Satan's Wrench

Cynicism is a debilitating disease. It takes us down a road we do not wish to travel, turning us into someone we never wished to be. It's been called the pus that seeps from a wound, carnality that thinks it's smart, and the identifying sign of a disappointed idealist.

It is a sure way to quickly distance one's self from friends, to unhesitatingly cause contention within a group, and to loudly proclaim one's misunderstanding that the world is not a perfect place, and neither are the people in it.

Do not let your heart become encrusted with the definitive slime of a cynic. Guard it. Watch your thoughts. Practice ever-present joy. Never quit hoping. Count your blessings. And forgive.

Forgiveness is key, as unforgiveness tends to be what opens up the door towards the beginnings of a jaded heart.

Do not let Satan win the battle for your heart. Cynicism is a powerful tool of his, and as a Christian, since he can no longer keep you from going to Hell, he will use every tool in his power to keep you from keeping others from going.

Do not let Satan's tool cause one of God's to become ineffective.

Mark 11:25 - And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.

Romans 14:8 - Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumbling block or an occasion to fall in his brother's way.

Humbled by Statistics (A Somewhat Nerdy Post)

I'm working towards my Master's at the moment, and one of the classes I'm taking (actually, the only class I'm taking) is biostatistics. Trust me, it's not nearly as daunting as it sounds, and it's actually pretty interesting. Biostatistics is the field that's helped us to determine what are the risk factors for heart disease (Framingham Heart Study), whether medications work, and that led to Gottlieb's discovery of AIDS in 1981. It's pretty cool to be able to use statistics to help to change the world.

Another thing that fascinates me about it is how the fields of statistics and probability can help us to make more informed, and therefore, better decisions. Decisions can be hard to make, but if you know that the probability that your car will break down 20% quicker with a particular mechanic, the decision automatically becomes a lot easier. It makes life a little bit easier knowing.

However, how sure can we be that we are right when calculating probability? My professor brought this up last night, and I've been thinking about it ever since. In probability, you can never be 100% sure that your prediction will be correct. This makes sense. Things happen. An unaccounted for factor comes into play, and completely destroys any chance that you originally thought would happen happens. The other team wins the game with a cross-court shot at the buzzer. An unknown fungus kills your apple crop. Your sale flops due to the manager having to leave suddenly because he has diarrhea. I don't know. You get my point. Stuff happens.

Anyway, in statistics we have something called a confidence interval to account for this. A confidence interval shows how certain you are that something could happen. For example, a lot of times we'll use a confidence interval of 95%, meaning that we are 95% sure that this is going to happen. The highest confidence interval we can get is 99.99%, which all but guarantees that something is going to happen, but what about that last .01%? We can never be 100% sure that something is going to happen.

But God can. God doesn't need confidence intervals. When He says something is going to happen, it happens. He's not 90%, 95%, or even 99.99% sure. He's 100% sure. He knows for certain. He is not limited to probability. He doesn't even need it. Probability is useless to God, as He never has to wonder if something is going to happen or not. Why? Because He knows. He already knows. It's just another indicator pointing to how God is waaaaaaay above us. And though it might be nerdy, I still find it pretty cool.

A Breather

I'm back! It's been a very busy year, but I finally finished! I finally received my B.S. in Exercise Science! And in the meantime I've gotten married to ma lady, finished a year long study on static stretching and muscle growth, moved into our first house, started grad school, finished working for cardiac rehab, and started working personal training! Woo. I can breathe now.

Things that Blow My Mind

I've been taking a lot of core science classes lately (one of the reasons I have barely any free time). I've always thought science was interesting. It was cool to see how things work, how you can fix it when it's wrong, and just to see the design and beauty behind everything. Just looking at a little seed and realizing it has the potential to become a gigantic oak is awesome. As I continued to read and study over this past year, I began to make a list of all the amazing things that I was learning about with an inherent design, beauty, and complexity that clearly point to a creator. Here are just a few.

• Golgi tendon organs - these are really cool little 'safety switches', if you will, we have in our muscles right near where the tendon ties the muscle to the bone. GTOs measure the tension in each of your muscles. If the tension ever gets too great, such as when you're about to cause damage to your muscle, the GTOs send out a signal that causes the muscle at risk to relax, and the antagonist muscle (the muscle that controls the reverse movement)  to contract, thereby protecting you from injury. 
• The healing process - the number of different things that happen when you accidentally cut your hand is crazy. All kinds of different chemical messengers are released when the body senses there is an injury, that causes to body to respond immediately. One of the coolest things to me involves your thrombocytes (platelets). These are the little guys that cause your blood to clot. What's crazy is how these guys don't start to clot until they are activated by the chemicals released by tissue damage. If they did just randomly clot, we'd end up with random blood clots and die.
• Elements - that's a link to the periodic table, every element known to man. These elements are the building blocks of our world. Our world is made of these elements. Thinking about how there is life, intelligence, humor, art, etc. in our world, while simultaneously thinking about how everything is made of these elements blows my mind. 
• Cellular machinery - there's so many examples I could give here. Bacterial flagellum, DNA transcription, viruses, the list goes on. One of my favorites (and to be honest, I don't know a ton) is kinesin. Kinesin is a little protein that's involved in a couple of different processes, including cellular transport. Take a look at this, and judge for yourself if this should make the list or not. That little thing is cool!
• Water - this stuff is crazy. Not only is it essential for pretty much all life on our planet, but compared to other liquids, it's pretty unique. Typically, liquids shrink when they freeze. Not so with water. When water freezes it expands. This makes ice less dense, causing ice to float on top of water. Because ice floats, it covers the top of the water when a lake, pond, river, etc. freezes. This insulates the water underneath. If ice were more dense than water, ice forming at the top would sink, and the lake would freeze solid, killing almost all aquatic life. 
• Reflexes - not only is it awesome how these crazy reactions actually protect us (think accidentally putting your hand on the stove), but we're designed so that are reflexes are as fast as possible. Reflexes are actually 'stored' in the spine, causing them to be much faster than if they were stored in the brain. 
• Snowflakes - each one is unique. Just look at that thing! How is every single snowflake in Antartica unique, how are they so artistic, and how did they get that way!?                                              
• The electrical conduction system of the heart - a little series of nerves goes through the heart, providing the source of electricity that it needs to keep beating day after day, year after year. The impulse begins up in the top right of the heart at an area known as the sinoatrial (SA) node. If for some reason the SA node gives out another node farther down in the system called the atrioventricular  (AV) node can take over and act as a temporary pacemaker for the heart. Isn't it awesome to see how our hearts have a temporary backup system should something go wrong?
• Valves - the veins in our bodies have valves in them that keep blood from backflowing. Why is this important? Well, just think about the veins in our legs. We spend a lot of time each day on our feet. What if we didn't have these veins? There'd be a lot of excess stress being put on the heart in order to maintain a pressure that could continually pump blood throughout the body. Varicose veins are one example of when these valves malfunction.
• Cells self-destruct mechanism - we only covered this briefly, so I don't understand a lot here, but this is what I understand. Cells have a self-destruct mechanism that they'll activate if they realize that their replication would be dangerous to the body. How this pertains to cancer I'm not really sure. I might need to do a little more studying on this one. 
• How chemical imbalances can actually change our thoughts - take a look at the chemical imbalances in people with schizophrenia, other mental illnesses, and certain types of parasites. It's weird. 
• Buffered blood - our blood has a pH of 7.35 to 7.45. Any deviation from this range can cause serious sickness or death. Fortunately, we have a series of buffering systems for our blood throughout our body, the major one being the carbonic acid-bicarbonate buffer system. If the blood gets too basic, it makes it more acidic, returning it to normal levels, and vice versa. 
• Physics - I'm not a huge fan of physics (I hate the classes, actually), but I have to admit, I can understand why some people are such huge fans of it. Seeing all of the different principles, laws, and equations that govern the world around us can be a little overwhelming, particularly around exam time, but are signs of beauty, thought, and order nonetheless.

I've been wanting to make this post for a while. The level of design, organization, and beauty in our world is astounding. I hope that this post causes you to think about how thorough God was with our world. He thought of everything when He made our universe, and seeing that makes me stand back in awe.

Refreshing

After way too long of a time of being away (Christmas break/mono), I was finally able to go back to juvee again tonight. Enough guys have been in lately to separate back into two pods on Wednesday nights like it used to be, with half of the guys going to the gym, and the other half going to the common area. A group of us went into the common area, and it was awesome. After only a few verses being read the questions started to come in. The guys asked question after question about everything from dreams to evolution to Jesus' coming back. The guys have a sincere interest in what we have to say to them and they demand answers to their questions. This was the first time I've seen the guys open up this much and ask this many questions within the past year. It was awesome, and extremely refreshing. I write this to ask ya'll to continue to pray for a few things:

1. That the guys will continue to come up with more questions, and think about these things over the course of this week, and that we will have sufficiently prepared ourselves to accurately answer their questions. These guys have a sincere interest in God. Pray that He gives them an insatiable curiosity about Him. 
2. That God will open these guys hearts to what we have to say, and that they may respond to Him. 
3. One of the guys (probably around 14 years old) asked us to pray for a safe delivery of his two little babies on the way. They're three months apart. 
4. These guys would also like everyone to pray for their families. Seeing your son in a detention center isn't the easiest thing out there to watch.
5. Pray for Marjun. He's speaking next week. 

Please continue to keep these guys in prayer. God's doing awesome things in there, as He's been doing all along, and pray that He continues to do even more.