New Year's Resolutions

Hello, friends, and happy new year! I hope you’ve all had a wonderful 2013, and I hope that you’re excited for what’s to come in 2014. I know I am.

This is the time of year where everyone is making their New Year’s resolutions. Most everybody has some sense of what they hope to change in the coming year. For some people it may be to exercise more or to eat more healthy foods. For others, it may be about enriching relationships and spending less time at work. No matter what it is, I think we can all think of at least one thing that we’d like to look back on a year from now and see some sort of change in.

But we rarely follow through on our New Year’s resolution. The problem I see with them is that they always seem to be really vague. A lot of people say they want to lose weight as their New Year’s resolution. That’s all well and good, but if you don’t have a plan of how you’re going to accomplish your goal of losing weight, then you’re probably not going to make much progress. And besides, if your goal is simply to lose weight, you could lose half a pound and consider your goal achieved. No, a good New Year’s resolution is specific about what you hope to achieve, and it comes along with a plan of how you hope to accomplish your goal in the 365 days you’ve given yourself to accomplish it.

I’ve never had much success with New Year’s resolutions, mostly because of the problems I just talked about. So this year, I’m going to be specific about what I hope to achieve in 2014, I’m going to detail my plans now instead of trying to figure them out later, and I’m sharing my goals with you guys so that hopefully you can offer me some accountability. Maybe this will be the year my New Years resolutions are successful.

So here we go. These are my 2014 New Year’s resolutions.

1. Write every day.

I don’t know about you, but I love to write. I discovered this pretty recently. I started out just journaling in Day One before bed to clear out my thoughts so I could sleep at night. I still do that, but now I’ve started doing more creative writing, and it’s something I really enjoy. It turns out that writing can actually be fun when you’re writing something for yourself and not for a grade.

So I bought this awesome creative writing app called Byword, and my goal is to use it every day to write something. Doesn’t matter what it is. It could be a blog post or a script or a song or a haiku. I just want to set aside some time each day to get away from the to-do lists and the papers and the assigned readings and just write whatever my heart desires.

2. Start a Bible journal and choose a verse of the day.

I read the Bible everyday, and for the past few months, I’ve been sharing a verse from my readings everyday that I think will encourage others. But I don’t think that reading a few chapters and sharing a verse everyday is enough. I’m going to start writing out responses to my Bible readings in a journal that I can save and expand on as I read through the Bible over the years. I’m also going to pick a specific verse out of my readings each day to focus on throughout the day and share on social media along with some thoughts on that verse. I think this well help me think more deeply about what I’m reading and also choose a specific verse to memorize, apply, and share each day.

3. Film a 1SE video.

I tried to make a 1 Second Everyday video last year, and I kept it going until sometime in July. But I ran into some serious technical difficulties over the summer and decided to stop becuase I had no way of sharing the videos and therefore no reason to keep making them. But good news! They finally released a fix for the app just before Christmas, so I’m going to give 1SE another shot. I want to make every day count, and I want to share those moments with you. So be looking out for a new 1 Second Everyday video at the end of each month, and if you’d like to be in one, just let me know.

4. Keep a consistent blog schedule.

For those of you who don’t know, I relaunched my website in November, and I’ve started a weekly blog. I tend to write about my own experience of living the Christian life and what I have learned from it. I’ve really enjoyed sharing my experiences that way, and I hope that you guys enjoy reading it.

Anyway, I’d like to continue doing those weekly blogs on Tuesdays, so that will stay the same. On top of that, I’m also going to start a series on my blog called Stuff Devon Likes. I’ve done this before, but I want to make it a regular thing. It’s where I do a write-up on someting that I enjoy and want to recommend to you. It might be a movie or a song or an app. It’ll change each week, and if you have something in particular you’d like for me to review, I’d be happy to look into it. Stuff Devon Likes will be posted on Saturdays.

Besides my weekly blogs and the Stuff Devon Likes series, I’ll also do some sporadic blog posts on what’s going on in my life. Between these three, I hope to have consistent, quality blog posts that share my thoughts, my experiences, and things I find noteworthy throughout the year.

Conclusion

So there ya go. I’m going to write something everyday, no matter what that something is. I’m going to keep a Bible journal and share a verse of the day along with my thoughts on that verse. I’m going to post monthly 1 Second Everyday videos. I’m going to blog on Tuesdays and post Stuff Devon Likes articles on Saturdays. At the end of the year, I hope to have a Bible journal covering the entire Bible, 12 1SE videos, 52 blog posts, 52 Stuff Devon Likes articles, and some sporadic blog posts updating you on my life. Wow. That’s a lot. But I think I can do it, and I think it’ll be worthwhile if I do it right.

So why am I doing all this, you ask? Why bother making these videos and writing all these blog posts if I’m not even sure anyone will watch or read? Well, it’s because I want to share my life with you. Whether or not you participate is completely your choice, but I want to invite you, my friends and family, to join me in this exciting year of my life.

This year is going to be crazy. In May, I’m going to graduate from Hendrix College. I’m going to be traveling most of the summer on all these crazy trips that my church sends me on. And in August, I’m going to be moving to Waco, Texas, to start working on my Masters of Divinity at Truett Seminary. And that’s just a few of the things I have planned for 2014. This time next year, I hope to be finished with my first semester of seminary and preparing for my second. I hope to be a little older, a little wiser, and a lot more experienced at this whole Internet thing.

So thank you for reading, and I hope you’ll join me on this exciting journey. No matter what, have a happy 2014, God bless, and I’ll see you on the Internet.

Merry Christmas

Hey, friends! I just wanted to wish you all a very merry Christmas. I hope wherever you are, you’re surrounded by those you love and remembering the things that matter most. I’m so thankful that I got to spend this Christmas with my family and watch my adorable nephew Aiden get excited over his gifts. May God bless you and your loved ones as we celebrate Christ’s birth. I’ll see you guys on Tuesday to talk about my New Year’s resolutions!

Thinking Like a Programmer

I’ve been trying to learn to code for a long time. I took a Python course on Udacity and a JavaScript course on Coursera, and these were great experiences that really got me interested in coding. Then I started doing lessons on Codecademy, where I learned the basics of JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. These lessons were really fun and informative. I’m very thankful for all of these opportunities to learn and to explore my interest in computer programming.

But I didn’t really learn to code until I took Foundations of Computer Science at my college. I came into the class with a pretty good knowledge of the basic syntax of programming. I knew how to write a for loop and how to solve basic problems by coding. But that class offered me something I didn’t get anywhere else. In my Computer Science class, I learned how to think like a programmer.

It’s one thing to know how to write code. I think anyone can learn that. You just memorize how to communicate with the computer in whatever language you’re using, and you spit it back out at the computer. And using this knowledge, you can do some pretty cool stuff under the right circumstances. But there is a limit to how much you can really do with just a knowledge of a computer language, and I hit that limit with my online studies.

And because I hit that limit, I got burned out. I stopped trying to learn. I thought that I had learned all there was to know and that I just didn’t have a knack for it. Codecademy kept giving me exercises to do, and if I couldn’t do them in one or two tries, I would find a way to trick the computer into thinking I had done what it had asked, or I’d look up the answer on Google. I wasn’t really programming.

Then I enrolled in my CS class at school, and somewhere admist the lectures, programming exercises, and exams, something changed. I learned to think like a programmer. I learned to approach challenges in coding not as obstacles to be overcome, but as puzzles to solve. I learned to break them down into pieces and to get excited when I could finally get all the pieces to fit together just right. I learned to be persistent when I ran into a wall and to try different approaches when my initial ideas inevitably didn’t work. I learned to code, and it felt great.

I owe most of this to my professor, Dr. Ferrer, who was very patient with everyone in my class and really made an effort to teach us not just the basic syntax of programming, but also how to approach programming. He even put the entire course schedule on hold and postponed a test because he felt like some of us weren’t ready. He wasn’t just concerned with providing the information so we could reproduce it on an exam. He wanted to teach us how to think like programmers, and he wanted us to love coding.

I’m proud to say my love for coding has been revived. And now that I can think like a programmer instead of just trying to reproduce the right syntax over and over, I have no limit to what I can do with my programming knowledge. I’m going back to the online class route and taking Stanford’s Programming Methodology class through iTunes U. I’m really enjoying it, and I can see how different the experience of coding is now than it was before. I hope to continue to learn more about programming and eventually develop my own app for phones and tablets. It’ll be a while before I get anywhere near that point in my programming skill, but I’m so excited to learn more about coding every day, and I can’t wait to see what I’ll learn to do next.

Side note: If you don’t know how to code, you really should give it a try. Learning how to communicate with computers on their own terms is not only a great mind exercise, it’s also a marketable skill. Plus, it’s just really fun! Resources for learning to code are everywhere. I personally suggest taking an introductory-level Computer Science class at your local university or trying out Codecademy to get started. Good luck, and happy coding!

New About Me Page

Hey, friends! I spent a couple of hours writing up a shiny new About Me page, so if you want to check it out, that would be awesome. Believe it or not, trying to sum yourself up in 500 words is pretty difficult, but I did my best. The Vizify bio was fun while it lasted, but I think the new page is a more meaningful and centralized way of describing myself.

As usual, thank you for reading. I hope you’re all having a great time getting ready for Christmas, and I’ll see you on Tuesday for our regularly-scheduled blog post!

Just Say Jesus

“And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus.” (Luke 1:31)

This verse is taken from Luke’s version of the Christmas story. The angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and gave her the news that she was going to have a son. The end of the verse in ESV reads, “and you shall call His name Jesus.”

Of course, Gabriel wasn’t speaking English. He spoke to Mary in her own language, which was most likely Aramaic, a language similar to Hebrew. So what Gabriel said out loud was not that Mary should call her child Jesus (His English name), but Yeshua.

So Jesus’ name in His native language was Yeshua. In school, He wrote Yeshua on His homework. When He was out and about, if someone asked Him what His name was, He would reply with, “Yeshua.” When someone called out to Him in a crowd, they said, “Hey, Yeshua!” That was His name.

Now there’s nothing wrong with calling Him Jesus. That’s His English name, after all, which comes from the Greek pronounciation Iēsous (imagine a rough “h” at the beginning of the word). I am personally fond of the name Jesus. It sets Him apart from other people who share His Hebrew name, like the Old Testament ruler Joshua. Plus, I think it’s just a cool name.

But something gets lost when we translate Jesus’ name from Hebrew to English. In the Bible, the meaning of a person’s name tells us a lot about who that person is, and Jesus is no exception. I think Christians would do well to examine the meaning of Jesus’ name in its original language and take it to heart.

The name Yeshua is made up of two parts that are based on words in the Hebrew language. “Ye” is short for Yahweh, the name of God, and is usually translated “the Lord.” And “shua” means “to deliver” or “to save.” So when you put these two parts together, Jesus’ name literally means, “The Lord saves.”

You see, when you say the name “Jesus,” you’re doing more than just referring to someone, even though that Someone is the most important someone in history. When you say the name of Jesus, you are making a bold statement. Whether you know it or not, you’re proclaiming to the world, “My God saves!” And that’s pretty incredible.

We worship the most incredible, most holy, most awesome Being in the universe. We worship a God who loved us enough to come to earth and die just so we could have a relationship with Him. We worship a God whose very name is a statement of His power and of His love for us. Jesus! What a name!

So the next time you’re praying or singing a praise song or even just talking about Jesus, remember what exactly you’re saying when you say His name. When you’re struggling with something and you just can’t find the words, simply say His name. Say Jesus. Because His name is powerful. His name is inpsiring. Jesus! Our God saves. Praise God!