A little bit, a little bit more.
Tonight my Dizmas boys were on the radio back east. Of course, I listened in via this thing called the internet. We decided we would record it for future posterity. Oh, and one more thing… Zach give us a shout out at the end. Yeah…. we’re friends.
Dizmas Playing Live on WJTL - FM 90.3 (4/17/2008) from Shay on Vimeo.
**UPDATE**
I added “Play It Safe” which Dizmas performed live as well. Click here to check it out!
Oh man, this could easily be some of the best news I have heard in months. I got an email this morning from my wife letting me know that my favorite movie of all time — “Short Circuit” — is getting picked up by Dimension Films and they are going to remake it! Now, let’s not get crazy — I’m not exactly sure how I feel about a remake. I was honestly looking forward to a third film, a final chapter in the life of the now solid gold Johnny 5 who became an American citizen at the end of the second movie. But never mind that for now, I’m just happy to see your favorite robot and mine returning to the big screen. Oh, and one more thing — let’s not forget what I said about Disney’s Wall-E looking strikingly similar to our good friend Johnny 5. I guess there’s nothing new under the sun.
You can read all about the new movie here.
P.S. If you are looking for further proof of my love for this movie be sure and see my movie list… just look at #1.
I wanted to write a really nice blog on “sanctification” right now, but I realized 2 paragraphs in that I am in no place to be discussing it. My heart and mind are a bit distracted and that’s the honest truth. I can however say that if somehow I believed that the Christian life was going to be a cakewalk, then I have sorely deceived myself.
Last week on NBC I watched a two day special on a two families who were basically a part of this huge case of mistaken identity. The gist is that each family had a daughter in this huge car accident that were near in age. Apparently the coroner made a mistake and one daughter was pronounced dead and the other was in a coma. The problem was, each family had the wrong daughter. Essentially this meant that one family got news of their daughters death and the other stayed at the bedside of their daughter was in a coma. Five weeks in to the ordeal the girl in a coma came out of it and they asked what her name was and it wasn’t what the family expected. To make a long story short, the families realized that a mistake had been made and the girl who was now alive was reunited with her real family and the other family found out their daughter had died five weeks earlier.
That story could easily be the saddest thing to hear, but what amazed me more than anything about the whole ordeal was the attitudes of both families. In the middle of the interview Matt Lauer asked both familes this question, he said, “Where’s the anger?”. He was implying that he didn’t understand why both families weren’t more upset at the situation they were put in. But it was the response of one of the father’s the blew me away. One of the dad’s said something along the lines of, “Well Matt, we believe in a sovereign God. We knew that we would see our daughter once again, if not right now, and though our faith is meager, we trust God with our lives.”
That dad’s heart is in the right place. He has a truly biblical understanding about who God is, and it’s possible that the Lord was able to reveal this to him only because of the situation that God had allowed to happen in their lives. You see, as I think about why “bad things happen to good people” (AKA: the problem of evil), I can’t get passed that one of the main reasons is for God to reveal more of Himself to you. For these families, God was revealing something about His character that they may never have learned or seen before unless this happened to them.
I got an email today about the new Starbucks website which allows people like you and me to post our ideas for the company. Of course, it didn’t take me long to write something up so get over there and vote for mine!
Click Here To See My Idea and Vote! (and if you’re really excited you can even comment on it!.. woohoo)
P.S. This post pairs really well with “Dave: The Future of the Starbucks Coffee Company”.
I went to get a routine SMOG check on my car and got more than I paid for.
You see, I take my car to Ned. He’s a good guy — really honest and reliable. In fact, he’s almost brutally honest at times. But I never feel like I’m getting cheated when he’s working on my car. He tells me what I need to do and then I get it done — no questions. He only has two other employees and they both make me smile. One is shorter and really serious most of the time. He doesn’t say much, but you know he’s taking care of business. The other is louder and loves to chat. Many times I’ve found him singing while fixing breaks or joking with the other customers. Ned however, is a mix of the two. He’s serious about cars and knows a ton of information, yet he loves to talk about life, photography, and this past visit he talked about business.
The conversation actually began as we were talking about photography. It actually surprises me how much Ned loves photography. He even showed me a few of his shots on his really dirty, oil covered computer in the shop. In our conversation about business he asked me what my plans were for photography. I told him I was still learning a ton, trying to build clients, and working on getting my equipment up to speed. But Ned said something that sort of surprised me — he told me I need to “know people.” With his accent (which I think is middle eastern?), he said:
Shay, you have a good relationships, I can tell. But you need to keep learning and know people. You think ‘I could do this by myself’ because you are young, but you need to continue to allow people to help you. You will look back on your life in business and it will be the people around you who have gotten you where you are.
What intrigues me most about Ned’s comments is how similar they are to those men who led great companies to the top in the book “Good to Great” (which I have talked about before). Some of the greatest C.E.O’s in the world attribute their success to the people on their teams and not their leadership.
The basic facts are that we can never stop learning. When we stop learning, we stop growing. This has been a recurring theme I have heard from numerous businessmen and pastors and I can’t help but think that’s the point of Ned was trying to communicate. You see, if you leave me alone by myself my skills will only go as far as I can take them — which probably won’t be far. But when you allow other people to teach and mentor you and help you — you will grow. This is true in both business and our spiritual lives. We need the input of others. This why accountability works and why the Church is so important. We need each other. It’s only by the grace of God that I can continue to learn and be shaped, and my prayer is I’ll listen to the simple yet important advice of my mechanic.
