I Love Good Covers
One of my favorite things to do on YouTube is to find random artists who create great covers of songs. I would guess that a least a third of my favorited vids on YouTube are covers.
Here are a couple of good ones to start off with.
Tik Tok by Ke$ha
Cover by Amy Colalella
Better Man by Pearl Jam
Cover by Hayley Legg
Current Obsession
Don’t ask me why, but I’ve been getting into the old Matchbox 20 album, Yourself or Someone Like You. I love re-listening to music I used to love when I was younger.
Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus
This is a video that has been making it’s rounds in my social media networks. I watch it and I don’t know what to think exactly. Take a look for yourself.
Yes, the words are powerful and the arguments are sound. It’s not the video itself that I have a problem with. It’s (what seems like) every one of my christian friends sharing the link on facebook or retweeting it on Twitter. They talk about how “truthful” this video is or how much they agree with it, but then they move on with their life unchanged. They agree with what is said here and they share it, but for the most part their life doesn’t change. Their actions stay the same. How they approach Christ, the church, and religion remains constant.
There must be something satisfactory about watching a video like this and sharing it, but the big problem is – IT STOPS THERE! It bothers me when I see this happen. We quote what theologians or preachers say and don’t let it transform us, we read the lastest Christian book don’t change how we pray or view God, we watch video and praise them relentlessly, and we get away with thinking that by doing this we are doing what we are suppose to. God has called us to be much, much more.
Maybe I’m thinking about this too much, but I when I see a great video like this go viral, but how we do church doesn’t change, I feel like we completely missed out on the purpose of the video. [end rant]
UPDATE: Additional reading from The Gospel Coalition
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
I recently had the pleasure of reading this book. A very touching but sad story of a teenager named Charlie. About a third of the way through this book, Charlie is called a “wallflower” by one of his friends. A “Wallflower” is someone who is usually shy (but not always) and generally hangs out in the background, they usually are people who are great observers and probably notice things that others don’t. In this story, Charlie is not necessarily a shy person, but he definitely has issues when it comes to (as the book puts it) “participating” in life. He rarely engages and usually only engages when he has to or he feels safe to.
One of the things that gets me about this book is how much Charlie reminds me of myself when I was his age. I would imagine that it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that in many ways most teenagers have tendencies to be a wallflower from time to time.
Another reason this book is so impactful is it gets you thinking. The book is a collection of letter that Charlie writes someone, he writes them to sort out his thoughts so this can easily be seen as a journal that he writes. And the thing about journals is we see how and what we think when things happen to us in out lives. For me, this originally struck me a sad book because so much doesn’t go his way, but it gets me thinking- there are a lot of stuff that doesn’t go our way in our life, but do we see our life as sad? Sometimes, but most of the time we try and handle it in the best way we think we know how and (like how Charlie is in most of the book) we are generally content with life.
I came away with two things.
1.) “So, I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we’ll never know most of them.” We are who we are and we need to find people who will accept us for it. It’s cliche and something we shove down the throats of teenagers, but we need to be ourselves and if we’re not, we aren’t going to be happy.
2.) Engage in life. Too many people wait for life to happen for them. They wait for something amazing to come to them instead of going after the amazing. Instead of chasing their dreams, they remain their dreams. We let so many things in our life pass us by and while some of us don’t have personality of a wallflower, by our actions we become wallflowers.
UPDATE: Just for the record, I highly recommend this. Read it, you’ll love it.
My Favorite Athletes
If you watch a lot of sports like I do, you have those few guys that you will always cheer for regardless of what team they are playing for. You know who I am talking about, those guys that you want to be successful no matter what. Below is a small list of 5 guys that I will always cheer for. They are quality people whose side I will always be on.
1. Josh Hamilton- I Am Second. Watch it!
2. Dider Drogba- They guy saved a country from Civil War, plus he plays some mean soccer.
3. Tim Tebow- the man with the spiritual gift of winning, haha.
4. Dirk Nowitski- got Dallas that long awaited championship!
5. Michael Young- classy and professional guy who leads by example.
Who are some of yours?
