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Below is an essay wrote by an NYU applicant on his entrance papers. This is possibly the funniest thing I’ve read in a long time. The best part however is the fact Hugh Gallagher (the author) was accepted into the college.
I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row.
I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.
Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets, I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I’m bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge.
I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear.
I don’t perspire. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been caller number nine and have won the weekend passes. Last summer I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration. I bat .400. My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles. Children trust me.
I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy.
I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I have performed several covert operations for the CIA. I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. The laws of physics do not apply to me. Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down.
I have made extraordinary four course meals using only a mouli and a toaster oven. I breed prizewinning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin. I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis.
But I have not yet gone to college.
29 days ago I started out on an adventure to read the complete Bible in one year. Sounds quite simple really, start in Genesis finish in Revelation, right? Well…. yes I could do that but one of my key objectives is to gain a better feel of how the 66 separate books slot together in terms of time.
The best way to fully understand events, people, places, prophecies and how they link together in a timescale is to take a chronological approach at reading the Bible.
The website YouVersion.com recently launched a ‘Reading Plans’ feature. Their superb range of studies differ in length and cover a wide range of Biblical subjects. You can image my excitement then when I discovered a chronological study which lasted 365 days.
29 days into my reading plan I have read almost all of Genesis and all of Job. Interestingly Job slotted in between Genesis 11 & 12 (who would have thought it?).
I’m really enjoying this plan so far and I look forward to learning more and more in the coming months. I’d also like blog my way through this journey if for no other reason than personal reference.
Sometimes its so hard to see God from a different point of view. We so often think of Him as being single sided, but the truth is God is filled with mystery and none of us can truly understand it. Here’s a litte paragraph from a Matt Redman book which helps us understand the many sides of God and His personality.
“The God we worship is clothed in mystery. He reveals and He conceals. He invites and He hides. He confounds and He confides. The God who rests but never sleeps, who thunders and whispers, terrifies and befriends; whose anger lasts only a moment, but whose favour lasts a lifetime. All-consuming, yet kind. All-knowing, yet capable of forgetting the sins He forgives. The God who wounds and binds up, who injures and heals. The King whose footstool is the earth, yet who humbly washed the earth from the feet of those He discipled. Who reigns in righteousness, yet carried our shamefulness. Who walked in the garden of Eden in the cool of the day, yet sweated drops of blood in the garden of Gethsemane one agonising night. The God of the smallest detail and the grandest design, who issued ornate designs for an extravagant temple, yet found pleasure in the humblest offering of a widow‘s two tiny coins there. The suffering servant who commands the universe. The sinless friend of sinners. The Saviour who hung in agony on beams of wood He Himself had called into being. Fearsome yet welcoming. Unfathomable, yet knowable. The God of kings and beggars, presidents and paupers. Who fathers the fatherless and works through our weakness. Burning with holiness, yet refreshingly graceful. This is the God we worship – the God of all mystery.”
It took just four weeks to organise – but thanks to the power of social media, today 20,000 people in 185 cities are hoping to raise £700,000 for charity. Amanda Rose, the founder of Twestival, took time out from her last minute preparations to speak to Sky News Online. “The Twestival is a Twitter festival, put together by volunteers. “It’s bringing people who met on the web together offline, to meet for a social cause, in over 185 cities across the world.” Twitter is a microblogging website that allows its users to communicate with each other in short, snappy text updates.
It has grown from a small network of San Francisco web entrepreneurs in 2006 to a major global network, boasting Barack Obama, Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross among its most popular users. And, through the power of online networking, over 1,000 volunteers across the world from Beijing to Brighton, Dallas to Dhaka will be hosting Twestival events.
The aim is to raise £700,000 for charity: water, which helps bring clean drinking water to people in developing countries. It is an idea Amanda and her co-founders had last September, when a group of Twitter users met in London to socialise and raise money for a local homeless charity. The event was a great success so they decided to have another go, and were blown away by the response.
Here’s a book I’ve been reading lately and has really challenged my thinking in so many ways. We often build up an image of God which fits into our thinking. However there’s so many sides and angles to God we need to step back every now and again for a fresh view. This book is great at displaying different sides of Gods personality. Here’s what eden.co.uk say…
God Most High, The Lord, I Am, YHWH, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Maker of Heaven and Earth. There can be no greater inspiration, no other reason for worship, and no stronger motivation to live well.
Andrew Wilson explores 60 names and descriptions of the one true God, weaving profound biblical insight into each short chapter, and so unfolding the greatest subject our minds abd hearts can ever contemplate.