Where my Story Begins

Okay, so in my first post I listed 4 things I wanted to accomplish with this blog. 

1 - To highlight current aspects of my life and how God is working in it.
2 - To let people know who I am and what I am all about.
3 - To let people know about my past and how God brought me to where I am.
4 - To be transparent with my life.
(paraphrased)

So you all know what to expect, I will be slowly going through different aspects of my past and showing how God worked in my life, shaping me and bringing me directly to the point in my life that I am at now. While intermittently giving tidbits of information about the present things God is doing in my life (i.e. - my post about fractals and others to come).

And that brings me to this post! Where my story begins! My story begins in two different places. The first is my birth, which occurred on January 22nd, 1991 at 3:21 AM. I was born in Beatrice, NE to Jeff and Sherry Cullison. It was a Tuesday, and before going to the hospital my parents stopped at Pat's Video to return the movies they had rented, in order to avoid the late charges. Unfortunately, I am not a primary source of information on this topic. For the complete details, please contact one of my parents, or both.

Moving forward a bit, we come to young little Logan! Life as a kid was fairly easy. One never has too many tough choices at a young age. I was a quiet child, and completely content keeping completely to myself (a trait that I cannot shake to this day).

My parents were Christians, and they constantly had bible studies at our house while I was young. We attended church every week. I did all the standard things a child in Christian family would do. I went to Sunday School and Children's Church every Sunday. And on Wednesdays I went to "King's Kids", which was a children's choir at my church that elementary aged students went to. I also went to AWANA during the school year and attended VBS in the summer. My parents even sent me to the local private Lutheran Elementary School, "St. Paul's", even though our family went to a Non-Denominational Church, not a Lutheran one.

But it was not right away that I realized that all those things are great, but they don't satisfy everything. While still pretty young, I thought I had it all figured out. I thought I had been lucky enough to be born into a free pass to heaven. But I soon realized that a person needs more in their life than to just go to church every week and be active in all the things that their church offers. I needed more than just reading the bible and following the crowd. I needed to realize that nothing I can do on my own could possibly get me into Heaven.

Instead, what is needed is to put faith in the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made on the Cross as the only way to gain salvation from Hell and gain admittance into Heaven. 

Romans 3:23 - "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."
Romans 6:23 - "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."
John 3:16 - "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have Eternal Life."
Ephesians 2:8-9 - "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this is not from yourselves, it is the free gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast."

Now, what this all means is that you cannot get into Heaven on your own. There is nothing you can do to get yourself there, no matter how hard you try. The only way in, is to acknowledge that you are a sinner and accept the free gift that has been given to you by the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross. By doing this and doing this alone, you can gain admittance to Heaven. 

Now for the second place my story begins! I came to this realization on November 10th of 1999, while I was 8 years old. It was a Wednesday and as per my usual Wednesday schedule I went to King's Kids. After we got done doing our singing and stuff, we would always watch a video or something of the sort. We typically watched either Veggie Tales, McGee and Me, or The Adventures in Odyssey. On this particular night we watched The Adventures in Odyssey episode entitled "Once Upon an Avalanche". In this episode the kids get trapped in an avalanche and are faced with survival. It brought me to the realization that at any point, anyone could be faced with death lingering in front of them. After leaving that night I went with my family to one of the bowling alleys in Beatrice, Tonka Lanes, where my father was in a men's bowling league. Before my dad went inside to bowl, I was talking to him about what I had done that night and our conversation led to my father sharing the gospel with me. On that night, November 10th, 1999, in our large white Ford Aerostar Van, in the parking lot of Tonka Lanes, I made the decision of a lifetime. I made the decision to accept Jesus Christ as my Savior.

Now like many 8-year-olds, there was not a whole lot that I thought I could do to actively live the life of a Christian. But I continued to be active in Christ Community Church in Beatrice. I stayed in all the previously listed activities until I aged out and moved into new activities designed for my age group, like JV FOOT (which was the Middle School Youth Group "Fellowship of Outrageous Teens" at CCC).

I will pick up with the story of my life, where I left off, eventually. But until then, I can only hope you do not lose interest. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

Thanks for Reading!

Logan Cullison 

What is in a Title?

I bet you are wondering what exactly my title (Fractal Fragmentation) means. Well to begin with, I must first make sure you understand what a fractal is. A fractal is typically a geometric figure that when examining a specific part, if you zoom in on the image, you would then be viewing the same image as you were before (which is called Self-Similarity). So, hypothetically, in a perfect fractal you can infinitely fragment a fractal and still have the original image, regardless of the amount of zooming and isolating you perform.

A good basic image to use to illustrate this idea is represented in the Sierpinski Triangle, which is a very easy start for a basic understanding of fractals. I highly suggest if you are unfamiliar with fractals to do a simple internet search for "Sierpinski Triangle" to get an idea of how simple some fractals can be. Another common fractal is the Mandlebrot Fractal, which is coincidentally located at the very top of this blog!

As you begin to have a better understanding of the patterns to look for you should look at more complex images and begin to see the complexity and beauty that are contained within the images. 

Now you are probably noticing that so far all these examples I have mentioned have been computer generated images. But fractals are also common in nature as well, you just have to know where to look. Here is one example, but you have to go out and find more on your own. 

Now to get to the interesting part. As I examine the fractals and consider the self-similarity contained minutely inside the images, I notice the detail, the specificity. These are the same things I notice about the Lord and His creations. First, in His creation, the detail and the specificity that went into the creation of all things reveals the amazing and awesome power of our Lord and Savior. Second, is the way I notice the Lord. I recently started reading "Systematic Theology" by Louis Berkhof, and one of the ideas that it presented was that we can only understand what God has revealed to us about Himself. What I began associating with fractals, was that God, in each of our lives has revealed a very specific fractal that is our life. The more God reveals to us is like zooming in further and further and examining closer the finer points that were designed by Him and created specifically for my fractal. I myself cannot change the fractal that I have, but as I take steps further and further into my life and make choices, it is like me selecting which part of the fractal to zoom in on. But God is always there, He is the one that actually reveals Himself to me, by zooming in to view the next part of the fractal. But here is the catch, as we zoom in, we are not discovering anything new, we are just having what was always there revealed to us.

I find it intriguing and amazing the connections between our lives, creation, and the way the Lord works in us. I hope I was able to hold your attention. If you have any questions feel free to contact me.

Thanks for Reading!

Logan Cullison

About Me and About the Blog

Hi Everybody!

My name is Logan Cullison.

Let us start this all off on a good note! I am a Christian and I believe the only way to Heaven is to accept Jesus Christ as the payment for sin. Since He lived a perfect sinless life and sacrificed himself on the cross for the sins of everyone, I feel it is my duty as a Christian to live a life that is glorifying to Him to the best of my abilities. I do that by joining other like-minded Christians in fellowship, by practicing habits that will strengthen my own personal relationship with my Savior, and by sharing my faith with other people whom I come into contact.

If you have any questions about the above paragraph or any other part of my blog and would like to speak more specifically with me about it, I encourage you to seek me out. My email is logancullison@gmail.com . You can also find me via the internet at facebook.com/logancullison , twitter.com/logancullison (I think the link gplus.to/logancullison takes you to my g+ page, but I do not use that enough to know for sure). Or you can use your computer skills and probably very easily find my phone number, I am the only Logan Cullison in the US to my knowledge. So, feel free to contact me with any questions you have, usually I am more than happy to answer any questions. (Talking to me in person works as well.)

To give you all a little bit more of an idea who I am, I am a student at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. I am studying mathematics and education and hope to graduate, eventually, with a double major. I hope to become a math teacher and swim coach after graduation. But that is probably enough about my future plans, they tend to not always play out how I expect them to anyway.

I currently live in Omaha, NE, although I was born and raised in Beatrice, NE where I graduated from Beatrice High School. In high school I was a three sport athlete (football, swimming, and soccer) and involved in band and choir, as well as being active in my church (Christ Community Church in Beatrice) and youth group (Fellowship Of Outrageous Teens - FOOT). A lot of you are probably noticing the pairing of my sports and probably wondering how that worked... well I grew up with swimming as one of the main focuses of my life and traveled pretty consistently during my preteen and early teen years, so swimming stayed a big part of my life into high school. Then after high school I moved out of my parents house and onto campus at UNO in the Fall of 2009. Shortly after arriving at UNO I joined up with a group called the Rock (a christian college ministry on the campus at UNO). Not long after, I joined the church that sponsored the Rock (Candlewood Church) in Omaha.

By now I am guess that you are all wondering what this blog is all about. To fill you in, I decided to do this blog for a handful of reasons. The first reason is that I wanted to find a way to highlight aspects of my life and show how God has been working in it. The second reason is that I challenged myself as a New Years Resolution to find a way to help more people understand me and what I am all about (yes I realize I am a couple weeks late). The third reason is that I realized there are a lot of people who know me but really do not know very much about my past, my life, or my relationship with God. The fourth reason is that I challenged myself to be more transparent with my life. I hope this blog will accomplish all these things, in due time.

Now for the Disclaimers! First, I probably think I am much funnier than I really am, you have been warned. Second, I cannot always get my brain to work properly in conveying an idea or thought into coherent words, you have been warned. Third, when telling stories I tend to never get the climax correct, so often times the ending will just happen, you have been warned. Fourth, I can get very long-winded in my words (yes, I know I am typing and not speaking), you have been warned.

If you made it this far, congratulations, you are almost finished. Thank you for sticking with it for so long! I just wanted to sign off and remind you all that if you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

Thanks for Reading!

Logan Cullison

PS - Maybe I should have put the disclaimers more toward the top of the post... oh well.