These pictures remind me of the song "There's something better than Gold" which I learned as a child at campmeeting.  It has been sung for generations and the truths in it are timeless.

"For Jesus to wash you whiter than snow is something better than gold!"

There are a few others here.

Admittedly, I certainly spend more time online than the average person. I don't watch any television shows regularly. I only semi-follow Georgia and Furman football and Duke basketball. I haven’t touched a gaming console in years. If I have free time I will often spend it online engaging content about the topics I'm most interested in, figuring out how to make a dollar, and connecting with people.

I always love trying out the latest gadgets and websites (the most recent of which I'm trying is FourSquare), and over the years I've certainly seen many tech things come and go. Remember Napster, AIM, Hotmail, My Yahoo, and mp3.com?

Recently I began thinking about ways in which I find content online and how I try to be efficient with my time on the computer. I thought I'd share them, and I'd love to hear ways you do this as well.

1. Twitter and Facebook - Facebook used to be a great place to just catch up with friends and see what was going on in their lives. Now, I often find myself discovering interesting articles, hilarious videos, and recommendations regarding everything under the sun from my friends.

Twitter dwarfs Facebook in this regard.

While Twitter is often stereotyped as a world where people tell each other what they ate for lunch, I find my main use of it is discovering hand picked links and recommendations from people I follow that have connections to my interests. They're often personal friends, people in ministry, politicos, or other figures who have something interesting to say. If these social-networking sites seem overwhelming or pointless to you remember: We all have something interesting to contribute to the conversation.
Twitter 101

2. RSS Feeds - Before micro-blogging hit it big time, the way I most often kept up with blogs and sites that updated frequently was through their RSS feeds. Most sites that update often have an RSS feed, and by using an RSS feed reader you can subscribe to all of your favorite sites and check one website that will notify you when these sites have new content. If you follow more than a couple blogs you definitely need to get started on this. I always laugh when I find out someone goes to a blog each day to see if there have been any updates -- save time and your sanity. Formerly, I used Netvibes.com to follow my favorite sites but I have recently converted over to Google Reader and would highly recommend it to anyone. However, be warned, the days of reading through tons of articles in a feed reader are dwindling due to more people discovering the "best" content through others on social networking sites.
RSS Feeds explained in plain english

4. Set up alerts for specifics things that interest you - It can seem overwhelming to try and keep up with the latest content regarding one's more specific interests. Do you like to know what is going in the world of your organization, educational institution, or other specific entity? The best way I've found is to set up custom searches on my favorite sites. First, I get a weekly digest of the latest relevant Google results for certain topics from Google Alerts. Second, I have saved searches on Twitter for another set of topics so I can see in real time what people have to say about them. Lastly, if there are specific items I'm looking to buy that aren't found regularly on eBay then I set up a custom search on eBay that emails when any new items appear.

5. Content Aggregation Sites - There is only so much time in a day and sifting through news, blogs, and websites isn't the most productive way to spend it. Fortunately, there are many websites that serve as clearing houses for the most important things going on in a specific area of interest. You may have to search a little to find one for your specific interest but some of the ones I use are DrudgeReport.com, Google News, PoliticalNetNews.com, WesleyReport.com.

5. Email - I only receive about one or two email "forwards" a week. I'm talking about ones with a link to a funny youtube video, with a picture of a rabbit with a pancake on its head, and the like. These days (at least for my generation) people seem to only send me a link to a website if it is one I really need to visit. I'm thankful for this, and one way to make forwarding great content easy is to use custom Google Groups in your Gmail account which you can set up for specific groups of friends or associates. This way you can send the content quickly to those who would find it most relevant.

This season, while traveling around the southeast on my break, I was able to capture a few other images of Christmas in America today.

Atlanta, GA

Glade Spring, VA

Conyers, GA

However, I encountered some of the most compelling images of Christmas when I read St. Athanasius' On the Incarnation for my Church History class this semester. Below are some selected excerpts, but I would encourage Christians at any stage in their faith to read this classic work.

"You must understand why it is that the Word of the Father, so great and so high, has been manifest in bodily form.

He has been manifested in a human body for this reason only, out of the love and goodness of His Father, for the salvation of us men. We will begin, then, with the creation of the world and with God its Maker, for the first fact that you must grasp is this: the renewal of creation has been wrought by the Self-same Word Who made it in the beginning.

The Word perceived that corruption could not be got rid of otherwise than through death; yet He Himself, as the Word, being immortal and the Father's Son, was such as could not die. For this reason, therefore, He assumed a body capable of death, in order that it, through belonging to the Word Who is above all, might become in dying a sufficient exchange for all, and, itself remaining incorruptible through His indwelling, might thereafter put an end to corruption for all others as well, by the grace of the resurrection.

It was by surrendering to death the body which He had taken, as an offering and sacrifice free from every stain, that He forthwith abolished death for His human brethren by the offering of the equivalent. For naturally, since the Word of God was above all, when He offered His own temple and bodily instrument as a substitute for the life of all, He fulfilled in death all that was required. Naturally also, through this union of the immortal Son of God with our human nature, all men were clothed with incorruption in the promise of the resurrection. For the solidarity of mankind is such that, by virtue of the Word's indwelling in a single human body, the corruption which goes with death has lost its power over all.

You know how it is when some great king enters a large city and dwells in one of its houses; because of his dwelling in that single house, the whole city is honored, and enemies and robbers cease to molest it. Even so is it with the King of all; He has come into our country and dwelt in one body amidst the many, and in consequence the designs of the enemy against mankind have been foiled and the corruption of death, which formerly held them in its power, has simply ceased to be. For the human race would have perished utterly had not the Lord and Savior of all, the Son of God, come among us to put an end to death."

Merry Christmas!

I do not know of a Duke graduate who was denied ordination because he got a 3.0 rather than a 3.8. I do however know certain Duke honor graduates who were denied ordination because they came across as too arrogant.

Your grades are not a test, not a measure of your spirituality, not a measure of your calling, not a measure of whether you are fit for ministry.

When you ascend and come before the throne of judgment, our Lord is not gonna ask "What’d you make on the CH 13 final?" But he well may ask, "Did you do it for my glory our your pride?" He may say, "Did you do it to honor the gifts I gave you or did you do just enough to squeak by?"

That’s the real question.

After he spoke there were shouts of Amen by some and faces of silent conviction by others.  We all needed this reminder and I'll continue to think about it as exam time approaches.

H/T: The Beginning of Wisdom

"Going Hunting" was completed in January 2009

When I was reviewing over my bucket list the other day I quickly realized that the items completed thus far had always been done with others.

In light of this, I thought I'd publish (most) of my list as I'd love for partners on any of these adventures.  After all, we were created by God for community and not as islands.

Have you made your "bucket list"? If so, post a comment with some of your items or blog about it.

Go to a Nascar Race
Go hang-gliding
Go up in a hot-air balloon
Fly in a small aircraft over Furman and Conyers to photograph the places I love.
Be a contestant on the Price is Right
Visit all of Southern Living's "204 Food Finds" Live in a rural area for a time
Foreign mission work for at least a year
Swim half a mile
Run a 10k in preparation for a half marathon
Play the Harbour Town Golf Links (learn how to play golf first)
Catch a fish on the flyline
Learn how to sail a small boat
Learn to speak basic Spanish
Learn to drive a stick shift proficiently
Learn my family’s genealogy as well as my Nana knows it
Become a morning person
Visit McDonalds #1 in Des Plaines, Illinois
Sell 5 items on eBay and personally deliver them to the buyers
Drive a hitchhiker to whatever destination he desires
Road trip with friends across the USA
Take a train across Canada
Visit New York (Just found out Amtrak travels from Durham to NYC for a great price)
Visit Time Square on New Year's Eve with a significant other
Visit the Grand Canyon
Visit Yellowstone
Photograph the Aurora Borealis in Alaska
Niagara falls
Visit Brazil
See the pyramids of Giza
Tour the Holy Land
Visit the Dominican Republic to visit Ruben, the child I sponsor through Compassion.
Photograph Mont Saint-Michel in France

During the past week these two questions raised at the conference have been on the forefront of my mind:

• Am I willing to submit my gifts to a bigger picture and be part of God's story or do I just want to invite God into mine?
• Do the relationships in my life get my very best, or do they get what is left over after I've given my best to all the "projects" in my life?

The most powerful moment of the weekend came in regards to the church's call to be the hands and feet of Christ.  On Friday, I witnessed an image of Christ's love in this world that shook my heart and 11,999 others.

In our world of information overload, I promise you this twenty minute video will be worth the slow down.

Are you open?  Will you join me in sponsoring a child today?

Some of  you are on twitter.  Most are not.  Those that are not probably laugh when you hear about twitter in the media and often wonder who in the world would waste time with such an invention.  Those that are on twitter think the previous sentence was absurd and are probably tired of fruitlessly explaining why they love twitter to their skeptical friends.  If you would like a better explanation about it or some responses to common objections, head on over to Michael Hyatt's blog where he addresses the top ten objections to twitter.

To the tweeters out there:

Will you join me in this idea to help proclaim God's word through twitter?

A few weeks back I posted a scripture verse on twitter and one of my friends messaged me later that day telling me how meaningful the verse was for him.  I immediately realized that if this verse reached all of my followers and was encouraging for even one of them, imagine if the twittersphere began to buzz with people sharing scriptures that had changed their lives that week.

After discussing this with some friends we were reminded of the #followfriday movement on twitter. It began with just one person and is now one of the best ways to connect with new people on twitter.

All of this is pretty simple:

1. Every Friday type your verse.  You can type it normally, use http://ref.ly to create a cool tiny url of it, use youversion.com's great interface, or anything else.  Even add thoughts with the verse if there is room.

2. Be sure and use the hashtag #followthewordfriday so that these tweets will be easily searchable and so that it may eventually become a trending topic which will lead more people to join in.

I have no agenda.  Most of us know first hand how the internet can become a stronghold for all types of sin.  I would like to see social media and the internet used for the Kingdom in any encouraging way possible.

If you think this an idea you could get on board please email this to your socialmedia minded friends, tweet some scripture on Friday, and pray that the Lord would continue to use new methods to spread an unchanging word.

Think about your town.  What comes to most people's minds when you tell them the name of it? Now, have you ever actually engaged the site, news story, or bizarre thing that most people name?  If not, I would encourage you to go out and explore it.

For years I heard about the visitations of the Virgin Mary to Nancy Fowler that occurred on her farm in Conyers.  Students would come late to school because traffic was so bad from the thousands of visitors.  Locals would speculate whether this was real or some scheme. Newspapers would publish stories.  And people would go drink water from the well on the property hoping and praying for miracles.  But until last week I had never even read about or been to this place that was less than ten miles from my house.

The Farm ended up being a place of solitude and beauty.  Much different from the sprawl right down the road.  There were acres of property to stroll, meditations to read, and lots of information in the welcome center on the site itself.  The story of The Farm is quite interesting, but I will spare the details and let you read about it at Conyers.org.

I was able to spend some great time in prayer there and capture some of the beauty, mystery, and icons of this place with my camera.  Click "Continue Reading" below to see more photos.

I'm still unsure exactly what to think of this pilgrimage site, but I do know that thousands have lifted prayers and sought after God on this property.  And when I stepped from the grass onto "Rosary Hill" to get some better photos of Jesus on the Cross my feet began to feel like they were on fire.  I looked down and they were covered in fire ants.  Needless to say, from that point on I gave the hill much more respect.

I returned a month later at sunset and it was well worth the trip.  After processing my photos from the trip, I feel almost as satisfied as the lady below drinking the illuminated red wine.