Penalty Kicks

“How soccer of them”

The Government Can

Randy Travis Songs

Here are two songs from Randy Travis that I listened to tonight that really “hit me”…

1. Precious Memories (iTunes, Full Lyrics)

Precious memories, how they linger
How they ever flood my soul
In the stillness of the midnight
Precious sacred scenes unfold

Precious father, loving mother
Fly across the lonely years
And old home scenes of my childhood
In fond memory appear

As I travel on life’s pathway
Know not what the years may hold
As I ponder hope grows fonder
Precious memories flood my soul

2. Nobody Knows, Nobody Cares (iTunes, Full Lyrics)

Nobody knows how lonely my road
Nobody knows how heavy my load
Nobody cares how tearful my way
How dark the night, how weary the day

Nobody knows, nobody cares
My every burden nobody shares
My only comfort and my only strength
Is Jesus walking by my side all the way

Nobody knows how hard I must toil
Causing sometimes my heart to recoil
Nobody cares when I try to sleep
I lay awake and I bitterly weep

Nobody knows how weary my cross
Nobody knows my trouble, my loss
Nobody cares if even I’m ill
Or if life’s hardships have broken my will

SNL Taylor Swift

This last weekend’s Saturday Night Live was a great show, which is getting to be rare for SNL episodes. I watched it because Taylor Swift was hosting it. It was actually really funny. There’s a great Fox News satire to open up the show as well. You can watch the whole show on Hulu here.

Waiting

Convicting quotes posted over at Justin Buzzard’s blog:

…waiting is living through those moments when you do not understand what God is doing and you have no power to change your circumstances for the better.

…waiting will always reveal the true character of your heart.

Theoretical faith is always easier than practical, functional faith, and when we are faced with the challenge of waiting it can be disturbing to realize how little of that real-life faith we have.

Your heart is always exposed by the way you wait.

Waiting is hard precisely because it calls us to live by faith and not by sight.

Waiting, therefore, is not a sign that your world is out of control. Rather, it is a sign that your world is under the wise and infinitely attentive control of a God of fathomless wisdom and boundless love. This means you can rest as you wait, not because you like to wait, but because you trust the One who is calling you to wait.

The wait itself is a gift…Waiting is about what you will become as you wait.

You see, waiting is not an interruption of God’s plan. It is his plan.

Waiting is not just about what I get at the end of the wait, but about who I become as I wait.

Quotes taken from chapter 9 of Paul Tripp, Broken-Down House: Living Productively in a World Gone Bad.

For all you bingo lovers

(Click for full size)

The Ultimate Test

Think you are smart? Well-learned? Wise? Then this test shouldn’t be a problem for you.

INSTRUCTIONS
Read each of the following fifteen problems carefully. Answer all parts to each problem. Time limit: 4 hours. Begin immediately.

1. HISTORY
Describe the history of the papacy from its origin to the present day, concentrating especially, but not exclusively, on it social, political, economic, religious, and philosophical impact on Europe, Asia, America and Africa. Be brief, concise and specific.

2. MEDICINE
You have been provided with a razor blade, a piece of gauze, and a bottle of Scotch. Remove your appendix. Do not suture until your work has been inspected. You have 15 minutes.

3. PUBLIC SPEAKING
2500 riot-crazed aborigines are storming the classroom. Calm them. You may use any ancient language except Latin or Greek.

4. BIOLOGY
Create life. Estimate the differences in subsequent human culture if this form of life had developed 50 million years earlier, with special attention to its probable effect on the English parliamentary system. Prove your thesis.

5. MUSIC
Write a piano concerto. Orchestrate it and perform it with flute and drum. You will find a piano under your desk.

6. PSYCHOLOGY
Based on your knowledge of their works, evaluate the emotional stability, degree of adjustment, and repressed frustrations of each of the following: Alexander of Aphrodites, Ramses II, Gregory of Nicea, and Hammurabi. Support your evaluation with quotations from each man’s work, making appropriate references. It is not necessary to translate.

7. SOCIOLOGY
Estimate the sociological problems which might accompany the end of the world. Construct and experiment to test your theory.

8. ENGINEERING
The disassembled parts of a high-powered rifle have been placed on your desk. You will also find and instruction manual, printed in Swahili. In ten minutes a hungry Bengal tiger will be admitted to the room. Take whatever action you feel appropriate. Be prepared to justify your decision.

9. ECONOMICS
Develop a realistic plan for refinancing the national debt. Trace the possible effects of your plan in the following areas: Cubism, the Donatist controversy, and the wave theory of light. Outline a method for preventing these effects. Criticize this method from all possible points of view. Point out the deficiencies in your point of view, as demonstrated in your answer to the last question.

10. POLITICAL SCIENCE
There is a red telephone on the desk beside you. Start World War III. Report at length on its social-political effects, if any.

11. EPISTEMOLOGY
Take a position for or against truth. Prove the validity of your position.

12. PHYSICS
Create a small rapidly rotating black hole. Investigate and report on its effects on the opto-electric properties of Seaborgium (element #106). Clean up your experiment after you’ve finished.

13. PHILOSOPHY
Sketch the development of human thought and estimate its significance. Compare with the development of any other kind of thought.

14. ASTRONOMY
Define the universe. Give three examples.

15. GENERAL KNOWLEDGE
Describe in detail. Be objective and specific.

Take me here

Cowboy Named Bud

A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in California when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced toward him out of a cloud of dust.

The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, RayBan sunglasses and YSL tie, leaned out the window and asked the cowboy, “If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, Will you give me a calf?”

Bud looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, “Sure, Why not?

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the
area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.

The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg , Germany …

Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses an MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer, turns to the cowboy and says, “You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.”

“That’s right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,” says Bud.

He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on with amusement as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then Bud says to the young man, “Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?”
The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, “Okay, why not?”

“You’re a Congressman for the U.S. Government”, says Bud.

“Wow! That’s correct,” says the yuppie, “but how did you guess that?”

“No guessing required.” answered the cowboy. “You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You used millions of dollars worth of equipment trying to show me how much smarter than me you are; and
you don’t know a thing about how working people make a living – or about cows, for that matter. This is a herd of sheep. ..

Now give me back my dog.

Tim Keller on the Reason for Living

I love the logical and philosophical approach Tim Keller takes in this talk to a skeptical New York audience entitled “The Reason for Living.” (Now available for FREE download). I don’t know, maybe not all people will like this, but I found this to be extremely engaging and fascinating really. He does such a great job of explaining why Christianity is the only true way of living and believing. This is what I would give to someone who is completely skeptical of the existence of God, objective truth, and meaning of life.