It’s a Girl?

So, Marie and I went to the ultra-sound today and think that we are having a girl. I say “think” because the technician couldn’t tell from what she saw. Given the Singleton male inclination to ginormous genitalia, I am going with girl on this one. Seriously, the tech thought she saw a she but couldn’t be sure. We are excited either one since this child will have all its limbs and also doesn’t look like it is a dwarf which appears on some part of my side. If you ever really want to hear a great story, ask Marie about when she first heard about the possiblity of dwarfism and her fear of it in everyone of our children.  As I started thinking about the prospect of having a girl, I have to admit that I am a bit nervous but I am also very anxious about what God may do in my life through this girl. I have heard that having a girl really is altering for a man so I am excited.

 

New Orleans and coming home

I am back from New Orleans and am happy to be back at home to Soren humming some tune through his teeth while wearing whatever shoes he can get his feet into, Atticus and Jude analyzing their candy loot from last nights Halloween trick or treating, and the smell of your own home. It was a really neat trip to NO and one that I hope will reinvigorate our company. If the 3 dollar jump in stock the next day is any indication, we might be back on the right track. We shall see. Some highlights included the volunteer time to help clean up, yep you guessed it, Katrina mess. After 3 years you would think that this stuff would be taken care of but its not and I am guessing from what I saw, not nearly as close as they thought they would be. House after house was still unoccupied and in need of being torn down.  Lots were filled with garbage, needles, and five foot weeds. It was astonishing. One thing I saw that was discouraging was the number of people just sitting around on their porches or chairs on their lawns while we worked. I thought that was ridiculous and really wished I knew why they just sat around while their neighborhood was a disaster. I am sure that you could go ahead and say part of it was the depression of it all, but I have to believe some of it is just plain laziness. The resources were there in the form of different organizations and such so that is not the big excuse. The French Quarter smelled like a toilet and the majority of things on the streets were about the same makeup of things you would find in the toilet, metaphorically speaking. There was a minimum of 10 store fronts with full-out porn on the windows and women trying to come out into the street to bring you in. I was reminded of the Proverbs warning against the prostitutes and realized that he wasn’t joking. Really, it was amazing and I am pretty glad that I went to bed at a decent hour most nights.  Some highlights from the actual conference included: Bono from U2 stopping by to speak for about 1 hour, all manager will be getting laptops to be able to do their work from home or the cafe or anywhere else, an improved bonus structure that if acheived would completely alter people’s style of living. The highest bonus I could get with my salary would be 10,000 in a single quarter. Anyway, it was a wonderful trip but truly even better to get back home where there were no strippers, prostitutes or weird smells…at least no strippers or prostitutes.

 

Leaving on a jet plane

I am leaving tommorrow morning for New Orleans for a Leadership conference with Starbucks. This will be my first official Leadership conference and I am super excited about it. Please pray for me as I will be away from everyone for a week and will miss them a lot. I am hoping that this conference starts to refocus Starbucks on what is important in our stores which is our customers and communities and our partners.

 

More on the Shack

So, I am really enjoying this book as a story so I guess I can be happy about that. Artistically, it seems like a really interesting tale. Something still does not sit right with me about what he is trying to do. I suppose that one of the biggest problems is simply writing about God in general. Typically we are as people very one-sided about God. What I mean is that we are either all the way into how God is love or we are the other way and all about how God is a wrathful God who punishes wrong. Both are right but I think that maybe our minds just cannot conceptualize a God who includes both with any kind of balance. I think I am that way, leaning a little more the wrathful side of God than towards the love aspect. I think probably God is both/and. In his wrath towards sinful man he does show love towards those he has saved and who have believed. In his love, he punishes the wicked and shows he is love towards those he has redeemed. Very difficult thing to think about and in my opinion too much to cover in a little book.

 

The Shack

So I just started reading The Shack. It is a pretty entertaining book about a guy named Mack who sounds like a fairly nominal Christian and has a tragedy hit real close to home. He begins to pretty much shelf God as someone who allowed this tragedy to happen without stopping it. He then gets this mysterious note to meet God at this well know place to spend some time talking. Kinda interesting and I am not sure what I think about it yet. The one big thought that sticks out in mind is the way that God is portrayed in the book. Still not sure whether it is a very faithful interpretation based on what we know about God through scripture or not. I get that the book is trying to use metaphors,analogies and a story to describe something that we can only hope to partially understand anyway. Read the book, maybe wait till it goes on sale though just in case it is heresy, “never pay full price for heresy.” as Dr Lunde used to say.  It is a pretty interesting book though and I read about 100 pages last night in about an hour so it is also one of those kind of easy reads. Also, the Rays won last night and so even though my beloved Cubs didn’t make the World Series, I will be happy to have the Rays in there. Go Rays!

 

This is the big one!

Well, I have not yet really gotten into blogging mainly because I don’t have time. However, I ran across this site that seemed to be hip to the jive and so I decided to go ahead and start writing. Actually, I have always wanted to blog but like I said before felt that my time was a little too tight to do that. Since I have one more child on the way, I figured I have all the time in the world to do it now! I am hoping that this blog helps me to be more focused on writing things down and recording some of the thoughts that fly in and out of my mind. Please feel free to comment on anything and let me know what you think, but try not to be too much of an ass!

So right now I have just discovered this tool for exegesis called arcing. I am sure some of you may be doing it already but I just found it and it is really a simple and interesting way to get you to slow down and think about the text. Kinda neat. If you are interested in it then you can check it out at www.biblearc.com.  Okay well in the keeping with the domain name of this blog, I am going to wrap it up. Verse I have been contemplating today is I Cor 1:30, “He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption.”