Boasting About Tomorrow

Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit"-yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

James 4:13-17

There is so much depth to these five verses. In the big picture, do we include God in all of our plans? Do we include him in our career or educational plans? Do we pray about the path He wants us to take?  When we make plans and exclude God, no matter what the plans are, it is as if we are boasting in our own abilities.

Verses 13 and 14 refer to making future plans for prosperity without consulting God. Even if the plans are honorable and righteous, God may have other ideas. Our lives are but a blink of God's eye, "a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes." God wants us to consult with Him for all plans.

I plan ahead.  If I do not have the next step or two thought out before I get to them, I feel behind and unorganized.  However, God does not work this way.  Ever since I gave Him full rights to my life, I cannot seem to plan anything too far in advance.  He is the ultimate schedule shifter.  James notes, "you do not know what tomorrow will bring."  I have to remind myself of this.  Life throws sudden changes at you.  Yes, I still plan ahead to the best of my ability, but I now make flexible plans instead of rigid ones.  This is one way I submit my life to God, by giving Him free reign to jumble my schedule.  In the end, I trust God has a better idea of what I should do with my life than I do since He sees the entire picture.

I remind myself that God has a plan for me in my prayers.  I begin by asking God to forgive me of my sins, then I ask Him to guide me down the path He has chosen for me before asking Him to bless my family and friends.  I pray for guidance down the path God has chosen for me, because I know it is not an easy path.  In Matthew 7:13-14, Jesus says, "Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.  For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few."

I've learned to use verse 15 in all planning. "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." There is so much each of us wants to do with what time we have left in our lives, right? Personally, I would love to travel to Europe again, write a book, get in better shape, and be healthier. With each thing I want do to, I pray about it and say, "Lord, if it is Your will that I do this, then I will do it."

Psalm 37:4 states: Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart. This is a Scripture of hope.  We think, "I love the Lord and so He will give me whatever my heart desires." That sounds great and all, but what about this:  if we love the Lord and become very close and intimate with Him, very soon His desires become the desire of our hearts. Ask the Lord if your desire is His will and you may find that His will truly becomes your desire.

Verses 16-17 remind us that boasting in our arrogance is evil, and goes on to say that if we know the right thing to do and fail to do it, we are sinning.  If the Lord places something upon your heart, and you do something else instead, verse 17 tells us that it is sin.  In 2 Corinthians 1:12, Paul writes, "For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience, that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you."

Boast in the Lord and proclaim to everyone: "My God has blessed me abundantly, and He directs my path."  In Matthew 5:6, Jesus said: "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled." There is satisfaction in doing God's will. To actually do good is filling food. The more we eat the keener our appetite becomes. Dissatisfaction is a sure sign that we are not eagerly doing the will of God. It is a symptom of spiritual immaturity. The only way to discover the point of Christ's teaching is to practice it. The only way to godly contentment is to hunger and thirst after righteousness.

Moment of Zen: Boat Books

Who Dat Whodunnit

Who Dat Whodunnit continues the Scott Bradley series. No longer a go-go boy in the French Quarter but still involved in an unorthodox relationship even by gay standards, he is now a professional investigator in business with with his two partners. I thought I had this one figured out, but, by the end of the book I found I couldn't have been more off base. This is yet another great mystery by my favorite author Greg Herren.  Easy reading, great plot development, familiar characters that feel like old friends, so if you've read the Scotty Bradley Mysteries, and I suggest you read them in order, you will love this one.  If you are a long-time fan of the New Orleans Saints, like I am, then you will absolutely love this book, which is part homage to the Saints' Super Bowl victory.

The Saints’ victory in the playoffs and a ticket to the Super Bowl just prior to the start of Carnival season has everyone in New Orleans floating on Cloud Nine. But for Scotty Bradley, Carnival looks like it’s going to be grim yet again when his estranged cousin Jared—who plays for the Saints—becomes the number one suspect in the murder of his girlfriend, dethroned former Miss Louisiana Tara Bourgeouis. Scotty’s not entirely convinced his cousin isn’t the killer, but when he starts digging around into the homophobic beauty queen’s sordid life, he finds that any number of people wanted her dead. With the help of his friends and family, he plunges deeper and deeper into Tara’s tawdry world of sex tapes, fundamentalist fascists, and mind-boggling secrets—secrets some are willing to kill to keep! 

Do You Need A Rounder Bum?

A few weeks ago, I received an email from a representative of Rounderbum Underwear.  The rep asked if she could send me a pair of Rounderbum underwear to try out and write a review of them.  First of all, I have to admit that I almost have a fetish for underwear.  Whether anyone else thinks a pair of underwear looks good on me, it is definitely an ego boost when I put on a sexy pair of underwear.  They just make me feel better. Also, i have always wanted to try a pair of butt enhancing underwear to see if it would actually work and make my rather flat behind look rounder.  So, when I was contacted by Rounderbum, I said that I would love to test out their underwear and write a review.

First, a little bit about Rounderbum.  With a growing trend of men who take care of their appearance, Rounderbum created a men's line specially for those who want to look more attractive, athletic and are in need of body enhancing underwear. 

Rounderbum uses hidden padding made of flexible polyurethane that conforms to every body shape in some styles. Other styles utilize hidden bands of technology that lifts with a more subtle and discreet effect. Whether padding or hidden bands are used, Rounderbum's cutting edge design is carefully made by a patented manufacturing technology that blends discretely with the body. 

I chose the ROUNDERBUM BASIC PADDED TRUNK to give a try.  They have a modern and low cut design that gives more volume and a rounder shape to the glutes. Since I have always had a small butt and was looking for something natural-looking, this product seemed to suit the purpose I was looking for. This product is pretty amazing! You can wear anything and nobody would ever know that you have pads, even if they were to grab you! LOL! I was pleased with the results.  They did provide me with a beefier behind and were extremely comfortable.  It was definitely worth the experience.

Everyone’s a Biblical Literalist Until You Bring Up Gluttony

I came across a link to this on Dan in OKC and decide it was probably worth reading. After reading the blog post from Rachel Held Evans, I wanted to share it with my readers as well. Tell me what you think.

…Or divorce, or gossip, or slavery, or head coverings, or Jesus' teachings on nonviolence, or the "abomination" of eating shellfish and the hell-worthy sin of calling other people idiots.
Then we need a little context.
Then we need a little grace.
Then we need a little room to disagree.
I got to thinking about this after I was criticized last week for my post about loving gay kids unconditionally. Some folks were very upset that I had the audacity write an entire blog post about putting a stop to LGBT bullying without including a Bible-based condemnation of LGBT people, or at least a theological discussion around the issue of homosexuality and Scripture.
Bible verses were quoted.  Open letters were written. End Times predictions were made.  Pillows in my home were thrown record distances.
It's funny. Yesterday, in Sunday Superlatives, I included a quote from Mark Twain in which he referred to a snake oil salesman as an "idiot," but no one left an angry comment warning me of hell based on Jesus' teaching in Matthew 5:22 that "if you call someone an idiot, you are in danger of being brought before the court; and if you curse someone, you are in danger of the fires of hell."
Nor did anyone raise any biblical objections regarding gluttony a few weeks ago when I casually mentioned overdosing on Sweet Frog frozen yogurt (strawberry, with a pile of chocolate chips, Oreo crumbs, and chocolate animal crackers on top, if you must know), or about materialism when I shared pictures of our new car. (Hey, for some people, a brand new Honda Civic is pretty flashy.)
And in spite of the flood of emails I get each week condemning my support of women in ministry, I've never received so much as an open letter criticizing my refusal to wear a head covering, even though my Web site is full of photographic evidence of what the apostle Paul calls a "disgrace" in 1 Corinthians 11:6.
We may laugh at these examples or dismiss them silly, but the biblical language employed in these contexts is actually pretty strong: eating shellfish is an abomination, a bare head is a disgrace, gossips will not inherit the kingdom of God, careless words are punishable by hell, guys who leer at women should gouge out their eyes.
Heck, you could make a pretty good biblical case for gluttony being a "lifestyle sin" that has been normalized by our culture of "Supersized" portions and overflowing buffet lines, starting with passages like Philippians 3:19 ("their god is their belly"), Psalm 78: 18 ("they tested God in their heart by demanding the food they craved"), Proverbs 23:20 ("be not among drunkards or among gluttonous eaters of meat"), Proverbs 23:2 ("put a knife to your throat if you are given to appetite"), or better yet, Ezekiel 16:49 ("Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.")
Yet you don't see weigh-ins preceding baptisms or people holding "God Hates Gluttons" signs outside the den of iniquity that is Ryan's Steakhouse.
And we haven't even touched on materialism, or the fact that on the day I stuffed my face with froyo, 30,000 kids died from preventable diseases and many more went hungry. 
It seems the more ubiquitous the biblical violation, the more invisible it becomes.
So why do so many Christians focus on the so-called "clobber verses" related to homosexuality while ignoring "clobber verses" related to gluttony or greed, head coverings or divorce?  Why is homosexuality the great biblical debate of this decade and not slavery, (as it once was) or the increasing problem of materialism and inequity? Why do so many advocate making gay marriage illegal but not divorce, when Jesus never referenced the former but spoke quite negatively about the latter?
While there are certainly important hermeneutical and cultural issues at play, I can't help but wonder if something more nefarious is also at work.  I can't help but wonder if biblical condemnation is often a numbers game.
Though it affects more of us than we tend to realize, statistically, homosexuality affects far fewer of us than gluttony, materialism, or divorce. And as Jesus pointed out so often in his ministry, we like to focus on the biblical violations (real or perceived) of the minority rather than our own.  
In short, we like to gang up.  We like to fashion weapons out of the verses that affect us the least and then "clobber" the minority with them. Or better yet, conjure up some saccharine language about speaking the truth in love before breaking out our spec-removing tweezers to help get our minds off of these uncomfortable logs in our own eyes.
We see this in the story of the religious leaders who ganged up on the woman caught in adultery. She was such an easy target: a woman, probably poor, disempowered, and charged with the go-to favorite of the self-righteous—sexual sin.   When they brought her to Jesus, they were using her as an example to test him, to see how "biblical" his response to her would be. (See Deuteronomy 22:23-14.)  Jesus knelt down and scribbled in the sand before saying, "He who is without sin can cast the first stone." They dropped their stones.
While self-righteousness avoidance certainly affects our selective literalism , we also have good reasons for not condemning one another for the more ubiquitous biblical violations (again, real or perceived) in our culture.
It's hard for me to flatly condemn divorce, for example, when I know of several women whose lives, and the lives of their children, may have been saved by it, or when I hear from people who tell me they would have rather come from a broken home than grown up in one. We have a natural revulsion to the idea of checking people's BMI before accepting them into the Church, especially when obesity is not necessarily reflective of gluttony (often, in this country, it is a result of poverty), and when we know from our own experiences or the experiences of those we love that an unhealthy weight can result from a variety of factors—from genetics to psychological components—and when some of our favorite people in the world (or when we ourselves) wrestle with a complicated relationship with food, whether it's through overeating or under-eating.  
Again, it's a numbers game. It's hard to "other" the people we know and love the most. It's become a cliché, but everything changes when it's your brother or sister who gets divorced, when it's your son or daughter who is gay, when it's your best friend who struggles with addiction, when it's your husband or wife asking some good questions about Christianity you never thought about before.  Our relationships have a tendency to destroy our categories, to melt black and white into gray, and I don't think God is disappointed or threatened by this. I think God expects it. It happened to Peter when he encountered Corneilus and Philip when he encountered the Ehtiopian eunuch. Suddenly it became a lot harder to label your friends "unclean" or "unworthy." 
 After all, when God became flesh and lived among us, the religious accused him of hanging out with "sinners" (even gluttons!) never realizing that this was the whole point, that there were only "sinners" to hang out with.
Of course, all of this raises questions about when it's right or wrong to "call out" sin, and I confess I'm no good at sorting that out. I'm as hypocritical as the next person, judgmental of those I deem judgmental, self-righteous, indulgent, a gossip, too careless with my words, too quick to get angry at certain people with certain theological views, too easily seduced by money and notoriety and…my favorite things in the whole entire world…AWARDSI LISTS! ACCOLADES!
I too need reminding that, for all my big talk about a "Christocentric hermeneutic," more often than not, I'm following a "Rachelcentric hermeneutic" when I read the Bible, complete with my own biases, preferences, insecurities, and opinions guiding how I "pick and choose." (Oh I can wield every Bible verse that challenges Calvinism like a knife, but I'd rather not talk about how I'm actually applying the Sermon on the Mount to my life or what I really think about enemy-love.) 
Should we stop discussing which biblical instructions apply today and how we ought to apply them? Certainly not. Should we remain silent when the vulnerable are oppressed and exploited or when injustice and immorality pervades our culture? No. Do we abandon our convictions about what the Bible says is sin? No, not even when we disagree on that. Are rhetorical questions overused in blog posts? Yes.
But it's good to remind ourselves now and then that just as Southern slaveholders had a vested interest in interpreting Colossians 3:22 literally, so we tend to "pick and choose" to our own advantage. 
And when we make separate categories for the "real sinners," when we reduce our fellow human beings to theological issues up for constant debate who cannot even be told they are loved without qualifiers, when our hermeneutic conveniently renders others the problem and us the heroes, maybe it's time to sit across a table and get to know one another a little better, to break up some categories and make some new friends. Maybe it's time to drop our stones for a while and pass the bread.
…healthy, whole grain, organic bread, of course.

In Memoriam

In Memoriam, [To Sleep I give my powers away]

Lord Alfred Tennyson

To Sleep I give my powers away;

    My will is bondsman to the dark;

    I sit within a helmless bark,

And with my heart I muse and say:

O heart, how fares it with thee now,

    That thou should fail from thy desire,

    Who scarcely darest to inquire,

"What is it makes me beat so low?"

Something it is which thou hast lost,

    Some pleasure from thine early years.

    Break thou deep vase of chilling tears,

That grief hath shaken into frost!

Such clouds of nameless trouble cross

    All night below the darkened eyes;

    With morning wakes the will, and cries,

"Thou shalt not be the fool of loss."

"In Memoriam" consists of 131 smaller poems of varying length, of which the above poem is an excerpt. Tennyson wrote "In Memoriam" after he learned that his beloved friend Arthur Henry Hallam had died suddenly and unexpectedly of a fever at the age of 22. Hallam was not only the poet's closest friend and confidante, but also the fiancé of his sister. After learning of Hallam's death, Tennyson was overwhelmed with doubts about the meaning of life and the significance of man's existence. He composed the short poems that comprise "In Memoriam" over the course of seventeen years (1833-1849) with no intention of weaving them together, though he ultimately published them as a single lengthy poem in 1850.

A year ago today, my beloved Grandmama passed away.  I wanted to post a poem that would be in memory of her.  The above poem is not perfect for this purpose, but it works to an extent.  I mourn Grandmama's life each day.  Last night I read the post I did last year right after she died.  I sat and cried.  I couldn't help myself.  Then I read the loving comments of my readers, and my spirits were lifted a little.  Though she is now gone, she will forever live in my heart. 

Country Music

Country music has been the buzz on many gay sites and blogs because of the hot little number by Steve Grand, which I posted about on Friday.  As I mentioned on Friday, I went to an Alabama concert on Friday night.  Alabama has been around for forty years, and my aunt, who I went with has been seeing them in concert, every time they come around, for thirty of those years.  To say she's a fan might be an understatement.  I have one more concert to go to with my aunt on Thursday, more on that in a moment.  My aunt s a huge country music fan, and I have, since I was a kid, went along to concerts with her so she didn't go alone.  My aunt is a wonderful woman, who always took my sister and I on different vacations each summer.  She is keeping pretty busy this month, and it often means me going along.  There is a reason for this.  You see tomorrow will be a year since her mother and my Grandmama died.  Her father and my Granddaddy died at the end of July twelve years ago.  For these reasons, July is a difficult month for my family, and especially for my aunt, who took care of my grandparents in their waning years.  When I started writing this post, I had not meant for it to be such a downer, so I am going to make a radical shift back to the topic of country music.

The Alabama concert was a wonderful and surprising event.  I was surprised by the number of young people at the concert.  Alabama hasn't toured in years, and it has been quite a while since they put out an album, but the teenagers and twenty-somethings seem to love them.  Three cute teenage boys were sitting behind us.  One of them knew the words and sang along to every song that Alabama sang.  I was impressed.  (If I were one to have a foot fetish, his bare feet propped next to me for a good part of the night probably would have caused a spontaneous orgasm, lol.)  One other surprise that I noticed in the crowd was a hot guy in cut-off jean shorts (Daisy Duke short), button down shirt with the sleeves ripped off, boots and a cowboy hat.  He was smokin' hot in a slutty gay boy kind of way.  Whether he was gay, lost a bet, or just has a quirky sense of fashion, this hot little number was quite the looker.  I'd loved to have snuck off with him and had my way with him, but alas, I only got to admire him from afar.

The opening act was another surprise.  Aaron Parker, who incidentally I had never heard of, was the hot little cowboy who opened up for Alabama.   His picture is above.  Be forewarned, my description of him might be a little raunchy.  First of all, Mr. Parker is packing some major meat.  His bulge was big enough to be noticeable from where I was sitting on the second level, maybe two hundred yards away. He also had a tight little butt that was drool worthy.  It was definitely fun to watch him continuously bump and grind one of his band mates, see picture above.  His music was okay, and with Alabama's help, he might have a good career ahead of him.  Being the opening act for a band like Alabama has to be difficult considering how great of a band they are and that people were there to see them and not him, but he was fun to watch.  Most likely, he was chosen because of his song, "Anything Alabama."

Alabama came on afterward and were fantastic.  They sang "Love in the First Degree," "The Closer You Get," "High Cotton," "Feels So Right," "Roll On (Eighteen Wheeler)," "Song of the South," "The Fans," "Tennessee River," "Dancin', Shaggin' on the Boulevard," and of course, no night would be complete without "Mountain Music" and "My Home's in Alabama."  Their song list was no surprise, but it was what everyone came to see.  The biggest surprise of the night was yet to come.  Randy Owens, the lead singer of Alabama, announced that they would have a new album coming out soon.  It will be the first studio album since 2001.  Yet that was really not what caused to crowd to go wild.  That was when Owens announced that he was bringing out someone who he had been told several years ago would be a star.  He then welcomed to the stage Luke Bryan, the CMA Entertainer of the Year.  I happen to be a big fan of Luke Bryan.  I think that he is incredibly sexy.  I stood and cheered like everyone else, and "Little Joe" stood up at attention as well, if you know what I mean, lol.

The concert I will be going to Thursday night is a Luke Bryan concert in Birmingham.  I can't wait to see this sexy man in action again.  I fell in love with Luke Bryan the first time I saw his video for "All My Friends Say."  I've been a fan ever since and have wanted to see him in concert.  He came to Montgomery a few years ago, but because of the circumstances at the time, I was not able to go.  Now I am finally able to go, and I can't wait.  Georgia-Florida Line and Thompson Square will be the opening acts on Thursday night.

Warning Against Worldliness

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, "He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us"? But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?

James 4:1-12

When was the last time you heard a sermon warning against worldliness? I suspect for most believers it would have been a very long time indeed. There are several reasons for this. Likely it is because we are in fact very worldly, and we don't like to speak to our particular sins, so we just drift along. Also, you are particularly unlikely to hear a sermon, or in this case read a Bible study, about worldliness and gay Christians.  First of all, most of us would start squirming in our chairs.  My first thought would be, "This can't be good."  The reason for this is that as gay Christians most of our naysayers consider homosexuality to be a sin of worldliness.  That as gay Christians, we want to sin, be a part of this hedonistic culture, and call ourselves Christians.  But I hope that if you are one of those who regularly follow my Sunday posts, then you will know that is not the message I will deliver here.  I write these posts as both Bible studies and as a way to deliver the truth.  Therefore, I want to study this passage in a way that brings to light the kind of worldliness that applies to LGBT Christians.

There is also another reason Christians don't tend to dwell on worldliness. We have tended to misunderstand what the warnings against worldliness actually mean, and/or have quite distorted the actual biblical teaching on this. That is, we have often thought that worldliness means having nothing to do with this material world altogether.  Or, as LGBT Christians we have been branded as worldly people because too many people believe that homosexuality is a choice.  The truth is, as I believe it (and I do believe that God helped me understand this after much prayer and meditation), God created us to be gay.  He had a purpose for us.  Whatever, that purpose is, we cannot deny God for creating us or leading us down this path.  We are all God's children and have his undying and eternal love.

James is not the only one to warn about worldliness.

John: 1 John 2:15-17 - Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.

Paul: Ephesians 2:1-3 - And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

In the text from James above, these verses make me think of the person who tries to live in both the world and in the kingdom. It can't be done. Living in the kingdom means the Spirit dwells within us, and God reigns over us. It must be all or nothing. In Matthew 6:24, Jesus says, "No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other."  Therefor, ask yourself to describe you in one word.  What would you say?  If you are worldly, then your answer might be your profession or an adjective describing how you feel or act, but truthfully, the answer should be very simple: Christian.  Whatever else you are, however else you might describe yourself, it is being a Christian that should come first.

James finishes this section of scripture we are examining with a warning about verbally attacking or slandering our brother. When we do this, we are not only attacking, but judging his character. In doing so, we are speaking out against and judging the law. Think about it. We are to love our Lord God with all of our heart, soul, strength and might; and to love our neighbor as ourselves. When we speak against our brother, we are not loving our neighbor as ourselves, and might as well throw the whole commandment out the window.

"...do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.... Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good." Romans 12:2, 9

As believers, we are not of the world. Worldliness is not a kingdom attribute.

If you're wondering if a behavior or activity is worldly, ask yourself these questions:

• Does this activity, thing, pursuit take my heart away from God?
• Does it sabotage my communion with God and my walk in the Spirit?
• Does it undermine or seek to displace my relationship to Christ as the power of my life?
• Does it attempt (is it designed) to do so?
• Does it feed the self-centered, appetite-driven, God-hating part of me called the flesh?
• Does it inflame my desire to disobey God's commands?
• Does it produce pride, contention, immorality, or any other behavior contrary to the love of God and the love of others?
• Does it lure me into obsession with what is earthbound and temporal versus what is heavenly and eternal?

In John 18, Jesus answers Pilate by repeating this phrase twice:  My kingdom is not of this world.

If you follow Jesus, then your kingdom is the Kingdom of Heaven, and it is not of this world.

Moment of Zen: Old Pictures

Oh, the history contained in old pictures!

All American Boy

A friend of mine sent me a link to the video below, and I think it's pretty fantastic.  I was raised on country music, in fact I'm going to a concert tonight (the group Alabama).  I wouldn't say I'm a huge country music fan, because I tend to like older country music.  Most of the time when I listen to the radio in the car, I am listening to NPR, not music.  I tend to like funky alternative rock more, but I do like some country music.  When my friend sent me this video, he said, "Since you like country music you are going to enjoy this video.  It's got a surprise twist.  And the singer is so damn gorgeous and so aptly named.  It is making its rounds on gay sites so you might have seen it already."  I had not seen it, but I couldn't pass up an introduction like that.  You guys may have already seen it, if not I hope you will watch it.  Let me know what you think.

Steve Grand  is out to be a country music star, and an out one at that. He’s got the whole package – great voice, musically talented, incredibly hot, and fearless, as you can see in his video for “All American Boy” which he created out of pocket, as he doesn’t have a label yet. The hopelessly romantic singer falls for a guy in a heterosexual relationship in the video. The two spend time together leading to skinny-dipping in a river and a kiss. Unfortunately, the attraction is only held by one of the characters. His lyrics are quite dreamy for his crush “He smiles, his arms around her but his eyes are holding me, just a captive to his wonder, ohh I say we go this road tonight.” Steve produced all his own music, as he does not have a manager or label. He raised funds to pay for everything on his own by playing piano at a local joint and at a church. 

He’s ready to be upfront and honest from the start of his career, "time to be brave. the world does not see change until it sees honesty. I am taking a risk here in many ways, but really there is no choice but to be brave. To not tell this story is to let my soul die. It is all I believe in. It is all I hold dear. We have all longed for someone we can never have… we all have felt that ache for our ‎#allamericanboy.”

Gay country music artists do not have a good track record.  Josey Greenwell ended up recording a pop song, and k.d. lang left country music, at least for the most part.  I love to hear all of them sing, but I love k.d. more as a jazz artist.  She has a beautiful voice.  I hope Josey goes back to his country music roots and finds success, just as I hope Steve Grand has success.

Thank you, Steve Grand, for having the courage to make the music you want and to be a voice for thousands, in a music genre that may not support you.