cheers

my guess is that today (happy 4th of July, btw) many people will be raising a glass and declaring "Cheers" to a friend or 2.

have you ever wondered WHY we do that? where did that custom come from?
if so, then read on... or if you've never wondered, but now i've got you curious... just keep reading.

i heard the explanation from my friend Andrew. Andrew is pictured below on the far right of the pic below and his sweet wife Catherine is on my right in the pic. (Andrew Guuru is the Kenya Director for 410 Bridge and i'm privileged to call him my friend.)

Crystal and i got to know Andrew in Kenya working with Karima which is a community he works directly with. This pic was actually in his home near Karima.

Then a couple weeks later Crystal and i were living in the Havilla Children's Home a couple hours away and Andrew came to visit us twice! it was definitely awesome to see a familiar face. even though we had just met Andrew a few weeks earlier, it felt like we had known him a lot longer.

Andrew came over and we played soccer with a lot of the boys at the children's home... but of course we had tea together 1st... as Kenyans always do during a visit.

i think i must have said "cheers" or something like that or we maybe bumped glasses? Andrew asked if i knew where that custom came from... so here's the story.

when someone came over for a visit and their friend served them something to drink there was always a suspicion that their drink could be poisoned in order to kill their "friend". \
not cool.

Apparently this happened a lot, so to keep the host honest the guest would always clang his glass to the glass of his host so that some of his beverage sloshed out into the glass of his host. if the host drank then the guest figured his drink was not poisoned and he could trust his friend.

but then the custom began among GOOD friends who wanted to display trust. if i came to your house and TRUSTED you 100% then i would gently bump my glass to yours NOT letting any slosh into your glass and simply say "CHEERS" showing my absolute trust for you, my friend. trusting that you didn't poison my drink and i'll drink up without any worries.

so, Andrew and i bumped our glasses that day--careful not to let any slosh out into each other's glass--and said "Cheers".

i hope we get to do that again one day. i'm sure we probably will.

5 pieces of great advice

i respect Rick Warren like crazy. i've learned a lot from him and he has an awesome heart. he loves and believes in guys like me, so he's always trying to give "us" great advice. he's very public that he's pouring the rest of his life into the leaders of the next generation. we are thankful.

When a guy like Rick gives specific advice to a guy like me... i try to listen and take it very seriously.

before we get to the 5 pieces of advice i wrote down, i'll start with a somewhat funny honorable mention anecdote he gave that could be some good advice for me and everyone else.
Rick said that he had a “worry can” at the front door and dropped all his crap in there so he wouldn’t take it home to his family. like anything he was worried about he just left it out there and then enjoyed life with his fam. kind of corny, but probably a great idea.

*now, to the 5 pieces of advice:

1            Forget “Time management” & go with “energy management”. We all have the same amount of time but our energy works and comes and goes differently…

[i'm working on this by reading the seminal book on energy management this year.]

2            never stop learning -> learn from everybody! “The person who can’t learn from somebody has an ego problem.” “This may save me years of sideways energy. There’s no point in not learning everything I can from people.”

3            never compare myself -> I can get down OR full of pride. Dangerous. I was never called to compare myself to anybody else. 

I always find peeps who are better to discourage me & always find peeps worse to fill me with pride.

4            Divert daily (know what reenergizes me), withdraw weekly (Sabbath), abandon annually (go away and don’t take my laptop/cell phone with me).

5            never give up

Thanks so much for the great advice, Rick. i'm trying my best to take it to heart.

quotes of the week #43

best quotes of the week:
“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.” – William Penn

“For me, it became hard to read the Bible and walk away as if I had just watched a nice movie. Jesus never seemed to do anything normal.” – Shane Claiborne

“If I diminish you, I diminish myself.” – Desmond Tutu

“He who thinks he leads but has no followers, is only taking a walk.” – John Maxwell

[unfortunately,] “the system works for those with the power and influence to change the system.” [so] “they can’t hear the cry.” – Rob Bell

“It is not easy to challenge the reigning plausibility structure. It is much easier to conform.” – Lesslie Newbigin

“It was the most religious who seemed to get the secret message of Jesus the least, and the least religious who seemed to get it the most.” – Brian McLaren

“Everybody should see kindness in your face, in your eyes, in your smile, in your warm greeting.” – Mother Teresa

“The hope offered to believers is not that we will be a peculiar elite group of people who will escape out of the world, leaving others behind to experience the wrath of God. The hope is rather that by our sacrificial participation in the ever-expanding kingdom, the whole creation will be redeemed.” – Greg Boyd

“If there’s a legitimate indictment of the Church today, it’s that we’re subcultural rather than countercultural.” – Jay Howard

“‘Theology’ and ‘science’ never exist in such a generalized, abstract sense, but always only in quite specific social, historical, and intellectual contexts.” – J. Wentzel van Huyssteen