Sushi on the Water (Just watch it!!!)

Word's cannot describe what is going through my head right now. Wow! Go Japan? Wow!

Smoke on the Water?? I think? Wow!

Praise or not to Praise that is the Question

- Praise is the culmination of our enjoyment of anything.
- C. S. Lewis

Why call praise music - praise music? Why not thank you music or I love you Jesus music.

The widely trusted Wikipedia says:

In Christianity, the word takes on a new meaning, and is understood as a command to either describe God or give a testimony of what God has done.In religion, praise is an impassioned exaltation of God (ie. a Supreme Being, or Creation), typically as an expression of gratitude for one's life or being. In other cases,praise may be tied to more situational aspects such as health and prosperity.In its common usage praise is the act of making positive statements about a person, object or idea, either in public or privately

Praise is just one element of worship and praise is something we have done since birth. Christian or not we praise. When we were youngwe looked up to a certain individual, in most cases our parents or siblings. We gave these individuals praise for simple things because at the time we didn't know better. For example: I used to praise my brother for being a good baseball player but now that I'm older I know my brother stinks at baseball.

God (Yahweh) is praised everyday through what we see, taste, and hear. When we look at the mountains in East Tennessee and we say, Wow! That is praise.The book of Psalms is a rich resource where most of our Worship leaders and hymn writers are inspired to write about praising God.

David Crowders' book, Praise Habit: Finding God in Sunsets and Sushi, gives us some questions to be thinking about.

" Remember how effortlessly we sang the praises of things we enjoyed? It was so easy and fluid and natural. What if this kind of praise freely leaked from us in delightful response to God? What if life were like that all the time? What if we were so moved by who God is, what He's down, what He will do, that praise, adoration, worship, whatever,continuoustly careened in our heads and pounded in our souls? What if praise were on the tip of our tongues likewe were a loaded weapon in the hands of a trigger-happy meth addict and every moment might just set us off? Thisis what we will do for eternity. What makes us think out time on earth should be any different?What keeps it from being so?"

This is what praise may look like:

A history lesson with some help

I thought this was pretty cool information.

"A Mighty Fortress": The Reformation Lives On through a hymn

On October 31, 1517, twelve years before he wrote this hymn, the Roman Catholic monk Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses on the Power of Indulgences to the door of a Wittenberg, Germany, church, effectively sparking the Protestant Reformation with his critique of indulgences sold by the Catholic church. Out of this Reformation, celebrating its 490th anniversary next month, was born all of the other churches that we know today: Lutherans, Presbyterians , Anabaptists (predecessors of the Baptist denominations) and Anglicans.

One of the hallmarks of the Reformation was the five "solas", meaning "alone":

Sola gratia (we are saved "by grace alone")
Sola fide (through "faith alone")
Sola scriptura ("Scripture alone" is the source of Christian doctrine)
Solus Christus ("Christ alone" is the mediator between God and man)
Soli Deo Gloria (all glory is due to "God alone")

Two of the ways Luther expressed the idea of sola scriptura were by encouraging ordinary people to read Scripture for themselves and to sing scriptural ideas in their own languages, rather than merely hearing scriptural ideas sung in Latin. Because of his emphasis on ordinary people participating in the service, Luther was a father of congregational singing."A Mighty Fortress" expresses the strength of ordinary people's devotion in the face of much resistance, and since its words and tune were both written by the founder of the Protestant Reformation, it has been called the "Battle Hymn of the Reformation."

For a while, it is the last hymn we will sing that was written by a monk--because ordinary people learned to read, write, and praise God with hymns in their own languages. May we sing it today with vigor, knowing we stand with generations of ordinary people to praise an extraordinary God.

Hope you enjoyed that. I didn't write all of that. I am not the scholarly or am I...

Come All to Blakes Burger Joint!!!

So, I was at work searching the internet because that's what I do for a living. Well, it seems like it. Anyway, I enjoy photography and I was flipping through the vitual pages of Flickr.com and I found this pic.

I can see myself owning my own burger joint. That would be nice. It would be like Sonic but way more greasy and yummy. Rollerskate car hops would be standard. All burgers would be 1 dollar... none of this 4 dollar stuff for a fastfood burger. My Dad would work with me too. He would flip burgers and sing to the other high school employees. I definitley wouldn't make them wear stupid outfits. I would also have a small amplitheater in back of the burger joint. It would draw people in and it would promote local bands.

Well, thats the end of my day dream. One can only dream. Thanks Flickr