all that its about.

The night breeze blows gently through my clothes as I gaze out and over the balcony at the world of activity before me. I close my eyes and draw in a deep breath, and immediately the smells of a million adventures overwhelm my senses. From the familiar and benign scent of coffee to fresh, warm bread pulled carefully from a fiery brick oven, I want to hold it in forever.

The sounds of the paradoxically quiet and chaotic universe extending as far as I can see join together to create a whole new symphony. Here, above the panic and rush, the selfish honk of a cab, the heavy panting of a large truck, and the roar of the sports car all chime into the glorious song of the city. The wind whistles through the streets, and everywhere, from every corner, the chatter of people meets me.

As I look into the horizon, the blue clouds gently caress the even bluer sky, and as the sky touches the city, it bursts into flames, casting an all-engulfing flame of deep orange and pink across the lateral. The twinkling lights of thousands of buildings and streetlights, of hundreds of thousands of vehicles all put their hand to the plow to create glowing rivers of light that wind through the city as it wishes.

I could sit on this balcony forever.

I guess that I'm the kind of guy who sees absolute awesomeness in the world around me. I appreciate everything, almost to an uncannily large extent. People just don't seem to recognize the divine qualities of everything around them.

I think I could get really into photography.

Now that I think about it, shouldn't photography be all about capturing the perfect essence of every image, every moment, every second and breath of life? Shouldn't it be about seeing the world in a more amazing, more dazzling, more beautiful way with every click of the shutter?

What better way is there to make people see the world through my eyes than to throw it in their face and yell "LOOK. LOOK HOW BEAUTIFUL EVERYTHING IS?"

How can photographers take their job seriously and not be excited about every little thing that they see? How does the smallest twinkle, the most delicate blur, the perfect imperfection of the subjects they are shooting not make them tremendously giddy? How can they not be obsessed with how the tiniest detail lends itself to a perfect grand design, even on a small scale?

The world I see is so vivid, so vibrant, so filled with color. It's living and moving and jumping and sparkling and screaming, "God made me and I am incredibly made!"

This is my Father's world,
and to my listening ears
all nature sings, and round me rings
the music of the spheres.
This is my Father's world:
I rest me in the thought
of rocks and trees, of skies and seas;
his hand the wonders wrought.

This is my Father's world,
the birds their carols raise,
the morning light, the lily white,
declare their maker's praise.
This is my Father's world:
he shines in all that's fair;
in the rustling grass I hear him pass;
he speaks to me everywhere.

This is my Father's world.
O let me ne'er forget
that though the wrong seems oft so strong,
God is the ruler yet.
This is my Father's world:
why should my heart be sad?
The Lord is King; let the heavens ring!
God reigns; let the earth be glad!

it's a bit early...

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

God is not dead nor doth He sleep!

The Wrong shall fail

The Right prevail

With peace on Earth, good will to men!

where does it all come from?

It truly is amazing how God orchestrates perfection in the late hours of the day.

Where does Laus Deo Semper come from? What does it mean? It means praise God forevermore. According to the Westminster Catechism, the chief end of man is the worship God and enjoy Him forever. I am fighting the good fight, until I see His face.

And my friend just sent me a text with the scripture 1 Timothy 5:11, 12. "But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. fight the good fight of the faith. take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses."

to my friend

I think you might be the only person that reads my blog, but either way. Thanks for reading it.

Whoever I'm talking about, well, you know who you are. It's not secret to me or to you haha. I just remembered my account info for this blog, so I will start using it more and more often again. Probably to your happiness, huh xD

In any case, I want to thank you for being the person that you are. The last year has been a very confusing one, but I hope that you're once again ready to give this another try. You are and always have been a true friend. Thanks.

supervillains

I watched Megamind awhile ago, and it's just now been on my mind, not even for the last ten minutes.

Not 100% sure how it just suddenly started to tell me stuff, but I think God wants me to recognize something.

In the movie, Megamind, the anti-hero Megamind fulfills the role of the supervillain for the first half of the movie. His arch-nemesis is a superhero by the name of MetroMan, and frankly, although smart, the villain never wins. Ever.

But there is something very interesting about Megamind. He loses every time, but he kept coming back for more. There was no end to his resolute passion of defeating Metroman. He kept on coming.

And I feel like that's the way it is with all supervillains. In order for the journey of the superhero to continue, he has to have an archnemesis who runs away and comes back every time to try again to beat him, even though they knew they had no chance of winning.

So it's the same with Christ's supervillain counterpart. My sinful nature. It will never go away because it is in a desperate battle to own my soul. It will never keep trying to make me go against my covenants and my promises to God. It will put me in traps where God's blessing seems to be with me. It knows where it will ultimately end up, and so its only purpose in this world, in my mind and my heart, is to drag me down with it.

It will always, ALWAYS come back for more. That's why I have to be careful. I cannot ever think that all things I believe to be set-up by God as only set up by God. There is always some kind of sin some kind of cryptic vice buried inside of it that will cause my unsuspecting heart to stumble. That's why I need to constantly involve Christ in everything I do.

Cuz He knows best, and I don't. And that's good enough for me to obey.

an age old lesson

Has a situation ever come up in your life where you want to do something really badly, but you weren't allowed to?

Doesn't it just absolutely destroy your mental and emotional serenity?

Something has come up recently that's an age old lesson. I've learned this one time and again. I know exactly what the right mindset is, and I know all the correct reasoning and logic behind why the right action to take is the right action.

I know exactly what the right thing here is to do but man, I just don't want to do it.

I want so bad to do what I feel like doing right now, something that goes against everything I promised myself and everything that I've been promising myself. And the opportunity is so prime.

The circumstance is literally perfect. All the approaches are perfect. All the wheels are in place. The gears mesh, the circuit complete, all it needs is its light switch to be flicked.

And every bone in my body screams in a longing and unquenchable desire to act, and just act, not think but just act.

And every part of me that's Christ-like, and Jesus seeking (and I honestly believe that there isn't much of it) is trying to restrain me.

The indomitable, recurring, worldly-based sinful nature rears its malevolent face in war against the purity and sanctity of Christ's work in me.

This war, like any, can't be won on my own power. The only reason why I've sustained all these blows so far is because God is on my side.

So God, keep fighting for me. Don't let me confuse my feelings for Your will. Don't let me try to shape my life against Your will.

Don't let me build an existence on an unstable and rebellious decision.

Hold me tight.

no subject

It's been a while. A year, I think. Nah, more than a year. It says here that the last post was from Januar 9, 2011.

I guess that's pretty unfortunate, too. Revisiting this blog afer a whole year has passed, and realizing now that I left a whole years worth of thinking, musing, and learning unrecorded.

In the past year, I've learned so much, experienced so many things, and went through dramatic change. And yet, I feel like I haven't made too many steps forward.

I'm looking down the line and all I see are miles and miles of unfinished business. Of more to come. Of even rougher roads.

In the next few days, I'll be catching up on the lost stories of 2011, the meaningful anecdotes that never came to be, the words that have passed through my mind and never been put down.

It's a shame, really, no one should ever let a lesson go unkept. It should be constantly refurbished, reminded, recorded, kept track of.

And as many times as it's been said by other people, I'm going to say it one more time. Life, just like history, repeats itself.

Throughout the years of your life, there are two things. Recurring themes-landmarks, if you will, and also rare events. You take the recurring themes for granted because, even if you don't think this train of thought will happen to you, you believe that the situation will present itself to you again, and so the need to address it isn't as dire.

And it comes back. And you do the same thing again, push it off. And it comes back.

And it festers.

It roots itself inside of you to the point where it becomes a never-learned lesson that you want more than anything else to get rid of, but want to hide when it comes a-knocking.

When I don't blog. When I don't place down my thought processes. When I don't leave myself something to remember from a previous struggle that may prove to be the key to turning my viewpoint of a current trial to what is right and holy, something bad happens.

I learn nothing.

So here goes, hopefully a year of steadfast blogging. As I said before, there will be quite a few things put up on this blog tha are from the year 2011, but it'll be intermingled, or a huge blast right off the bat. I haven't yet decided.