To Take a Stand

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter”

I have a real problem, I am insecure. That’s right, very insecure. This is a problem I think that most normal people have, in fact if you don’t have at least some insecurities I would argue there is something wrong with you. But mine is insecure to the extreme. I worry so much what other people think that I don’t ever stand up for what’s right, I never take a stand, I never do much at all except go along with it. And that’s bad.

I do this because I don’t want enemies, I want everyone to like me, but what ends up happening is that no one likes you anyway. Alexander Hamilton once said, “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything”. And that’s what happened to me. I let people walk over me, I let them say things, I let things happen that I never should, but I do because I’m insecure. Insecure that if I stand up to them, then they’ll stop liking me. I’m scared that if I stand for something bigger than myself then bad things will happen. I don’t have the courage to take a stand.

The quote I quoted above is from Martin Luther King Jr. He stood for something. A very great thing, equality for all mankind. Yeah, people hated him for that, people hated him so much that they murdered him. But that is what made him great, he stood for something unpopular, he made his voice heard, he didn’t care what others thought of him. He knew what was right and went for it. I only wish I could be like this.

There are hundreds of people throughout history who have stood for something that would make them quite unpopular, and many paid the price of doing so, but at the same time they knew what they were doing was right and went for it. They didn’t look back.

Take William Wilberforce. He fought against slavery in the late 1700s, introducing bill after bill to Parliament that kept getting shot down. He earned himself many enemies, but he didn’t give up. William said this: "So enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did the [slave] trade's wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for abolition. Let the consequences be what they would: I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition." I want this kind of drive.

I want to be someone who when people look at me they know who I am and what I stand for. They know that I’m not someone who backs down, is afraid, or gives up. I want to be someone who when people look at me they know that I’m someone who is passionate about what I stand for. And yeah, it might make me lose friends, or make enemies, but if I’m to take a stand for something, I need to be ok with that.

I want to stand against injustice, against prejudice, against hate towards fellow man, I want to stand for God, for freedom, for love, for helping others. I want my heart to break for issues like project AK47: An organization that frees child soldiers in places in like Asia and Africa, or International Justice Missions that frees sex slaves around the world. I want my heart to break for the things that breaks God’s heart. I don’t want to focus on myself anymore, I want an outward focus, a focus on others. I believe if I can achieve that, my insecurities will be gone, and I’ll finally take a stand for something.

I leave you with some quotes to ponder on:

“You have enemies? Good, that means you stood for something, sometime in your life.”
W. Churchill

“When you have decided what you believe, what you feel must be done, have the courage to stand alone, and be counted.” E. Roosevelt

What I Crave

Maybe this is just boredom speaking, or maybe I'm just going through some "mid-college" crisis, but lately I have been thinking more and more about my intense want, and need, to be apart of something grander and bigger than myself. I've talked with a lot of people my age recently who are actually doing things like this; Going on mission trips, going to Turkey, or Africa, and other amazing things. These people are taking a stand, my generation is finally getting up and saying no more to injustice, and doing things to help out others and further God's kingdom.
I watch movies and TV shows and see people taking a stand, people who aren't living the comfortable life, who are out there getting messy and making a difference. And all I can think is, "Why can't I do that?"
Yet, despite my intense desire to change the world and be apart of something grand, I still find myself sitting around twiddling my thumbs, being bored, and wondering what to do. Monotonous day after day goes by yet I still do nothing about it. I want a life that isn't comfortable anymore, I want to be dead tired at the end of the day, yet knowing I did a job well done. I want things to go bad, so that I can learn to lean more on God, and learn from my mistakes. Most of all I want at the end of my life to skid into the grave bruised and broken, but knowing, that was quite a ride.

My Top 10 of 2010

Here is my list of top 10 favorite movies of 2010. I wish I could have movies like 127 Hours and The King's Speech on here but Saginaw likes to be dumb and not get good movies. These are kinda in order of favorites, some could definitely be moved around a bit, but who cares really…

10. How to Train Your Dragon: This is such a beautiful animated film, the visuals are stunning, and the music is soaring. Of course being for kids it has it’s fair share of cheesiness, but nonetheless, it pulled me in.

9. Book of Eli: For me this was one of the most important spiritual movies I’ve seen in a long time. The movie is about a guy who’s memorized the whole Bible and is trying to take it to safety. It really made me think and reminded me about how much we take it for granted.

8. Kick Ass: This film was the epitome of awesome comic book movie. It’s hilarious, has a quick, witty script, great acting, insane sequences of violence, and is exactly what the title suggests.

7. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: For those with ADD, this is for you. Every scene has a bazillion visuals, frenetic action, and more sound than your ears can take, but that’s why it’s awesome, and oh so much fun.

6. Toy Story 3: The film that makes grown men cry…for me Toy Story has grown up with me, I saw the first one when I was 6, and now as Andy goes to college and grows up, so do I. For my generation this film signals the end of an era, we’ve come of age, and so has this movie.

5. True Grit: I’ve seen the John Wayne version and this one wins, hands down. Jeff Bridges plays Cogburn so much better than Wayne, cause Bridges can actually act. The best thing about this movie is the actors, Matt Damon, newcomer Hallie Steinfeld, and others. This is up there with O Brother for best Coen Brothers film.

4. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: I was completely blown away by this movie! Especially the acting by the trio, the biggest improvement was Emma Watson who has FINALLY learned to act without moving her eyebrows. I loved how dark and ominous this movie was, a far cry from some of the previous Potter films.

3. Black Swan: This was the most uncomfortable, disturbing movie I’ve seen all year. It’s about a ballerina’s descent into madness as she starts to become her role, and the descent is not pretty. Natalie Portman will for sure take home the Oscar, it was truly haunting. Plus Darren Aronofsky just knows how to make amazing, compelling, yet horrifying movies.

2. Social Network: At first I was leery about seeing a movie about Facebook but I’m glad I did. It was so interesting and compelling to see what people will do to gain fame and how they will stab each other in the back.


1. Inception: Christopher Nolan did it again, he’s made another masterpiece! I can’t really say anything about this, I’m sure you’ve seen it so there really isn’t a point. If you haven’t then watch it now…like right now. Go!


And here are my 5 worst films of 2010:

5. Robin Hood: No this wasn’t poorly made, it just was a tremendous disappointment to me, very dull, and very boring.

4. MacGruber: I love the SNL sketches, but draw it out for 90 minutes and it becomes painfully unfunny.

3. Nightmare on Elm Street

2. Resident Evil: Afterlife: Huge, epic failure. Not that I expected greatness (especially now that it’s in 3-D!), but I did expect it to at least be cool, but nope, not an ounce of cool in this film, just boring clichés and annoying monsters.

1. Grown Ups: I had big hopes that this movie would be funny, being a huge Adam Sandler fan, but it was horribly, horribly, awkwardly, not funny. I laughed maybe twice.

Honorable Mentions go to Karate Kid, Due Date, Tangled, Let Me In, The Town, Iron Man 2, Shutter Island, and Alice in Wonderland. Whew, I’ve seen a lot of movies. Now what are your thoughts? Am I completely off on any of these? Are there any I’ve missed that I MUST SEE?

Identity

I find lately I've been ranting and raving so much about Facebook and other social networks. Lately I've had such a contempt towards these sites, and I'll explain why: I feel as if Facebook has become mine, and many others, identities. We edit our profiles in such a way to make ourselves look our very best. Nevermind if a lot of it is fake simply to make others like us. We carefully choose what to put on our profiles and our status' that would most make others like us.
This is the epitome of selfish. People say all the time that Facebook is a way to stay connected with old friends, I say thats crap. How is checking your facebook 20 times a day, and reading everyone's status's keeping in touch? It is mearly a way to make yourself look amazing in front of mostly complete strangers you would never even talk to in real life. The more friends you have the more popular you seem though.
All this ranting is getting somewhere :) I'm such a facebook addict, and it's ruining me arguably. I've seriously considered deleting it, and its something I'll have to pray about more.
What I really am getting it is our identity and love, we've made it all about what our profiles say about us, and not what God has done through us. We've lost so much love and relationship with facebooking all the time. This is just my rant, I'm going to write on love, selfishness, and more on identity later, this is just the set-up. I know you can't wait for more! I can feel it! :P

Savior King

Never have I ever seen a video more inspiring or chill/tear inducing. It never fails to amaze me how blessed Hillsong is in creating such beautiful music praising God to share with others.

Watching this video I was reminded of all the other believers out there, that stadium full of people all praising God. It reminds me of all the people so on fire for god, so on fire to reach the unreachable, so on fire to help those who are lost and hurting. All I can hope and pray is that I too will be on fire.

Let now our hearts burn with a flame
A fire consuming all
For Your son's holy name

Technology

Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation...tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation. ~Jean Arp

Technology... the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it. ~Max Frisch

I like my new telephone, my computer works just fine, my calculator is perfect, but Lord, I miss my mind! ~Author Unknown

I don't know about you, but I have been so conflicted lately about technology and all the aspects that come with such great technological advances. The quotes above speak volumes about what I'm talking about. Take the first quote; it talks about how we are turning our backs on silence. And we totally are. Can you even remember the last time you were completely silent? The last time you just sat and pondered the sweet song of birds, or the rushing sound of the wind away from all distractions? The quote says the absence of silence is robbing us of our essence of life, and I couldn't agree more. More so, hearing the voice of God. I believe the more bells and whistles we put in our lives, the less and less we can hear God's direction for our lives.

The second quote involves something I've talked about before, how we are using movies, books and the like to live our lives for us instead of making our own stories great.

I've been so conflicted lately about how much technology I've been consuming. I've found there have been times where I'm on Facebook, watching a movie, and texting all at the same time! I walk down the halls of school and see everyone's faces buried in their phones, oblivious to the other human beings walking the halls along with them. Has technology made us even more selfish than ever?

How much are things like Facebook and texting hurting our social lives? We opt for technology as opposed to face to face time. I am so guilty of all this. For so long I've been trying to back off the use of so much technology, and for so long I've been failing. And I wonder why it's hard to hear God's direction for my life, it's cause He's being drowned in noise.

What are your guy's thoughts? How can someone so into technology back off a bit? It's so in our culture now that you could never totally get rid of technology! No, that would be terrible, technology is a great thing, though in moderation. But how does one back off enough to, as Jean Arp put it, get back into the essence of life? As the third quote so aptly says, "I miss my mind..."

Punching Holes in the Clouds

Ever since I was old enough to know what skydiving was I wanted to do it. I would say every summer that this would be the summer I would do it, but always put it off, be it money or lack of nerves. But finally last Sunday...

I did it!

There is no feeling in the world quite like it, it's totally unique and completely exhilarating. My brother Dave and I went to Mt. Pleasant to do it. We received only about 10 minutes of instruction before suiting up in super uncomfortable jump suits. They were tight in all the wrong places.

Before we knew it we were headed for the plane, this tiny, cramped thing that looked like it could barely make it off the ground anyway let alone with us all in it. Dave and I, along with our two instructors, squeezed onto the floor of this plane and off we went. I admit, I was N.E.R.V.O.U.S. There is no way you can mentally prepare for something like jumping out of a perfectly good airplane, therefore my nerves were pumping. After an agonizingly long 17 minute flight we reached 11,000 feet and WHOOSH! there goes the door.

The wind whipped through the tiny plane as Dave and the instructor he was strapped to inched to the door. One second they were sitting there, the next they were gone. This did nothing for my nerves. We inched our way to the door, and put my feet on a step over the wheel and suddenly my mind registered that I was going out of the plane, to plummet thousands of feet to the ground. I had a moment of clarity while Scott goes 3,2,1! And out we go!

I couldn't even register what was happening we were falling so fast and the wind was so loud! I felt a rush of adrenaline unlike any before, and in that moment I had never felt so alive. It never one registered in my mind the thought of, "Uh oh!What if my parachute doesn't open!?" All I felt was pure excitement like never before. After 30 seconds of shooting to the ground our parachute opens and I got to experience the biggest wedgie known to man. For the next 5000 feet we coasted to the ground while trying out some twists and turns which made me feel quite ill so we stopped that.

All I have to say now, is you MUST experience this for yourself! You MUST!! There is nothing like this and I can describe it all day long but you won't truly know till you've felt the wind in you face and seen the ground rushing towards you at 100s of miles an hour. It is insane to say the least.

Now go forth, and punch some holes in clouds yourself...