Some things change, and some don’t. My quotable quotes were interrupted for a while, as I made changes in my role and life…but I hope you find their return to be a pleasant surprise in the future. If this is your first time reading the Quotable Quotes, they are a light-hearted weekly post that I’ve passed onto friends from my own sources (none of that forwarded SPAM email we all love so much).

This week’s quotes are selected contents from John C. Maxwell’s Winning with People

“The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, not the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Five Principles that deal with Trust:
1. The Bedrock Principle: Trust is the foundation of any relationship.
2. The Situation Principle: Never let the situation mean more than the relationship.
3. The Bob Principle: When Bob has a problem with everyone, Bob is usually the problem.
4. The Approachability Principle: Being at ease with ourselves helps others be at ease with us.
5. The Foxhole Principle: When preparing for battle, dig a hole big enough for a friend.

The Bedrock Principle: Am I a Trustworthy Person?
“It is a greater compliment to be trusted than to be loved.” ~ George MacDonald

“A blessed thing it is for any man or woman to have a friend, one human soul whom we can trust utterly, who knows the best and worst of us, and who loves us in spite of all our faults.” ~ Charles Kingsley

1. Trust begins with yourself:
“This above all: To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” ~ William Shakespeare

2. Trust cannot be Compartmentalized:
“One of the realities of life is that if you can’t trust a person at all points, you can’t truly trust him or her at any point.” ~ Cheryl Biehl

What a person will do with you, he’ll also do to you.

3. Trust works like a bank account:
Positive interactions make deposits, and negative ones withdrawl. A positive balance yields a good relationship, a negative balance will keep you from doing business.

What do you do when a person is untrustworthy?
1. Forgive them.
2. Explain that the violation must never happen again.
3. Remember their better moments.
4. Give them opportunities to rebuild trust.

I’m sure you’ve spent at least a couple hours this past month watching intently as the soccer matches of teams from around the world took place in South Africa. For the first time in history, the World Cup is widely available on TV and on the internet…and the world truly is watching.

The games are definitely filled with mixed emotions for me. There are so many excellent players and such great teamwork among the players that I find it thrilling to watch. In my opinion, soccer is the greatest sport out there: it requires an extreme amount of physical endurance to play nonstop for 1.5-2 hours, it demands that people communicate and interact as a team on the fly (rather than being dependent upon direction from coaches every 5 minutes), and grips the attention and devotion of people all across the world like no other sport.

Unfortunately, it also places a lot of authority on the fallible and limited perspective of 3 referees, who are often dishonest, blind, or deceived without any chance of their being a challenge to their decisions…and it reveals the extreme lengths of cheating and dishonesty that players will go to in order to get a call in their team’s favor. No example is more vivid than the most recent game with Ghana and Uruguay, where the Uruguay player used his hand to knock the game-winning goal for Ghana out of the game, causing Uruguay to win. It’s an illegal move: something I would consider far below a player’s character…and yet we’ve seen plenty of character revealing plays in the last few weeks, as teams will do anything to win.

Well, what can I say? I’ll keep watching. I don’t hate it enough to ignore it. Teamwork, endurance, and skill are too amazing not to watch. I just hope that in my life and in my ministry, I continue to get to work in teams that are as good as these World Cup competitors. Success is a team effort: in my life and in the World Cup. I’m grateful for the teams I have had in my life already: a loving family, an amazing church, great schools, great neighbors, and unbelievable friends.

This picture says it all…thanks to historiclols.cheezburger.com

Tomorrow we’ll spend a few hours huddled in a small sanctuary with family and friends, memorializing and saying goodbye to my 16 year old cousin: the victim of a motorcycle accident that claimed his life in a matter of hours, earlier this week.

The events are still so sudden that they seem unreal for everyone, especially for his mother and father. It’s hard to grasp, and hard to justify the way a life so young can end so suddenly in our modern world. Worse yet, it’s difficult for me to see how we can say goodbye to such a special person in a number of hours…it seems that we should spend days processing this and comforting one another.

During this time of thoughts and questions, I am surprised to see the relevance of my studies: I’ve been translating the book of Ruth this month, a book where a mother looses her husband and two sons. Naomi’s reaction is nothing short of ours: she’s bitter, and she blames God for making her that way. It’s situations like this that I believe God is ok with our anger…and he’s ok with us expressing that anger. The important thing is that we keep our lives open to His response. We cannot shut ourselves off to His voice. He is secure enough not to be angry in response. He will reassure us of His kindness, His trustworthyness, and His love until we see Him again.

Times like these remind me of one favorite song, which I’ll share with you in video and in lyrics:

Wilderness: The Supertones

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz3cVQ9LglA[/youtube]

Click Here for Lyrics Read the rest of this entry »

One thing we definitely loose in Christianity from time to time, is our ability to worship God with our architecture. We have some of the most amazing portraits of God’s majesty displayed in buildings our brothers and sisters constructed a hundred years ago. This post from a blogger named bored panda, highlights 50 of the most amazing church buildings across the world. I definitely recommend that you check it out in full, just click the picture or link below:

50 Most Extraordinary Churches