Ryan A Bilello

The Princess Bride is one of my favorite movies of all time. Not simply because Andre the Giant is in it, but because the story offers action, adventure, peril, romance and comedy all wrapped into one. There is one character, Vizzini (on right), who for some reason loves to use the word inconceivable on multiple occasions to describe his disbelief, the unlikeliness of something happening, or his inability to be fooled. There is a humorous montage of the use of this word from the movie on YouTube.

As much as I love discussing The Princess Bride, that’s not the purpose of this post. What made me think of this particular part of the movie, specifically the questioning of the definition of inconceivable by Inigo Montoya, is the word or idea of legacy that I have been hearing, seeing and reading much about these days. Much talk is being made of leaving your mark, making a difference and using your life to reflect your mission, vision or goals.

I do wonder though if that is really what Jesus was getting at as he spoke of the kingdom and the lives that would have to be given up if his disciples followed him. I wonder even more about how important legacy is when I think about a guy named Shamgar back in the Old Testament. Maybe you’ve heard of him, but I’m guessing not many of you have. You’ll find his story immediately following the awesome story of Ehud (why isn’t Hollywood making more movies out of Bible stories?). Anyways, here’s the story of Shamgar;

After him was Shamgar, the son of Anath, who killed 600 of the Phillistines with an oxgoad, and he also saved Israel.-Judges 3:31

That’s it. There’s nothing more about him. Just his oxgoad and the death of 600 Phillistines. It doesn’t seem like Shamgar was too concerned about any type of legacy. I don’t know if he even cared much about his story being told. But the simple fact is that he was obedient to God in saving Israel. 

I can’t say I see too many people living like this today. Sure I know a few people who are content with living in obscurity while being obedient to Christ, but this definitely isn’t the norm today. Jesus wasn’t really concerned about his legacy either. He regularly was telling people not to share about his miracles or talk to others about what he was doing or saying. There are four books in the New Testament that tell the story of his life, but by no means is it because Jesus was concerned about his legacy. No, it was more to underline the fact that Jesus was more concerned about being faithful than famous.

So that is the challenge for us, and my question for you. Could you live a life of faithful obedience and dedication to Christ and do so without human recognition?

In Isaiah 58, it says “Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for people to humble themselves?” I wonder if God is asking the same thing in regards to legacy, “Is this the kind of legacy I have chosen, a life for people to build themselves up, to gain approval from men?”

If you ask me, I hope my life can be summed up as shortly as Shamgar’s. Read his story a couple more times and ask yourself, does legacy really mean what I think it means?

This will probably be the shortest review that I do on my quest to find the best mobile Twitter app. TweetDeck was horrible. I didn’t like it, at all, ever. That’s saying quite a bit because I didn’t like UberSocial or Plume but both of these apps did at least have a few qualities that I liked when I was using them.

TweetDeck is probably the most simplistic of the apps. If you are looking to just send tweets occasionally and read what people who you are following then this app probably is for you.

I sent a tweet earlier in the week that summed up how I was enjoying my experience with TweetDeck.

But to maintain some fairness I know that I should list some specifics about the pros (+) and cons (-) of the app.

- Again this was an app where there was no tutorial or quick tips when I first launched it showing me how to get around and use it easily. TweetCaster has been the only one so far to offer this.

- The app does nothing to help you add in people’s Twitter handle when writing a tweet. This means I’m supposed to memorize anyone whom I want to interact with on Twitter?

- Either I wasn’t using it right or it really just doesn’t allow it but I couldn’t merge both my Twitter accounts into one stream.

+ The one thing I really did like about TweetDeck is that my tweets that had been retweeted were merged right into a column with any tweets that mentioned me. This was much better than the previous apps I used where I had to dig and go to multiple different screens to find it.

+ There were no ads at all. This was a completely free app.

-/+ It did have a nice feature that was difficult and took a while to figure out. After hitting ‘refresh’ you can hit the time displayed at the top of the app and it will quickly and automatically scroll you to the top.

That’s about all I have for this app. I honestly didn’t like it. It did give me a new appreciation for UberSocial and Plume (which I really didn’t like before this) and it really made me miss TweetCaster.

If you use this app, I would love to know what you like about it.

For this upcoming week of March 24-30 I will be using HootSuite…hopefully I won’t be disappointed.

This is the third installment of my quest to find the best Twitter app. I started off with UberSocial followed by Plume. Clicking (& reading) those reviews may help in reading this review. In this review and previous reviews I always bold the main points so those of you looking for a quick read can get through this in no time. I would love to hear your thoughts on this review, any of the previous I have done or apps I have yet to review (TweetDeck, HootSuite, Twitter’s official app or Seesmic).

As always, this review is written in the order in which I came across the pros (+) and cons (-) of the app. Here we go…

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Who is your favorite character in the Bible & why?