Archive for March, 2010

We’d love to have you be a part of our worship service at Northstar Church this Sunday if you’re in the area. Here’s a Google map to the Blacksburg Middle School. We have services at 9:00 and 11:00 a.m.

It was a beautiful Saturday in Blacksburg. The family was out and about, but I was stuck in front of the computer reconciling our financials. Fun.

So… I remembered “Gawker” – a time-lapse app that takes pics through your webcam at specified intervals. Here is the boredom that follows.

Working on Quicken from Jeff Noble on Vimeo.

This is the first of my posts in reflection on my recent personal retreat. As an aside, I’m grateful to David James, the Arkansas Baptist Collegiate Ministry Team Leader, who effectively urged me to take a regular personal retreat each year that I served under him as a campus minister. It was a strange practice to me at first, but it’s become a cherished pilgrimage that I now seek to prioritize twice a year.

Since moving to Virginia, my family and I haven’t been east of Blacksburg except to go to the airport in Roanoke or attend a meeting in Richmond. I left last Thursday a.m. with Lynchburg in my sites for the first personal retreat in a year and a half. 2009 was just so crazy for me that I wasn’t able to schedule one.

My three days there were spent reading, writing, praying, and simply being. At times the quietness almost overwhelmed me. I am grateful for an incredibly supportive spouse who recognizes my need for solitude and for two kids who just seem to take for granted that dad needs time like this.

Bookstore melancholy

I visited a bookstore while in Lynchburg, and while there, I bumped into a familiar bookstore buddy of mine – melancholy. Typically I ran into Mr. M when I was in Mardel in Little Rock or Barnes & Noble. It was no surprise to find him there. He seems to ambush me frequently in between shelves.

As I tried to explain this to Carolyn the other night, I felt a little foolish, but after reflecting on this sense of sadness/longing that envelopes me in bookstores, I’ve reached some tentative conclusions:

• The Muzak is playing Back Street Boys, and I just haven’t realized it.
• A voodoo doctor is sticking pins in a doll of me somewhere.
• I wish I could have/run a bookstore.
• I am running face to face into my finiteness.

I tend to opt for the last one (although I really have dreamed of owning a bookstore throughout my life).

My own awareness of my great limitations is never more obvious in a bookstore. I am a reader and love to digest new material and be challenged. It’s in a bookstore that I have this sweeping realization that I will never be able to digest even the smallest portion of what’s available. I am doomed to perpetual ignorance.

Even if I had a photographic memory and started today, I would not in my lifetime be able to consume the material I want and that I’m hungry for. Even though Google has become a collective human database, it still cannot tap the innards of copyrighted material. Nor can I remember everything I read. On top of that, I can only read one thing at a time – for limited amounts of time. And so I’m left… melancholy.

The fact that I forget so much of what I’ve already read means that I have to spend a portion of my life re-membering, refreshing, reflecting and upgrading. I will never catch up. All of reading must be done in a linear fashion. I can’t read two books simultaneously.

It makes me hungry for heaven, actually.

When I am welcomed with joyful grace into eternity by my Lord Jesus, I firmly believe that the invitation of eternal blessing is matched with an invitation for eternal learning, discovery, and adventure. I’ll be able to spend a thousand years reading and then take a break with another thousand years of backpacking heaven’s equivalent of the Andes. What I’ll do next as I enjoy the glories of God’s Presence and Love is all cake.

As I bemoan my inability and finiteness, I am turned to praise the wonder and majesty of God. He is a God who created all things, knows all things, and is a Master of it all. He is not overwhelmed in Barnes & Noble. He is the Author of Life. His omniscience and immanence are stunning and beyond comprehension.

So while I can’t plug a USB cord into my neck and download (and remember) all the information I want here, it’s OK. Those surprise ambushes by Mr. M are counteracted with confident knowledge of future discoveries in the kingdom of God.

Inspired by Jeremy, I dug up an old Facebook tag. For those of you used to expecting distinguished and profound posts from me, you’ll be so disappointed… For those of you who know me, this will assure you that I am still not distinguished and profound.

1. I intercepted a note in 5th or 6th grade that the girls in our class were passing around. It had every boys’ name in our grade on a sheet of paper with comments out beside their name like “He’s soooo cute” or “Adorable.” Out beside mine was “Eeeeww. Yuch.”
2. Probably as a result of that note scarring me, I didn’t have a steady girlfriend until I was a freshman at Ouachita.
3. I got my first kiss in a closet… from my next door neighbor in Marlowe Manor in Little Rock.
4. When she moved, my high school principal moved into the same house. It was quite a mental adjustment. He had two sons, and I could never bring myself to tell Rick Dowda (until now) that I got my first kiss in his or his brother’s closet.
5. I almost got suspended from high school (along with several other journalism students) for publishing an issue of the school newspaper that contained derogatory editorials about administration decisions.
6. I went to Arkansas Governor’s School and loved it. Thoroughly enjoyed getting to defend and dialog with others about my faith in Christ.
7. While at Ouachita Baptist University, I never knew where my car was going to wind up. My “friends” had keys made, and it would wind up on the student center steps, in used car lots, etc.
8. My favorite ice cream flavor is banana.
9. I don’t like tomato-ey foods. Gives me heartburn if I eat them after 4:00r 4:00
   English: World English Bible - WEB
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   WP-Bible plugin in the afternoon.
10. I used to have acid reflux really bad – even had to elevate the head of our bed – until I did the low-carb diet for 6 months. Lost 10-15 pounds, and have only had it in rare occasions since then.
11. I have “windows” in my sinuses. When I was young and into my teenage years, I would have to have my sinuses “washed out” by numbing them and having a large syringe full of warm salt water shot up my nose. Yum.
12. I was valedictorian of my high school class.
13. I have some of the greatest friends and accountability partners in the world.
14. I have a really hard time stomaching ultra-sports freaks.
15. At seminary, I got up early twice a week to drive over for classes (took me an hour to get there) and would arrive at 5:30 a.m. I joined Ben Phillips at a local bakery just south of seminary and got all my reading done there at the bakery before class.
16. Donald Duck is my favorite cartoon character.
17. I’ve been to China (twice), the Dominican Republic, Canada, Slovenia, Ukraine, Poland (twice), Maine, and Colorado on mission trips as a collegiate minister.
18. I once had my shorts jerked down to my ankles in the cafeteria line at Ouachita. I was standing in the main room with my tray in hand and had to shuffle off to the side and put down my tray in order to hastily jerk them back up. I’m pretty sure it was Mitch Bettis or Andy Dean. One doesn’t look behind you in that instant. One just acts.
19. I was part of a choreographed lip-syncing group with Mitch Bettis and Dennis Tucker at OBU. We were called “The Goobers.” We actually got requests to perform. Later, when Dennis decided his reputation was too precious to be soiled any longer with the epithet of “Goober” (though he was and I’m sure still is one in heart), Lon Vining took his spot for a last cameo of the group in the school cafeteria for a late-night talent show.
20. I drive a moped affectionately known as “The Batmoped.” That has nothing to do with being a Goober.
21. I have owned just about every video game system since the Atari 2600. Heck, before that, my dad brought home a large box one evening with two knobs on either end that connected to the TV. It was the first home entertainment “Pong” system. I rocked at that.
22. I have had a motorcycle wreck. Andy Dean was involved in that as well. Too little space here to detail.
23. I have journaled since I was in junior high.
24. I have had a large, painful butt boil before that I blogged about – to my wife’s horror.
25. I love life because of Jesus Christ.