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cyberflex11
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Name: Christopher
Country: United States
State: New York
Metro: Queens
Birthday: 10/11/1988
Gender: Male
Interests: Helen <3
Expertise: Football, bodybuilding and powerlifting
Occupation: Student
Industry: Entertainment
Message: message me
AIM:  cyberflex11
Member Since:
6/23/2005
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| Everlasting...Hillsongs - From the Inside Out
A thousand times I've failed
Still Your mercy remains
And should I stumble again
Still I'm caught in Your grace
Everlasting
Your light will shine when all else fades
Never ending
Your glory goes beyond all fame
Your will above all else
My purpose remains
The art of losing myself
In bringing You praise
Everlasting
Your light will shine when all else fades
Never ending
Your glory goes beyond all fame
In my heart and my soul
Lord I give You control
Consume me from the inside out
Lord let justice and praise
Become my embrace
To love you from the inside out
Everlasting
Your light will shine when all else fades
Never ending
Your glory goes beyond all fame
And the cry of my heart
Is to bring You praise
From the inside out
Lord my soul cries out
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| God is.Tuesday morning, as I walked to school in a light drizzle, I had a bit of time to buy an umbrella. I walked into the nearest Duane Reade and began to search for a cheap, yet good umbrella (yes, I know, how ambitious of me). After rummaging through their disheveled umbrella rack, I found what I was looking for. While waiting in line to pay for my newfound haven from the rain, I noticed the man in front of me was holding a book titled "God is Not Great" and I began to think, why would some one go and write a book about how not great our great God is? As I paid for my umbrella and walked to school, I began to think of the relevance of such a book, its merits and its shortcomings. I decided to have an intellectual debate with an atheist about religion in my head (once again, oh so ambitious of me), and this is what I came up with.
Some of the biggest questions about the existence of God would be: If God really existed, couldn't he just make a perfect world with no hate, murder, starvation, genocide or disease? The answer is: yes, he could make a perfect world. But he doesn't. Some people think that's cruel, unjust and simply inhumane. Why would some one with the power to grant all people a life without crime, corruption and greed want to just let the world continue to be in the terrible state that it currently is? For the people to do it themselves. Now, many of you may just stop reading right now, saying that it's just a load of hogwash, that it's a really simple answer in order to cover up the fact that God really doesn't exist. Honestly, if I was a skeptic, I would think so too. But hear me out (the athiest in my head had to; he didn't really have anywhere to go), I'm going to try to explain this in 3 very simple steps:
Step 1: God gave us morals
When God created man, he created man in the image of God. Many people take this literally, thinking that God made a clone of himself and called it Adam. I don't think that's 100% correct. While it does make it easier to portray him in movies (a la Morgan Freeman in Bruce Almighty) I believe that he created us spiritually and emotionally in his likeness. What he considers good, we inherently think is good. What he considers bad, we inherently think is bad.
Think about the first time you shared your toy with some one else when you were a kid. It felt good didn't it? Even before you were taught that it was good manners, you knew that it was a nice thing to do. Now, think about the first time you stole something. It doesn't have to be larceny, it could simply be gum from the local grocery store. How nervous were you when you left the store? Maybe you walked out slowly, sweating buckets, maybe you ran out so you wouldn't be caught. In any case, we all knew it was wrong, considering the fact that we didn't walk out normally.
Now think of that on a much bigger scale. When you watch the tv tonight, look for the infomercial with the toll-free number about how you can sponsor a child in Africa for only pennies a day. Look at those starving children who sometimes don't even have a bowl of rice to eat in a whole day. You just have to look at them and the helpless expressions on their faces to know that something is horribly wrong with that picture. And then think of how much you can help them simply by giving them the pocket change you have in the piggy bank on your bedstand. Think of how easy it would be, and how good it would make you and that child feel. Nobody taught you to react like that. You just know it. It's inside us.
Step 2: God gave us media
When the first infomercial for sponsoring starving children in third world countries was aired, it was a long process. It had to be planned out, scripted, shot, edited and then sent to tv stations to be approved by producers and directors in order to be aired on tv. Hopefully, those producers are touched, and in turn air the infomercial in hopes that maybe the viewers can help these poor souls. No matter how moved they are, some skeptics may say, "What can helping one child in a country of starving people do? What good can helping this one child ever bring that country?" Despite all this, some people do decide to give up their pocket change to help those in need. And those people really have helped in ways they cannot even imagine.
Now if that first infomercial was not produced, shot, edited and aired, most of us would not even know about the ludicrous conditions that these people live in. But that first groundbreaking video paved the way for more tragedy in third world countries in the media. The conflict diamonds of Sierra Leone (Blood Diamond), the genocide in Mogadishu (Black Hawk Down), the genocide in Darfur (Hotel Rwanda) and many others. Even though I stated three movies, these movies have done so much for these terrible wrongdoings, and it's all thanks to Hollywood. By taking these atrocities and putting them into mainstream media, they're allowing us to do something about it, instead of letting us just live our lives not even knowing that these terrible happenings are going on. By making movies or infomercials, these producers have spurred people to create change, to create a shift in the power struggle against wrong.
Step 3: God gave us means
I think we all take for granted how blessed we are to live in the United States (yeah ok). No but seriously, think about it: we live in a country with plenty of food (come to think of it, America is actually one of the most obese countries in the world...maybe we have too much), freedom of speech, the press and religion (in another country, buck fush t-shirts could have gotten you executed), and a volunteer military (some other countries have mandatory military service for men, South Korea included).
If you take these three things and make up the worst-case scenario, I would say that you eat too much food, watch too much tv and decide not to go to the military. Best-case scenario? You give your excess food to hungry people, use your freedom of speech to make your people want to help other countries that aren't as well off as we are, and you use your military full of willing soldiers to aid countries in need. The choice is yours: you can be an overweight couch potato, or you can do your part and make your country not only the richest, but the country that helps others the most.
They say God works in mysterious ways. No, he doesn't. He works through others. He's a chess master moving his pieces into place, always 3 moves ahead of his opponent. You see, it is through God that we have our morals, and can judge for ourselves how wrong it is for a child to be starving while we stuff our faces. It is through God that we have our media, which can tell stories of fantasy and romance, but also of horrors, filled with acts of cruelty so terrible that you wish they were fiction. And it is through God that we have the means to change those very horrors by creating and spreading good.
C.S. Lewis says that God "shouts to us in our pains." I think its really the pain and suffering of others that God uses as his "Megaphone to rouse a deaf world." By showing us how much a group of people can suffer and endure, we seem to forget our own suffering, if even for just a second. In that second, you may choose to rise up and do something about it, or just sit there and let the injustice continue. In the end, it's your choice; God can only pull so many strings.
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| ComebackWow. Britney Spears has made a comeback. And if Ms. Spears can make one after all the stuff that's been in the news about her being a terrible mother, I think my xanga can make one too. Well, for those of you out there who haven't been in touch with me, shame on you. But all jokes aside, Helen and I are doing great, we're in our 11th month, and we're extremely happy xD. I had my surgery on June 8th, it was a success, my knee is feeling great, but I'm still not 100% in terms of strength and range of motion.
Funny stories about the surgery: after I checked in and changed into my gown, the doctor who would be doing the operation came to see me, and he ran through the procedure, and right before he left he looks at my knees and he goes, "which knee was it again?" A sly smile on his face as he wrote a big YES on my left knee, with a matching NO on my right knee. Then as the anesthesiologist is knocking me out, one of the nurses is shaving the area around my knee with an electric shaver, and I look at him and say "hey man...while you're at it, could you do the other side?" and I was out.
The pain from the procedure was almost unbearable. After then local anesthesia wore off on my knee, I cried because it hurt so much. Basically, there was a hole in the front of my knee, where the doctor had taken the bone grafts and the patellar tendon to make a new ACL. When he said he would harvest the tendon, I did not realize he meant cut out one third of it along with the two pieces of bone attached to either side. Don't know how that feels? Well I do. It hurt like a MOTHER! At first it was a dull throbbing, nothing too bad. Then it began to literally thump from the pain, and then it felt like there was a freaking buzz saw in my knee, carving out the tendon. Honestly, I can't believe I even fell asleep that night. Or the rest of the week for that matter. Fortunately, Helen came over while I was recovering, and helped me out a lot by being my moral support, being there for me when my mom was at work or my dad was out. Without my parents and Helen, I don't know how I would have gotten through that ordeal.
So I've been working part time as a cashier at the Alley Pond Golf Center on Northern Blvd. in Douglaston, making some pretty decent money but the real deal is getting to hit for free. And that's basically how I spent my summer: go to work, hit a bucket of balls and then chill with Helen. I got my license in May and my mom's Mercedes ML320 in July, so I'm driving a lot, mostly from Flushing to Helen's place in Long Island, but hey, I'm not complaining. Actually, come to think of it, if I hadn't been driving almost everyday this summer, I probably wouldn't have as much driving experience.
In the 5 months I've worked at the range, I've earned a little under $2900, but the sad part is that my checking account is pretty much empty, except for the $1 I leave in there to keep the bank from closing my account. Over the course of the summer I've spent practically all of my money on food, never hesitating to gorge myself on Wendy's from time to time. For those of you in college who have meal plans, you have no idea how lucky you are, but then again the food at John Jay is pretty good, so I can't really complain. But yeah, I still need to keep better tabs on my money, maybe even save up a little bit. I don't know WHAT I'd be saving it for, but it's always nice to have my options open.
School started two Mondays ago, and I like my classes, even the double period of philosophy on Fridays with Prof. Jongjin Kim, or "Professor JJ" as he prefers to be called. his accent is pretty bad, i.e. he says "sink" instead of "think," and he says the word think a lot. He also has a tough time putting his thoughts into words, so he just talks in circles for most of the 3 hour class. But other than that, history doesn't look too bad, english shouldn't be too difficult, sociology looks like fun and music will be interesting. All in all, it looks to be a very fun third semester at John Jay.
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| Happy 5 Months Helen Ji Woon Kim! <3 
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| So I just got back from the orthopedic surgeon's office with a new brace that's fitted for movement. I get to throw away my old immobilizing brace so that I can get some range of motion and strength back into my knee.
So when I injured my knee on the 10th, I tore both the acl and the mcl in my left knee. The acl (anterior cruciate ligament) prevents any forward or backward movement of the fibula from the femur, while the mcl (medial collateral ligament) prevents the knee from moving side to side, keeping it stable. Basically, the immobilizing brace that I have been using for the past 2 weeks has kept my knee almost completely straight using 3 metal strips that ran from my thigh down to my shins. This has caused my knee to become very stiff and weak, and most movement is painful. The new brace is specialized for activity, mainly sports. The new brace keeps the knee stable, but allows for movement by supporting the knee from either side, preventing the knee from shifting side to side much like the mcl would if it wasn't torn.
Because none of the bones in my leg are broken, I've been cleared to walk as long as I don't feel any pain in the knee. The brace keep my knee from collapsing as it would if I stood on my own, which is an amazing thing to have when you've been on crutches for 16 days in an immobilizing brace. Hopefully after 2 weeks of physical therapy, the orthopedic surgeon will clear me for surgery to have the acl and mcl repaired so I can be back to normal as soon as possible.
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