Tagged

Posted on May 23, 2008 by Jason

So I’ve been tagged by Sunny. Here goes:

*Maybe I should…learn Spanish. I think it’d definitely come in handy on the mission field. I’d also like to learn to cook.

*I love the smell of…almost nothing. I have virtually no sense of smell. I like the smell of gasoline, I guess. Probably because it’s strong enough for me to smell it. I like to think this is some kind of superpower the Lord gave me since I’ve changed a couple thousand diapers in the last 4 years.

*People would say that I…I honestly have no idea what most people think of me. I’m sure some people think I’m a swell guy; and I know of several people who really aren’t fond of me at all.

*I don’t understand why…people think Will Ferrell is funny. I just don’t get it. (Although “I Need More Cowbell” may be my favorite SNL skit ever.)

*When I wake up in the morning…I pop right out of bed and attack the day. I didn’t used to be this way. I used to hit the snooze button several times before waking up. When I started working at Madison Academy, I had to wake up by about 6:15 every morning and somewhere along the way, I sort of lost the ability to sleep much past 7:00am. Two or three minutes after waking up, I’m thinking about what I need to get done that day.

*I lost my will power to…keep my 2007 New Year’s Resolution to not eat fried foods and not drink Mountain Dew. I think I made it a couple of months before caving in.

*Life is wonderful with…the abiding peace of God. I know that even in the worst of circumstances, He is faithful and ever present. He promises to never leave me nor forsake me. And I believe Him.

*My past made me…realize that God never lets go. And He is more gracious than I was led to believe.

*I get annoyed when…people misunderstand me. Also when people read over my shoulder.

*Parties are not…a lot of fun for an introvert like me. I prefer smaller gatherings.

*Dogs are…my favorite! (I miss our cocker spaniel, Andy.)

*Cats are…arrogant.

*Tomorrow I am going to…attempt to drive 6 hours to the beach with three kids in tow. Pray for me.

*I have a low tolerance for…chick flicks. And meatloaf. And double standards.

*I’m totally terrified of…I don’t really like to talk about the things I’m afraid of. So I’m not answering this one.

*I wonder why I thought my life would be…I’ve never had any assumptions about how my life was going to be, so I don’t know how to answer this one either.

*Never in my life…have I been as content as I am right now.

*High school was something that…I really enjoyed. I had some great friends that made high school a blast. My only regret is that I didn’t take my faith as seriously then.

*When I’m nervous…I don’t really get nervous that much. On the weeks that I preach, I feel a shot of adrenaline just before I walk to the pulpit, which I guess helps combat nervousness.

*Take my advice…LOST is the best television show of all-time.

*Making my bed is…a myth.

*I’m almost always…reading.

*I’m addicted to…Mountain Dew. And books. Especially Bibles. Seriously, I have this thing for Bibles; I have them in all different translations, different sizes. NIV, ESV, TNIV, NASB, KJV, NRSV, NASB Update, CEV, NLT, The Message, Pocket Bibles, Study Bibles, Journaling Bibles, Thinline Bibles. I have some at my office at church, some at my home office, and I always have one or two in my bag. My thing now is I’m searching for a good TNIV / Message Parallel Bible. And anytime I’m at LifeWay or Barnes & Noble, I have to just walk through and see what Bibles they have.

*I want someone…to make fuel-efficient vehicles more affordable.

I’m supposed to tag someone else, so I’m tagging Lane.

Posted in Blogging, Sunny | 2 Comments

Thirty!

Posted on May 22, 2008 by Jason

Today my sweet wife turns thirty years old. I know she’s a little weirded out by the thought of entering a new “decade”, but I’ve assured her that thirty is the new twenty. Or something like that. 

Sunny and I started dating in the spring of 1995. She was a junior in high school and I was just finishing up my senior year. We began as friends and even through our dating and married years, our friendship has been one of the things I’ve appreciated the most about our relationship. Early on, I was drawn to Sunny for her warmth, her compassion, her purity of spirit, and her sincerity. I had dated other girls before; none of them made me want to be a better person. Sunny did. 

As I look back over the years, it’s clear to me that God brought Sunny into my life when I needed her the most. After both of my parents died when I was very young, I went through a dark period of time where I really doubted the love of God. By loving me unconditionally, Sunny became a conduit of God’s love in my life. By doing that, she became an incarnation of the Gospel for me; I can honestly say that she has brought nothing but “Good News” into my life over the past 13 years. 
Sunny, I hope this birthday is full of blessings for you. You deserve it, because you bless our family with such peace and joy and stability. 
I love you.
Baby, you’re the greatest!
Posted in Blessings, Sunny | 3 Comments

American Idol: Final Performances

Posted on May 20, 2008 by Jason

Live blogging the AI final performance.

Weird, cheesy boxing intro. Although I like the Rocky theme music.

All right, enough with the boxing theme. It’s a bit of overkill, don’t you think? We get it. They’re going to duke it out. Let’s get on with it.

Archuleta chose to go last. I think that’s a good move by him. You always want to be able to take the last shot.

Man, they’re really not abandoning this boxing theme, are they?

Round 1: I think Clive picked some killer songs for these guys. “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” is one of my all-time favorite songs and I think Cook owned it. Strong opening. Why did Randy just say this was “the duel of 2007”? Has he been drinking from Paula’s Coke cup? Archuleta singing “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me” was a great song choice, too. All I can say is “Wow”. The kid absolutely nailed that song.

I think this round was a toss-up; I give the slightest nod to Archuleta. I’m surprised the judges so decisively ruled in favor of Archuleta.

Round 2: This is an interesting spin: taking a few of the best songwriting submissions and letting the contestants sing them. I think it’s odd that they’d give these unknown songs this kind of platform. Cook’s song was pretty good; not my favorite that he’s done, but I love that he rocked it out. I have to agree with the judges that this was just an OK performance. Of course, Archuleta comes out singing a ballad. Sunny just made a good point: why does he always grab his stomach while he sings? Maybe I should try it next time I have to lead singing. This song is a yawner, but it’s a good one for him.

This round was kind of a mediocre round for me. I didn’t really like either song (too cheesy). But I think Archuleta gets another slight nod. This doesn’t look good for Cook.

Round 3: Contestant’s choice. Cook is going with Collective Soul’s “The World I Know”. I like the acoustic sound; I think this is representative of the kind of show you could expect him to put on. I might actually download this. (If I do, I’ll probably get “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”, too.) Man, Simon really has it in for Cook tonight. I like that he took a risk with this song, even though it’s probably going to cost him. Big surprise: Archuleta’s singing “Imagine”. I’m sure this will bring down the house. His performance was pretty much flawless. That should pretty much seal the deal.

If Archuleta doesn’t win this thing, I’ll have to shave my head. He lacks the personality of a star, but the kid deserves it.

I would vote, but what’s the point?

Posted in Music, Television | 8 Comments

Jon Lester

Posted on May 19, 2008 by Jason

After watching last night’s Yankees-Mets game and Carlos Delgado’s homer that wasn’t ruled a homer, I thought about writing a blog today about Biblical hermeneutics and the interpretive art of umpiring. But such a post would require more brain power than I feel like mustering up. If you’re a baseball fan and a Bible student, you can probably figure out where I was going with that anyway. So let’s just call it even.

Instead, I’ll quietly applaud 24-year-old Jon Lester on his no-hitter tonight against the Kansas City Royals. You’ll remember Lester was diagnosed with non-Hodgskin’s lymphoma in 2006. He recovered last year, coming all the way back to win the clinching game of the World Series for the Red Sox. You just like to see good people do well. After beating cancer, taming the Kansas City lineup was probably small potatoes. Way to go, Jon.

Posted in Baseball, Blogging, Scripture, Theology | 4 Comments

It Keeps No Record of Wrongs

Posted on May 17, 2008 by Jason

There’s this guy that owes me thirty bucks. I “loaned” him some money a few years ago on the promise that he’d pay me back the next week. That never happened and now, years later, I’ve pretty much resigned myself to the fact that it never will. It’s not that I even really care about the money (anymore); what bothers me is that every time I think of this guy, I instantly think of the $30 he owes me. I wish he’d pay me back so I wouldn’t have to think about the fact that he owes me money.

The difficulty with loving others is that we’re told that love keeps no record of wrongs (1 Cor. 13:5), a concept which I find almost impossible to live up to. I’ve forgiven the guy for breaking his word and not paying me back, but I can’t seem to wipe the slate clean and forget the grievance. Trying to keep no record of wrongs is like trying to un-ring a bell; it can’t be done.

I guess all of this seems pretty petty. But I have a good friend who recently had a family member that was murdered and the perpetrator has yet to be caught. We were talking the other night and my friend said, “You know, if they caught the guy and I was given the chance to say something to him, I don’t know what I’d say.” In this hypothetical situation, my friend said he would be torn between what he would want to say and what he knows he should say.

And maybe that’s the point. Maybe we’re supposed to feel this tension, the tension between the ideal of 1 Cor. 13:5 and the reality of our humanity. Maybe we’re supposed to feel this tension and it’s the tension that helps make us better people. I don’t know. All I know is that a love that keeps no record of wrongs must come from someplace outside myself, because I’m just not quite there yet on my own.

Maybe feeling the tension is the place where that starts.

I hope so.

Posted in 1 Corinthians 13, Devotional, Friends, Love Others, Scripture, The Resolution | 1 Comment

What’s My Name?

Posted on May 15, 2008 by Jason

So I’m coaching Little League at the YMCA. Today the recreation director from the Y called the house to let us know that practice had been rained out. (Little did he know that I’d already notified my parents that we wouldn’t be practicing.) I was at work, but Sunny spoke to Dean, a nice enough guy with biceps the size of tree trunks. What was surprising about the conversation, Sunny would tell me later, was that he actually pronounced our last name correctly. “Hi, Mrs. Bybee?” In six or seven conversations with the man, I’ve yet to hear him pronounce my name correctly. That got me to thinking of the many mispronunciations of my name I’ve heard over the years:

  • Usually, people mispronounce it as “Bibby” or “Beebee”. I even got a “Bye-bye” once from a Wal-Mart clerk.
  • Blake King called me “Jason Baby” in kindergarten and I bloodied his nose.
  • For about half of my junior year, one of my high school football coaches thought my name was “James Bobby”.
  • Until very recently, one of my co-workers referred to me as “Jason Bivey”.
  • In high school, I used to receive recruiting mail from Harding University addressed to “Jason Bybeck”. Not the best recruiting strategy, I might add.
  • My all-time favorite: one night a telemarketer called our house and asked to speak to “Mr. Bee-bye”. I think he was dyslexic. I also thought Sunny was going to wet her pants.

What about you? Any of you share the plight of the not-so-common last name?

Posted in Humor, Random | 13 Comments

Justice and Righteousness

Posted on May 14, 2008 by Jason

In Deuteronomy 16, corporate Israel receives a charge from Yahweh to be devoted to justice:

“You (Israel) shall appoint judges and officers in all your towns that the LORD your God is giving you, according to your tribes, and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment. You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality, and you shall not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of the righteous. Justice, and only justice, you shall follow, that you may live and inherit the land that the LORD your God is giving you.“

Our notions of justice are perhaps incomplete compared to the biblical concept of the term. We think of justice in terms of perpetrators being caught and being “brought to justice” for their crimes. A society where crime is punished is considered a just one; where crime goes unchecked, injustice runs rampant.

While that certainly hits on one element of biblical justice, the term is used in a much broader fashion and is often synonymous with the notion of righteousness. The society God wills is not so much a culture of retributive justice but one that hungers and thirsts for righteousness (Matt. 5:6). In the kingdom of God, this hunger for justice and righteousness will be fully realized. It is the world Amos imaginatively conjured when he wrote, “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream,” (5:24).

What is surprising to many is the revelation that justice and righteousness are not reserved for some ethereal, immaterial, “spiritual” afterlife experience. The biblical testimony is clear that God wills for justice and righteousness to break into the present, infiltrating every nook and cranny of this world NOW with activity that bears witness to the One who truly embodies righteousness and justice. The injustices of our present experience seem to leave us with the impression that we can do little to stem the tide of disorder and unrighteousness in our world; the testimony of Scripture illumines another path and imagines an alternative way of being. In the stream of the great prophetic voices in Israel’s history, this path is the way of justice and righteousness.

May He continue to empower us to be His conduits of justice in the created order.

Posted in Scripture, Social Issues, Theology | Leave a comment

American Idol: Final 3

Posted on May 14, 2008 by Jason

Last night’s Final 3 episode was pretty strong, in my opinion.

Round 1: I think all three performers really shined here. The judges picked out some great songs; I especially liked Billy Joel’s “And So It Goes” for David A. I know Simon declared Cook the winner here, but I think it’s pretty much a draw. Archuleta was great; Cook was masterful on the most difficult song of the round; and Syesha turned in her best performance of the season, in my opinion. Three 10’s in my book.

Round 2: In the famous last words of the Dawg, this round was just a’ight. David Cook’s song was subpar (by his standards) but it was far and away the best performance of the round. I don’t know what Archuleta was thinking with the Chris Brown song. And Syesha’s choice of “Fever” was nice enough, but not really viable as a top 40 sound. This round went to Cook, although it was kind of by default.

Round 3: I thought the producers picked some fairly predictable songs here. But this is probably an indication of what sort of songs these artists will be performing post-AI. Archuleta’s “Longer” was another stellar effort and Cook’s “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” sounded great. (Did Simon really say this was one of the best songs of all-time? Uhh…OK.) I was surprised that Paula told Syesha she didn’t think she’d be making the finals. But, I have to agree.

Prediction: David vs. David in next week’s finale. Since Cook has been my boy since the Top 24, I’m rooting for an upset. But I don’t know if anybody can beat Goliath Archuleta.

By the way, I feel bad griping about how the votes go sometimes when I’ve never taken the time to vote myself. (At least I vote in the “real” elections!) How many of you actually vote for your favorites?

Posted in Music, Television | 8 Comments

Cruisin’

Posted on May 13, 2008 by Jason

Sunny and I had a blast on our cruise last week. She’s posted pics over at her blog and she’s already done a great job of chronicling our trip together, so I won’t try to rehash. I will say that this vacation was honestly the best vacation we’ve ever been on. It was great to spend time together and we really enjoyed our time with my sister and her family, too. And I’m very thankful that Sunny’s parents were willing to come and spend a week with our children so we’d be able to do this.

I was in such a good mood last week, I decided to pose for this pic with “Funship Freddy”, the Carnival Cruise Mascot:


Now, it’s back to reality (and a much needed diet!)

Posted in Blessings, Sunny | 5 Comments

A Week’s Worth Condensed Into One Post

Posted on May 4, 2008 by Jason

I should probably go ahead and let you know that things will probably be pretty boring here at Already & Not Yet this week. I’m planning on taking some vacation time and it’s doubtful that the blog will receive much attention from yours truly.

While I’m away, here are a few things for you:

  • Can anyone explain to me why my daughter pronounces the word “coupon” the way she does? Instead of “coo-pon”, she says “q-pon”, like “Q-Tip”. It’s really cute.
  • I was able to catch the movie Expelled the other day with my buddy Lane. You may not have heard much about it; it’s a documentary that attempts to make public the plight of many scientists who are ostracized by the academy for their views re: intelligent design. I’ll admit: the whole creationism vs. evolution debate just isn’t my thing, but I found the film to be informative and even entertaining. I certainly benefited from watching it. Check it out if you can and let me know what you think.
  • If you’ve read The Irresistible Revolution and you’re wanting to read Jesus for President, I think you’ll be a little disappointed. (It reads kinda like a history book.) I know that’s sacrilege to many, but that’s my opinion.
  • I’m no prophet (and my father was a coffee salesman), but I’m predicting this is the week we finally bid adieu to Syesha on AI. I’m still saying it’s a David vs. David finale.
  • Speaking of television, this week’s episode of LOST is entitled, “Cabin Fever”. I’m stoked that we get to find out more about Jacob.
  • Don’t look now, but a certain person’s favorite team just followed up its winningest April ever by taking 2 of 3 against the “lovable losers” from Chicago. I’m just sayin’.
  • Here’s your Hebrew proverb for the week: Money is like horse manure. If you try and pile it up, it stinks; but if you choose to spread it around, it helps bring life.
  • Several people have asked me how graduation went. It was really great (for pics, check out Sunny’s blog) and I’m thankful to have so many encouraging voices in my life. Now I’m looking forward to having more time to tackle some of the jobs around the house I’ve neglected for a while. Yard work, here I come!

The next time you see me, I hope to be well rested and tanned. See ya next week.

Posted in Baseball, Books, Grad School, Kids, Movies, Music, St. Louis Cardinals, Sunny, Television | 7 Comments