Category: Life

Saturday Night Retro

Flashback with me – won’t you ? – to 1984. Some of you weren’t even born back then, and the rest of us were 24 years younger. I was 16-years-old coming in to 1984, and 17-years-old at the halfway point. This Junior became a Senior in ’84 !

I was the only one in the family that knew how to program our Sony Betamax VCR. I recorded Johnny Carson, David Letterman, and “Saturday Night Live !” on a regular basis, and we watched those shows together as a family. My ‘home computer’ at the time consisted of a giant keyboard, a cassette tape drive, and as a monitor – our living den’s television set tuned in to VHF Channel 3. My favourite hour of television occurred on Sunday nights from 9 PM to 10 PM on CBS-TV when it was “The Jeffersons” followed by “Alice”. Both shows were nearing the end of their respective long runs, and they just got better and better as they got older and older. I also enjoyed watching “TV’s Bloopers & Practical Jokes” on Monday nights at 8 PM on NBC-TV with Dick Clark and Ed McMahon.

In 1984 I had two jobs – both as a newspaper carrier. I delivered the world-famous “Washington Post” early every morning in the dark, and then in the afternoon during the week I delivered the newer “Washington Times“. I made lots of money on my own doing this, and I had plenty of it to buy my very first car – a beige 1980 Chevy Citation. I didn’t own that car for very long because I eventually moved overseas to the U.K. courtesy of the United States Air Force.

1984 was a cool year in my young life. I looked cool like this:

… And my final Junior year report card looked like this:

Would you believe that I actually made the Honor Roll during my Senior year in High School (1984-1985) with all As and Bs ?

God Life Movies Music

Saturday Night Retro

Post author By Chris M. Day
Post date October 18, 2008

It’s an extra early edition of the ‘Saturday Night Retro’ this week because I’ll be livin’ it up out on the town until late tonight. No worries though. I’ll be hangin’ out with my Life Group at the mall.

So check this out. In 2003 I was livin’ it up. It was just 5 years ago, but it seems like a lifetime ago – literally. I was 35 and 36 years old – going on 22 years old. The U.S. economy was booming thanks to President George W. Bush and the Republican-dominated House and Senate. I was financially successful but emotionally unhappy. I was miserable at work, but I did a pretty good of hiding it (most of the time). I was happy at home because I had my little feline buddy Boots to hang out with. I spent a lot of time at the malls – and the movie theatres where I saw a whopping 30 movies at the box office during the course of the year. On the radio Party-93.1 was ‘South Florida’s Pure Dance Channel’, and I listened to it day and night. My life had the frenetic beat of an underground European techno track, but it had the soul of a cheap green glow stick.

Watch this 2003 music video from Aquagen. It’s a German techno remake of the Chicago classic “Hard To Say I’m Sorry”. It was my running theme song that year.

It’s all about moving forward in Life, but sometimes ya gotta look back in time to see the growth that’s been made from then to now. I thank God for rescuing me from the dying darkness, saving me, and placing me on His journey especially selected for me into the living daylight.

Books God Life

Bedtime Stories

I just returned home (about an hour ago) from my Life Group with my fellow singles. Together we all brought it up a few notches as we shared deeply personal Life stories with each other relating to tonight’s topic of discussion. It was all about ‘Words Of Affirmation’ – the first of ‘The Five Love Languages For Singles‘. (That’s the book that we’re reading together as a group during this Fall semester.)

As usual I failed to do my homework during the two weeks leading up to tonight’s Life Group, and our leader – Patricia – made me pay for that. But it was all good, and I deserved the extra bit of attention for the night. ‘Say what ?’ We had a little exercise that we did during tonight’s session where we each wrote an affirming handwritten note to someone else in our group (we each picked a random name out of a glass). Due to a suspicious clerical error Patricia made me write two handwritten notes to two people in my group. The joke was on Patricia. I enjoyed it immensely, and I sincerely meant everything that I wrote in those two notes over the course of about 15 minutes.

Our Life Groups at Life Pointe Church are all about living Life together on His fantastic journey for us. Our ‘church’ is not the movie theatre. It’s not the office suites in Downtown Homestead. It’s not the 70-minute service or the 5-hour experience on Sunday morning. Our ‘church’ is us – we – the living breathing body that lives Life together and loves and worships Jesus Christ with reckless abandon. It never stops. It’s a 24/7 commitment. Anything less than that would be cheating our Lord and Saviour. He gave it all up for us on that bloody hunk of wood.

So that’s what I’ve got to offer for tonight’s edition of the ‘Bedtime Stories’. We’re all on this journey together, and sometimes we physically meet at strategic intersections of Life. Until we meet again at a junction – REMEMBER THIS:

Proverbs 18:21
The tongue can bring death or life; those who love to talk will reap the consequences.

Luke 6:38
Give, and you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full — pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, running over, and poured into your lap. The amount you give will determine the amount you get back.”

1 John 4:19
We love each other because He loved us first.

Proverbs 15:1
A gentle answer deflects anger, but harsh words make tempers flare.

Holidays Life Travel

Bedtime Stories

Post author By Chris M. Day
Post date October 12, 2008

Good Evening My Friends,

It’s Sunday night. It’s after 9 PM, and I just felt like posting one more blog entry for tonight before I retire to bed. Tomorrow is Columbus Day – a major Federal holiday here in the U.S. – or as this cat refers to it – ‘a fake holiday’ – a normal work day for Life Pointe Church staff.

This morning as I was driving southbound along the new-and-improved ’18-Mile-Stretch’ (U.S. 1 between Florida City and Key Largo) I was trying to figure out when was the last time I had driven down into the Florida Keys. It was nearly 22 months ago – about 3 weeks before I discovered Life Pointe Church for the first time. It was back during the final few days of December 2006 when I drove all the way down to Key West with my parents who were visiting me here in Homestead for the first time in about 18½ years.

Although it’s been nearly two years since I set foot in the Keys I was a fairly regular visitor for a good decade up until 2006. I mostly went down there to party – back when I used to that. In fact I used to party pretty much within a single mile of where our new campus is located at in Plantation Key (near Mile Marker 90).

There’s a lot of places I don’t go to anymore because of who I am today as a born-again Christian. The Florida Keys (to the south) and Orlando (to the north) are two such places that I no longer have a vested interest in. Well scratch that – because of our new Life Pointe Church campus down south. It felt weird returning to the scene of the crime after all of this time – just as weird as it felt returning to Orlando for a national Christian conference last April after previously abandoning everything that I had up there. My Life (always capitalized) has changed since then. Thanks Jesus for rescuing me from the darkness and saving me. I owe it all to You.

Well that’s ‘Bedtime Stories’ for this glorious Sunday night. Thank You for allowing me to share my Life with you, and until we hang out again – REMEMBER THIS !