Nicknames

Nicknames are a very curious thing to think about. They can come from very little thought or from a very large idea of collaborative thinking. But regardless of the origin of a nickname they are a way to refer to someone else in good ways and bad ways. 

One big intrigue I find about nicknames is how even within a group of friends a person could have multiple very different nicknames. Over the course of a lifetime the number of nicknames a person can accumulate can be staggering. I personally am unsure of how many nicknames I have and find it humorous to consider all the different things people have called me in the past. 

I am going to try to list as many nicknames as I can that people have called me. So please bear with me. I will attempt to explain the more confusing ones since some of you may not have known me when some of these nicknames came into existence. Well let us start off from the beginning.

Bo - My parents called me this as a baby. I truly do not know entirely why.

Bucket boy - I have my brother to thank for this one. (Because I apparently cried buckets of tears.)

Bucket - My brothers kids shortened the aforementioned nickname to suit their liking. I still get a kick out of the reaction from people hearing me called this the first time. 

Cully - Short for my last name. Actually carried down from what my dad is called by some of his friends. 

Jazz - Only one of my friends ever really called me this because while in high school there was a large group of people ordering shirts with nicknames on them to wear at basketball games. And I was in jazz band so one of my friends decided jazz would be a good nickname. And it stuck (for only Craighton).

L - From BLT, it is an inside joke with a couple friends. 

Log - Apparently my name was not short enough. 

Logman - This nickname I can thank my roommate Ben for. It is one of the various names he uses to refer to me via text message. (Also it is sometimes Logamo.)

Lo - Lo Lo - Lo Lo Pop - Papa Lo Lo - this one evolved over a matter of days. It started as Lo, because I met some Malaysian students and they informed me that Lo means man. Then it was Lo Lo, manly man. Then it was Lo Lo Pop, which means lollipop. (I was not too thrilled about this addition so now it has evolved into a mixture between Papa Lo Lo and just Lo Lo.)

Base 10 - This nickname requires the most thinking. So it requires knowing that I like math, then you think of mathematical terms and you encounter logarithms. Spend a second thinking my nickname could be Natural Log, and then I scramble to convince the people deciding that I do not like that nickname. And thus Log base 10 was born. Shortened to just base 10, and completely confusing to people who do not know what they are calling me. 

Yeah, feel free to go ahead and read through them again, but I have another list of nicknames I would much prefer you all read through. This next set of "nicknames" belong to something more glorious and more powerful than I can ever dream of being. They are a list of "nicknames" of God. They are similar to the nicknames I have in the respect that they all point to a characteristic that God possesses or are another name that points to Him. But they are much more important and have a much greater reason and purpose for their existence. Without further adieu I will begin the list. 

There are the well known God, Lord, Father, Savior. But the list does not end there. In the Old Testament, God was often called a name based on a characteristic He was displaying. 

Elohim - means God in reference to power and might

Adonai - means Lord in reference to God's Lordship

Jehovah-Maccaddeshem - The Lord the Sanctifier

Jehovah-Rohi - The Lord, the Shepherd

Jehovah-Shammah - The Lord who is Present

Jehovah-Rapha - The Lord our Healer

Jehovah-Tsidkenu - The Lord our Righteousness

Jehovah-Jireh - The Lord, Provider

El-Elyon - The Most High God

El-Roi - The Strong One Who Sees

El-Shaddai - God Almighty

El-Olam - The Everlasting God

This list does not even scratch the surface of the glory and power that our Creator contains or the surface of all the names used to refer to God contained in the Bible. He is Beautiful and Magnificent. His power is stronger than any other. He has given us a precedent to follow through the Bible. One of using His characteristics and various nicknames to refer to Him and often times I hear people only ever use one name to refer to God. Certainly, as a christian we can find more originality for our Creator, our Savior, our Jehovah-Jireh, our Jehovah-Rohi, our Adonai, our El-Olam. Our Lord is a beautiful and magnificent thing and He is worthy of our praise. 

I have heard multiple pastors talk on this subject and I know there are many other names of God. I encourage you all to go look up more names and expand your knowledge of our God, our Savior, our Creator. Also use the names you find. One pastor I have heard speak said in a message that in prayer we should refer to different aspects and characteristics of God. That is how the israelites prayed in the Old Testament. They prayed to their Teacher, their Couselor, their Provider, and their Lord. So we should also pray to our Lord, our Savior, our Creator, our Father, our Provider, our El-Roi, our El-Shaddai, our God, and any other name we can use to refer to God and glorify Him in doing so. God is the Glorious One and He is worthy of our praise, so we should act and Glorify Him, in whatever way we can. 

Thanks For Reading,

Logan Cullison (or whatever other name you may use for me)

Change is Good

There have been all sort of changes happening in the last couple weeks in my life. It is actually very interesting to think about as I look at them.

First are the changes at the community center I work at, which seem small in my mind in comparison to some of the other changes happening. At the center, changes range from new basketball hoops and rule changes, to the pending hope of a new scoreboard and security cameras that are on the way! Also, there  will be registrations moving to online so I will not be sitting at a computer for hours manually inputting data for day camp registrations. No matter what way you look at it, all these changes seem to be for the better and I am excited for all that is going on there.

The other place that major changes are happening is at my church! There are just so many things going on that I have been chock full of thinking, planning, and emotion! (Yes... You read that correctly... Even emotion.)

Catch Up Time

So I had a roommate mention something to me about my blog… Whoops! I have actually gone the last 11 months without even thinking about blogging at all.  Now to clarify, for all my avid readers out there, I didn't leave you out of the loop on purpose. Just to prove it I decided to take a post and summarize the last year and highlight some thoughts God has been putting on my mind. (ps, it is mostly thoughts)

This last year was a pretty wild and crazy ride. I have been busy working at my job up in North Omaha. I have been steadily taking classes continuing to work on my degree at UNO. I have also tried to maintain being active in my church and college ministry here in Omaha. I recently turned 23. Over the summer, I helped run a kid's day camp. I spent countless hours studying and in class (lots of typing). Over Spring Break I went on a Mission Trip with my church to Denver where we helped out a local church there. I attended a lot of weddings. Over the summer, my church in Omaha went through a book and video series that encouraged us to be proactive in sharing our faith with the people that we are already encountering everyday. Also, we created little half page personal faith story documents that feature our own testimonies and function as a tool we can use to share our faith with people that we encounter in our lives. But most importantly I went about my life trying to consciously follow the path that God has laid out for me. 

I have been looking and trying to find ways to take advantage of the situations that God presents in my life, because I feel that in my life I tend to get comfortable and just take a backseat approach. (I often feel like its just easy to let other people make the decisions and I can just be along for the ride.) But it is very important to my life to not be caught on the sidelines. Complacency in the life of a Christian can be a very dangerous thing that can very easily lead to destructive habits.

One step I am taking is to just in general step forward more and be of use and service to my church and college ministry. I have been gradually trying to find more ways to contribute and I see it as a necessity in my life to actually be involved in Church and not just attending. Personally I think that in order to see growth in your life and relationship with Christ, you have to be putting effort out beyond just attending. One observation I would like to point out that has come through years of my own experience is that the people that you see as "the most Godly people" tend to be the ones who go out and actually serve their church. Its not the people that show up and sit in the back row and only ever speak to people within a 5 foot radius of them. Yet, in my life it was so easy to think "what it so different in _____'s life?" "why can't I have a faith like ______?" I always felt like for some reason I could just jump to the level they were on and not have to worry about putting forth any effort. When deep down we can easily know that the answer is right in front of us.     ***Proverbs 13:4 says, "A sluggard's appetite is never filled, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied." (NIV)***     We should pay attention to that verse and see it as a caution and a calling to get involved with other christians. Just think of the impact the christian church could have on this country and the world if everyone went out of their comfort zone and made a conscious attempt to actually help and serve their church and/or community in a way other than just giving their money in a tithe.

Another step I am taking is dedicating time to reading my Bible. Now, don't judge me yet, because reading my Bible has been an important and semi-consistent part of my life for the last 8 or 9 years now… but I never really came naturally as a required daily task until about April of last year. I went through phases where I would read it consistently, but there were also dry spells. Then, I have realized how easily technology can take reading the Bible on a semi-regular basis and transform it into a consistent daily occurrence. Now you won't see me make a plug for things very often, but there is a free app called YouVersion that is a Bible app (for at least Apple products). Within this app you can set reading plans to help you get consistently through the Bible in a timely manner. I stumbled across a 90 day reading plan last April and tried it out and was amazed at the steps you can take to remind you to read your Bible. It does everything from email reminders and having multiple translations to giving you the option to add a friend to hold you accountable to read it every day. This app even lets you take notes and can be merged with your social media to share your progress. It does all of this while still being able to remain free to the user. So, if you are reading this and call yourself a Christian but don't include reading the Bible in your daily routine, I highly encourage you to try this app, or find a way that works for you to get your Bible included in your daily life.

Another way of thinking that I have decided to consciously consider is how I look at my Bible. One of my college friends had an interaction with an international student that was really convicting to my life about this very topic. In summary, it deals with the importance of the Bible as the Word of God. This international student wanted to see my friend's Bible and as this international student looking at it, they were treating it like it was a Holy Text. (Which I 100% agree with.) This got me thinking back to what treatment I have given to Bibles in the past and to consider what reverence we should give the Bible. I have drawn on pages and thrown my Bible around not really caring about what its physical condition looks like. (For those of you who take notes in your Bible or highlight verses, I am not speaking to you.) But in reality we could look to other religions and see how they treat their texts. (Now, I know I am not a part of those other religions) But other religions keep their religious texts under the best care. They don't throw them around and leave them places. They keep them clean, and away from harm. I feel like we as American's and Christian's should take a page out of their book (not a Bible though) and treat our Bibles with respect and dignity treating them as The Word of God. 

Also, on a related note (and I'm not trying to call anyone out) I find it odd when at a church service or someplace obviously related to God and there are people that attend and either bring their Bibles and never open them, or have stopped bringing their Bibles altogether. At places like that you hear constantly a speaker say something along the lines of "If you have your Bibles you can follow along with the text." but it seems to have become unnatural to bring/use a Bible in places like that because they sometimes offer the text of the verses on the projector. I heard a pastor say once that he hates putting the entire text up on the projector because it encourages people to limit their exposure to the Bible. He only puts the references up and encourages people to look up the verse themselves. This was they can still follow along, but if they feel a compulsion to read an adjacent verse or continue reading, God could use that to speak to the person. The exposure to God becomes wide open like a door that will only become closed when the reader shuts it themselves. If we are able to shift our way of thinking, the possibilities of what God can reveal to our lives are increased exponentially.

Well, I have begun to realize that my post is dragging on and I have somewhat caught you all up on the happenings of my life in the last year. So I hope you enjoyed reading my blog and you can expect to see posts coming out again. Unless I completely forget and take another 11 months off… In which case I will be back in the blogging world around Christmas!

If you have any questions you can call, text, email, message, or old fashioned face-to-face talk to me and ask. I trust you can find a way to contact me if you want to.

Thanks for Reading!

Logan Cullison