How You Spend Your Time, Part 2

-Started on Tuesday evening, the 8th-

So I kinda cut the last post short because I had to go to bed. I'm not exactly more awake now, but I figure this will help me kill time while I wait for Flash to install. That or while I wait to AIM chat with Tomi-san from Family of Moonlight, cause he e-mailed me asking to chat about my con report. I've got AIM open, but I'm not sure if he's on because I don't know his username.

I guess my main dilemma is about how I should spend my time. Is it wrong for me to make websites about such temporal things as SeraMyu or (in the past) Pokémon when people's eternal destiny is at stake? Shouldn't I be spending my time getting in people's faces and telling them what I believe, like those Jehovah's Witnesses people who try to get you to take a copy of their magazine The Watchtower? (They don't actually preach to you, though; they just try to get you to take their magazine).

And yet spending every free minute doing stuff like that doesn't sound appealing to me. If I met someone like that, I just might tell them to get a life. Not that being all on-fire for God is a bad thing - I wish I was on-fire for God too. And I know we're supposed to give God control over every aspect of our life. They frequently quote Proverbs 3:5-6 at North Coast:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.

In all your ways acknowledge him,

and he will make straight your paths (ESV).

Just now when I looked that up I noticed the two verses after that as well (Mr. Pichette said always to look at a verse's context):

Be not wise in your own eyes;

fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.

It will be healing to your flesh

and refreshment to your bones (Prov. 3:7-8, ESV)

 
The same verses in my "Manga Bible" (which has the text of the New Living Translation) says:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart;

do not depend on your own understanding.

Seek his will in all you do,

and he will show you which path to take.

Don't be impressed with your own wisdom.

Instead, fear the LORD and turn away from evil.

Then you will have healing for your body and strength for your bones.

Same verses in the NIV:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart

and lean not on your own understanding;

in all your ways acknowledge him,

and he will make your paths straight.

Do not be wise in your own eyes;

fear the LORD and shun evil.

This will bring health to your body

and nourishment to your bones.

And in the King James Version (sorry...I have more Bibles than the average person; please indulge me):

Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.

In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the LORD, and depart from evil.

It shall be health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones.

(The "navel" thing there is because the actual Hebrew word used there means "navel").

-After several hours, during which I IM'd with Tomi-san, ate dinner, and took a shower-
I guess they're all basically saying the same thing. The NLT puts it in the easiest-to-understand words (part of why I like that translation).

-Continued the next day-

I went to bed without finishing this because I had to be work at 6am again.

These verses seem to stand out to me now. I'd heard verses 5-6 before, tons of times. It's the classic verse someone pulls out when you're faced with a tough choice or loss of direction. But I didn't look at the next two verses, the ones that tell you not to rely on your own wisdom but to fear the Lord (though what fearing the Lord means no one seems to have agreed on) and do what's right, because that will bring you strength and healing.

That reminds me of Micah 6:8:

No, O people, the Lord has told you what is good;
and this is what he requires of you:

to do what is right, to love mercy,

and to walk humbly with your God (NLT).

To do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. The ESV makes it slightly clearer:

He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the LORD require of you

but to do justice, and to love kindness,

and to walk humbly with your God?

To do what is right/do justice - that's obedience. It has to be. To love kindness/mercy is, I think, how you act towards others. To "walk humbly with your God" is to be humble, and to walk together with God. Not just for God, but with him. I think God has wanted us to walk with him from the beginning; Enoch - one of the two men in the Bible who never died - is said to have walked with God: "Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away" (Genesis 5:24, NIV).

I realize I'm not good on any of those counts. I don't always obey; while I try to act kind towards others, I know sometimes my mouth gets the better of me and I gossip or say things I shouldn't; and I wouldn't consider myself very humble. (I hesitate to say I have a "problem with pride," because that phrase has become a bit of a Christian cop-out).

So where do I go from here? Well, to be honest, I wish I could go away to the mountains somewhere and think all this through, but I can't.

I think I definitely need to change the negative way I think and (sometimes) talk. And I definitely want to study the Bible in a deeper way and actually start to memorize it. I do know some verses, either from church or from an old cassette (which, sadly, I no longer have) that had a bunch of them put to music.

The other day I was listening to my Christian music playlist, and the first song was "About You" by ZOEgirl. I found it very fitting for my frame of mind right now (you can hear the song in the video below)

I've been thinking lately about You
When it hit me from nowhere, out of the gray
Everything's been coming together
Now that I've moved beyond myself
And wrapped my head around something else


It's not about me, it's gotta be about You
(Everyday and...)
All I wanna see is who You're turning me into
(In every way and...)
I will not forget that You said You'd always lead me through
To who I wanna be, making every part of me about You


I’ve been spending so much time disconnected
I was searching for perfection inside myself
But I finally turned away from my reflection
I saw Your world outside my door
And everything that I'd been looking for


So I'll lay down my pride 'cause You laid down Your life
And I'm giving up all that's holding me back
And clinging to You
And You'll lead me through
'Cause You always do

~~~

In other news, I went through an annoying day trying to get Flash installed so I could do the Flash assignment I thought was due today - only to find out that it's due NEXT Wednesday. What a relief! Oddly enough, only after that did I get Flash to install, when I found and installed files for the CS4 version of Flash (the version before the current one). I think it might be a 30-day free trial, but that at least buys me some time. Since I got that to work and wasn't able to install the one I spent $179 for, I'm going to call Adobe tomorrow and ask for a refund. Then I'll order the cheaper physical-copy one over at JourneyEd. I just hope I don't end up on hold again for half an hour like I did tonight. I do not get that, but then again it was right before they closed, so maybe the lines were really busy. (Ironically, I was on hold for less time calling Microsoft about the Windows Installer issue the guy in my Adobe Live Support Chat - who I think was from India - pointed out than I was calling Adobe...I'm still amazed I even got a real person at Microsoft).

I have my first draft for my first Writing Project due Friday. I've decided I'm going to do film reviews for Project 1, since we're supposed to do one project in a mode of writing that stretches our abilities, and reviews aren't my strong suit. But I really like film, so I think it will be interesting. Since I just bought a DVD of Bandslam, this awesome movie I first saw via a Redbox rental (they had the DVD for $7.99 at Albertson's), I think I'll do my first draft review on that film (and maybe another one, if I can't meet the page requirement with just that film). I will probably do multiple reviews, as Dr. Wilson suggested; I just don't know how many yet because I don't know how long the first one will be. I'd like to do at least one foreign or anime film. Maybe one of the many foreign films they have in the Media Library, or maybe La Vie en Rose, the docudrama about Édith Piaf that I own (that movie is quite intense, actually).

I'm becoming less sure about reviving my Mercury shrine. Innocentami has done quite a good job with her Mercury shrine. Maybe I'll put it off for now and focus on Myu Corner and my writing site.

I still haven't made my personal site/domain hub, and recently I thought about making it a Tumblr blog. I'd read about Tumblr and even made an account there but then wasn't into it. But I just read about it again in an article in Laptop magazine called "101 Social Networking Tips." It does look pretty cool. Plus I follow Frankie Franco of PotterCast on Twitter, and he frequently tweets things from his Tumblr blog. I checked out a couple Tumblr blogs that this one article said you should definitely follow, and one of them, Daily Dickinson, provides a different Emily Dickinson poem every day. As that blog shows, you can have a Tumblr blog with a custom domain, though Tumblr's staff admit that it's hard to set up.

While doing whatever I could to curb my boredom today, I ended up checking out and signing up for the "web discovery site" StumbleUpon. It's kind of a social network combined with the link sharing aspects of bookmarking networks like Delicious (formerly known as del.icio.us). When you sign up, StumbleUpon gives you a list of topics, and based on what you check, it will then "discover" sites for you that are on the topics you check. You find these by "stumbling," either through the site itself or through downloading the StumbleUpon toolbar for your browser (which is probably the more convenient way). I downloaded the toolbar and started "stumbling." It brought up some great stuff, as well as a couple weird videos - one of a skateboarder "wiping out" and landing butt down on a bench, and one of a girl playing an awful prank on a guy (her brother probably) where she spread butter on the floor just outside the shower while he was in it, which then resulted in him slipping on the butter and hitting his head. That's gotta hurt!

(Gah...lately my cursor just randomly clicks in the wrong place a lot. I don't know why that is. Maybe I'm just typing too fast?)

Wow it's already 11pm. I should go to bed so I'm well-rested tomorrow. Good night!