Jeremy's Blog

Movie Poster for X-Men: Days of Future Past I love the X-Men series. I saw the newest movie, Days of Future Past, twice in theaters. While watching the movie for the second time, I began a working theory: that the young 1970's Charles Xavier is a young man who is close to dedicating his life to Christ. In this way, the events of the movie are an allegory for the trials and sufferings of a newfound Christian. Allow me to further explain. I don’t have the time to relay the whole plot but I will explain pertinent events as they happen. In the beginning of the movie, present-day Xavier forms a plan to alter the current mutant massacre by changing the past. With the course of events changed, the subsequent years would turn out differently and result in a brighter future. By default, Wolverine must be the mutant who travels back in time (because of his healing factor). Wolverine’s goal is to unite the 1970’s incarnations of Xavier and Magneto to stop the assassination of Bolivar

“Like father, like son” is how the saying goes. If you truly know me, you know that the saying has a very direct application in my life. From our physical characteristics to our genotype, I am a lot like my father. One specific way that I am like my father is with finances. We both believe in the “less is more” strategy. We like to conserve money wherever possible – wearing more layers to keep the heat off in the winter, frequenting yard sales and the local Good Will, and buying food in bulk are several examples. In fact, last year I had my heating bill well under $30 for several months during the winter months. Being conservative with my money has led me to apply to several restaurant email clubs. A perk to joining these clubs is that they usually send you free food around your birthday. Seeing as last week was my birthday, I received several great offers. I have already been to Black Bear Diner (a local place here in the Springs) for free pancakes, Ruby Tuesday for a free burger

This past Monday at camp, Aaron Hanrick delivered a short message on giving your best for God. He started the message with instructions to make things right with our loved ones. He then proceeded to show this video clip from “Facing the Giants” The Death Crawl I wanted to take another step in this direction. Immediately after Aaron was finished with his great message, several illustrations and pop culture references came to mind. Staying with the sports theme, I immediately thought of my favorite runner of all-time: Steve “Pre” Prefontaine. Pre ran one way: hard. He ran as fast as he could, for as long as he could. Here are two quotations from him: “Somebody may beat me, but they are going to have to bleed to do it.” “The only good race pace is a suicide pace, and today looks like a good day to die.” His most pertinent quotation is this one, written on the poster: For the next reference, we have this classic song by the Foo Fighters: The Best of You Loo

Change The word change has quite the connotation since the Obama administration began in 2008, doesn’t it? Sure there are good changes, but I venture that a lot of people define “change” the same way that they define “New Year’s Resolution”. By this I mean that you formulate an idea and attempt to implement it, only to eventually fall back into old habits. A schoolteacher talks about changing her lesson plans to be more creative and exciting; after several weeks of planning she falls back into the same routine. A former high school athlete tells his wife and kids that he’s going to get back in shape by going to the gym – and he does for a couple weeks, until his favorite television show comes back on. I’m sure that you can come up with several more examples. Why does change so often fail? Because we are afraid of being uncomfortable . Think about it – humans are creatures of routine. We sleep at night. We wake up and go to school/work. We come home, eat, and socialize with our f

Last Friday I sat down to watch the previous night’s episode of “The Big Bang Theory” (TBBT). This is a weekly occurrence for me as I do not have cable television. For those of you unfamiliar with the show, let me give you a basic rundown. The show chronicles the lives of Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) and Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki, or as many of you know him, the son from Christmas Vacation). These 2 geniuses live together in a California apartment; despite their quirky features and Sheldon’s idiosyncrasies, the duo have an intimate group of friends: Howard Wolowitz and his wife Bernadette, Sheldon’s girlfriend Amy Farrah Fowler, and forever-alone colleague Rajesh Koothrappali. The four male characters work together at Caltech: Howard is an engineer and the other three are physicists. With the show being based around science, not many Christian values can be taken from it. Just look at the title! Here are the lyrics to the theme song: “Our whole universe was in

Let’s get this straight: I’m NOT an English person. In high school, here was my priority list for classes: math, science, history/social sciences, everything else, and then English. My brain doesn’t think about sentence structures or parts of speech, it thinks about Algebra and Psychology, sports, and FOOD . I can communicate effectively with others (although I will talk about someone who cannot in my next post). Therefore, I have never been excited to write a blog. I have several friends who write regularly on blogs, and I enjoy reading their musings on life. This past fall I took part in a program called OLD (Outdoor Leadership & Discipleship) School through the parent organization SWO (Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters) in Andrews, NC. The program was a BLAST . I was able to try many outdoor disciplines and I learned a lot about myself throughout my three months there. God communicated to me that I need to work on specific areas of my life. One specific area is exhortation. F