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Sunday, August 16, 2009
Welcome Week Designs
Every year we host two weeks worth of events to meet, welcome, and connect with freshmen on campus. This is a selection of the design work that supported our schedule of events this year.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Seemingly Random Thoughts
"you never leave where you are until you decide where you'd rather be." (Gabrielle Beaty)
"All great life is the product of a great purpose taking hold of the personality and sinking our selfishness out of sight... Some cause must dissolve you, melt you, move you, burn in you, if you are going to do anything in this world." (Daniel Clark Knowles, "Lofty Purposes" from Chapel Talks)
"It's not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting but that it has been found hard and not tried."
(GK Chesterton)
"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea."
(Antoine de Saint Exupery)
"Every generation must have its own confrontation with God."
"22Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: "Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you." (Acts 17)
"13When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say the Son of Man is?" 14They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets." 15"But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?" 16Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."" (Matthew 16)
"In the Bible we do not see man groping after God; we see God reaching after man." (John R.W. Stott)
"We know that to find God and to accept Jesus Christ would be a very inconvenient experience. It would involve the rethinking of our whole outlook on life and the readjustment of our whole manner of life. And it is a combination of intellectual and moral cowardice which makes us hesitate. We do not find because we do not seek. We do not seek because we do not want to find, and we know that the way to be certain of not finding is not to seek." (John R. W. Stott)
"All great life is the product of a great purpose taking hold of the personality and sinking our selfishness out of sight... Some cause must dissolve you, melt you, move you, burn in you, if you are going to do anything in this world." (Daniel Clark Knowles, "Lofty Purposes" from Chapel Talks)
"It's not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting but that it has been found hard and not tried."
(GK Chesterton)
"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea."
(Antoine de Saint Exupery)
"Every generation must have its own confrontation with God."
"22Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: "Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you." (Acts 17)
"13When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say the Son of Man is?" 14They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets." 15"But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?" 16Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."" (Matthew 16)
"In the Bible we do not see man groping after God; we see God reaching after man." (John R.W. Stott)
"We know that to find God and to accept Jesus Christ would be a very inconvenient experience. It would involve the rethinking of our whole outlook on life and the readjustment of our whole manner of life. And it is a combination of intellectual and moral cowardice which makes us hesitate. We do not find because we do not seek. We do not seek because we do not want to find, and we know that the way to be certain of not finding is not to seek." (John R. W. Stott)
Church at My House
I did not sleep well last night and decided to stay home from church this morning. I wanted to listen to a sermon or two online, but when the website timed out on me, I decided to check out my personal library of sermons. I ended up listening to a sermon I preached during our last semester at LSU. Aside from noticing again, as I do every time I listen to myself in recordings, that I have a much stronger country accent than I realize in daily life... that I sound very much like a combination of my friends Angie and Tara when I preach... and that I need to get control of my use of the word ummmmm... I had a few thoughts I wanted to put down in writing before they fly away (apparently another symptom of pregnancy).
"If we do not experience God, we cannot experience love."
If this statement is true, and I believe it is, the opposite is also true. As we experience God, we experience love. And not just in our relationships with Him. We know (and for some of us, learn) how to identify love in our lives by the interactions and exchanges we have with the Lord. Without God, we continually misinterpret life situations and the actions of others. But as we know God and live with Him, we learn to correctly name love in our interpersonal relationships as well.
One of the interesting things about consistent pubic speaking is the inability to separate a particular sermon from a specific season of life. This effect is magnified when the sermons are recorded. As I sat and listened to myself speaking to my LSU students, I could see our old room in the Design Building like it was yesterday. I could feel the heat of the stage lights on my face. I remember what it felt like to step in that tiny little space upfront and try to speak to a group you couldn't even see for those blinding lights. And more than all that, I remember how I felt, not just as a director/pastor/preacher, but as a human, a daughter, a wife, a friend, at that time in my life. For me, it wasn't pretty. No one probably knew at that point, but that sermon was straight out of my own life and relationship with God at that moment. But most people don't think of their pastors/preachers as being real people with real challenges and real hurts. But such was the state of my heart as I took the mic that night. I was in the midst of some real life challenges - and, completely unknown to me at that moment, I was about to enter one of the most difficult, heart-breaking, life-changing experiences of my life. I talk in the sermon about friends who have betrayed us in the past - I was about to be betrayed. I talk about the moments when you feel most alone - I was about to find myself absolutely alone. So as I listened to myself speak, it was like knowing both the beginning and the end of the story, like watching a character in a movie you've already seen - wanting to tell them not to open that door cuz the crazy ax-murderer is behind it, but you know they will anyway. And for the first time, as I "watched" myself for 43 minutes and 38 seconds, all I could see was God. Usually, when I replay that time in my life I am focused on what I could have done differently or how I felt during that process. Today I saw God. I saw Him speaking to me in small ways. I saw Him setting the stage long beforehand to prepare me for the most difficult act of my life thus far. Wow, He is so good to me.
"If we do not experience God, we cannot experience love."
If this statement is true, and I believe it is, the opposite is also true. As we experience God, we experience love. And not just in our relationships with Him. We know (and for some of us, learn) how to identify love in our lives by the interactions and exchanges we have with the Lord. Without God, we continually misinterpret life situations and the actions of others. But as we know God and live with Him, we learn to correctly name love in our interpersonal relationships as well.
One of the interesting things about consistent pubic speaking is the inability to separate a particular sermon from a specific season of life. This effect is magnified when the sermons are recorded. As I sat and listened to myself speaking to my LSU students, I could see our old room in the Design Building like it was yesterday. I could feel the heat of the stage lights on my face. I remember what it felt like to step in that tiny little space upfront and try to speak to a group you couldn't even see for those blinding lights. And more than all that, I remember how I felt, not just as a director/pastor/preacher, but as a human, a daughter, a wife, a friend, at that time in my life. For me, it wasn't pretty. No one probably knew at that point, but that sermon was straight out of my own life and relationship with God at that moment. But most people don't think of their pastors/preachers as being real people with real challenges and real hurts. But such was the state of my heart as I took the mic that night. I was in the midst of some real life challenges - and, completely unknown to me at that moment, I was about to enter one of the most difficult, heart-breaking, life-changing experiences of my life. I talk in the sermon about friends who have betrayed us in the past - I was about to be betrayed. I talk about the moments when you feel most alone - I was about to find myself absolutely alone. So as I listened to myself speak, it was like knowing both the beginning and the end of the story, like watching a character in a movie you've already seen - wanting to tell them not to open that door cuz the crazy ax-murderer is behind it, but you know they will anyway. And for the first time, as I "watched" myself for 43 minutes and 38 seconds, all I could see was God. Usually, when I replay that time in my life I am focused on what I could have done differently or how I felt during that process. Today I saw God. I saw Him speaking to me in small ways. I saw Him setting the stage long beforehand to prepare me for the most difficult act of my life thus far. Wow, He is so good to me.
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