Audio Blogs

In an effort to synthesize the thinking and sharing I've done, this link will take you to four recorded messages I've given at the Ranch Church. If there's anything noteworthy in these messages it is because God is real, and He wants to be involved in our lives.

http://ranchchurch.com/sermons.php?teacher=Taylor%20Storey

Don't Waste Your Life

If there's one phrase I'd put on a billboard it would be this: Don't Waste Your Life.

I think it leads people to what really matters the most in their lives, and then asking questions if even that really matters.

For instance, how would you live your life in such a way that it really mattered. The first thing I think about is to live for other people. Go to africa and give orphans food. Spend time with kids so they can grow up and do the same, right?

Then that kid that we invest in, he grows up and gets a job for a magazine, writes and researches from 9-5, goes home, has a drink and watches a movie, then goes to sleep. On the weekends he plans fishing trips, he spends most of his free time on ESPN.com and can't wait for sundays when the guys come over and he watches the Chargers go 14-2 then win the super bowl.

not a bad life, but if the thing I get most excited about is the chargers, it seems to me i'm wasting my life.

I've been working construction this summer and its so sad to hear the guys talk about their lives. They live with a girl that they got pregnant before they were married and now they are living in a trailer with a couple kids trying to do the right thing. They work LONG hours trying to pay their expenses but they still live paycheck to paycheck. When they are not working they are sleeping, on the weekends they try to relax so they can get back to work during the week. The brutal truth is that it seems pretty wasted.

So if mother Theresa spends her life helping other people to waste their lives is her life wasted? The brutal truth is that it also seems pretty wasted.

Therefore life is meaningless.

Or should I say life apart from God is meaningless? When we put God in the situation our lives all of a sudden become meaningful. We realize our purpose is to know God, then all of a sudden the mother Theresa, humanitarian work takes on meaning. We feed people so that they can live a meaningful life, knowing God, enjoying what he has given us to enjoy. We invest in that kid so that he can exist with God.

If there is eternity, then everything takes on new significance. If its not there, the only life not wasted is one not lived. But don't kill yourself! There is eternity! and there is eternal significance to our actions here!

I wanna live a life not wasted, a life that matters for eternity.

The Education System

In my heart there are a few things that I often think about, one of these is education. I was homeschooled every day of my life (apart from pre-school, 3 months in mexico and some time at allan hancock college in high school) and I consider myself to be generally quite different from the stereotypical homeschooler.

That being said, I believe some things have changed in the way we view education, and some things should change in the way we view education.

Sadly, it seems to me that our public education system has embraced daycare rather than education. I surveyed 45 of my friends who went to either public or private school and some of them said that during high school 90% of their time was wasted. The kids that thought it was most useful were most often private school students.

I know a lot of kids that half their senior year was spent watching TV shows in class. Even when there is teaching, I am convinced that for a majority of students what they learn outside the 1 on 30 classroom is more beneficial to them than the time they spend within it. It should be said that some students clearly buck this trend, however, it seems to me they are in a minority.

I am thinking this blog may turn into developing a clear thought process on how to influence the next generation of educators into seeing a child and seeing an opportunity to give that child the most valuable knowledge to enhance their life, and to do it in a way that gives them an opportunity to use it, maintaining high expectations of them.

...if it were up to me, I'd start by eliminating any federal education system. What does somebody in washington D.C. know about educating a child in Solvang, CA that somebody in California (or even better, Solvang) doesn't?

...in the classroom, I would switch my thinking to having 50 minutes 5 days a week to teach important concepts to enrich my students lives. -I'm sure some teachers already think like this, but we've all had teachers who are just there to click through their slides and generally discourage us from ever thinking about US History again, or at least beyond friday's test.