NO DAY LIKE A SNOW DAY

Well, apparently the result of yesterday's snow was a day off today for little boy... most of the other districts were fine to go in with an hour delay or so, but our district has a constant problem getting plows out to the schools to clear the parking lots... and in all honesty, the roads were perfectly fine as i drove into work... anyway, i used to love snow days, but little boy isn't quite at that age yet... he still loves going to school every day which is great and he was pretty bummed today - especially since he's the "star of the week" this week and now he gets rooked out of one day of starhood... poor little guy... both littles had a BLAST shoveling this morning though, so it's all good...

as for the rest of today, it's below freezing outside, but because our HVAC unit is on the fritz AGAIN, it's well over 80 in here and i'm BURNING UP!... i'll have to head home early i guess... anyway, i managed to fix a big connectivity issue that i was having for work by remembering to connect to the right server... silly me... spent 2 days trying to figure out how to connect to the wrong server...

WORD OF THE DAY

Continuing on, looking at Ephesians today, Chapter 1 verses 1-8...

FROM: Paul, an apostle of Christ according to God's will... TO: the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ...

now, i believe that these are some pretty young Christians, and they've been dealing with some issues and struggling with some things within the church and from outside sources... but Paul calls them "saints" and reminds them of their own faithfulness... and then he offers them grace and peace... seems like a much more tender approach to things than "Be strong and Courageous"...

moving on... verses 3-8 talk about our inheritance in Christ... similar to the inheritance mentioned in Joshua, it was granted to us well before we were around and God has remained steadfast in granting it to us... contrary to the inheritance mentioned in Joshua, it's talking about the spiritual blessings we have and will later receive... God chose us to be holy and blameless... to be His adopted children, according to His will (much like why Paul is an apostle)... we're freely given glorious grace because He loves us... that grace is glorious because it grants us redemption and forgiveness from sins... and it comes with "all wisdom and understanding"... that's pretty amazing, (sorry for the pun)... but wait there's more... and i'll get to it tomorrow... there's actually a whole lot to these opening verses so i'll probably end up taking it very slowly...

IN OTHER WORDS

okay, continuing with that Shepherd book... i'll be honest, it's dragging on for me... and it's really short as is, but i think that it's really just a 200 word essay stretched out over 80 pages... anyway... today's reading started out with an excerpt from the authors' novel called Sixth Covenant that described a little bit about the protection of sheep and discussed the parallel between mankind and sheep... next chapter, "Why Worry?" talks about the grand effect of little things... little bugs and parasites can cause sheep a lot of problems... just like little things can cause us to stumble and drive us crazy... that was a fine four pages... i like that i have a better understanding of the passage of Scripture that talks about God annointing my head with oil as a way to protect me from little worries...

the next chapter, "Why an Enemy?" makes a shift in focus, turning the attention away from sheep and focusing on our enemies, specifically the devil as a roaring lion... i thought this chapter was unnecessary since the parallel has already been drawn out handily... somethings are better said unsaid, if you know what i mean... anyway, i have indeed located the other book and i expect that i'll be starting that one next week... maybe two or three more entries about this book and then we'll move on...

TO GRAMMYS HOUSE WE GO

Well, i was going to dive into some TV shows, specifically Heroes and The Next Great American Band, but then i realized/discovered that the Grammy nominees were announced this morning... thus, i'm bumping that coverage for this, my random comments on the Grammy nods...

The first thing to catch my eye is Carrie Underwood - and it wasn't even a picture of her... her song "Before He Cheats" is up for a few awards including Song of the Year... none of the other songs or albums in the top categories really have my interest... Paramore is up for new artist of the year, that's cool... i'm supposed to interview them sometime... also interesting is to see Kirk Whalum up against The Beastie Boys for instrumental pop album of the year... Daughtry has also put up a good showing this year with quite a few nods and i'm excited to see Lupe Fiasco's "Day Dreamin'" up for urban/alternative performance of the year... that's a sweet song...

And now for the "Gospel" Categories... i don't particularly care who wins, but i find it interesting - interesting? yeah, that works - to see "East to West" from Casting Crowns garnering a nod in both best gospel performance as well as best gospel song... Israel and New Breed have a song up for performance as well and TobyMac's "Made to Love" is up for song... Casting Crowns keeps rolling with a nod for best pop/contemporary album alongside of TobyMac, Mandisa, Israel and New Breed and Michael W Smith... Cross Movement Records got double kudos with "HIStory and "Open Book" (Da' T.R.U.T.H.) competing against Skillet, Pillar and Ashley Cleveland (one of these things is not like the other ones) for Rock or Rap album ... i'm somewhat surprised to see Smokie Norful under the "traditional" gospel category... i'd pick him for "contemporary"... oh well...

A few, final notes of interest... The Fold is up for best recorded packaging (see album cover in this entry)... The White Stripes are up for best special edition packaging for the fancy USB flash drives that i thought were pretty spiffy and Johnny Cash's "God's Gonna Cut You Down" is in the running for music video of the year...

The full list of nominees is on Grammy.com...

HUT HUT HIKE!

i'll post my weekend football picks tomorrow, but today i have a few hours to mention that the Redskins are going to bounce back and trounce the Bears tonight, 42-20... why? because it's on NFL Network and NOBODY will be watching...

BEFORE I GO

Today, i posted an interview with Casting Crowns and an album review of All That Is Within Me by MercyMe...

COMING SOON

i'll talk about some TV.... i'll talk about Blake Lewis... i'll talk more about the weather... and i'll post more interviews, reviews and features at everyone's favorite website called theTRu...

peace... love... bdg..