the tindog coffeehouse

I don’t want the Father, I want a vending machine
I don’t want the Father, I want a vending machine
I know what I want if you know what I mean
I don’t want the Father, I want a vending machine

– Derek Webb, “The Spirit Vs. The Kickdrum”

A lot happens between Chapters 5 and 6 of the Gospel of John. By the time we get to John 6:1, Jesus has attracted a huge following. At least 5000, and that was likely just counting adult males. Including women and children, that number could’ve been 10 or 15,000.

Jesus took the time to feed them all, and He didn’t just give them each a small ration of fish and bread. They had so much food, they couldn’t eat all of it, leaving twelve basketfuls of leftovers.

But that wasn’t enough for them.

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This blog post wasn’t supposed to be here. Instead, it was supposed to be a different post I wrote a couple of days ago. It was a good one, too, or at least I thought so at the time. But I didn’t publish it. After thinking about it overnight, I decided it was best to delete it. And I’m glad I did.

The topic of the post isn’t important. It wasn’t anything controversial or anything I haven’t written about before. But it was the tone of it that bothered me when I reread it later. It was caustic, mean-spirited, and divisive, and I would’ve regretted publishing it.

Proverbs 5:1-2 (NLT) says:

My son, pay attention to my wisdom;
listen carefully to my wise counsel.
Then you will show discernment,
and your lips will express what you’ve learned.

I’d like to say that I always show discernment in what I say or write, but the truth is, I don’t. In fact, I’m lousy at it. I’d like to say that every word I speak or write reflects God’s wisdom and glorifies His Kingdom, but it doesn’t. In fact, very little of it does.

I think I’ve gotten a little better at choosing my words over the years — only after leaving a trail of destruction in my wake — but I’ve still got a long way to go. Thankfully, this is one time I chose correctly.

Since joining Twitter last November, I’ve gradually blogged less and less, not because I wasn’t interested in blogging, but because there are times it’s just quicker and easier to fire off a quick tweet and be done with it. But then a lot of times I feel guilty, as if I have some sort of obligation to meet a blogging quota. (I don’t, do I?)

Then, of course, there’s the Facebook versus Twitter dilemma. When I want to announce something amazingly profound to the citizens of the Interwebs, like how I could really go for a ham sandwich right about now, do I post that nugget of eternal wisdom on Facebook or tweet it?

Of course some people do both. There’s the Twitter Facebook app that ports your tweets automatically to Facebook (in the form of your Facebook status). And the next version of TweetDeck will allow users to post their updates to Twitter, Facebook, or both. I don’t really like this approach, personally, simply because not everything I say on Twitter is necessarily appropriate for Facebook, and vice versa. Plus, at times it borders on spamming your friends, and Facebook users are already being spammed enough as it is.

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I was all set to write some sappy blog post about looking back over the year and looking ahead to 2009, but, eh, whatever. We all know this year has sucked in a lot of ways, and it’s been a tough one for our family, so who really wants to rehash all that?

So, as I enjoy the last couple of days of my vacation, I’ll just wish everyone out there on the Interwebs a happy New Year.

(And I promise I’ll try to be more interesting next week.)

Let me first preface this by saying I don’t have a Facebook profile, nor do I have a MySpace page, nor am I on Twitter. Or any other social network for that matter. I understand the idea behind them and see the potential value in them for some people, but for me personally, no.

Recently there’s been a lot of controversy floating around about Facebook’s Beacon system. Essentially, it works like this. You have a Facebook account and shop online at a company who is participating in the Beacon system, such as Overstock.com or eBay. Regardless of whether you’re logged into Facebook at the time, if you buy something from one of these companies, all of your Facebook friends are automatically notified of what you bought. Huh? Yeah.

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OK, so I’m a computer guy. My first computer was an Acros 386 running Windows 3.0. It was a high school graduation gift, and I loved that machine. Good times.

Computers have obviously come a long way since then and so have operating systems. Remember Windows ME? (Sorry to bring back painful memories.) It used to be that Windows was so unstable you had to restart the computer every so often just to get the stupid thing working again. Today, XP and Vista are much more stable and reliable, but sometimes a clean boot is necessary just to clear out the memory and start over fresh.

Well, that’s kinda how I’ve felt lately, like I need to be rebooted. Just start over fresh, clear out the cobwebs. Hence the blog. No, nobody needs or cares about another random blog. I don’t expect anyone to read this. So, if you are reading this, then you probably need to find a more productive hobby.

So how to reboot? Well, I need to exercise more to start. Still thinking about how I can start adding some exercise into my day. More on that later. I also need to eat less and eat healthier. Those are no-brainers. I need to be praying daily and spending time in the Word. That’s not hard to do so much as I just get lazy about it. And finally, I need to stop dwelling on my circumstances. I need to focus my attention on others, get more involved in church, stop sittin’ around feeling sorry for myself.

I guess that’s a good place to start. Or restart.