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coastlands
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Name: coastlands
Birthday: 8/8/1977
Gender: Male
Interests: Travel, Reading, Golf
Occupation: Itinerant Missionary
Industry: Christian Education
Message: message me
Member Since:
9/14/2006
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| As I stood outside tonight enjoying the beauty of the clear night sky complemented by a full moon and cool crisp air, I couldn't help but be taken back in time to those feelings of excitement combined with nervous anticipation that always preceded the start of another school year. Vivid images of friends, football games, and late-night and late-season fun came flooding into my mind. I also remembered the following article, written by Eric Zorn and originally published on August 27, 1995, which I read in the Orlando Sentinel just days after I arrived at Stetson University for my first semester of college. I thought it might be worth sharing - perhaps others can also relate to his perspective! "It has been 16 years since August's passage into September made more practical difference to me than any other flip of a calendar page, but I doubt it will ever stop feeling like the real New Year.
The end of summer and the start of school was when we really rang out the old and rang in the new. Forget when the ball dropped in Times Square and the drunks blew on noisemakers.
Only a fresh September fully combined bittersweet conclusions with exhilarating possibilities the way a New Year's Eve was supposed to. It was a natural time for resolve -- I will study harder, dress nicer, be a better friend, be realistic for once in my romantic aspirations. It was the best vantage point in the year from which to look back and look ahead at the same time.
Nothing quite says "time to begin again" like back-to-school days. They are when clothes are new, shoes are crisp and pencils are still sharp, yet unchewed and safely stored in a zippered pouch at the front of a pristine notebook.
Classrooms are spruce and slates, both literal and figurative, are clean. The new teacher doesn't know and may never get to know of your tendency to fall asleep in class and hand in assignments late. The new students -- there are always at least a few -- never may discern your dorky qualities, while those above you on the social ladder may have matured over the summer such that they now fully appreciate and admire you.
Maybe you've grown into your nose or finally lucked into a flattering haircut.
It happens. Inversions. Transformations. Discoveries. September swells with potential when you're growing up.
From the time we are young enough to remember until the time we are old enough to know better, the school calendar imprints this on our psyches. Accordingly, long after we have accepted our last diploma, a switch inside us still trips at certain cues this time of year.
Like most adults, I will do the same job for the same employer next month as I'm doing this month. I will sleep in the same bed, drive the same car and wear roughly the same clothes.
But as August trickles into September in the coming week, a sense of renewal will ease the pain of remembered regret that another summer's promise has been spent. A part of me will again, as ever, be starting 6th grade as a stranger in a new town; a part of me will be scanning the halls my first day of high school for the room numbers on the flimsy carbon of my class schedule; a part of me will be staying up late on moving-in day to tack up Vincent Van Gogh and Linda Ronstadt posters in my college dorm room.
The true New Year is upon us. Start the Top 500 countdown. Compose the best-of lists. Drape the streamers and put on the pointy hats. Indulge your dreams of what could be and savor your memories of auld lang syne."
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| John Piper: "My passion is to see people, churches, mission agencies, and social ministries become God-centered, Christ-exalting, Spirit-powered, Bible-saturated, missions-mobilizing, soul-winning, and justice-pursuing. The supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ is the central, driving, all-unifying commitment of my life." Lord, may this also be the commitment of my life. | | |
| Malachi 3:3-4: "He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the Lord will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Lord, as in days gone by, as in former years." | | |
| Last week Pam and I journeyed to northern coastal Maine ("Downeast") for a VBS on Sunshine Island, Deer Isle, ME. That church definitely puts the "vacation" in vacation Bible school! If you're like me and prefer scenic non-touristy places, Deer Isle is for you! No hotels and no boardwalks - just a small BEAUTIFUL island made up primarily of hard-working lobstering families. I've added some pictures in the "Photo" section. You can either view them on the photo page itself (they actually take up a page and a half) or you can click on the photo album that says "Deer Isle". If a place on earth can be that beautiful, I can't imagine what heaven will be like! | | |
| I am almost finished with the 1976 book How Should We Then Live?: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture by Francis Schaeffer, and it has definitely been a book worth reading. I have frequently been reminded of this very simple statement: "Ideas have consequences." Schaeffer, as the title suggests, traces the dominant philosophies over the past 2000 years, explaining how we have reached this point in the West (up to 1976). What I have found most fascinating is Schaeffer's projections to where those philosophies would lead in the future. His words written thirty-one years ago seem prophetic when looking at the great moral and ethical debates in our society today; however, he simply carried the ideas to their logical extensions. Where will the dominant philosophies today lead us in the next 31 years? What will be the consequences of the ideas that shape our culture today? Need some summer reading? Forget the new Harry Potter book. Check out How Should We Then Live? | | |
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