Green Couch (Of the Ninja Variety)

Hey there my blogisto's and blogista's! I have a few thoughts I want to blog about, but can't seem to put them into words very well. I thought you would enjoy this though. I bought a couch on Craigslist 4 years ago for $20 and decided to sell it, on Craigslist, for the same amount I purchased it for 4 years ago. I succeed. Proving once and for all that my green pleather couch is recession proof. No depreciation on this one!

Here is the actual post that I put up. I'm still waiting on my "Best of Craigslist" Nomination. I'm sure it's on it's way.
PS: I sold it in 24 hours. BOOM!
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Green Couch (Of the Ninja Variety) - $20

This couch is a green, pleather, swanky, highly Ninja friendly couch that is also hypo-allergenic. This couch has seen some of the fiercest Ninja Warriors on the planet in it's day. How would I know that you ask? Uh, because I myself am a class 4 Ninja Warrior. "WHAT?!" You might exclaim while wondering aloud how this could be possible. I am sure like many other mere mortals, you probably believe the lie that Ninja Warriors can only achieve a class 3. Well, you are mistaken my moistened bottomed applejon. I know this, because I stated, I am a class 4 Ninja Warrior.

So, this couch. I know you already want it. It's awesome. It will sexy up your pad by at least 57%. Plus, if you play your cards right, I will even throw in a can of corn for you to consume as you sit on this majestic warrior throne. "Why would you willingly part with such an epic piece of Ninja lore?" You ask. Well, this Ninja just got married and as it turns out, my NON-Ninja wife very much prefers her Ninja Thrones to be in the color of blue. So I bought a blue one that looks just like it.

To be totally real, you will probably show up and demand to give me $25 because of it's stunning beauty and delectable nature. I however will refuse such an offer. Probably. Then I will change my mind and accept to keep you on your toes.

In review: The Couch has a few dings and nicks. It's not perfect, as it is very comfortable (Ninja speak for worn in) and is a tiny bit damaged in one corner. I have provided photos of the damaged areas but lets be honest here. The couch is $20 and it's on the first floor right by my front door. Easy to buy. Easy to move. Not easy to find another Ninja Warrior Throne.

My name is Josh. Email me and I'll get right back to you. Promise.

A Christmas Tradition for the Whole Family

My wife and I realized that since we have been married (we have been married almost one year) we have been living with the traditions of our families. As a small family, we don't have our own traditions. So we decided to make our own tradition. We believe that traditions should be awesome and not awful. So, we created a new tradition that is awesome enough that future generations of Erickson will be excited about for years to come. Sooooo we built a Gingerbread House and on Christmas afternoon, we destroyed it, filmed it, and put it on the interwebs. Yeah, that is a tradition that we can all get behind.

Gingerbread House

Feel free to make your own video and share it in the comments!

Salty

Salt taste good. It adds some flavor to bland foods. Boring fries? Add salt. Dull chips? Add salt. Lame corn? ADD SALT! In most cases, we add some salt to make things go from boring to bazinga. Since most logical people will agree that this is in fact very true, the rest of this blog will be predicated (V. Found or base something on) on this principle: Salt adds flavor. 

This being said, I find it pretty interesting that the bible states that those that follow Christ are "the salt of the earth". 

The BEST kind of salt!

My friend Nate Magnuson recently tweeted, "To be salt, you gotta...preserve the culture, disinfect, and add flavor!" This got me thinking, are Christians all that salty? I mean, when was the last time a non Christ follower came to a Christian in search of some flavor? It seems that in totality, the Church has become what is bland and the world has the flavor. We see churches and Christians pulling from non Christians so they can            access their flavor. I'm pretty sure this was never the plan. Not that Christians have a corner on the creative and "Flavor" market, just that we should be leading the way. 

                                                                                         
                                                                                                   

How long has it been since the Church and Christ followers lead the way in creativity, art, ingenuity, innovation, music, and just plain flavor? There was a time when we had flavor. The printing press was invented to print bibles. The Sistine Chapel was painted to add beauty to a Church. Johann Sebastian Bach wrote much of his music while serving as a Church organist. In their day, these people were the bee's knee's. Somewhere along the line, we lost the flavor though.  

We (Christ followers and the Church) have gotten good at the disinfecting part. We know how to challenge corruption in many cases, but we have gotten so incredibly bland that people have lost interest. I think in many cases we have just stopped trying. Church architecture mostly sucks these days. Church web design looks like a hot mess in most cases. The music many Churches ask us to worship too is a poor replication of something that was a  sub-par creation in the first place. None of these things are in and of themselves indicative of a lack of a biblical perspective. However, when taken in on a wide scale, we can easily identify a lack of flavor. No creativity. A bland attitude. 

Here is my solution: STOP IT. For real. Stop. Stop believing it is ok to stifle creativity. Quite accepting a lack of vision and passion. Get away from people that shout that stuff has to always be the way it was in days gone by. There is a new theme for us. Flavor. Add flavor. Be what the world craves. You have the creative, passionate, holy, righteous, innovative, and miraculous spirit of God living in you. It's about time that we start acting like we have something the world does't. Be Salty my friends.

Sometimes, Cake is Worship.

My sister (Jini, she is awesome and if you have never met her, you should) told me about some cake she had recently at a Church Lunch. She said it was divine and tasted like heaven in her mouth. Not being satisfied with simply consuming one portion of cake, she decided to trace the cake back to it's source. At the end of her quest was a lady that had baked the cake. Jini explained to the lady how grateful she was that she had used her God-given talent for baking, to serve in the Church. Oddly, that lady was worshiping God with her baking.

What a crazy cool way to worship your creator right?! We were created with certain talents and all God asks for is that we use them to give back. Worship is simply paying homage to God. We can do this by giving him our best efforts with the talents he has given us and laying those at his feet. What a beautiful way to worship.
I think that I have been guilty in the past of thinking of worship as the song service on Sunday morning. That was wrong. This way of thinking is flawed because true worship is to pay homage (Homage:  something done or given in acknowledgment or consideration of the worth of another. In this case it is given to our God.) to our creator. 


I have come to realize that the truest forms of worship may not even be experience in a Sunday Worship Experience. Think about this, when a band prepares for the Worship service, they are giving God not just their talent, but also their time, their energy and their passion. This means that they have been worshiping while preparing to lead worship! The guy that sets up the sound and mixes it? He was worshiping before the service by giving his knowledge and best efforts to the sound setup. The same can be said for the Pastor preparing for the service, the door greeter that wears his best smile, the guy that cleans the building, the set up crew worships with their ability to move large objects quickly. I can go on and on, but the basic point is this. Worship has nothing to do with music. It has everything to do with taking your talents and abilities that God has given you or given you a passion for and giving those back to God. That is worship.

I have heard much cacophony (loud useless noise) about the distinction between worship leaders that give every ounce of talent they have to the worship experience, and those that put on a show. It seems to me that if we are worshiping correctly by giving every bit of talent we have back to God and we all pour it out simultaneously on a given stage on a particular Sunday morning, it had better look like a show! How can we give a half-hearted recreation of another mans work and look up at God and act like he should be happy with that!? If we give everything we have back, I assure you, God has given us enough collective talent to put on a pretty awesome show. 


So, the lady that bakes the cake? She makes worship taste pretty fantastic!

A Lesson in Fist Fighting

The title has nothing to do with what I am talking about. I like uniqueness. I enjoy ingenuity and I most of all, enjoy healthy explosions of creativity. You see, I have come to dislike sheep. Living in Ethiopia, I have almost run over about 20 trillion sheep and have come to the conclusion that they are pretty much only good at following other sheep and making wool. One of those things they don't even know they are doing! The other is making wool...

We were built to think, to create, and to be unique! I find it sad that this world is filling up with sheep and we have very few...whatever the opposite of a sheep would be in this metaphor. I think I'mma do something different tomorrow. Maybe I'll cook with rice instead of eggs, I don't know. 

Free Thought: If we all got what we wanted in life, who would be the janitor?