yet without a genuine relationship with God through Jesus Christ, we are empty.

Many will deny this until they are so empty that they cannot go on.

From there they look up or they will give up.

Recently, I attended my 30^th high school reunion and there I saw some people that I saw in bars 20 years ago.

They are still doing the same things like the drinking, the pursuing, and the emptiness.

Outwardly, they look like they are having the time of their life, yet when you get on Facebook, you will see that they have been divorced multiple times, they have children by many different women, and they have a DUI or two.

Yet, on Friday, there he is again with a drink in his hand and a smile on his face pretending to fill the God void.

Without God, we continually search for meaning and fulfillment and we may actually have it for a short amount of time, but it disappears; too quickly.

The filling of the void by God will drive you in a way that you no longer feel fulfilled by the world, but by living for Jesus; being his hands and feet and doing the work he created you to do.

2nd No-Hitter...10 Years Old

Brandon threw a no no in a 10U championship game.

#SC2DC18

Spring Break 2018