Photos for you to enjoy (and or disenjoy)

Alison's wonderful enchiladas!

Our lazy cat

Ali & I on our 180 tubing day

Ali & some of the gals

Me, my bro AJ and two students

I'm ready to do some serious damage with this icicle

Update

I am a horrible person, ashamed in my lack of blogging. Its not that I didn't have anything to say, just didn't have the time with which to blog.

I've had a great week. Alison and I have spent time with both of our families, been tubing on Mt. Hood, had our noses in the books and enjoyed another week of work.

Something that is fun for me now is our youth group's new Newsletter Blog. We send out a weekly newsletter via e-mail, but will now conduct this on a blog. That way we can jazz it up a bit, add pictures, polls, comments and standing links. Check it out if you have time and/or you want to see the weekly doings of 180.

Safe and sound

I do not propose to know the exact definitive answer on the issue of eternal security. It seems to me that stories of God's grace and the prodigal son, among others, plead for this view. On the other hand, there seem to be many passages which point toward the possibility of "stepping over the line" if you will.

It is on my mind because we had to do a "Eternal Security in Hebrews" project for my Hebrews - Revelation class. There are good arguments both ways, and I don't intend to choose one right now, or debate for either side. What I do want to do is ask a question.

Is the question Can I loose my salvation the wrong question to ask?...Or better question is, Is salvation only about getting into heaven?

If salvation is only about getting myself into heaven, then I suppose wondering if I can lose that salvation is a perfectly good question to ask. But if salvation begins now, and eternal life begins now, then a better question to ask would be Am I following Christ the best that I know how?

What are your thoughts?

It's been a while...but school's here!

I apologize to those of you who come to my blog everyday, and have now seen nothing new for a week. It's been one of those busy ones.

I just started back in school 2 terms left! So I thought I'd give you a rundown of my classes:

Hebrews - Revelation: Not too hard to figure out. We'll study the books from Hebrews until we finish Revelation.

Ethics: I'm excited about this one. The last 2/3 of the semester we'll spend debating ethical issues such as abortion, gender issues, death penalty and so on.

Doctrine: A seminar class where we discuss what we believe after 4 years of school about various topics like God, the Bible, Salvation. We turn in 8 short statements of what we Believe...and no, they don't have to agree with the professor or the school. They just have to be our beliefs.

NTBT: Short for New Testament Biblical Theology. I am very excited about this course. Systematic Theology asks what does the whole Bible say about ________...often, inevitably leaving out some verses...almost like a pick and choose method of Bible study. Biblical Theology looks at the books themselves. What does the book of _______ teach? What does the book of _____ teach about _____? How does this specific author talk about ______?

Persuasion: I don't know much about the course yet, but I'm sure I can be persuaded to pay attention.

Well, that's about it. I have more to write later.

A quick quote

I just saw a quote on the Youth Ministry Forum that I'd like to share with you. (Quote from ruben Shelly, posted by dougout)

Christians are like manure. Pile it up and it just stinks to high heaven. Spread it around and it fertilizes whole fields.

What do you think about that? :)

Not ready to be a parent...yet

I suppose that my title would make some assume that I am going to be a father soon...but no, don't even think it. I am not ready.

This past weekend, Alison - my beautiful wife - and I house/babysat for a couple that went on vacation. Their house was up miles of windy roads in the middle of Washington Park at the top of the hill. many beautiful views I must add.

We "baby" sat a Senior, Sophmore, and 4th grade girls of which 2 needed rides to places, and 1 had a basketball game to play. The 4th grader wanted to play cards... for hours... and hours. She didn't tire from cards, any card game you knew she would play.

I got to thinking that this was okay for the few days, but I am way to selfish with my time to be a parent right now. I want time for myself, without having to entertain! But now the weekend is over, and I have all the time to myself and my wife.

By the way. Do you automatically become less selfish when you have a child? Or is it learned?

Photo Album

I've made a photo album that you can visit on the right hand side of my page at anytime. So far, I've got:

• Scenery
• Winter Youth 05
• Christmas 05

Hope you enjoy

Living in the moment

I've been living for the next moment, and not this one...in a bad way.

I attended this wonderful New Years Eve concert at Trinity Episcopal in downtown Portland, which held a standing room only crowd of about 1000. My cousin-in-law sang with the Portland Symphonic Girl Choir.

There was some great music including an award winning quartet, an erie organ piece, a cello piece played on a cello built in the 1700's!!! and the most amazing violin solo I have ever heard. I don't know how her fingers could move that fast.

I was listening to the violinist when I realized that I wasn't really enjoying the moment. I was thinking about what was coming up next, and then what I was doing later that night. Then I realized that I couldn't get this moment back ever again.

I think that maybe this is caused by our culture of media. We have everything stored on tape, CD, DVD, hard drive, iPod, or internet so that we can relive the experience.

But this experience I could not relive. It was not being recorded for me to listen to later. If I didn't enjoy this moment, I would never get to enjoy it again. So I decided to really live in that moment and take in the violinist and her amazing solo. It made quite a difference in my listening experience!

Unfortunately, the sad part is that I do this with people, with conversations. I will be talking to someone, and be thinking about what I'm doing next, not giving them my full attention. I rob them of the moment, along with myself.

So I decided to try to engage myself fully in the last few conversations, living right then, not thinking of what's next...and it too made a difference. Maybe it is because this "new" way of living is less selfish, focused on the other person.

I guess I hope that you will live in the moment, thinking of the other person, much better than I.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everybody. I hope everyone's celebrations were fun and safe. I have a few things on my mind which I will get to later.

I just returned from the Winter Youth Celebration. 4 days in a hotel with 1100 high schoolers. We sang, listened to teaching, and stayed up late jumping on the beds. Anyway, I'll start posting again tomorrow.

Hope you have a great 2006!

Aaron