Passion Toronto...

Passion was an awesome night! It was a great night, not only because of the awesome worship time led by Charlie, Chris and David, not only because we were all able to freely worship and express our love for the Almighty One with all the brothers and sisters from different campus. It was an awesome night because God is here, in Toronto, in Ontario, in Canada, and He wants to use us to serve Him and glorify Him!

What a great reminder from Louie, when he mentioned how God is BIG...kind of similar to what I wrote about Horton and the Whos the previous post. But I don't know how many of you does this, but for me, there have been many times where I just feel that what I did simply can't be forgiven, and you know what, He still loves us. Despite being the HUGE and totally awesome God that He is, He can still call each of us by name, small and tiny indivudal, and loves us to the point that its beyond imagination. It was also a great reminder that God KNOWS, He doesn't need us to tell Him what to do, give Him advice etc etc, it is US that needs to do less talking, and more listening. Our passion should not be for some earthly things, but for His name and His renown.

Finding God in Seussical?!?!

Ok, here is the deal. Been awake for ages working on two papers which I must complete or else I wouldn't be able to go to Passions tomorrow (well, today). Finished in a few mins ago, and seeing it being 6:40, instead of sleeping for 1 hour and waking up for class, I decided to come on here to kill time. Well, not kill, but you get the point.

So I headed out to watch Seussica the Musical with one of my friends from UW last week. For thse who don't know, Seussical the Musical is a musical that is based of the many works of Dr. Seuss. Now the reason I decided to go, was I wanted to see how a semi-pro production compared to the high school productions we did last year. I won't go into how they compared, but when I was thinking back to the actual musical, there was a few things that I noticed. Seeing how there is "finding God in Harry Potter", "finding God in Lord of the Rings", I figured, lets write a "finding God in Seussical". Now I cannot write a full book on it, but I can write a few paragraphs with some of my thoughts on it.

In the musical, "Whoville", is a planet which is as small as a speck dust, and those living in Whoville are known as The Whos. When I think back, I relate us as human beings on earth as those Whos in Whoville (Earth). When Whoville was falling through the air, and was caught by Horton the Elephant, Horton took the role of "God". Now Horton, being the size of an elephant, did not have to do anything with Whoville. He could've simply let them fall to the ground until someone steps on it. But he chose to catch them and take care of them. When Horton lost Whoville, he searched and searched, determined to search until it was found. Now thinking about it, Horton is very much like God sometimes. We are so small compared to God, so small we are even smaller then a speck of dust, but God chooses to love us, care for us, listen to us. When we are lost, He doesn't let us wonder astray, He goes and search for us, until the day we are found and are back with Him.

At the same time, the various animals and other characters in Seussical mocked Horto for taking care of a speck of dust, and wanted to take Whoville away from Horton. No matter what was going on, Horton held on to the Whos. Similarly, many times in life, we are tempted with different things in various situations, God never leaves us. It is Satan who tries to draw us away from God, tempting us to do things that does not glorify God.

Finally, there are those who lives among us, despite living on "Whoville", forgets the reason he/she is there. Those who go astray, does not necessary go off because they choose to, it may be simply due to things happening in life that leads them down the wrong path, or something happened and they need support. It is at that time when brothers and sisters come in, lends a hand, and support the individual.

I don't know if any of this made sense at all, especially if you have never seen the play. Even if you have, I doubt any of this will make sense since it is written slightly before 7am. But either way, I just wanted to get that little bit off my chest.

Now...I promise my sports segment will be short. I got to leave some for this blog even though I do have a primary sports blog on a sports website now. Ask me if you are interested in reading that blog.

Cooler Talk:
- classic case of salary dump, Josh Beckett and Mike Lowell to the Red Sox for essentially nothing, but the salary the Red Sox will be picking up also mean they can also say goodbye to Johnny Damon
- scary incident in Detroit last night. Jiri Fischer collapsed on the bench in the middle of the game. hats off the the NHL for cancelling the game. it made no sense for them to continue, when the minds of the players and the fans was obviously with Fischer.

Thats it for today. I will try to update this more often, but I've been saying that for awhile, so we'll see what happens.

Stress-free or care-free

I just realized how long it has been since one of my posts that is actually something worth posting other then reminders for myself or lists of stuff to do and what not. So I've been doing alot of thinking and writing and reading lately, and also with talking to a few friends, I've realized I'm an extremely weird person. Well, more like weird-case in terms of study and school wise. Let me put it this way, it seems like I'm the type of person who is never completely on track with my work, I always fall behind, I always slack off, but I get my work done. I rarely get stressed out, even before big tests or exams, I hardly ever study hard for any tests or exams, and my mark shows. Depending on who you are (the reader), my mark could be horrendous (hi mom, dad, people who get 90s, you see the pattern), or my mark could be excellent with the work and effort I put in. Now I hear people often stressing out about how they did on a test, always thinking back and talking ALOT with others about a particular question, I have always been the one who will check the textbook for a question and the answer, and leave it, I always avoid talking about a test/exam until I get it back. While I see everyone around me stressing out about a particular exam, I go on about my life. I would study, do my reading, but I won't be stressing out to a point of close to having a breakdown. When I need to do my papers, its either always do it VERY early, or the last couple of days before its due. Sometimes I would do bits and pieces of it over a period of time, but thats very rare. But when it comes down to crunch time, I get my work done. But putting myself in that crunch time work mode is the hard part. When exams and tests comes around, I'm in the same boat. I would study, do my reading, go over course notes and matierals, do my practice exams, redo the parts I have difficulty on, and move on. Others have commented I do not prepare at all, others have said I do not prepare enough, but I know for one thing, never has anyone said I am too well prepared. Which leads to another question, do I really not care about my results, or am I just not "programmed" to be the type that stresses out. I think its a combination of both among other variables. I choose not to stress myself out, knowing it won't help me at all, but I also acknowledge the fact that there have been times when I have "dogged" it. One thing is for sure, I am a rare breed in today's society where everyone seems to be stressing over one thing or another at any given time.

While I do not know the purpose of this blog, nor do I know the reason I wrote this, it helped me put my mind off studying and reading psychology for 10 minutes =D


Now a Wesley "long" blog MUST contain some sports (almost all baseball) talk, so here it goes.
-rumour has it former Jays GM Pat Gillick offered JP Bobby Abreu for Vernon Wells. Interesting offer, but given the fact that Abreu is older, and has more money left on his contract, Wells should be staying put.
-another rumour, it seems the Jays are front runners for the services of AJ Burnett, but with as many as 22 teams competiting for his services. it looks certain his services will not come cheaper than 10 million a season for at least 3-4 seaons
-one of the most interesting off-season for the Jays in awhile, this off-season could possibly "make or break" the Jays future in the next couple of years. with boston having its own troubles with the GM vacancy and possibility of losing a few key players, and the Evil Empire looking as weak as ever, this upcoming 2006 season could be the season the Jays make a push towards the playoffs. that being said, we are still a couple of players away.
-o'dog on his way out? interesting twist, blue jays reacquiring versatile IF John MacDonald. with 6 players and 4 IF spots available, it seems inevitable that one player will be moved. it seems it will be o'dog being moved to lure a power bat and having hill take over 2B. it will not be a popular trade if it happens, as o'dog is one of the more popular player, but "quality must be traded to acquire quality"
-looks like thome will be headed to an AL team. even though the phillies are not actively shopping jim thome, i'm guessing if the right opportunity came along, the DH slot in an AL team would be a perfect fit for him. only if his contract wasn't so large, maybe philly would swallow up parts of it...wells, followed by thome
-delgado on the block. interesting to see trade rumour going on regarding delgado's future. one year after leaving the jays, seems like typical toronto media to bring up the idea of bring him back to hit behind wells and florida carry part of the pay. highly unlikely in my opinion. JP made it very clear he wanted to unload delgado's contract when he arrived, it seems unlikely he would bring him back.
-personal sports pet-peeve, why must all these armchair GMs bring up ridiculous trade and write it as a rumour? you know the ones where you will have their favourite team getting rid of a player they don't want, and in return getting a player every team wants to get in return. i mean if toronto wants to trade eric hinske, you will not have the other 29 teams asking for his price, so what makes those "armchair GMs" thinking hinske plus batista will get you a bobby abreu?

Now that my sports part is as long as my "blog" part, i think it is time for me to wrap it up and go back to psych

Reading List

John Eldredge - Waking the Dead
Lynn Austin - Gods and Kings
Jonathan Eig - Luckiest Man (The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig)
Michael Craig - The Professor, The Banker, and The Suicide King
Buzz Bissinger - Three Nights in August (Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager)

AND maybe catching up for reading for school.