Chris's Musings

This was too good not to share. Tonight in small group, we talked about deep friendships, especially friendships among guys, and used the story of Jonathan and David from 1 Samuel 20 as our launching point.  This is a story from David's life in which he confides in Jonathan about what he's learned of Saul, and Jonathan goes to bat for David (and risking his life in the process). There were two things that really caught our attention (I originally had about 20 things brainstormed and five large bullet items to discuss) and occupied our time. First, was that Jonathan got involved in David's situation instead of merely giving advice.  See Jonathan's response to David's complaint: Jonathan said to David, “Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do for you.” - 1 Sam 20:4 This is not a normal response in most of our worlds, especially in 21st century white collar America.  Generally, when a friend confides in us about a problem, our first response (as guys) is to give...

I've been thinking about this recently, and a conversation I had with a married friend of mine about this topic got me thinking about the "F-word" in relationships.  You know it. "Let's be..."  (I can see you cringing now :-) ) Friends. My friend told me, "You know that once you're friends you never get back."  That may be true, but sometimes when you're interested in, or have gone out with a great girl a couple of times and "something" is not right which you can't put your finger on - sometimes surrendering the romantic is the right thing to do.  Obviously, there is risk to it, but it is in my opinion the most honoring thing to do for the other person too. Even if it may be the "kiss of death."  Perhaps this is why I'm still single.  Ha!  I'll get to that in a second. Being an expert on being friends with women (in my own mind), in my opinion there are four or five "friend dynamics" (from...

I don't know if you saw this post from Tyler Stanton, but I thought it was pretty hilarious.  Not only because of it's obvious snarkiness, but also because it's pretty obvious that I'd probably not impress Tyler (me being the movie line quoting, Android phone carrying, theologically minded guy that I am).  But I laughed, so I gave it the fanfare that a great post is due.  Here is the link, in case you haven't seen it. http://www.tylerstanton.com/2011/06/06/16-things-that-dont-impress-me/ I've actually thought about posting my own, but I think I'd rather ponder what actually DOES impress me (even though in Henry Cloud's "Nine Things" chapter about "hating well," what we dislike (aka - doesn't impress us) is an indication of what we value).  If you don't really care about impressing me, then you can ignore the rest of this blog, but in case you're curious then you can read on... :-) Things that impress me in general 1...

Tonight, I did something a little crazy. I missed fusion (the singles gatherings that my church holds for community)...  a fusion group that I really enjoy the people at... and attended a small group leaders' training event at my church.  Okay, that's not quite crazy but what was crazy was this was the session designated for the MARRIED group leaders.  There's a good reason for this, and it's because when they were holding the sessions a couple of weeks ago for me and my fellow singles group leaders, I was out in L.A. running some crazy race (one that I'm very happy about running in case you missed any of the medal pictures :-) ), and this weekend was the only one available for me to pick from. And I was the ONLY single person in the room. Actually, that was a great thing for me tonight.  First off, being newly unattached after dating a really good girl for five months, being in an environment where no one was even remotely working the room was neat and relaxi...

Last Sunday before I headed to my church to sing at UpStreet, I spent a little bit of time just meditating over life and hanging out in 1 Corinthians 13 for a while.  I found myself there again this morning, because God really spoke to me in that time and I wanted to keep my mind on those thoughts and really let Him work on me more. I started out because, honestly, I can actually from time to time act in ways that are not very loving.  I know that's probably a shock to some of you (okay, not really :) ) but it's true.  So, where better to go and meditate than a passage devoted to defining love. The one verse that really caught my attention had these phrases.... (Love) Always protects Always trusts Always hopes Always perseveres (I'm reading this from my note card right now). I know that this passage is often read at weddings, but the context in which this letter was written was anything but matromonious.  This Corinthian church was rife with problems... massive...

Not a pontification on my married friends, I promise!!! Not at all... I got asked this question at the airport yesterday. No joke. After a long consulting week, I arrived to to Memphis airport to see if I could catch an earlier flight back to the ATL and had some time to kill and a stomach to feed. As any good hungry business traveler would do, I moseyed through the aiprort looking for a place to eat and ran into an old Kelley School of Business classmate that I literally haven't seen in almost 5 years (May 2003 to be exact). After getting over the shock of running into each other so randomly (in the halls of the airport... we were both scurrying for food venues & ended up grabbing lunch at Corky's) we catch up on what we're doing in Memphis, what we do for a living (any good MBA will eventually go here), and then he asks me if I am married. Strange question, huh? Discuss among yourselves for a second... how would you react if that were you? I laughed under my breat...