LIFE Nuggets

The purpose of this blog is Essentially to Chronicle our personal faith journey and that of a place that we call LIFE House West. Why Life Nuggets? Because Nuggets bring to mind a sense of fun and enjoyment, show me a child who is sad when they get to eat chicken nuggets..... Things like life, and following Jesus should be fun and we want to explore those things in a light hearted and fun way, so please, enjoy...

Name:
Location: Hagerstown, Maryland, United States

30 years old, married, Father of four children (2 boys, 2 girls) 2 cats and 3 dogs (black lab, english bulldog, and pug)

Thursday, August 30, 2007

The Search For Wisdom

Hello again and welcome back for another LIFE Nugget. I have been spending my personal time studying the book of Proverbs. One, because I love the simple plain spoken words of the book, and two, our next sermon series will be taken from it. What has always fascinated me about the book is the pursuit of wisdom that speaks of. The word wise, means: having intelligence and knowledge. From this root we get the word wisdom. I was thinking this morning that it is the pursuit of wisdom that is one of the strongest desires of the human spirit.

We want to know things, to understand how things work. From childhood on up, the pursuit of wisdom fills us with wonder and constantly makes us want more of it. When I was a kid, my brother tells me that I drove him crazy by constantly asking the question, "what's that?" He, being a good older brother would answer until he became frustrated and then handed the questions off to my mother who never tired of answering her son.

Things have not changed much, I still love to learn things and am called by many, a fountain of useless knowledge. I think that we all have this innate desire inside of us to learn. I personally feel that we should never neglect our desire to learn, we should all be lifelong learners. The great thing about learning, and wisdom is what the book of Proverbs points us to. That is wisdom for every day. Old thoughts and practical experience from people who have lived well that we can take and not just hide inside some monastery, but bring into the practical realm of our every day life.

That is the greatness of the Christ Centered life. It is practical and every day. At the same time there is a beautiful element of mystery and wonder that keep us wanting more. If I can encourage you with anything today it is to get wisdom and pursue it with all your heart, and remember that it is in relationship with Jesus that real wisdom begins.

PJ

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

The Altars of Life

I have been taking some time today and looking back over the posts of this blog. In October it will mark one year that I have been posting on the blog. It feels strange to go back and look over what you have written and the comments of others who have stopped by and left a nugget of their own. They are a reminder of what God has brought us through up until this point in life.

This blog is the closest thing that I have to a journal. I do not sit down and write my thoughts in a book somewhere. This blog is my place for that. Already in this process we have seen people give their lives to Christ and seen God do some awesome stuff. We have worked hard, laughed hard, and played hard along the way. However, looking back reminds me of something that I think that all of us can do in our lives.

If you look in the book of Genesis, you can see that men like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, among others built altars "to the Lord." Those places were reminders of what God had done for them. They were reminders of experiences. Most of those altars were structures that had some permanence. They would go past those altars and be reminded of what God had done for them.

Looking back over the posts of this blog is one way that I am reminded of what God has done for me. If I can give any pastoral nugget it would be to find a way to remember, journal, blog, whatever helps. It also helps you look to the future with more faith than you may have had in the first place. I know that it does that for me.

PJ