Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours.

~ C. S. Lewis

"There is nothing progressive about being pigheaded and refusing to admit a mistake."

Mere Christianity

*Now* it's natural?

Pizza Hut is now advertising its new pizza, "The Natural":

- All natural pepperoni
- All natural mozzarella cheese
- All natural sauce

What have they been serving up till now? I get that artificial cheese is just oil, not a dairy product. But what's in artificial pepperoni? And what is artificial sauce? Yikes.

"You don't do the right thing because of the consequences. If you're wise, you do it regardless of the consequences."

~Jeannette Rankin

Jasper Clinic research study

It's been 6 weeks since I've posted here...I'm assuming there's no one reading this any more. But I'll post this anyway. I'm spending this week at the Jasper Clinic in Kalamazoo (part of the Bronson hospital system) doing a clinical research study on a migraine medication. No, I don't have migraines...I'm here for the money. Plus it's a nice break from the normal daily stress, if you don't mind needles or rooming with strangers...which I don't.

If you do read this and check out Jasper Clinic and end up doing a study, please tell them I sent you so I can get a bonus. Thanks!

"This is the art of courage: to see things as they are and still believe that the victory lies not with those who avoid the bad, but with those who taste, in living awareness, every drop of the good."

~Victoria Lincoln

"Mere change is not growth. Growth is the synthesis of change and continuity, and where there is no continuity there is no growth."

~ They Asked For a Paper

Some of my favorite verses in Psalms:

Psalm 51: 10-12

Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Do not cast me from Your presence or take Your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of Your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me.

Psalm 103: 8-12

The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.
He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever;
He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is His love for those who fear Him;
As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

We will miss you, Jeff

Jeffrey S. Gerwig, aged 40, of Grand Rapids, went to be with the Lord on Sunday, August 17, 2008, after a courageous battle with cancer. He was a loving husband and father. Jeffrey was a graduate of Ravenna High School and Ferris State University and an active member of his church. He was preceded in death by his grandparents, George and Mildred Gerwig; and grandmother, Phyllis McNitt. Surviving are his wife of 15 years, Jennifer; his sons, Bryan and Aaron; parents, Robert and Sally Gerwig; father-in-law and mother-in-law, William and Vickie Wakefield; grandparents, Claude and Ruth McNitt; his brothers, Monte (Amy) Gerwig, Todd (Irene) Gerwig, Rob (Rebekah) Gerwig; brothers-in-law, Shad (Baby) Wakefield, Adam (Suzanne) Wakefield; nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends. The Funeral Service will be held 11:00 a.m. Friday, August 22, at Woodview Christian Church, 3785 Woodview S.W., with Rev. Jon Stradner officiating. Interment in McNitt Cemetery. Memorial contributions may be given to an Educational Fund for his sons.

Why?

Jared has recently introduced me to a new musical artist...Why? (specifically the CD "Alopecia"). Not something to which I would normally gravitate but I think my friend, Jack, would enjoy it...especially the poetry of it.

"Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask - half our great theological and metaphysical problems - are like that."

~ A Grief Observed

"The sacrifice of selfish privacy which is daily demanded of us is daily repaid a hundredfold in the true growth of personality which the life of the body [of Christ] encourages. ...Obedience is the road to freedom, humility the road to pleasure, unity the road to personality."

~ The Weight of Glory

"All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience."

~Johann Wolfgang Goethe

"Welcome, child," He said.
"Aslan," said Lucy, "you're bigger."
''That is because you are older, little one," answered He.
"Not because you are?"
''I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger."

~ Prince Caspian

"But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you've taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man."

The Case For Christianity (C.S. Lewis)

"Now we cannot discover our failure to keep God's law except by trying our very hardest (and then failing). Unless we really try, whatever we say there will always be at the back of our minds the idea that if we try harder next time we shall succeed in being completely good. Thus, in one sense, the road back to God is a road of moral effort, of trying harder and harder.
But in another sense it is not trying that is ever going to bring us home. All this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you turn to God and say,
'You must do this...I can't.'"

Mere Christianity (C.S. Lewis)

Press on...

Philippians 3:12-14

"Not that I have obtained all this or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ took hold of me.

Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."

"To look is one thing. To see what you look at is another. To understand what you see is a third. To learn from what you understand is still something else.
But to act on what you learn is all that really matters."

~Bits & Pieces

"Crying is all right in its way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do."

The Silver Chair

"All that is made seems planless to the darkened mind, because there are more plans than he looked for."

Perelandra