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No One Will Remember

April 23, 2012 in Life, Movies with 6 Comments

I got into a conversation this weekend about time management. I was asked whether productive people are born that way or if I thought it was more like a discipline that someone could intentionally choose. While I hadn’t necessarily thought through all of this before, I found it to be an interesting conversation.

My answer is that I think we’re all born with a default setting when it comes to our time management. Beyond that it depends on how we intentionally choose to spend our time. Personally, I budget my time each day in my mind. Like a financial budget, this allows me to tell my hours how to be spent before I get to them.

In our conversation, I also thought of a scene from the movie Troy that has always stuck with me. In the scene, a boy is summoned to get Achilles to fight one on one with the best fighter from a different army. I’ve only seen the movie once, but I’ve never forgotten the following dialogue:

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#7 (Top 10 of 2011)

December 25, 2011 in Blogging, Movies, Music with 2 Comments

This is part of a series of top posts from 2011.

#7: Absent

I am so unbelievably excited to announce that we will be showing the Absent documentary at our Mesa campus on May 12. This is a special screening of an award-winning documentary that affects thousands in our community alone. Filmmaker, Justin Hunt, and METALLICA guitarist/vocalist James Hetfield will join us to present and discuss this worldwide crisis of absent and disengaged fathers and the impact it has had on society…

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Abraham Lincoln – Vampire Hunter

July 12, 2011 in Abraham Lincoln, Movies, Reading with 7 Comments

I’ve had a long debate going with some of the girls in our small group. A handful of them are REALLY into vampire books. I’m talking Twilight groupies to the max… and that’s just the beginning! (they once “Twilighted” my office at work, complete with a life size cutout of Edward). I often tell them they need to read other types of books, and they tell me that I need to read more vampire books. So we’ve settled into our stalemate.

But the tables turned when I was given Seth Grahame-Smith’s book, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. My friend and his wife knew of my love of all things Abraham Lincoln, and they knew that this would be a vampire book that I couldn’t refuse. They were right. While I don’t necessarily love the vampire genre, I do love a good story and so I was eager to read it.

It didn’t disappoint.

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Absent Documentary Showing with James Hetfield!

April 22, 2011 in Movies, Music with 5 Comments

I am so unbelievably excited to announce that we will be showing the Absent documentary at our Mesa campus on May 12. This is a special screening of an award-winning documentary that affects thousands in our community alone. Filmmaker, Justin Hunt, and METALLICA guitarist/vocalist James Hetfield will join us to present and discuss this worldwide crisis of absent and disengaged fathers and the impact it has had on society.

The film includes on-camera interviews and testimonies from well-known author John Eldredge, world-champion boxer Johnny Tapia, fitness model Robin Decker and Hetfield. I’ve already seen it myself and can vouch for how powerfully it portrays the need for fathers and what happens when they are not around.

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Expendables and Expectations

October 2, 2010 in Life, Movies with 2 Comments

The Expendables Movie 2010Last night we had guys’ night at the movies and watched the only logical choice in that scenario… The Expendables. That’s the stereotypical guy movie with all of the legendary action stars and previews that showed little storyline and a lot of things blowing up. I looked up the reviews online and found a dismal set of critiques. As such, I watched the movie expecting very little out of it other than to have a good time with some friends.

And I ended up really liking it. Sure, there were many awful parts by all definitions (including the opening scene), but I was pleasantly surprised by the existence of a storyline, and there were a handful of great tongue-in-cheek moments of humor. I expected little and walked away with much.

Had I gone into the movie expecting top notch acting and a mind twisting plot I would have been disappointed for sure. But I was in the mood to have a good laugh with friends and we certainly got that. Having low expectations when it comes to the entertainment world is usually a good idea. It can allow you to be pleasantly surprised with a book, a movie, or even a restaurant. Low expectations are almost always beneficial in these areas.

But the reverse is true when it comes to our expectations of our marriage, our kids, ourselves, or of our view of God. When we have low expectations in areas like these we tend to get very little as far as results. These areas demand something from us and when we don’t expect anything we rarely give much. And so we ironically get what we expected, and it’s rarely positive. For us to expect a lot would mean a lot of investment on our part, and the people that put this kind of effort in ironically usually get what they expect as well. The sad reality is that I think we often switch the two and have high expectations in areas that don’t matter much and low expectations in areas that are truly valuable.

So what are you expecting?

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