Chris's Musings

This blog is a tribute to my family Thanksgiving trip up to Wilkesboro, NC and the journey through western NC and north Georgia that brought us there... I give you, sights and sounds of the South.  What can you expect when you leave the Perimeter? SIGHT:  Lots of boiled peanut stands.  If you didn't grow up in the South, then you probably didn't think you could boil a peanut, much less think that you'd want to. SOUND:   I kid you not, the Christmas song playing on the Western NC country station on the way back was "Santa's Got a Semi." SIGHT:  Way too much "Indian" (Native American) collectables in roadside junk stores.  Who doesn't need a totem pole in their front yard to impress the neighbors? SOUND:  Listening to the man at the quickie mart who is trying to set the Guiness world record for most cigarettes smoked in a lifetime negotiate with the cashier. SIGHT:   Happy pigs on t-shirts advertising barbeque joints.  Do they not know tha

A few months ago, I was swapping songs with a friend and remember something she said when we talked about a few Lifehouse (one of my favorite bands) songs.  Lifehouse is a band of Christians that make good music that talks about their relationship with God but isn't totally known as a "Christian" band.  However, when talking about the songs "Everything" and "Broken," she would always talk about the lyrics in this way:  "I don't know how you can listen to that and not think about God."  Thinking about it and musing over the lyrics of these songs, unless you're mind is really far off from God it's hard to think about the songs any other way, even though there's really no mention of "God" or "Jesus" in them.  It's kind of enhanced my experience listening to their music, which already rocks. I had the same epiphany about Thanksgiving today.  I thought as I was getting my TJ's waffles warmed, my coffee

About a week ago, I had someone come in to look at this problematic leak that was coming from my upstairs bathroom into my kitchen and creating a mess.  I had finally gotten tired of trying to figure it out and brought in someone who knew what they were doing.  Good news:  we (ahem - he) identified the leak and got it stop-gapped.  Bad News:  In order to really fix the leak and get everything in the house back to normal, the water had to be shut off.  My unit shares it's water with about 7 others, which means that it really could not be an impromptu thing, unless fixing the leak was an emergency.  So, trying to be a good neighbor, we stop gapped the problem and set up a time a week from tomorrow to get everything done.  That's good news.  The bad news?  The leak was with my hot water valve on my tub, so to get everything to "not leak," now I have no use of the hot water in my shower.  Good times, huh?   So - two weeks without hot water.  I can handle it, I'm to

Tales from a wine country tour bus: I had a great retreat-ish vacation day yesterday touring the Napa valley in California, touring a couple of wineries and getting to enjoy some breathtaking scenery.  Included on our stop was a lunch stop and town tour of this "rustic" (for California) hot springs town called Calistoga.  It was a good place to retreat... some boutique wineries, great restaurants and coffee shops, and (for the ladies, especially) a number of spas fed by natural hot springs. But what kind of name is "Calistoga" anyways?  Sounds really goofy. The story of the town's founding is that the guy, Sam Brannan, that bought up all of this land made his fortune supplying the gold rush and went into retirement, buying up this land that included these fantastic natural hot springs in the late 1880's.  He had heard about the new resort of Saratoga, NY which was fed by hot springs and wanted, in his entrepenurial mind, to make this new place the &quo

I've still got this on the brain.   I like having this on the brain. A couple of days ago, I was listening to Francis Chan's talk:  "You have everything you need" (the newest one on the Cornerstone podcast), discussing 2 Peter 1:1-4 (2 Peter 1:3-4 are my life verses, so I was really into this talk as you can imagine).  This statement has been what I have been musing on... "Do you, really, believe this?" Before asking this question, Francis started out with 2 Peter 1:1 which states in the English Standard Version: Simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who have obtained   a faith of equal standing with ours  by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ:  (emphasis mine) The version I read this verse in before was either the NASV or the NIV, which each states: Simon Peter, a bond-servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours , by the righteousness of our