Often we conservatives are “against” abortion.
We stand in front of abortion clinics and hold signs and shout slogans.
Let’s put our money where our mouth is and do something that works for a change.
I think I ripped the tune off from Staind’s “It’s Been a While”, but these lyrics don’t really seem to fit my memory…
It’s been a while since I felt Your presence,
It’s been a while since I held Your hand in mine
It’s been a while and I guess I lost my first love
It’s been a while but I still recall the day that I met you
Lord, I want your hand to lead me
I want you to be the center of my life.
But every time I lose direction
I always fail to realize you’re by my side…
It’s been a while since I’ve really felt convicted
It’s been a while since I hung You on that cross
It’s been a while and I’ve gotten quite complacent
It’s been a while and my life really seems so out of line
It’s been a while since I’ve even read Your Bible,
It’s been a while since I spent some time in prayer
It’s been a while since I told You that I love You,
It’s been a while but I’m crying out for You to hear me now
Jesus, take me now and clean me
Wash my heart and make me fit for your design
Fill me with Your love, and let it shine through me
Tie me to your side - don’t let this moment ever fade away….
Dedication Prayer
music by Bernard Shuford
words by Karma Shuford
God gave to us His only Son,
The price to pay for our sin.
So, in love and obedience,
We offer our child to Him.
Lord, may his eyes see as you see.
May his hands, your kingdom build.
May his feet take him where you’d have him go,
And with your praise his mouth be filled.
May his ears hear your voice,
and his mind think of you.
May his heart be filled with love,
and his soul to you be true.
Lord, may his eyes see as you see.
May his hands, your kingdom build.
May his feet take him where you’d have him go,
And with your praise his mouth be filled.
God gave to us His only Son,
The price to pay for our sin.
Just a beggar on a street in New York City
Where he sits and stares and dreams of yesterday
There’s a picture in his pocket of his fam’ly
And he sometimes pulls it out and drifts away
To a place where all is well and there’s no pain
To a time when he loves everyone again
In nineteen sixty four , he bought a Bible
And carried it to church three times a week.
His wife and son went too and they met Jesus
And the preacher said “We love you coming here.”
But that church in Tennessee, it had some problems
Black men really didn’t quite fit in
So some people made some calls and accusations,
And they calmly told him “Don’t come back again!”
To a place where all is well and there’s no pain
To a time when he loves everyone again
Just a beggar on a street in New York City
Where he sits and stares and dreams of yesterday
There’s a picture in his pocket of his fam’ly
And he sometimes pulls it out and drifts away
When a man comes to your door, how you treat him
Tells him everything he knows ‘bout who you are
From the beggar on the street in New York City
To the rich girl riding in the limousine
I’ve never really been satisfied with my songwriting. I’ve written a few “good ones”, but only one, which I wrote during college, has really been preserved. I wrote one for Travis’ dedication that seemed fairly good at the time, and the one I wrote for Kristi was, to say the least, incredible. (”Show Me Jesus”, based on the idea of a little girl asking her daddy to find the picture of the Saviour in the picture Bible…) Somewhere a year or so ago, I wrote one for church and sang it, but I have no idea of where the lyrics even are.
I composed a tune for our wedding that I desperately hope is on a video somewhere; otherwise, it’s lost as lost can be.
Back in 1999, or so, I wrote one that probed into church racism, called “Don’t Come Back Again”. I think I’ve performed it twice, both times basically receiving blank stares. Then Casting Crowns released “If We Are the Body” and the similarities were incredibly strong.
Karma and I even co-wrote one for an Easter choir special back in the days of my Ray Boltz influence. I was never satisfied with it, but it had a great theme.
But I see many more “failures” in my songs than I do successes.
My melodies often seem trite and unimaginative, and I tend to reprocess chord progressions. I don’t like that. (It’s a favorite gripe of mine about Southern Gospel music.)
It also frustrates me that my lyrics often seem forced and stilted. That’s a favorite gripe of mine in regard to Christian rock.
Thus, something like 7 or 8 years ago, I intentionally set songwriting aside. Any “inspiration” seemed to be non-existent for several reasons, and my statement to Karma at that time was “There are plenty of good songs already written, I’ll just sing those.”
Wow.
By no means am I a good songwriter. I do believe, however, that buried somewhere inside me is a talent that God created that I’ve wasted.
A songwriter can become a cocky jerk. A songwriter can also become his own worst enemy. To write a song, thinking it’s “good”, and throw it out there to the wolves is a challenging proposition. I don’t like to introduce a song with “I wrote this” or “God gave this to me”, because there’s an immediate patronism that happens. I despise that patronism. I WANT to write good songs, but I don’t want some well-meaning individual to say “that’s a great song” just because they know me. I want my songs to stand alone.
Many of my lyrics and tunes are lost forever. The handwritten notes disappear all too easily, and the tunes were often only in my head. I neglected to record them, partially because I have a thing about only performing “specially written” songs once. However, now, I would love to play Karma’s Song from the wedding again, but I can’t…
My point? I don’t know, but hopefully this gift isn’t dead. I’ve considered my music to be a curse for all too long, I know. God has dealt insistently with me about it. I honestly fear that my talent has faded. But talent is only a small part of success.
Tags: Music
Not too far away, easily within an hours’ drive, a young lady, a few years younger than me, probably, endures another night without her husband. Suddenly taken away by the sweeping hands of death.
I cannot fathom the pain. I cannot fathom the shock.
Yet, I am strangely touched by the situation. I have no real idea why.
Perhaps it’s because I’ve seen her a good many times in life, a lively young lady with a ready smile. Very athletic, very friendly, very outgoing, and known and loved by many.
Now, her heart is broken. I hear she is holding up well, yet, even I, who did not know her husband at all, feel a strange emptiness.
While I watched my son play baseball, or at least as we prepared for the game, somewhere a few miles away, a man died. Suddenly.
As I concerned myself with a bat hitting a ball or a glove, the enormity of life and death hung precariously in the balance for a moment. A sudden event, and the umpire of all eternity called a man to his final home.
The biting question for me is this - How many times do men, and women, who do not know my Saviour, suddenly die while I simply pass the time of day, and yet I never feel the slightest pain for them? I assume, based on limited knowledge, that this particular man was a believer in Christ, but so many are not.
Words fail me as I try to make the lurking question express itself somehow.
I do not feel guilt for being at the baseball game. That in itself is not the issue. The twisted, distorted puzzle of life sometimes throws me curves. Me being somewhere else would not have stopped the death of this man.
Yet I sorrow for those who grieve, and I sorrow for the sudden cessation of the wonderful gift of life.
So, I puzzle. In a certain sense, I have no control over the spiritual condition of anyone. I can, hopefully, influence some. I can, hopefully, point them to the Saviour and allow the Holy Spirit to “use” me to guide them. Yet, there are many that I will never even meet, and many that will never know Christ. That breaks my heart, but it should break it even more.
And I sorrow as I puzzle.
Just as a blurblet to let the world know what’s going on…
I’m not sure what purpose this blog is currently serving in my life. I like having the option to create rants, tirades, and general discussions here, but most of my online “social network” is currently happening on Facebook and Twitter.
That’s not to say blogs are bad, but my following here is kind of small and much more focused than the atmosphere at Facebook. You can see my Tweets up top on here, and feel free to follow me if you have the slightest interest in me, my kids, my life, or anything of that nature. As well, I’m easily found on Facebook (there’s a link on the right to my profile), and I’ll “friend” virtually anybody that I remotely know.
Thanks for checking in; I hope to get more sensible content up here soon, but it won’t be “social” in nature. I don’t know exactly which focus I will pick, but the blog is going to be more focused than the other stuff.
As of May 20, 2009, I am a CrackBerry user.
I love it.
This isn’t a review, just some notes of things I’ve noticed and some that I love.
- I love the intelligent programming of the keyboard - pressing space twice to get a period, the fact that the space bar inserts “@” in email addys and periods in web addresses. Pressing and holding a key creates a capital letter. That is incredibly good engineering.
- It’s smaller than I thought it would be.
- Twitter on a Berry makes SO much more sense than on a desktop or laptop.
- I thought I liked UberTwitter better than TwitterBerry for a while, but uploading pics changed my mind. Ubertweet sends them to a site that didn’t appeal to my eye, while TwitterBerry uses TwitPic, which I DO like the look of. There may be options in UberTwitter than I needed to change, I don’t know.
- Facebook in general has some glitches. For instance, when I get a notification of a comment on a status update in my email, the browser takes me to the newest status update, and there is not a way to get to older updates as best I can tell. The Facebook app doesn’t solve this problem.
- I spend MUCH less time on computers now. That is a good thing. Seriously.
- The YouVersion Bible app was a bit frustrating to get installed, but once I found it at AppWorld, all was well. There’s also a direct link that might help someone with similar problems… http://bit.ly/46maG4.
- Gmail Application + BlackBerry works REALLY well, and notifications even work. I have a BlackBerry email account, but I’m not using it.
- Google Sync is awesome, especially the calendar features, which integrates exceptionally seamlessly with the Blackberry calendar. As well, the fact that I can enter addresses in Google Contacts and have them show up on the Blackberry without connecting a single cable is nothing short of amazing.
- I hope Google syncs “Tasks” soon.
- I had no idea that BlackBerrys could detect a holster and go into an entirely different profile as far as sound, vibrate, etc. That, too, is incredibly good engineering.
- The “pocket” that Verizon provides, however, is NOT a belt clip, regardless of the fact that it appears to have such a thing on it. That “thing” is actually the way that BlackBerry creates a groove for the trackball, so that inserting the Curve into the “pocket” does not roll the trackball.
- I really like the trackball, too. I am so glad I didn’t choose a touchscreen phone.
- I am obsessive about keeping the screen clean. See previous item.
- Google Maps use of cell signals to create a pseudo GPS even on a Verizon BlackBerry is incredibly effective and a bit scary. Sure, I can’t find a geocache with it, but I can at least be in the right corner of the right county, etc.
- Pandora is a sweet app no matter where you run it, but it makes a lot of sense on the BlackBerry.
- Crackberry.com is a good site. Period.
- Opera Mini is a great little browser, but it just doesn’t work for me. I don’t know why, really, but I strongly prefer the built-in BlackBerry browser. I actually uninstalled it. I may put it back on, I don’t know, but I had some difficulties with it.
- MicroSD memory is surprisingly cheap. 2 gigs for less than $10??? Wow.
- The Curve will not even go into video mode unless a MicroSD card is present. Just saying.
- The camera, even at 2 MP, is pretty decent, has some “okay” controls, and is well worth having. The lens is protected, so hopefully I won’t scratch it up or something stupid. For the first time, I LIKE the idea of having a camera phone. Previously, they were so bad as to be useless.
- It takes an intentional effort to close a BlackBerry application once you have it started, and it’s not really “clear” that apps are running. Those hidden apps drag down battery life and performance.
- Right now my convenience keys trigger the camera and the calendar app. Those are the two things that, when I actually need them, I need to be able to access them quickly.
- The Chess.com mobile app works really well.
- While it is widely circulated that BlackBerry cannot play YouTube videos, I found XENOZU on AppWorld. This is a dedicated YouTube player and appears to work very well. The videos are very small and vocal quality is basically awful, but it IS at least possible to access the site and watch videos.
- Lance Armstrong uses a BlackBerry, and dude, that is the final say-so for me. Lance, quite possibly, is the atheist that I like most.
Now, I’m gonna get off the computer and do something worthwhile, like check my email. 
Tags: app, Bible, blackberry, facebook, verion, youversion
I gotta get fit.
I really, sincerely, despise some things about myself. The biggest one is that I have a wide-span attention deficit disorder, or something stupid like that. I can focus on just about ANYTHING for about three weeks, or two, and then it falls by the wayside. I’ve blogged about my long list of cyclical interests, and for those of you who are happy with one or two hobbies, you have no idea how frustrating it is to be me.
Probably a dozen or more times in my life, I have set out to get into better shape. Maybe two dozen. For many years, my efforts were crippled by a heart defect, but I actually worked out very hard during my college years and for a few afterward. Not continuously, but often.
Funny thing, during THOSE years, I was a skinny runt and didn’t NEED to get into shape.
Regardless of all that, I still long to get rid of about 15 pounds of fat. I don’t mind what I weigh, I just want to be stronger and get some muscle in all the right places.
I have no plans to set goals. I don’t WANT any goals.
I just want my lifestyle to be healthier and to be founded on exercise and activity rather than a computer.
So, I’m gonna do some things.
Cut back on the computer. At work and at home. Use it only as necessary and not just to pass the time.
Make healthier eating choices. I’m not going to count calories, I’m not going to count fat, I’m not going to eat only certain things. I’m just going to make healthier eating choices.
Play more.
Work out. That’s a little difficult right now with this here bad elbow, but it’s coming back. If I can weight train two or three nights a week, I’ll be on a much better path. (As of right now, I genuinely wonder if I’ll ever be able to do a pushup or pullup again…)
I really hope I don’t fail at this, too. It’s incredibly discouraging to have such a history of things that I’ve not stuck with. I hate being that kind of person.
