bread&tea

Met anyone who's humble recently? Fact is, it's not always easy to tell, because they're so humble they're good at covering it up. Sometimes I don't realize how humble a person is until a few days later, and I go, "wait a minute, I know why I liked that person so much, they were really humble!" Eh... something like that. They're just real easy to get along with. I've found, that one reason they're so likable, is because you can teach them. Makes you feel real smart like. Have you ever noticed that? Most of the time they already know what you're talking about, but they listen and encourage you anyway. One of the best things though, is that humble people are almost always wise too, and after encouraging you, sometimes they'll ever so gently add to, correct, or otherwise reveal some truth that slaps you about the head (in a good way) and changes your thinking for the better. Of course the reason they don't always add to your whatever,

THIS IS IT What does that remind you of? Does Michael Jackson pop to mind? What's all the hype about him anyway? I'm happy to have grown up in a household that knows little of him, and cares even less for his music. The King of pop he may be, but quite frankly, he's creepy. This really is it though. Today is Christmas. We don't know what day Jesus was born, but we do get to celebrate that fact. What will you do today? This is it. God loves you. Will you accept him, return that love, and glorify him? The real King, came down to earth, and made himself man. He lived a perfect, sinless life, because he was 100% God and man, and died a horrific, slow death, for you. He died for the wrong things you know you've done, so you don't have to carry that burden. He died for each and every person on this earth, and took my sin and yours, to hell. He was the only one that could satisfy sin against a holy God, and because he was sinless, death could not hold him. He offers th

This is a persuasive speech I wrote. (for speech class) Hope you enjoy. A Big Enough Explanation Before I begin, I want to recognize Ravi Zacharias, from whom I learned. I would highly encourage you to learn from this mans god-given wisdom as well, if you haven’t already. And if you have, to help in the spreading of this wisdom. How do you think the universe came to be? How did life come to exist? And why do we struggle so much with each other over what’s right and wrong? I want to appeal to your logical mind as I present an explanation. To start with, the universe cannot explain itself. Take an atom, a molecule, any piece of matter. However you look at it, breaking matter down to the smallest bit, it can’t have created itself. Matter cannot explain itself. This leads to something outside of the physical realm. Something without a physical form, therefore spiritual, had to form matter to start with. Secondly, the universe has order. Study creation and you find incredible complexity.

(Edit: I unfortunately had little inspiration for this post, and subsequently, I have added a chunk at the bottom) Man that was fun! Man it's hot! What's up with that? Why do we use the word man as an expression? It's almost funny, trying to figure out why I use the word man. So. I'm not offering all the reasons, and I'm certainly not going to cover the whole subject of why we use extra words for more emphasis; but in this post I offer one simple reason for part of why I think the word man, and a few others, get used for emphasis. Because they're real. They have force partially because they're real . God, hell and d**nation are real too. Sometimes I use shazam and wow, but it seems like more often then not, I use something real. Maybe this is a bad example, but I use crickets as an emphasis word sometimes. Yeah, I know, that's kind of strange... Let me explain a little though. In the summertime crickets run rampant! They invade the basement and crawl a

This passage has always encouraged me. I hope you find some encouragement and peace from it. Galatians 5:22-26 "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other." Against such things there is no law. Really? Think about it. If everyone had these gifts in abundance, we wouldn't hardly need law at all. There definitely isn't any laws against them. Continuing on to the second part, the opposites to these gifts are easily named under "passions and desires". Only with Christ can we put these away and behind us. Selfishness, despair, madness, anger, um, nastiness, disloyalty, malice and impulsiveness. Those all sound horrible, and mean

A few nights ago I found I had a choice. Either I could read my bible, or my book. Hard choice? Well what do you think? I had both laid out, and only time for one. My mind began churning at this point. Hmm.... on one side is the book, (an excellent book) that offers instant entertainment. And the other, the bible, offering more long-term entertainments. Flashy and gripping adventure, suspense, mystery and involving drawings or time spent meditating and underlining and hopefully being enlightened. (depending on the scripture) Beautiful, rustic, travel-tome look and upraised cover or simply a plain softcover, quite bent and fraying at the edges. Both offer amazing stories, great plots and inspiring dreams. Both can be read and enjoyed over and over again. One offers temporarily relaxing, stress-relieving bliss, and the other, while it can be relaxing, offers eternal worth. I didn't immediately make a decision. I'm happy to say I didn't choose my book right away, yet unhappy t

Ah, Thanksgiving. Well, now it's over. You may have noticed I took an extended leave and haven't written anything for quite some time. I did debate whether or not to post over the holiday, but my procrastination eventually led to a rather blissful break. Two things I did decide, though. One, I don't have to write a large chunk of reading every post. And two, well, okay just one thing decided. Just hope smaller posts don't become the general. So notwithstanding and outwardly proposing I now heretoafter and whatsoforthly put eh, forth this magical and convoluted literature piece henceforth for your readilation. I decided (without much originality) to write about Thanksgiving. Narrowing my subjects I choose (the first thing that came to mind) things we take for granted. Now please don't groan, however many blogs or posts you may have read recently about things we take for granted, you must agree that we don't give thanks nearly enough. Take pens and pencils, actual

What do you think of fog? We've had heavy fog the last two days, and I was thinking of some way to use fog as a blog post. Fog, is a result of humidity at ground level being 100%. In essence, it gets so wet that the air can't hold it all, and a cloud forms. A cloud contains tons of water droplets floating in the air. That sounds wacky, but it's true. The fact that a cloud forms is pretty cool, because however many times I've thought of walking on the clouds, I've never realized, we can walk on clouds. It just isn't what it seems like it could be. So how about an analogy? God is like fog, or rather, fog is kind of like God. Fog, like God, is everywhere. But there are some other ideas that aren't quite so obvious. It isn't foggy most of the time. (except in some places) Likewise, God doesn't show himself so prevalently all the time either, but I believe he does sometimes move in and astound us. Showing us that he's all around us even if we can'

(EDIT: I just wanted to bring to attention my added comment, please read that too, if you read this speech. I also added a few words too clarify a paragraph that was rather confusing) This post is a speech on abortion for my speech class. I know I left out a lot, and didn't cover everything, but I wrote truth, and will not repeal truth. I will, however, take criticism and instruction on how to write better, and would appreciate your opinion and information in comments! If you have had an abortion, please remember that you are never to far from God to receive his grace and love. Let him mold you to who he wants you to be, and be comforted by the fact that he sees the whole parade, from beginning to end, and he is in control. He will not condemn you. Without further ado. (whatever that means) No Right To Decide This speech is on the topic of abortion. We will go over a few reasons for why people decide abortion is a good

Here's something really cool. What is the shortest chapter of the Bible? Psalms 117. What is the longest chapter of the Bible? Psalms 119. What chapter is in the middle of the Bible? Psalms 118. There are 594 chapters before and after Psalms 118, add these together and you get 1188. Psalms 118:8 is the middle verse, and says, "It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in man. Way cool. God would put his will in the center of his word. Note: Facts aren't based on the KJV, I'm checking around the internet, trying to find exact references, but if this isn't completely exact, it's at least very close. And it is cool. Ben

Have you ever thought about keeping a journal? If you haven't then, well, maybe you will now that someone's brought up the idea. If you have though, various thoughts may have plagued your mind. Questions and objections sure plagued my cranium when the idea occurred to me. Maybe some of these occurred to you. "A journal? That takes to much time." "My fingers will crumple! Seriously! That much handwriting really hurts." "What do you even write about?" "My life is so boring there isn't anything to write about anyway." "This means I'm going to have to find something to write in and something to write with. That's hard. Like, I might even have to buy something !" "Other people will read my journal. I don't want that!" "Who keeps a journal anyway?" "My dog will eat it though. And he might get sick!" I suppose now I must answer these as best I can. Except maybe the last one. :) So, it ta

So here is a review of the China Hut restaurant of Atlantic. Just for fun. China Hut: A Comprehensive Study Of Delectable Delights And Studious Grievances Debating In Calculable Elements In Particular To Hazardous And Harmful Health Conditions And Supplements Complementing Nutrition And Nutritious Values. Also in this study: A Test Of Visual And Complementary Sightings Belonging In Question To China Hut, It’s Surroundings, And Atmospheric Condition Regarding Extra-Terrestrial Patrons, Customers And Local Wildlife, In Conjuncture With Extravagant Searches In Seating, Serving, And General Cleanliness, Charm, Companionship, And Extensive Studies Into Rational Rates And Rival Corporations And Ability To Survive In The Survival Of The Fittest. Due to this reviews length, the following section of the whole is more direct for the convenience of the general audience. The title is: The Foods And Some Décor Settings of China Hut. First off, China Hut is located on Main Street, right next

When I first thought of making a blog, I thought, "Cool! Yeah! Sweet! I'll write a post a day, I've got tons of stuff to write down." I managed to cool my head and try for ten to fifteen posts a month. That seems more manageable, and it really is. While it's true that there's tons of stuff to write about, I've come to realize, (with a greater clarity anyhow) that you can't simply write a bunch of random thoughts down. So I was walking the other day and I saw a squirrel rapidly dashing about and gathering nuts; and that got me thinking, "hey, that's what humans are like, always grabbing whatever we can for ourselves and storing up our junk. We oughta' be more like dogs instead, running around and leaving the worries to God and knowing that lavishing love all over makes you maybe kindof annoying, but absolutely irresistible." That came out of the depths of my brain. No thought whatsoever as to how it might come across, sentence structur

So far I've been writing about basically, whatever comes to mind. What I'm thinking now is: Dare I write these things? Okay, so I'm getting myself messed up. The whole point of this "blog" was so that I could write my philosophical thoughts and beliefs down. With the intention that others would read and, hopefully, find something interesting, entertaining, and/or moving. Perhaps encouraging even. Maybe something else I fail to mention too. My philosophical thoughts, I intend to actually be my beliefs, therefore I would be writing about Jesus, salvation only through him, and other biblical teachings. I arrive then at: Dare I write these things? The Bible clearly states that false teaching will be severely punished. I think it's Paul or Peter who says something like, "If I preach the truth, then this God is, well, POWER. And I tremble, lest I teach something not true about him. Which brings me to the fact that I want to have Bible verses, for everything I

The last post was on Hard to Say things, and I ended with the idea that all times, people and places are appropriate circumstances to use these words with. As I come from a largish family, I wanted to clarify what I meant. And If you haven't read the post before this one, I would suggest reading it first. Within reason, these words can be used all the time. Consider my purely hypothetical situation below. "Will you please pass that wrench? I can't get this bolt undone with mine huge hands." "Right. One wrench coming up, Ow! I hit my head on it!" "Oh dear! I'm sorry I asked for it, you wouldn't have hit your head on it had I not. Will you forgive me?" "I forgive you. It was my fault I hit my head on the wrench." "Oh, well thank you for getting it for me. This bolt would have been a large pain in ta backside if I hadn't a wrench." You can probably tell I exaggerated this, em, slightly. The point is, the words can be us

I've been thinking. What is something hard to do, outside of your comfort zone, that would benefit others around you and yourself? A ton of different ideas can be used, but in this instance I swerved towards my speaking habits. I was looking, of course, for something that I could implement fast, that would make me happier too, and (I add this last) I was going for something easier. Please and Thank you came up quickly, which I thought I did quite well on. Hah! As soon as you think of something you're good at, you start seeing all the many places you aren't good at it. I've realized that most of the time I can be saying please or thank you to someone. The only time I don't need too is when I'm alone! :) I also found that there are a lot of things that I take for granted, which are important to me and I value without even realizing it; that I now want to thank someone for. One last small observation, was that saying thanks didn't seem quite as effective as t

Hello again! So yesterday afternoon I became sick, and consequently, I wasn't able to go to church. I lay on the couch, and read the bible instead. While I was thinking, a thought came to me. Why do we only worship on sundays? (or at least mostly only on sundays) We try to pray and read our bible everyday, but when it comes to worship, it's only on sunday. This seems backward almost. We should, I should, be worshiping the Creator every day. Maybe there seems to be no time. Does there ever seem to be time for bible reading and prayer? Maybe it seems to be uncomfortable. Well let's expand our comfort zone. How can glorifying God be uncomfortable? So I challenge you, as I challenge myself, to worship God more often. Plan it out as you would prayer and bible reading, start with simple songs. "I love you Lord" "Better is one day" "Amazing Grace" Worship isn't standing up and remaining in one place, while you close your eye

Barbaric Ben's Den has been created! Not sure how I'll celebrate, but I'm definitely excited. BBD's blog will have everyday life happenings and my hopefully humble insights about them. BBD's will also have some reports and essays for variety and fun. I hope you end up enjoying what I write, and maybe it will help someone too. :) Benjamin