But the Greatest of these is Charity

1 Corinthians 13:13 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

Sometimes my mind wanders, and tonight it wandered straight into an epiphany. The triad of faith, hope and charity has always baffled me. They all seem pretty similar when you look real close, so what's the difference, exactly. Specifically, if you wonder what motivates us as human beings. On separate occasions, I've come to the conclusion that all three can be motivating. But if they all push us forward, then why aren't they just one thing?

Somehow tonight this same thought came to me on the way home from seeing Star Trek with family and friends. So I thought about it for a bit; let it rattle around in my head for a few minutes, and then my mind began to wander and I thought about fire. What causes fire? Is it heat? Yes. Is it oxygen? Yes. Is it fuel? Yes.

All three of those elements (heat, oxygen and fuel) are necessary for fire to exist. If you remove one, the others don't make fire. So too with motivation. We need faith, hope and charity to make motivation or action.

So I thought about Jesus Christ, and what exactly he had that the rest of us didn't have. How did he muster up the gumption to offer himself as a sacrifice to save us? (For any non-mormon reading this post, I'm talking about LDS theology. Feel free to tune out or look it up or ask a missionary.) Obviously He had love, but he also needed faith and hope. Now Paul gave us the hint that the greatest is charity (love) and perhaps in this triad, faith and hope play supporting roles to the star of charity, but they were all three necessary to motivate the salvation of mankind.

Bread

Today, I made bread for a ward preparedness thingey. From scratch. That's right: I mixed together flour, oil and yeast and stuff and out of the oven will pop warm delicious bread. At least that's the plan. I won't know for about another hour and a half ... it's gotta rise and bake first, of course. For the overly-curious, here's a play-by-play of the process:

2:30 - Put Robbie down for his nap and continue working

2:45 - Go downstairs to see why Robbie's been trying for the past 10 min (didn't want nap time)

3:00 - Initiate bread-making process

3:05 - Realize I have no bread pans in which to bake bread

3:06 - Realize this is a problem

3:06 - Begin traversal of neighbor calling tree to locate bread pans

3:07 - Forget to dial 801 before the number of my next door neighbor, Mike

3:08 - Successfully place call to neighbor

3:08 - Neighbor #1 has bread pans. That was quick. (Thanks Mike)

3:15 - Return from neighbor's house with bread pans and a wee bit more bread-making knowledge (thanks Mike) in hand and head

3:16 - Begin mixing ingredients together

3:20 - Robbie finally stops crying and is (presumably) asleep

3:30 - Place bread in bread pans (thanks Mike) then place bread pans in warm oven (thanks for the tip, Mike)

3:30 - Begin recommended 45 min wait for dough to rise.

4:30 - How do you tell whether bread has risen?

5:00 - That looks good, I guess. Start to bake.

5:01 - Hope for the best.

5:45 - Done cooking. Looks surprisingly bread-like

6:00 - Done cooling. Tastes surprisingly bread-like

So there. I hope you're happy after having read that. I am so happy with the outcome of this experience, I may even do it again.

Old School Robbie

Judgement and Understanding

I remember taking the Meyers-Briggs personality test. It asked me if I was comfortable making value judgements. Since then (5 years ago) I've been thinking, and here's my answer:

My tendency is always to understand first and judge later, if judgement is even required. For me, understanding is usually all that I want. I don't try to make a judgement call (whether something is good or bad). That usually takes time to figure out. But if I do give it time, the whole good/bad thing will make itself evident.

Look What I Did

I don't post here often, as you might have noticed ... but every once in a while an idea strikes me to put something up. Usually it's in the form of "hey guys, look at what I just did." And this time is really no different.

Yesterday we had our annual design review at the Church for last year, and as an emerging tradition, we have a poster design contest. Whoever wants to comes up with a poster and then we all vote on which one we think should win. Last year I came up with a poster and entered it (didn't win). This year I came up with three posters and submitted one (don't know if I won yet, but my hopes aren't up).

So I thought I'd post my three posters here and see which one you guys liked the best.

For a Moment, I Was a Champion

We had a team off-site today which involved go-kart racing. There were three groups of 8. Each group did two races and then we had a finals race of the fastest 12 people. I made it into the champions race and got 6th place. Dead middle, that's not the exciting part, I live my life in the dead middle of the advanced crowd (if that makes sense). The champion part came in my second race. I scored the fastest lap of the day. Of our group, nobody beat my lap time of 40.52 seconds. There were people crowding around me to ask my advice, people wanted to hear what I did, what it was like, what was my secret.

All the fame and attention lasted about 3 1/2 minutes before they went on with their normal lives, but it was actually very satisfying to have people rushing up to greet me. What a rush. I was literally shaking form all the adrenaline.

So it seems I've used up about one fifth of my 15 minutes of fame. I wonder what's next, maybe I'll make it to the 10 o'clock news !!!

Good analogy for how we progress through life

Flowerpots from Crictor on Vimeo.