What I'm looking at right now

Typical Saturday morrning at the coffee shop.

Quote of the day

For lack of an original thought on my part, or a new quote, I dug into the "good" box and came up with this gem, originally posted by me on Sept. 6, 2009:

"Because you are a man,' she said. "Like other men, insecure. When a woman throws herself at you, you are incapable of just accepting your good fortune. You don't think you are worthy of what you are being given, so the woman has to have some ulterior motive."
-from Black Ops by W.E.B. Griffin hb pg 222

Twists and Turns

Sometimes life takes twists and turns that you can't detect or predict. All you can do is ask God to light the way and keep you on the path, and trust him to do it. The secular me wants to see the end of the road, the final score. That's not the way it works. If we could see the end game, we wouldn't have to trust now. I'm trusting, God. Don't walk me into a wall, or worse yet, off the edge of the cliff. Unless that's your will, of course. ;-)

More LARN

Why it's called Trestles. San Onofre in the distance.

More looking at right now

Never tried video before. Hope it works. It's a picture perfect day. Just one thing missing...my Valentine.

(The video upload from mobile didn't work, but here it is)

What I'm looking at right now.

Trestles beach

(with either a giant ufo looming overhead or my finger in the picture...not sure which)

Our ways are not God's ways

A friend wrote this in a blog post today:

Sometimes when something really bad happens, it's God making way for something good to come into our lives.

True that. As a matter of fact, I might be wiling to go so far as to call that statement true even without the qualifier "Sometimes".

I've found it to be true many times in life that "it's darkest before the dawn". According to J.M. Farro,

It's no coincidence that right before deliverance comes, the temptation to lose faith in God became unbearable. These are the kinds of tactics that Satan uses to try to convince believers to abandon their faith and hope in God so that their victory will be delayed or even thwarted entirely. That's why the Bible says: "Do not throw away this confident trust in the Lord, no matter what happens. Remember the great reward it brings you! Patient endurance is what you need now, so you will continue to do God's will. Then you will receive all that He has promised." (Hebrews 10:35-36 NLT) The devil knows that if he can send enough discouragement and despair your way, you'll be more likely to quit and give up on trusting in God and His plans for you.

Yeah, that's what I wanted to say, but Farro said it already so I've just quoted him.

When we are walking through the difficult times of life, it is easy to forget that God is with us through it all. It is easy to turn from him if we're feeling that he's abandoned us. We must remember that he's not only there during those times, but those are the times that he's closest to us. He knows our troubles and feels our pain. Sometimes he won't take those pains away from us because we have more to learn by enduring them than we do by escaping them.

Sometimes he lets us hit bottom just so we'll look up. That happened to me. Those of you that know the story of my conversion have heard it before. If you haven't, and you're interested, ask me.

This whole post feels disjointed and unfocused, so I'm going to quit here. If enlightenment comes, I'll be back.

Yemen al-Qaeda leader threatens US

From the "If you're not concerned, you're not paying attention" department:

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/02/201028133549227780.html

Of VERY special interest is this part:

"Elshari was released in 2007 from the US Navy's detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to his native Saudi Arabia.

There he graduated from a "rehabilitation" programme before fleeing the country to join anti-government fighters in Yemen.

He quickly rose to become al-Qaeda's second-in-command in the Arabian Peninsula."

We had him. We let him go. I have no further comment for polite company.

Where's Steve / What I'm looking at right now

Those of you playing along at home should recognize this place and know that I come here to listen for the voice of God.

I'm waiting...