andrew dodson

When reading through the Bible, I’ve questioned why so much of the Old Testament deals with the not-very-intelligent Israelites. I mean, it’s over and over again. In a nutshell, “The Israelites did something dumb, God punished them, they said they were sorry, God forgave them. The Israelites did something else dumb, etc.”

In one of the many examples of how the Bible stands the test of time, it struck me why so much of the Bible focuses on this issue. This may be a no-brainer to some of you out there, but it didn’t hit home to me until a few weeks ago. The Israelites? Yeah - no different than the current human race. No different than today’s Christians. We are the Israelites. Doing dumb things every day and having to ask for God’s forgiveness. The good thing is, He gives it to us - every time.

I found myself in need of a new set of computer speakers this past week. I wanted something nice, but didn’t want to spend $75-100 on the “really nice” sets on the market. Being the audiophile I am, I of course wanted something with a subwoofer, and wasn’t opposed to experience a set of 5.1 surround speakers for the first time.

I headed to Wal-Mart late the other night and found a set of Altec Lansing speakers for $25. Since Wal-Mart will take anything back with a receipt, I decided to buy them. Here’s where the plan gets good. My next step would be heading to Office Depot or CompUSA or Best Buy. There, I’d actually be able to listen to different sets of speakers in the store. A “test drive” for speakers, if you will. Should I find a set that sounded better than the Altec Lansings, I’d buy ‘em and take the AL’s back to Wally World.

Tonight, I was in Office Depot and checked out the speakers. My findings? A small set of $22 speakers sounded far better than a set priced at $84. I think I’ll keep my $25 set. After hearing what $50-84 speakers have to offer, I’m quite pleased with my purchase.

I’m not big on video games. Actually - I am. It’s just… I can’t allow myself to play them. I get caught up in them and play them for hours. I own a decent amount of games for Playstation (yes - I’m still playing the PS1), and a handful of computer games.

I started playing SimCity 3000 (still haven’t made it to SimCity 4 just yet) again a little over a week ago. Last Friday night? Yeah… played for about five hours. A couple of nights ago? Close to three hours.

I’m going to start a support group - VGA. Video Gamers Anonymous.

I have a bit of a problem. I have a bad habit of buying books much faster than I can read them. Tonight, I purchased three books (all three on sale), knowing full-well it’ll be a while before I, a.) get around to reading them, or, b.) read them from cover-to-cover.

I blame Christianity on stunting my reading. Before I accepted Christ and started reading the Bible, I read a lot of books. Well - I take that back. During high school and college, I didn’t enjoy reading. After I graduated college, I discovered that I could actually read for enjoyment - as opposed to sticking my nose in a textbook. Since Jesus came along, all I’ve really been interested in reading is the Bible. I’ve attempted reading a lot of books, only to find months later I’ve only made it to Chapter Three. I also tried reading straight through the Bible. Once I got to the prophets, I kind of hung up that idea and started jumping around from book-to-book.

A couple of the books I purchased tonight are devotional-style books - small and not many pages. Hopefully I’ll be able to get through those pretty quick.