Alive - to worship

This weekend we went to the Alive festival in Canal Fulton. Kirsten and I have gone the last 5 years and this year was the best one yet. I'm not sure that the speakers we're any better than any other year. I can't even really say that there were more bands there this year that I "really" wanted to see. I think the difference this year was me. You see, sometimes people talk about how they can feel God moving in their lives and sometime they can't. Personally I don't think that God ever stops moving in our lives - I think sometimes we just don't choose to see it that way. There's nothing wrong with going to a christian music festival for the sole purpose of entertaining yourself for a weekend. You can sing along, clap your hands - even jump and dance around to the music without really worshipping or letting God have any real estate in your head. This year was different for me, it's not that I haven't been growing in my faith and this reawakened me - I think I saw something besides cool bands, some goofyChristiann t-shirts and even a few cool ones. I think I saw a glimpse of what heaven may be like. Heavenly Choir Robes? I think even the most devout Christians may think about the prospect of worshipping God for all eternity and think - "I hope I don't get bored." I think when we have that cross our mind we're looking at worship with a very narrow focus. Worship isn't what takes place before the sermon every week at church. Worship isn't something that can be fit into a time slot and expressed just with words to music. Worship is a lifestyle, and just like every lifestyle (yes every) it is a choice. I've been learning a lot about choices in life. Some we get to make for ourselves and some of them God makes for you and your choice can be acceptance and joy, or self-pity and anger. When we choose Joy, which is very different than happiness, we open ourselves up for the opportunity for God to do something more with our lives than would happen on our own. Worship can be lived - giving honor to God in the choices we make, the way we spend our time and the way we look at situations all contribute to the life of a worshipper. It's much bigger than singing songs and clapping to the music. If we limit it to just singing in church, then I'd have to say yes, heaven could be pretty boring. But because worship is bigger than a song, it can be expressed in our lives and our interactions with each other, and how we work. When we find joy in doing something and turn that joy toward God - it's worship. God is big and all the creativity that is shown in the different ways we can worship Him won't stop when we get to heaven. When we die and get to heaven, we probably won't be issued a heavenly choir robe and a harp and take our place in some gigantic choir.

God is trying to call us back to that for which He created us, to worship Him and to enjoy Him forever." - A.W. Tozer

Bigger than we can imagine I love doing design work, but if that was all that I did, if I never took a break from it to read, or spend time learning new techniques or see other people's design I'd probably get pretty bored with design. The difference with God is that, there is no limit in the possibility of who He is. We won't ever "know" God, our lifetime is too short to begin to understand who He is and how He works. But every once in a while we catch a glimpse of just how great He is, and when that happens - your spirit wells up inside you and it's almost like you could burst. I don't know about you but those moments don't just happen when I'm singing, they don't always happen when I'm in church or at a "Christian" function. They happen when I allow myself to be secondary to what God is showing me and choose to worship Him in whatever situation I find myself in. I think the creativity that God has placed in us will continue in eternity. I believe our expression of worship will be as diverse in heaven as it can be here on earth. The things that we find enjoyment in as mortal beings will provide enjoyment that will prompt us to worship as eternal souls in God's presence. Just like His creativity, wisdom and love are limitless, so will be our opportunity to worship in eternity. A whisper in my ear Standing there on that hillside, singing - and yes - even dancing (It was more or less just jumping up and down) I saw a tiny glimpse of heaven, the fun and passion that I felt in the brief seconds when the Holy Spirit whispered "Remember this, and know that there is so much more..." still moves me and leaves me yearning for that. Not to recreate that moment, but to live in that eternity and feel the infinite passionate love and appreciation for who God is. It was awesome to see so many people spending that time worshipping God. It was great to spend the time with Kirsten and our friends Donny and Jennifer. But greater than that, was knowing that we were spending time in the presence of God, fulfilling His purpose in our lives and finding joy in doing just that.

One Squirrel's Plight

Last week at bible study - I found this. Conspicuously placed under my bible. Courtesy of our good friends, Donny and Jennifer. Give it a click to read.

Sorry guys, no squatters on my property. What a cruel landlord I am. By the way - apparently these squirrels moved north and have taken up residence at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame - seriously. Call the number. Technorati Tags: Squirrels, Akron, OH, Gitgan, Rock & Roll, Bible Study,

Big Thanks and Flying Homeless Rodents

You guys did it! I've won! My Akron t-shirt design will be produced! Biggest thanks to all of my loyal blog readers and friends! Your comments on Rubbercityclothing.com about my t-shirt design we're great and fun to read. It turns out that each owner of the company picked their favorite design and mine was one of them. My design - thanks to all of you - had the most comments out of all 80+ entries for the contest. The shirts will be produced by July 1st, but you can pre-order now and be entered for a $50 shopping spree @ Rubbercityclothing.com. I'll be getting a few of these and once I have them in my hands I'm promising a contest, right here - on this blog, in which you can win one of these bad boy's. Thanks again and -please try to keep your pizza sauce, chicken & jo-jo grease off the front!

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I admit it. I haven't written lately so that anyone who visited would see the t-shirt stuff and hopefully click through and post a comment. But now that we have that business out of the way, let me fill you in on what's been going on in the mean time - and by "mean time" I mean yesterday. Sunday was I think the hottest day ever on planet earth. (I figured I'd get an early start on embellishing this story.) So obviously that makes for the best kind of weather to take care of all those homeowner things that you really enjoy doing, like climbing up on your roof while the sun beats down and the heat reflects back up at you off of asphalt shingles with double the intensity that it does on the ground - all so you can seal up the parts of your house that squirrels have managed to find their way into. Now, don't go thinking that I've got wild animals running through the hallways or peeking around corners so they can sneak up and harass my dog. These things have managed to get into the "hangy over" parts of the roof - technically those parts are called soffit. As long as we're talking in technical terms - it's also supposed to be of a different construction than the siding that covers your house. Well, that's not the case on ours. We've got siding for soffit - I don't think that's normal - if people use it for soffit, then I've never seen it. Not to mention the fact that, at least as far as our house goes, it doesn't seem to work very well at keeping out birds, squirrels or migrating packs or fainting goats. This year we had two spots, that I know of, where squirrels had made a home out of our house. The first one we tackled was on the back corner of the garage. Once we had the ladder in place getting it sealed up wasn't too tough. A few screws and a little bit of Great Stuff foam and we're onto this year's big problem. Now, I had anticipated taking care of this one was going to take some time. At the front of the house the roofline of the main part of the house meets the roofline of the porch and the face of the 2nd floor forming a triangle shaped cove. Well, Momma squirrel had decided that this was the weak part in our perimeter defenses and decide to execute the breach. She had great success obviously and delivered at least 2 babies in this cozy little "apartment." For all you tree hugging, canvas shoe wearing environmentalist wackos, I want to state for the record that I didn't kill the baby squirrels. In fact - I've never killed a squirrel or any other wild animal for that matter. (Unless you count the frogs I shot with my slingshot using limestone as ammo when I was in junior high, or that bird with Nate's pellet gun, but that was an accident I swear. Or those baby seals, with a big wooden club. . .) The first thing we did, and feel free to use this approach for any matter that requires problem solving, was stand around and look at it, scratching our heads and furrowing our brows. Then we decided - and in retrospect, I'm not sure why - to remove the rain gutter and downspout. Not an entirely neccessary move but in the end it added a bit to the story as you'll see later on. So we started out by taking off the gutter and downspout. Dad was climbing up the ladder, I was handing him tools and he started to try and loosen up the whole thing. Well, my neighbor across the street, works construction - he's got a garage outfitted with just about every tool that you'd ever need - he's watching us attempt to take down this gutter and decided that we weren't being very effective in getting it down. And he was right, it would have taken us much longer to do than it took him. He crossed the street, went up the ladder, took off the gutter and was back down in a little under 7 seconds. Okay - so it actually took like 60 seconds but, the point is that he knew what he was doing. Once he was off the roof he asked us how we were going to get the squirrels out, we hadn't thought that far ahead. He wished us luck and headed back across the street. There was some talk about a smoke bomb, a flame thrower and an insurance adjuster but, nothing that we thought would work to get them out right away. So after a few more minutes of looking and brow furrowing I had an idea. (See that method works every time.) I had decided that I would try to get them out in the potentially least destructive way as possible. Rather than tossing a smoke bomb up there and possibly burning down my house, I'd just try spraying water in there. Maybe I'd get lucky and the squirrels would run out - if not, then it was on to bigger and more risky methods. Having chosen a course of action I prepared for my assult on the squirrels stronghold. I wanted a good view of the action so I sat my step ladder about 6 feet away from the house, got the hose and climbed up the ladder. Rather than just standing - I went all the way up - yes fellow risktakers, I went past the step with the label that says in bold letters "THIS IS NOT A STEP" - in fact - I did one better. I climbed all the way to the top and sat my butt right on the top level of the ladder, I turned to face my target and prepared to fire. In my mind - this made total sense. I laughed as I sat down and squeezed the trigger, listening to the frantic scratching noises before the squirrel emerged. You see, at this point I didn't know that there were multiple squirrels inside. I was anticipating that one would jump out, run away while squeeking little squirrel profanities at me - instead FOUR came out. The first one ran out of the hole and jumped to grab onto the downspout and scurry down it to escape to safety under the front porch. The only thing is - AHA! I removed the downspout, so after some frantic scratching - the squirrel fell to the ground and headed under the porch. At the same time that was happening, a second squirrel emerged and jumped straight out away from the house, then a third jumped toward the garage and ran around the back of the house. As the fourth one came tearing out, I realized that the second one - yes SuperSquirrel had managed to land on ME! Thankfully it was too freaked out to begin biting, scratching or ripping my flesh off. I honestly think that we (the squirrel and I) realized our situation at the same time. I flung my left arm out towards the street sending the squirrel flying. It bounced off the rear wheel of Kirsten's car, landed, got its feet under it and ran up our Magnolia tree. Keep in mind that all this is happening over the course of about 30 seconds. It seemed to move in slow motion for me though. Especially once I realized I was the landing pad for Kamakaze Squirrel. The funny thing about this is that when my neighbor was over and we we're talking about ways to get the squirrel out he said something to the effect of - "you can try whatever you want, it might not be too enjoyable if it attacks you, but It'll be fun to watch from my living room if they do." And I'm sure it was pretty funny looking. Alltogether - I'm just glad that it's just Me, Kirsten and Shelby living in our house. Although I seem to have developed a nervous tick and been drooling a lot lately. . . hmm. Technorati Tags: Squirrels, Akron, OH, Gitgan, Jo-Jo's, Rabies,