There are so many questions about time that I don’t know the answers to. When I sit in zombie mode and my eyes dose off to nowhereland, thoughts begin to pop like bubbles.
How does time reflect our Creator? POP
How does it reflect us? POP
Can we find truth in time’s honest actuality? POP
What would time look like if not seen on a clock? What would it feel like if our biological clocks were truly natural and not culturally automated? POP

Time is made up of 3 main things: the past, the present, and the future. That is about all I know honestly.
Ancient cultures such as the Mayan, Greek, Hindu, and Jainist have a cyclical concept of time, a constant circle of existence. God, the creator of time, displays it as linear to us. The Bible sets up a linear story. We are given a model of perception. I think God gave us this model so that our being, understanding, and living our existence would always symbolize and reflect His character.

Our clocks, the sun, the moon, rotation of the earth, all track time, measuring it—but only we can experience it. I think if we have a better understanding of how to really experience time, and not just measure it, we can better understand its creator.

I was reading a blog the other day that told a story about a man walking on a beach next to a beautiful woman. They walked together, standing under the same stars, feeling the same luring passion for each other and aching to let each other know about it. They were both experiencing the moment, the aroma of salt, the cool whip of the wind, the gritty/ soft sand falling between their toes. Then the man looked up at the moon and realized a very human and true realization. The moon is just a watch with no face.

This experience shows me how time can be both experienced and measured.
Have you ever been in a situation where you felt you were outside of time? You just completely forget that it even exists. Instead of worrying, you were living.
Does time control us, or does our Purpose? Once we figure that out, the phrase “Use time to YOUR advantage” has a whole new meaning.

How are we seeing and using time? Are we truly relationally experiencing it, or are we just systematically tracking it, measuring it every second to know how much we have left?

Time is too relationally complicated and beautiful to just view it through the spectacles of measurement. That’s why in the world according to Jiryis, my Christmas list includes a new pair of lenses. Maybe yours should too.

Throughout the years, my duffel bag has acquired some holes, tears and broken zippers. To this day it carries the wounds of the past. I have to admit, I haven’t taken very good care of it, yet it still gets me going form one location to another (It’s kind of weird when you look at your luggage, and you feel a type of connection). It feels as if it has been with me all this time, when other bags have come and gone.

My duffel bag has been like a loyal companion, experiencing the same travels I have. There is going to be a time, however, when I get a new duffel bag. I will not be able to allow the wounds of the past to affect my travels and life. Maybe yours is getting pretty old, and starting to affect how you live your life. We all carry our own type of duffel bag, suitcases, or backpack.

What if we all got new duffel bags? Better yet, what if we unpacked our luggage- let go of our emotional baggage- and instead of carrying around this heavy load, we just presented each new piece of luggage in light of the Lord? In all honesty we can’t keep storing our past and problems in a bag. Holding on to emotional baggage eats away at your own life and prevents you from healing or moving on. Such baggage can even hurt the ones that get close enough to unzip our history.

My new duffel bag is going to be awesome, because in the world according to Jiryis, our duffel bags are lighter than air.

Many times I feel like I’m wasting my life away, sitting through lectures that are structured by a flawed system of education, playing virtual games, and constantly looking towards the future, thinking things will get better. A lot of times we think about our past, when we were younger, and want our lives to be like that again.
I remember how much fun I used to have with my friends at recess, Chuck E. Cheese’s, and DZ- Discovery Zone. I remember watching cartoons before having to stand outside for the bus.

It’s almost as if I am starting to think that the best parts of life are in the past, when I was younger. How much time do we spend in frustration due to responsibilities, deadlines, monetary issues and personal lives? We feel all these things and then long for the way things used to be.

If we are all hung up on the past, and desiring for that rather than what we have now, how does that reflect our understanding and appreciation of our present lives?
We are longing for something else, a different lifestyle, an easier lifestyle, the lifestyle that we had when we were younger.

Maybe instead of desiring this, we should learn to embrace our past for what it was, and start living our present lives to the fullest- now!

We need to learn that our current lifestyles can be just as appreciated and desired as the lifestyle we used to have. How does God see us when we desire our past more than what he is giving us right now in the present?

We have around 12 hours in our day to spend doing whatever we want to do. How are you spending your 12 hours? When I looked at the way I spent my 12 hours, I was disappointed.
We could be doing blessed things for God in the twelve hours, as well as having a God-centered attitude while doing them.

When was the last time we sat in silence? When was the last time we reflectively wrote in a journal or diary for longer than 20 minutes? When was the last time we actually prayed a list of prayers that has been piling up? We should live our lives to the fullest in complete appreciation for the present.

Why do we like these things? Maybe it’s more than just because they look cool or the way they make us feel. Maybe it is because we have a desire to know and understand our roots and our uniqueness. We want to know where we come from and to know more about the earth that existed before us. We want to be unique and truly who we are made to be.

We seem to be looking for these things because our culture lacks identity. The identity of our generation seems to be generic and universal. We can’t find true uniqueness around us nowadays, so we look for it in superficial ways.

We want to know who we are, and the only way to find this out is to understand who God created us to be. We get, and are told, who God wanted us to be through the Word. We study the Word through hermeneutics and its principles.
We long for change because of the desire to find the real us. By understanding God’s true character found through Jesus’ teachings and scripture, we find out who we really are and need to be.

However, our search for uniqueness has been ending up in girls buying crazy looking slipper/shoes, thinking that their pair are unique to their own personality, when really 1.5 million other girls have the exact same pair, or with guys creating what they think are unique sermons with new twists on what the text “really” means, when really they are straying form the original context to prove a self-driven point. These self-driven points are not manifestations of biblical truth.

In a world of 6.6 billion people, we desire to be different, special, and feel like we belong. Instead of looking for it in the character of God, we look for it in the voices, words, and music of our times.

Regina Spektor describes how our values and beliefs are created by the voices, words, and music that are shoved into our brains through our culture.

“I hear in my mind all these voices
I hear in my mind all of these words
I hear in my mind all of this music
And it breaks my heart, and it breaks my heart.”

-Regina Spektor “Fidelity”

I think that people hear in their minds all these voices, they hear in their minds all these words, words that tell them what should describe their reflections in the mirror. Do these shoes match my dress? Could I get away with wearing a shorter skirt? It’s breaking my heart to see our seeking of uniqueness end up in an alleyway of Gucci, Von Dutch, Armani, Abercrombie and Fitch, Mary Janes, ect.

What are we really seeking? Shouldn’t we be seeking for more? Are we seeking our uniqueness through being the image of God, or the image of fashion and reputability?

If we are not careful, the things we own, such as shoes and skirts or our actions and statements, could end up owning us.

In the world according to Jiryis, claiming to seek the image of God but actually seeking the image of fashion and reputability is a deep-seated, life sapping paradox. As citizens and priests of the Kingdom we must be living and speaking candidly in relation to our biblical principals.

Muse presents us a ribbon tied gift of techno electronica, fused with the distinctive bold voice of lead singer Matthew James Bellamy.

There is nothing boring about this album. It offers an interesting sound. Muse mixes the feel of classic rock with new technique in electronica. However, and this is a big however, the lyrics lead to a bit of depression, not to mention disappointment.

Let me digress on these lyrics of depression, universalism, nihilism, and anti-government propaganda. *Caution, spoilers ahead*

“you are my guiding light, there’s no guiding light left inside, there’s no guiding light in us.” If that doesn’t leave you feeling empty I don’t know what would.
Muse seems to nonchalantly throw a dash of universalist perspective through their lyrics. Lyrics such as
“These wars cant be won. But soon we will see There can be only one, United States! United States! Of Eurasia.”
This album is very politically driven, pardon me, in muses’s defense, anti-politically driven. We hear this evident In the song “unnatural selection”.
We get language of legislative opposition.
“They’ll laugh as they watch us fall
The lucky don’t care at all
No chance for fate
It’s unnatural selection
I want the truth!

I’m hungry for some unrest
I wanna push it beyond the peaceful protest
I wanna speak in a language that they will understand

Dedication to a new age
This is the end of destruction and rampage
Another chance to raise and never plead again
“Counter balance this commotion
We’re not droplets in the ocean.”

This is an album that really strives to push personal initiative to change what people don’t like. It is draped in a desire to ‘expose’ the liars of the world, it is just ironic that they planned the cd to begin sales on September 11th.
In this album are powerful words which can be taken into two majorly extreme ways causing both sides to hate eachother even more.

they take you down a nihilistic road of hopelessness smothered with the backing of determination to kill the government.

Well done Muse, mission accomplished. In your plan to liberate our senses and lives, you have pushed aggression and depression. Sounds great though. We get synths, piano, vocoder laced vocals, sounds of a missiles taking off, extreme guitar solos, church organs, French, and an ending of symphonic passion.

But I guess there’s nothing wrong with free speech. Right? I can understand their frustration of wanting people to leave them alone in a sense, but in reality they are creating self truths and a more individualistic mindset in peoples brains, which in turn creates the very thing they are trying to kill.

I Hate winter. So as we are living through fall and looking towards winter I cringe at the thought of finding joy in the aches and pains of flu’s and dry skin. It seems as though depression begins to creep into our minds as the days begin to darken earlier and earlier. How do we secure our hearts? How can we shield or subconscious? How can we observe the symbolism of transitioning into death while anticipating the hope of the following season?
Here is where I stand as we speak.

psalms 42:5
Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and 6 my God.

Throughout the Bible we are offered amazing advice on such things. What do we do if we feel down, BAM flip to Ephesians 5:19

19Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, 20always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

How do we shield our subconscious, BAM flip to Philippians 4:8

8Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

Heck, even Abraham Lincoln saw this to be true. Stating, “Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.” I agree with Abe.

We should view this transition with hope. Hope is necessary to life; without hope, we give up. That’s why there’s christmas, and eggnog, and christmas lights, and then springtime.

Donald miller, on of my favorite authors is quoted to say, “Could we, with human reason, process the finality of death, we would be very different souls, giving more than we take, forgiving easily, and listening with all that is in us for the answers to questions we would not have otherwise asked.”

Lets have this thought in our minds as we begin to notice the approaching death that is the season Winter. I must, absolutely must, hold my thoughts at gunpoint, cause in the world according to Jiryis I’m finally beginning to see how every season has it’s purpose.

There are some great slogans out there, here’s a few:
Its everywhere you want to be, Just do it, Have it your way, and one of my favorites, Coca-Cola’s “Open Happiness.” This is when I thought, well, seems vague, lets research.

What drives a company to create a slogan such as this? What is the background of the slogan? What I found convinced me that Jesus drinks Coca-Cola.
The main mission of Coca-Cola is to 1) refresh the world; 2) inspire moments of optimism and happiness; and 3) create value and make a difference.
Coca-Cola revolves their company around a set of core values, which they instill upon their employees. Those being 1) Leadership: encouraging a better future, 2) Collaboration, 3) Integrity: be real, 4) accountablity, 5) Passion: committed in heart and mind, 6) Diversity: as inclusive as our brands, and 7) Quality.
The company Coca-Cola promotes their employees not only to work for the brand, but to be the brand. Their representatives desire to inspire creativity, passion, optimism and fun.

Doesn’t all this seem to be effective in nature and OSM? I think the way Coca-Cola runs their business provides a strong backing to say that when we arrive at the seat of judgment, we’ll all receive our dues, which will include an 8 fluid ounce bottle of Coca-Cola.
Just like the upsides of Coke, having a somewhat vague yet bold slogan, we see an upside to our new slogan as well.

For one, it’s definitely not weak. Those three words, live your mission, contain so much power. The word “live” on its own pushes hundreds of pictures, emotions, and presuppositions into our minds. The word “your” offers ownership and self identity. The word mission, providing a sense of calling and responsibility.
How did we get this strong saying? LCU Marketing Director Christine Thomas said, “Live your mission was recommended by Simantel, a full service advertising agency, who we hired to do research on our institution. They aided us in developing the new logo, new tag line, and what the brand statement should be.”
Coming up with a slogan to lead this new institution is a very heavy duty. How does something like this even work?
“They ran some early suggestions, among them was ‘find your mission’…but students felt unsure of this slogan. After testing that info with more students, alumni, staff, and faculty, they went back and compared it to their research,” continued Thomas.
Does this slogan really stand strong to the identity of the the New U?

“It is a statement that everyone could identify with. If you are a student coming to LCU in search of more education, the new U will equip you for the world and help you live your mission. Even while you’re here you are living your mission. Students are gaining the skills and knowledge that they need to go on.” Said Thomas

Thomas added that employees and instructors also connect to the slogan,
“We are living our mission here by preparing students, informing the public, serving the public, and our community.”
Thomas continued, adding our Alumni to the list.

“Having graduated from here, hopefully they have taken what they gained and are now living their mission.”
Being, truly, a statement we can all agree with, we see yet again our strong hold in Unity, as well as our roots of Restoration. Through this slogan we find clarity, strength, and a common purpose. A purpose that we all have burnt onto our hearts. One that pierces through the norm, drowns away the average, and ignites the world according to Jiryis.