• Brad Ruggles

  
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I heard an amazing story told by Mark Beeson, Pastor of the Granger Church here in Indiana. It was very moving to me, probably because I can relate to the sacrifices a leader has to make. For every step forward you take in ministry there are always going to be the hardships that go with the territory.

This video reminded me to count the cost. The influence of leadership always comes at a price.

(click here if you can’t see the video)

Busy day today…too much to do…NO BLOG FOR YOU!!
(click here if you can’t see the video)

Like many of you reading this right now I’m struggling through yet another Monday morning. With my second cup of coffee in hand I pray that somehow the Lord will bless those beautiful Starbucks coffee beans to wake my body up.

As I was sitting here thinking about all the stuff I had to do this week I had to do an attitude check on myself. I tell my kids all the time, “Attitude is a Choice.”

I realized that I also have a choice in determining my attitude. I can fall into the slump of the Monday blues or view this week through the lens of opportunity.

God has given me so much. Just the fact that I have a car, a house, food to eat and a job makes me wealthier than the vast majority of the world’s population and yet I choose to mope and complain about Monday blues? Sometimes it helps to get a little perspective.

I’m choosing to readjust my attitude today and view this week for what it really is: a week full of limitless potential. Every day holds new opportunities for me to make a difference in the lives of my family, friends or even complete strangers. Each moment is a gift from God entrusted to me. I’ve been given the gifts I have, not so I could squander them on myself, but so I could be a blessing to others.

This week is a week full of amazing potential and I can’t wait to start it!

Watch the dog in the background. I felt like that this morning.
(click here if you can’t see the video)

I saw this on Stephen Barry’s blog and I had to put it on mine too.

This little boy named Hero was born in Korea . He can sing most of the Beatle’s songs even though he doesn’t know English. This video was recorded when he was three years old! (click here if you can’t see the video)

I found a fascinating resource online that everyone should check out. It’s a world clock that displays statistics on things like world population, deaths, oil consumption, and infectious diseases. The numbers are generated using data from a variety of sources. While the actual numbers cannot be precise down to the second as they are displayed on the clock, what is interesting is the rapid rate of change.

After watching the numbers grow for a few minutes I began to see the world in a different way. We often can’t wrap our mind around the really big numbers but we need to be reminded about the issues that are facing our world today. For example, as many as 3,000 people have died so far today because of AIDS, 2,000 because of Diarrhea (caused often from the lack of clean water), 1,800 from Tuberculosis (a preventable disease)…and that’s just at 9:30 AM when I’m writing this!

Take a few minutes to look at the clock. Click the buttons along the top to see the numbers for this month, week, day or minute by minute. It will give you a new perspective on the world we live in.

See for yourself! B.J. Novak (better know as Ryan from the Office) exposes the truth behind the shrinking Cadbury Creme Egg. We’re being robbed!

Thanks to Tim Jahr for passing this along. (click here if you can’t see the video)

I went into a convenience store today and saw one of my old friends…the Cadbury Creme Egg.

This little chocolate egg is one of the reasons I look forward to Spring every year. It’s one of my vices. I can’t walk into a store and see them at the counter without buying one.

Did you know…

• Over 300 million eggs are produced each year
• The Cadbury Creme Egg plant at Bournville can ‘lay’ 66,000 Creme Eggs every hour - more than 1.5 million eggs a day
• The fondant filling is solid when the eggs are made, then injected with an enzyme which causes it to liquify into the gooey substance found in the finished product.
• The Cadbury Creme Eggs you buy here in the US are actually smaller than the ones made in the UK and purchased around the world

Go ahead, Leave a comment if you enjoy these little chocolate eggs too.

If you know me or have read my blog before you know that I’m a creative person at heart. I’ve been involved in media and graphic design since 1995. Back then I was designing with Photoshop 3.0 on a computer with 16MB of RAM and a 1GB Hard Drive!

Here’s some of the highlights of my life as a designer:

Ok all you creative people out there, time to ‘fess up.

Do any of those sound like you?

Inspiration can be found in the strangest places. This morning I was logging into Wordpress to write a blog post when the checkbox under my username and password caught my eye. Remember Me.

I know what it’s supposed to mean but I started thinking, what is it about human nature that has such a strong desire to be remembered? We all want to leave our marks on this world. None of us want to simply run out the clock on our lives and just exist. We want to leave a legacy behind.

I was reminded of this at a funeral over the weekend. Paul Mason, a man I had the privilege of knowing for almost three years, died last week. I didn’t expect to be as emotional as I was at the funeral but I was overcome by the incredible legacy of faith Paul left behind.

Person after person recounted Paul’s love for God and his earnest desire to share it with anyone who would listen. They talked of his faith in God that didn’t waver even after months of fighting a painful cancer. If Paul was listening from Heaven, as I’m sure he was, I can imagine that he would have been proud of the life he lived.

Here’s some food for thought on a Monday morning. If you could pick 2 or 3 things that you would like to be remembered for when you died, what would they be? I think most of us would agree that our first goals in life would be to love God and love our families so let’s take those two off the list and dig a little deeper.

How would you like to be remembered? What would you like to be remembered for?

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