let the games begin...

(by games i mean school. heh.) :P

reading week is "dead and over". can't believe that it sped by so quickly.

highlights:
- lccf retreat: good times guys!
- being home: nothing can beat showering in bare feet. (my new motto. AND it rhymes.)
- seeing liz again: yay!! *he is a barney/oh where oh where oh where...* (bahaha) :D
- being with my family: i love my family. it was so nice to be altogether again. :)

hope y'all had a good one, and to those of us who have your weeks one week behind, have a great one!

think outside that box, sharon.

an already hard thing to do just became all that much harder. i need some of God's lovin.

more later? maybe. but for now...gotta get back to studying for my music history.

*and for the record...MUSIC IS NOT EASY!!!!!!* you try it. what's that? no? exactly. hmmmmph. :)

because of Him, I am free.

Because of what Jesus Christ did, I am set free. i am set free to be me - the real me...the one God has made me to be. but my freedom came with a price, the death of Jesus Christ.

sometimes we look at the cross too casually. we know what happened 2004 years ago, but we don't know. we remember it, but we don't remember. you know what i mean? it's pretty sad...

so where did these thoughts come from? at church on sunday (CFC in up here in loo) they showed the trailer to the new movie the Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson (which is set to premiere on Feb. 25th). in it they showed bits and pieces of the crucifixion and it really hit me. and i'm thankful for the much needed reminder. i only saw like, a little tidbit of the movie but yah. it just seemed so real. it WAS so real. i could feel the tears starting to form in my eyes. my Jesus...our Jesus Christ, going through all that pain and agony for, me. and you. it was really moving.

let us not look at the cross casually, or nonchalantly. instead, let us look at the cross with utmost respect and remember the sacrifice, the pain, the suffering, and the love that kept Him there until it was done.

The Crucifixion

What is crucifixion? A medical doctor provides a physical description: The cross is placed on the ground and the exhausted man is quickly thrown backwards with his shoulders against the wood. The legionnaire feels for the depression at the front of the wrist. He drives a heavy, square wrought-iron nail through the wrist deep into the wood. Quickly he moves to the other side and repeats the action, being careful not to pull the arms too tightly, but to allow some flex and movement. The cross is then lifted into place. The left foot is pressed backward against the right foot, and with both feet extended, toes down, a nail is driven through the arch of each, leaving the knees flexed.

The victim is now crucified.

As he slowly sags down with more weight on the nails in the wrists, excruciating fiery pain shoots along the fingers and up the arms to explode in the brain - the nails in the wrists are putting pressure on the median nerves. As he pushes himself upward to avoid this stretching torment, he places the full weight on the nail through his feet. Again he feels the searing agony of the nail tearing through the nerves between the bones of his feet. As the arms fatigue, cramps sweep through his muscles, knotting them deep relentless, and throbbing pain. With these cramps comes the inability to push himself upward to breathe. Air can be drawn into the lungs but not exhaled. He fights to raise himself in order to get even one small breath. Finally, carbon dioxide builds up in the lungs and in the blood stream, and the cramps partially subsided. Spasmodically, he is able to push himself upward to exhale and bring in life-giving oxygen. Hours of limitless pain, cycles of twisting, joint-renting cramps, intermittent partial asphyxiation, searing pain as tissue is torn from his lacerated back as he moves up and down against rough timber.

Then another agony begins: a deep, crushing pain deep in the chest as the pericardium slowly fills with serum and begins to compress the heart. It is now almost over. The loss of tissue fluids has reached a critical level. The compressed heart is struggling to pump heavy, thick, sluggish blood into the tissues. The tortured lungs are making frantic effort to gasp in small gulps of air. He can feel the chill of death creeping through his tissues.

Finally, he allows his body to die.

so long, friendster.

well, my friendster account (the one that i didn't even sign up for myself *ahem eugene*) has officially gone down the toilet. i flushed the little booger down just moments ago. good grief. even to this day i still don't really understand the point of friendster. but maybe it's just me. oh, how i miss the days of the pen and paper. and actually meeting people in person, instead of this crazy "6 degrees of separation" garbage. (what the heck is a degree of separation? you either know a person or you don't. don't give me this "i know you through my friend's brother's relative's cousin's neice's sister's friend" stuff. why not? well, 1) because it's way too confusing, and 2) at the end of it all, we still don't know each other (i mean c'mon, let's be honest here)...

oh well, as i said before - maybe it's just me. :)

in any case the friendster and sharon connection has been terminated. *say it like arnold would. it sounds cooler that way.* :P

thank you :)

so my jazz concert was yesterday - thanks to everyone who came out, it really meant a lot to have you guys there. :) even though i might not have looked it, i was pretty stressed out on the inside. guess all those performances for yamaha when i was younger paid off after all. :P when performing, it's all about looking calm and confident, even when you feel like you wanna barf. ;)

*side note: those guys upstairs are really loud. they keep on falling down. tonight alone i must have heard at least 3 big thuds. they really need to be more careful...oh. i think that they just fell down again. :P

Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done.

I originally didn't want to go to Urbana 2003. Spiritually, I was in a place where I didn't even want to be surrounded by so many Christians and when the time came for us to go I was so far from Him - so far from our Father, so far from my Creator. I was unsatisfied with the life that He created for me, unsatisfied with the things in which He had blessed me with, and I was unsatisfied with every part of me. I was thirsting for something more...i just didn't know what that "something" was.

I went to New York to visit my sister (see my past blog), and seeing Liz and having my family altogether again helped me quite a bit. It didn't bring me closer to God, but I felt "free" in the sense that I was away from everything and I was with my parents and my sister. I left New York not wanting to go to Urbana and my attitude to go was all wrong. I figured, because it was so much money and I had already paid it all I'd just suck it up and go and see where God would take me from there.

Now that I'm back from Urbana I can honestly say that I am truly thankful that I went. I started off not wanting to go at all, but in the end I couldn't wait to come back - not because I didn't want to be at the conference anymore, but because I wanted to put into practice what I had learned, and the things that God had impressed upon my heart there.

Being with my blood family had helped me in the sense that I felt happy and secure with them, but I left New York by myself feeling alone and weary to be coming back to Toronto. But being surrounded by and worshiping with 20,000 of my brothers and sisters of Christ and being saturated with the presence of the Holy Spirit at Urbana filled up the void, and left me feeling secure in Christ, satisfied and renewed. Coming back to Toronto the second time, I'm excited to see the places in which God will lead me. I know there will be challenges that will come my way but with the help, guidance, patience and love of Our Heavenly Father, all things are possible. With regards to figuring out what i was thirsting for, I finally figured it out. "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God." - Psalm 42:1 I had been searching for so long it seemed only to find that it was in front of my face the whole time. Father, thank You.

something more ::switchfoot

Augustine just woke up with a broken heart
All this time he's never been awake before
At 31 his whole world is a question mark
All this time he's never been awake before

Watching dreams that he once had
Feed the flame inside his head
In a quiet desperation of the emptiness
He says

*Chorus:
"Theres gotta be something more
Than what I'm living for
I'm crying out to you" (2x)

Augustine
All his fears keep falling out
All this time he's never been awake before
Finding out his old dreams aren't panning out
All this time he's never been awake before

But he's mad to be alive
And he's dying to be met
In a quiet desperation of the emptiness
He says*

Something more

Hey, I give it all away
Nothing I was holding back remains
Hey, I give it all away
Looking for the grace of God today*

my farewell to the city that never sleeps...

and just like that, my week long trip to new york city has come to an end. *sniff* it's been a great week. i came here not really liking this city...but...now that i've been here, walked the sidewalks, viewed the buildings, taken rides on the subway, i'm relunctant to go. i'm gonna miss the bustling, the hustling, the elbowing - everything minus the filth and dirtyness of the city. :P hahaha. in any case, i never thought that i'd say this but, i'm gonna miss this city.

highlights:
- getting here safely. (i rode the plane. all by my lonesome.) haha :P
- seeing lizhead. :)
- seeing lotr III with liz
- seeing maxine, and auntie juliana
- shopping (i love the shopping here. i need to get a job. then come back.)
- squishing four of us into a little apartment
- NBC/Rockefeller Centre Tour

*sigh* it was fun. quite the fun trip. but, sadly it has come to an end. my next adventure? urbana 2003.

p.s. merry Christmas everyone. see u boogers real soon. :)

my sister, the freelance musician...

i'm so happy for you lizhead!!! :D *cheering*

i'll have to blog more another time...i have an exam in 2 hours...

but in any case, good luck on your finals everyone! or better yet...wait. what am i supposed to say again instead instead of "good luck"? God speed? bahhhh. i forgot. :P

"i'm an alien. a legal alien."

(nobody says it better than sting).

this is how i feel like sometimes. like a legal alien. like an englishman in new york. well, minus the fact that i'm not english, a guy or in new york. *technicalities, technicalities* :P

anyone wanna go away with me? maybe to fields of gold? haha. i'm so cheese. i love it.

speaking of new york, if you're reading this Liz....i'm thinking of YOU! * and listening to sting in the van in boston. and all the other silly things that happened/we did in boston this past summer. ("if you're listening whoa...*enter drums, electric guitar, bass and crazy headbanging*" hehehe.) wish i could go back. wish i could be there with you right now...can't wait until Christmas... :)

what u may not have known about loopoo town. :)

- the squirrels here are fearless. fearless.
- seagram has the BEST leaves on the sidewalk. yay crunchy! :) i LOOOOOOVE it.
- there's a new sidewalk on one side of lester
- it looks super great in fall and winter
- there are no snow flurries here. just snow storms.

today at volunteering i was standing outside in the park watching the kids, when all of a sudden i realized that my hands were numb. numb inside my mittens. they're usually cozy in there. this can only mean one thing...

who's ready for winter? :)