A New Me

Well, I know it's been over a week since I've had my last post and I apologize to everyone! Today I wanted to hit up a song that has been popular lately and not just something out of my little collection. So we're gonna hit up Dead & Gone by T.I. featuring Justin Timberlake. Lyrics can be found here. The song can be found right below this paragraph.

DEAD & GONE - T.I. ft. Justin Timberlake

Ever had one of them days you wish you would have stayed home? Let's face it, everyone has had one of those days at some point or another. Granted, it may not be on the scale that T.I. is saying, but maybe some of us can relate a little bit more to the song than others. We've all had those bottom of the barrel days, but we always tend to realize on our own that when you've hit the bottom, the only way to go is up.

As you can imagine, I'm mostly hitting up the chorus of the song and I will come back to the verse in a bit. II Corinthians 5 reads "17Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation."

Have you ever gotten seriously lost while driving or walking? You keep going and going thinking that you'll maybe see a street sign or something you recognize or anything to let you know where you are? Well, most of the time you won't so we make a u-turn and head back the way we came until we hit familiar soil. Life is that exact same way! But what if you manage to change yourself to not try the shortcuts, cause I'd hate to say it, but most time we date shortcuts, we miss something. So instead of being the old, adventurous, and lost person, why not be the new, safe, fulfilled and found person?

And the bridge is something we all relate to. At some point or another, we all feel lost and alone, but though we may feel it, we never are. We all know that God is always there with us, but God has other avenues. Pay attention, that friend trying to reach out to you is help. That book you just read is help. This blog that you're reading is help. He can communicate with us in so many ways, don't limit him to a whisper in the wind like in movies. God appeared to Moses as a burning bush, and that's pretty intense, but you probably won't see that. Stop, look, listen. He will show you the way.

That Power Is Finally Known

Well, as promised, here is my first official blog on this topic and lets do this right. I was actually stumped for a while trying to decide what song I wanted to do and then this one came to mind. The name of this song is Twister and it is off the official soundtrack for Square-Enix's "The World Ends With You." I couldn't find it on Imeem so I had to go to youtube and place the video above. If you click here you will find a link to the lyrics for the song and here we go!

The first thing we notice about the song is the repetition of "the power is yet unknown," before it jumps into the lyrics which are, to put it lightly, completely and utterly random! The beautiful thing is that this is exactly how life for every person is portrayed, jumping from subject to subject, task to task, party to party with little or no break or at least the feeling that there are no breaks at all for us.

What if we knew that power though and were able to do something about the hectic lives we lead? Beautiful thing, we do. "11 For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jeremiah chapter 29 shares this verse with us and take a second to reflect on that.

We lead our crazy random lives, but how big of a blessing that our randomness is all part of God's divine schedule? Take the example of the potter and clay in Romans chapter 9. To anyone who doesn't know how to work the clay and the wheel, it looks like a lump of clay spinning and it looks random and chaotic. To the potter, however, that same lump of clay will be molded into a vase or something else that is beautiful and useful.

So while our world is a complete twister, spinning around in chaos as we jump from point A to point D before going back to C and realizing we skipped B, remember that our potter is shaping us. God is perfecting us and making us vessels to do His work. So we finally know that power that the world has spent ages trying to figure out.

A New Direction

Alright, I decided to delete Littera Caligo after just one letter. I know, I wanted to keep my skills fresh, but I recently joined a good friend's RP board so that I can keep my skills fresh there. I figured it's time to act on this blog and make the most out of this one here.

For those of you who noticed, the blog is called Light and Shadows and that is a two fold purpose. If you're close to me, you know that I have this knack for taking real world things and putting a Godly spin on it, which is probably why I like Flamingo so much. They're able to incorporate worldly things but give it a Godly perspective.

Well, this blog came from two worldly places and one biblical one. It combines the three major influences in my life, God, music, and games. Ephesians 5: 8-14 reads "8For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light 9(for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) 10and find out what pleases the Lord. 11Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. 12For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. 13But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, 14for it is light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said:'Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.'" And of course, we are the light of the world.

The second part is from gaming. My favorite game series of all time is...
Kingdom Hearts! Well, because I can go on for hours about that series, I'll bring it down to the point that is relevant to this blog post. In the first game, you hear the line, "The closer you get to the light, the greater your shadow becomes." I think this is fitting to a Christian walk. The closer we get to Christ, we realize just how imperfect we were, but at the same time, a person would be incomplete without their shadow. To be whole and progress forward, we need to acknowledge that it wasn't always good and that we were, in fact, sinners.

The last part, music, comes from an underoath song titled "It's Dangerous Business Walking Out Your Front Door" which was originally introduced to me by a friend of mine. This part is actually the url for the blog, crosscastshadow. This is a link to the lyrics.

Its Dangerous Business Walking Out Your Front Door - Underoath
That's the song itself, streaming from Imeem.

Well, to sum it up, I have a new direction for this blog as a whole. I want to include at least once a week, either a song and a short devotion or a game and a short devotion, or both, when I'm feeling really adventurous. I want this to be enriching to your life and I also want you to feel free to talk to me about anything. So, I will do my first official one soon, but I kinda count this as one too.

God bless you guys!