Thank You

Thank you Columbus/Franklinton "community" for sharing your lives with me through your blogs. They bless me.

Hey I just customized my colors and template--maybe I am catching on after all

blogs & time

This blog is getting to be more work than it is worth. When I tried to post yesterday they told me my email address was not valid. Then they wanted me to create a new password. So here we are trying once again and hoping I will be able to get back to this site in the future.

The weather has cooled down nicely. I don't like hot weather. Next holiday that comes is Labor Day and after that the fall progresses quickly and before you know it the holidays are here. How's that for making six months of your life fly by!

technology

All I wanted to do was add a post...but no because they decided to upgrade I have to remember what my gmail account is..which I didn't create in the first place..why do they think I created a nice litte icon on my desktop to access my blog??? Isn't this some kind of invasion of my privacy? I had an account and they decided to change things without asking if I wanted to? As a result we may not have dinner tonight as I had to spend the allotted time to prepare our crock pot dinner to update my account!!!

Well to get back to my post:
Had a really nice weekend. Visited with my entire family--not all together which works out better--each group has their own "center" and sometimes they don't blend well. As someone who doesn't particularly enjoy conflict it works out better to visit this way. I got to scooter board for the first time. It was a lot of fun and good exercise. Also got to play basketball and actually got the ball in the hoop. Good food, good company. All this even when situations are not the best in people's lives. I have a saying by my computer--Happiness is NOT having what you want but wanting what you HAVE.

Time to get ready for work.

We can compete with God’s plan and pursue our own agenda. Or we can converge with God’s plan and join the winning side. The choice is ours. —Joe Stowell

Choose not a path that God can’t bless,
For it will end in sure defeat;
But choose God’s path of victory
And with His plans you won’t compete. —D. De Haan

Vacation is coming up fast. Leave Saturday for Florida. Trying to avoid getting sick--lots of people around me have one thing or another.

Trying a new group Thursday night and my Wednesday night group is finishing up the section we were doing. Need to decide if we will start a new one or end till September or possibly not start up again. Taking a leadership class because of small group I lead and most of what it is talking about is not something I want to do. Decisions, decisions-----

Reason for prayer

This is from today's reading of OUr Daily Bread--

We prayed. Quietly sometimes. Aloud other times. For more than 17 years we prayed. We prayed for our daughter Melissa’s health and direction, for her salvation, and often for her protection. Just as we prayed for our other children, we asked God to have His hand of care on her.

As Melissa rolled into her teenage years, we prayed even more that He would keep her from harm—that He would keep His eyes on her as she and her friends began to drive. We prayed, "God, please protect Melissa."

So what happened? Didn’t God understand how much it would hurt so many people to lose such a beautiful young woman with so much potential for service to Him and others? Didn’t God see the other car coming on that warm spring night?

We prayed. But Melissa was killed.

Now what? Do we stop praying? Do we give up on God? Do we try to make it alone?

Absolutely not! Prayer is even more vital to us now. God—our inexplicable sovereign Lord—is still in control. His commands to pray still stand. His desire to hear from us is still alive. Faith is not demanding what we want; it is trusting God’s goodness in spite of life’s tragedies.

We grieve. We pray. We keep on praying. —Dave Branon

I question not God’s means or ways,
Or how He uses time or days,
To answer every call or prayer—
I know He will, somehow, somewhere. —Whitney

God may deny our request but will never disappoint our trust.

You are rich when you are satisfied with what you have.

From our daily bread:


Driving through Ireland to a Bible conference, I saw a fascinating billboard. It was large and white with nothing on it but a woman’s red shoe and the bold caption: "Is Shopping The New Religion?"

The pursuit of possessions continues to be one of the most powerful motivations that people can experience. But can the accumulation of things bring true satisfaction?

In Luke 12:15, Jesus answered that question with a firm and uncompromising "No!" During a discussion on material wealth, He said, "Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses." Life must always be more than just the inventory of the things we own.

King Solomon also attempted to find satisfaction in the pursuit of things. He discovered it to be full of emptiness (Eccl. 2:1-17). If we have placed "the abundance of the things" we possess at the center of our lives, shopping may, in fact, have become a substitute for God—a new religion. But such endeavors will always result in emptiness.

David prayed, "You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing" (Ps. 145:16). Only God is able to bring real satisfaction to our lives. —Bill Crowder

O Lord, help us to be content
With all that we possess,
And may we show our gratitude
With heartfelt thankfulness. —Sper

You are rich when you are satisfied with what you have.

happiness

At Harvard University, you can take a course in happiness. This popular class helps students discover, as the professor states, "How to get happy."

That’s not a bad idea. In fact, the Bible even suggests on several occasions the importance of being happy or joyful. Solomon tells us that God grants happiness to us as a privilege (Eccl. 3:12; 7:14; 11:9).

Sometimes, though, we take the search for earthly happiness too far. We see it as the most important pursuit, and even believe that our happiness is God’s highest goal for us. That’s when our thinking gets confused.

God’s Word tells us that true happiness comes by keeping God’s law (Ps. 1:1-2; Prov. 16:20; 29:18). God demands holiness and has called us to live a holy life—one that exemplifies His moral character (1 Thess. 4:7; 2 Peter 3:11). In Peter’s first letter we read, "As He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, ‘Be holy, for I am holy’" (1 Peter 1:15-16).

When we face decisions about the way we should act or how we should live, we must keep in mind that God’s command is not "Be happy," but "Be holy." True joy will come from a holy, God-honoring life. —Dave Branon

In all I think and say and do,
I long, O God, to honor You;
But may my highest motive be
To love the Christ who died for me. —D. De Haan

There is no true happiness apart from holiness and no holiness apart from Christ.

Jeremiah vs the Christmas tree

The year we had no tree, Mother planted within me a seed of discontent with all cultural displays of religion.
Eugene H. Peterson | posted 12/20/2006 08:08AM


This article originally appeared in the December 11, 1987 issue of Christianity Today.

Related articles and links



Two years ago at Christmas I was living in Montana in the Rocky Mountains where I grew up. The National Forest Service there allows people to cut their own Christmas tree. So Jan, my wife, and I went out one day with an axe into the snow-filled forest to get ours. We spotted what looked like the right tree-it was 200 yards up a hillside, and we had to tramp through snow to get to it. In that forest and on that hillside it was a spectacularly beautiful tree. But after we got it back to our home on the lake and set it up in our wood-fired and carpeted living room, we realized that a considerable amount of its charm had been lost in transit.

It was an Engleman spruce, a tree with character, having lived a hard life on the mountain, and we had hiked through 16 inches of snow to get it. It still looked handsome enough to me, but when our three children, all adults now, arrived to celebrate the holiday with us, they took one look and mocked. They were used to coifed Scotch pines, bought from the Lions Club in the Safeway parking lot in Maryland. If those were too picked over, we patronized the Boy Scouts selling from the Methodist parking lot. Buying a tree was a family affair, with arguments about size and thickness and symmetry. This was our first tree chosen without benefit of children.

In Montana, with an entire forest of trees to pick from, they thought we could have done better. We reminisced about the Christmas trees we had bought and set up and decorated. The more we talked, the more scrawny this Engleman spruce appeared. But finally we all agreed it was a tree, after all, and the moment it was designated Christmas tree it was suitable.

People worry these days about keeping Christ in Christmas; no one has any anxiety about keeping the tree in Christmas. Nobody I know discusses the pros and cons of the matter; it is simply done. There must be numerous households in America where no prayers are offered at Christmas, no carols sung, and no nativity story told. But there can be few households where there is no Christmas tree. The tree is required. We always had a tree, and always will. It is as much a part of Christmas as the crèche and "Silent Night."

But I do remember a Christmas when there was no tree. I was eight years old. My mother, an intense woman capable of fierce convictions, was reading the prophecy of Jeremiah and came upon words she had never noticed before:

Thus says the Lord:
"Learn not the way of the nations, nor be dismayed at the signs of the heavens
because the nations are dismayed at them, for the customs of the peoples are false.
A tree from the forest is cut down, and worked with an axe by the hands
of a craftsman. Men deck it with silver and gold;
they fasten it with hammer and nails so that it cannot move" (Jer. 10:2- 4)
There was no doubt in her mind that the Holy Spirit, through the prophet Jeremiah, had targeted our American Christmas in his warning satire. Every detail fit our practice.

A couple of weeks before Christmas, on a Sunday afternoon, my father would get the axe and check its edge. He was a butcher, used to working with sharp tools, and he did not tolerate dull edges. When I heard the whetstone applied to the axe, I knew that the time was near. We bundled into our Model A Ford pickup, my parents and baby sister and I.

If it was not too cold, I rode in the open truck bed with our springer spaniel, Brownie, and held the axe. It was a bouncy ride of ten miles to Lake Blaine, where the Swan Range of the Rocky Mountains took its precipitous rise from the valley floor. There had been a major forest fire in this region a few years before, so the trees were young-the right size to fit into our living room. I always got to pick the tree; it was a ritual I stretched out as long as parental patience and winter temperatures would accommodate.

My father then took over, swinging the axe. Four or five brisk cuts, and the green-needled spire was horizontal in the snow: A tree from the forest is cut down.

He then squared the base of the trunk so it would be easy to mount when we got it back home: Worked with an axe by the hands of a craftsman. My father was deft with the axe-the wood chips from the whittling released the fragrance of resin in the winter air.

When we arrived home, I climbed into the attic and handed down the box of decorations. We had multicolored lights on our tree, and lots of tinsel. Across the street, my best friends had all blue lights, and I felt sorry for them, stuck with a monochrome Christmas.

My father took slats from packing boxes that our sausage and lunch meats were shipped in-there was always a pile of these boxes in the alley behind our butcher shop-and cut them into four 18-inch supports and nailed them to the tree trunk: They fasten it with hammer and nails so that it cannot move.

By now it was late afternoon and dark. Our Douglas fir—it was always a Douglas fir for us, no other evergreen was a Christmas tree—was secure and steady before our living room window, facing the street. We strung the lights, hung the silver and gold ornaments, and draped the tinsel: Men deck it with silver and gold.

When we were done, I ran out onto the gravel road (the paving on Fourth Street West fell short by about 400 yards of reaching our house) and looked at it from the outside, the way passers-by would see it, the framed picture of our Christmas ritual adventure into and out of the woods. I imagined strangers looking at it and wishing they could be inside with us, part of the axe/ Model A pickup/Lake Blaine/tree-choosing/tree-cutting/tree-mounting/tree-decorating liturgy that I loved so much.

And I would look across the street at the tree with blue lights where the Mitchell twins, Alva and Alan, lived—so cold and monotonous. They never went to church, and at times like this it showed. I couldn't help feeling privileged and superior, but also a little sorry for them: Christian pride modified by Christian compassion.

And then, in the winter of 1940, when I was eight years old, we didn't have a tree: For the customs of the peoples are false. It wasn't just the tree that was absent, the richly nuanced ritual was abolished. A noun, "tree," was deleted from December, but along with it an adjective, "Christmas." Or so I felt.

And it was all because Jeremiah had preached his Christmas Tree Sermon. Because Jeremiah had looked through his prophetic telescope, his spirit-magnified vision reaching across 12,000 miles and 2,600 years saw in detailed focus what we did every December, and denounced it as idolatry. And it was because my mother cared far more about Scripture than culture.

I was embarrassed—humiliated was more like it—humiliated as only eight-year-olds can be humiliated. Abased. Mortified. I was terrified of what my friends in the neighborhood would think: They would think we were too poor to have a tree. They would think I was being punished for some unspeakable sin and so deprived of a tree. They would think we didn't care about each other and didn't have any fun in our house. They would feel sorry for us. They would feel superior to us.

As a regular feature of the child-world holiday socializing in our neighborhood, we went to each other's houses, looked at the presents under the trees, wondering what we would get. Every house was so different-I marveled at the odd ways people arranged their furniture. I was uneasy with the vaguely repellent odors in houses where the parents smoked and drank beer. At the Zacharys, three houses down, there was a big pot of moose-meat chili simmering on the back of the wood stove for most of the winter—it was easily the best-smelling house among those of my friends.

But that year, I kept everyone out of our house. I was ashamed to have them come in and see the bare, treeless room. I was terrified of the questions they would ask. I made up excuses to keep them out. I lied: "My sister has a contagious disease"; "My mother is really mad and I can't bring anybody in." But the fact of no-Christmas-tree could not be hidden. After all, it was always in our front window.

Alva and Alan, the twins who never went to church, asked the most questions, sensing something wrong, an edge of taunting now in their voices. I made excuses: "My dad is too busy right now; we're planning on going out next week." And on and on.

I was mostly terrified that they would discover the real reason we didn't have a tree: that God had commanded it (at least we thought so at the time)—a religious reason! But religion was the one thing that made us better than our neighbors; and now, if they were to find out our secret, it would make us worse!

My mother read Jeremiah to me and my little sister that year and talked about Jesus. She opened the Bible to the story of the nativity and placed it on the table where the Christmas tree always stood. I never told her how I felt, or what I knew everyone in the neighborhood was saying. I carried my humiliation secretly, as children often do, stoical in the uncomprehending adult world.

It is odd when I think back on it now, but we never went to church on Christmas. Every detail of our lives was permeated with an awareness of God. There was a rigorous determination to let Scripture and Christ shape not only our morals and worship, but also the way we used language and wore our clothes. Going to church was the act that pivoted the week. But there was no church-going on Christmas.

On Christmas Eve we exchanged and opened presents; on Christmas Day we had a dinner at our house with a lot of relatives in attendance, plus any loose people in the neighborhood-bachelors, widows, runaways.

Christmas dinner was full of Norwegian talk. It was the only day in the year I heard Norwegian spoken. My uncles and aunts reminisced over their Norway Christmases, and savored the sounds of their cradle tongue. The Christmas menu was always the same: lutefisk, fish with all the taste and nutrients leached out of it by weeks of baptism in barrels of brine, and lefsa, an unleavened, pliable flat bread with the texture (and taste) of a chamois cloth.

There was a stout but unsuccessful attempt to restore flavor by providing great bowls of melted butter, salt cellars, and much sugar. It was a meal I never learned to like. But I loved the festivities-the stories in Norwegian that I couldn't understand, the laughter, the fun, the banter.

The primary source of the banter was my favorite uncle. He was the best storyteller and always seemed to have the most fun. He also posed as an atheist (I think it was a pose), which provoked my mother, on alternate days, to prayer and indignation. On the Christmas we had no tree, he surpassed himself in banter.

He was the first to remark its absence, and his remark was a roar: "Evelyn [my mother's name], where the hell is the Christmas tree? How the hell are we going to celebrate a Norwegian Christmas without a tree?" (He was also the only person I ever heard use profanity in our home, which set him apart in my child mind on a sort of craggy eminence.) My mother's reply, a nice fusion of prayer and indignation, was a match to his raillery: "Brother, we are not celebrating a Norwegian Christmas this year; we are celebrating a Christian' Christmas." Then she got out Jeremiah and read it to him. He was astonished. He had no idea that anything that tellingly contemporary could come out of an old-fashioned Bible. He was silenced, if only briefly.

The next year we had a Christmas tree. The entire ritual was back in place without explanation.. Our gray and rust Model A was replaced by a red Dodge half-ton, but that was the only change. I never learned what authority preempted Jeremiah in the matter of the Christmas tree. Years later my mother occasionally said, "Eugene, do you remember that silliness about the Christmas tree when you were eight years old?" I didn't want to remember, and we didn't discuss it.

But now I want to remember. And I want to discuss it. It doesn't seem at all silly now. My mother died four years ago, and so I am not going to find out the details that interest me-the turns and twists of pilgrimage during those years when she was so passionate in pursuit of a holy life. She may have been wise in restoring the tree to our Christmas celebrations, but I am quite sure that it was not silliness that banned it that single year.

The feelings I had that Christmas when I was eight years old may have been the most authentically Christmas feelings I have ever had, or will have: the experience of humiliation, of being misunderstood, of being an outsider. Mary was pregnant out of wedlock. Joseph was an apparent cuckold. Jesus was born in poverty. God had commanded a strange word; the people in the story were aware, deeply and awesomely aware, that the event they were living was counter to the culture and issued from the Spirit's power.

They certainly experienced considerable embarrassment and inconvenience—did they also clumsily lie to their friends and make excuses at the same time they persisted in faith? All the joy and celebration and gift-receiving in the gospel nativity story took place in a context of incomprehension and absurdity. Great love was given and received and celebrated, a glorious festivity, but the neighborhood was not in on it, and the taunts and banter must have cut cruelly into their spirits.

So, Mother, thank you. And don't apologize for the silliness. Thank you for providing me with a taste of the humiliation that comes from pursuing a passionate conviction in Christ. Thank you for introducing into my spirit a seed of discontent with all cultural displays of religion, a seed that has since grown tree-sized. Thank you for being relaxed in grace and reckless enough to risk a mistake. Thank you for being scornful of caution and careless of opinion. Thank you for training me in discernments that in adult years have been a shield against the seduction of culture-religion. Thank you for the courage to give me Jesus without tinsel, embarrassing as it was for me (and also for you?).

Thank you for taking away the Christmas tree the winter I was eight years old. And thank you for giving it back the next year.

detachment

Patience----keep at it until it works!

Great post from a sober.com web site for families in recovery--may give some insight into why I choose to be where I am for now:

One of the most important terms in Alanon is detachment. For me it was the hardest one to grasp, the most elusive to pin down a real understanding of. I had a fuzzy idea of what it was supposed to mean, but when it came right down to it, I didn' t really know what I was supposed to do at all. Detach? Be aloof? That didn' t sound very kind. Detach? Separate? That wasn' t what I wanted. Is detaching giving up on the person? Is detaching not caring?

I looked the word up in the dictionary...some of you know about me and dictionaries...lol Gotta get to the very core of the meaning of a word I don' t understand so I go to my friend Webster!

One of the definitions Webster gives for the word detach is: To separate from a larger mass without violence or damage. In this case, the larger mass being the disease of alcoholism. Hmmm...so I can separate from the disease and still love the person? Yes! Because detachment is all about realizing that the actions of the individual are caused by the disease, and not by the person with the disease! Detachment is about being objective, being able to stop before we react to behaviors and ask, is this the person intentionally trying to hurt me or is the disease creating this? If this person were sober and rational, would he/she be acting like this? The anger, the irrational behaviors are to alcoholism what confusion and thirst are to diabetes, what vomiting and diarrhea are to the flu.

When we are able to realize it is the disease, and not the person, we can truly understand our own powerlessness over it. We can stop trying to bring reasonableness to something that is not reasonable. How can you reason with a disease? Can you reason with diabetes to make it go away? Can you reason with the flu so that the symptoms will disappear? Of course not. By detaching we are loving ourselves enough to go about living DESPITE the fact that our partner is ill. We are saying, I hope you choose to get better and while you make that decision, I' m going to go to an alanon meeting, or shopping, or coffee with a friend or take the kids to the park. We are saying, I love you, but I cannot cure you. We are saying yes to life and no to being chained to someone else' s illness. Alcoholism is a disease that has a course of treatment to put it into remission. If our partners do not choose to get themselves well by taking that course of treatment, we cannot force them to. But we are not loving ourselves if we take it upon ourselves to try to play " nurse" to the disease until they do.

Detaching is not giving up on the person. Detaching is not being uncaring or unfeeling. Detaching is simply separating ourselves emotionally and spiritually, possibly even physically from another person' s actions. The same as you would if the person were sick and needed to cancel a dinner date. You would understand that it was the illness, not the person, causing the cancellation. Detachment is a choice to not allow ourselves to be sucked into another person' s situation. We still care, but we also refuse to get our blood boiling or possibly give up on our own plans over something we have no control over. It is not our fault that the alcoholic doen' t take the medicine that will help him recover. But we don' t help him or her by allowing ourselves to get wrapped up in the drama. By detaching we are giving them the opportunity to think for themselves and make choices for themselves and that is actually very loving. We are doing the same for ourselves at the same time.

I remember once seeing a nature program on a creature - I can' t remember for sure but I think it was a lizard - who when being attacked by something that was attempting to consume it, could detach the back end of it' s body or it' s tail and leave it behind in the mouth of the attacker and head off to safety.

We detach from the alcoholic so that we don' t get consumed by the disease! When we get consumed by the other person' s disease, we are no good to either the alcoholic or to ourselves. Our lives become unmanagable, angry, insane. We are wasting precious energy spinning our wheels in the sand. To detach from another person allows us to accept them exactly as they are, while we work on our own issues and goals. By detaching, we can hate the disease but still love the person and continue to wish the highest good for that person even though we no longer allow ourselves to be manipulated by the symptoms of the disease.

detachment

I had this great post on detachment but it disappeared.

Will try again tomorrow

2 Peter 3:10-11
The day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives.

Thoughts on today's verse

Holiness is that forgotten character virtue that is the Christian's reflection of God, his or her holy and righteous Father. In a day of cheap grace, when anything goes just as long as we want to be buddies with Jesus, Peter's words should shock us into reverence - the commitment in life to set our lives apart from the evil and sludge that defiles our hearts and to offer our bodies, hearts, and minds to do his will and reflect his character.
Prayer:

Holy and Righteous Father, teach me to do your will and reflect your character while offering your grace. May the movements of my heart, the thoughts of my mind, and the actions ! of my life be pleasing to you and reflect your holiness and grace. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.'

Beautifully Stated

As we grow up, we learn that even the one person that wasn't supposed to ever let you down probably will. You will have your heart broken probably more than once and it's harder every time. You'll break hearts too, so remember how it felt when yours was broken. You'll fight with your best friend. You'll blame a new love for things an old one did. You'll cry because time is passing too fast, and you'll eventually lose someone you love. So take too many pictures, laugh too much, and love like you've never been hurt because every sixty seconds you spend upset is a minute of happiness you'll never get back.

Don't be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never begin.

anonymous

"I Believe"

Have a seat....relax...and read this slowly.

I Believe


I believe-
That we don't have to change
friends if we understand that friends change.

I believe-
That no matter how good a friend is,
they're going to hurt you every once in a
while and, you must forgive them for that.

I believe-
That true friendship continues
to grow, even over the longest distance.
Same goes for true love.

I believe-
That you can do something in an instant
that will give you heartache for life.

I believe-
That it's taking me a long time
to become the person I want to be.

I believe-
That you should always leave loved ones with
loving words. It may be the last time you see them

I believe-
That you can keep going long after you can't.

I believe-
That we are responsible for
what we do, no matter how we feel.

I believe-
That either you control your attitude
or it controls you.

I believe-
That regardless of how hot and steamy a
relationship is at first, the passion fades and there
had better be something else to take its place.

I believe-
That heroes are the people who do what
has to be done when it needs to be done,
regardless of the consequences.

I believe-
That money is a lousy way of keeping score.

I believe-
That my best friend and I can do anything
or nothing and have the best time!

I believe-
That sometimes the people you expect to kick you when
you're down, will be the ones to help you get back up.

I believe-
That sometimes when I'm angry I have the right to
be angry, but that doesn't give me the right to be cruel.

I believe-
That just because someone doesn't love you the way you want
them to doesn't mean they don't love you with all they have.

I believe-
That maturity has more to do with what types of experiences
you've had and what you've learned from them and less to
do with how many birthdays you've celebrated.

I believe-
That it isn't always enough to be forgiven by others.
Sometimes you have to learn to forgive yourself.

I believe-
That no matter how bad your heart is
broken the world doesn't stop for your grief.

I believe-
That our background and circumstances may have influenced
who we are, but we are responsible for who we become.


I believe-
That just because two people argue, it
doesn't mean they don't love each other, And just
because they don't argue, it doesn't mean they do.

I believe-
That you shouldn't be so eager to find
out a secret. It could change your life forever.

I believe-
That two people can look at the exact
same thing and see something totally different.


I believe-
That your life can be changed in a matter
of hours by people who don't even know you.

I believe-
That even when you think you have no more to give, when a
friend cries out to you - you will find the strength to help.

I believe-
That credentials on the wall do not make
you a decent human being.

I believe-
That the people you care about most in
life are taken from you too soon.

Nothing that we despise in the other man is entirely absent from ourselves," wrote Dietrich Bonhoeffer while awaiting execution in a Nazi prison. "We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer."

Related articles and links



I read Bonhoeffer while touring the three tiny Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. As I was exploring country roads and cobblestone streets, hostilities broke out between Israel and Hezbollah, giving me much opportunity to practice Bonhoeffer's principle on how to regard people.

Israel. You cannot understand the Israeli mindset unless you visit a scene from the Holocaust: Auschwitz, Dachau, or perhaps the Paneriai forest on the outskirts of Lithuania's capital. There, Nazis converted storage pits designed for oil tanks into open graves. As trains full of Lithuania's Jews arrived daily at the tiny Paneriai station, ss guards marched the Jews to the pits and systematically shot them. The practice continued for two years, and corpse burners reduced the bodies to bones and ashes to make room for more bodies. At least 70,000 Jews perished in the pits.

I visited Paneriai on a cloudless summer day. Located amid a pine forest, its dark green background was interrupted by an occasional white birch tree. Although butterflies flitted among the wildflowers, the forest seemed oddly void of birds, as if nature itself recognized a place of haunting. I walked from pit to pit, each labeled with the exact number of people massacred: 7,898 here, 5,423 there. In a small museum, the recovered diaries of neighbors report matter-of-factly how many trains arrived each day, how many died, how long the shooting lasted. Blood had seeped into the ground I walked on; human ashes had blended with the soil.

One photo imprinted itself on my mind, and to this day I cannot erase it. Bored Nazis had forced five women to strip to their old-fashioned bloomers underwear and pose. They stand at the edge of a burial pit, and the foreground shows the pile of corpses they will join as soon as the guards put down cameras and take up guns. The women seem like ghosts staring, with a look at once haunted and helpless, victims of an evil beyond comprehension.

Every Israeli citizen knows that look. They read about it in schoolbooks, honor the victims in their own museums, and visit the hallowed sites in Europe. When terrorists and the president of Iran vow to wipe Israel off the map, they take the threat seriously. Israelis have a Masada complex because they have a Masada history.

Plastic

Aronofsky: I buy it. I think we live in a very critical time. Every plastic bottle of drinking water that we've produced is going to be around for 10,000 years, at the minimum.

elections

Whether we agree with our leaders or not we have an obligation to participate in the privilege we have in this country--voting. If we don't vote then we have lost the opportunity we have in this country to influence who will make decisions that effect us in the future. Is it a perfect system--by no means--but if we don't utilize what our ancestors put in place I don't believe that we should complain about how the system works.

Romans 13:6
This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, who give their full time to governing. Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.

Thoughts on today's verse

Ouch! I hate taxes. But I have to admit, I enjoy many of the privileges and blessings that those taxes afford. Paul keeps reminding us in Romans 13 that civil authorities are God's tools to hold back anarchy, chaos, and lawlessness. As a Christian, I'm immune to most laws because my faith in Jesus is going to regulate my behavior far more strictly than a legal code. But I do have a responsibility (I owe it, Paul says) to be a good citizen, a good financial manager, a nice respectful neighbor, and a person who willingly honors those who have merited it.
Prayer:

Almighty God, I pledge allegiance to you. You alone are Sovereign, Ruler, and King. But because you call me to honor my government, because you have so richly blessed me to be in a land such as this, because you have lavished your grace on me so richly, I will live today in a way that honors my allegiance to you, my citizenship in my country, and my respect toward those whom I meet this day. In Jesus I pray. Amen.

Let’s amaze the world by telling them about a God who still has the power to amaze!



My Prayer for Today:

Precious Lord, You are amazing in all Your ways. You are clothed in majesty and worthy of all our praise. Thank you for the record of Jesus’ life and for His promise that we can do greater things. Help my unbelief. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Vacation is coming up soon. Then Thanksgiving & Christmas--this time of year always goes by quickly for me. It is also the time of year that the most trumatic events happened in my past--October 31 is a milestone as it is the anniversary date of when I was first told by my spouse that he was leaving-that was in 1990 and then in 1993 I was in the midst of being diagnosed with colon cancer. But here it is 2006 and I am still here and there is much left that is to be fulfulled in my journey. God is faithful.

From Breaking Point by Chuck Colson

The Amish Shine Their Light

Two stories have dominated the news in the past week: the Foley scandal and the shooting of Amish schoolchildren in Pennsylvania. One of these stories is depressing. The other is a vivid example of what it means to be the Light of the world.

On October 2, Charles Carl Roberts entered a one-room Amish schoolhouse and took ten girls hostage. An hour later, Roberts killed five of his hostages and then killed himself.

From the start, these school killings stood out from other such attacks: The killer, first of all, was an adult, not a student; and then there was the irony of the Amish, a pacifist community that resists what it regards as the contagions of modernity, falling victim to a very modern kind of violence.

Most remarkable is what happened in the schoolhouse itself. Thirteen-year-old Marian Fisher, one of the Amish girls held captive, displayed Christ-like love: She offered to lay her life down for her friends, reportedly telling her would-be killer, "Shoot me and leave the other ones loose!"

And even in the painful aftermath of the shootings, the Amish continued their witness to the love of Christ, reaching out to Roberts's family, attending Roberts's funeral, comforting his wife and children, and providing for them through a fund established for Roberts's victims and their families. One victim's family even invited the Roberts to their daughter's funeral. In the most dramatic way, they forgave Roberts.

As I watched the news, it was clear that the media had trouble understanding the kindness and forgiveness extended to Roberts and his family. It wasn't the first time that Christian grace and charity confused people.

Early Christians, unlike their pagan neighbors, cared for the sick during the periodic epidemics that afflicted the late Roman Empire. The sight of Christians staying while everyone else fled confounded their critics and confused their neighbors.

Many but not all: In its first centuries, Christianity grew at 40 percent per decade. By the time of Constantine, at least 10 percent of the empire was Christian-a remarkable statistic when you recall that to be a Christian at that time was to live with a target painted on your back.

What fueled this explosive growth was the way the early Christians loved one another, were concerned for the weak and marginalized, and were willing to die, if necessary, for their faith. These living epistles were the ultimate witness to the truth of the Gospel and its transformative power.

What was true of Rome is still true today. People can dispute our words, but they have no answer to a demonstration of forgiveness, reconciliation, and charity. Before the shootings, the Amish seemed quaint. Now, they're extraordinary.

Ironically, they inspire us yet another way. In classrooms across America, students are force-fed Darwinism. They are taught that we are the products of random processes and natural selection-that is, the survival of the fittest. But in the Amish classroom, that thesis is demolished by self-sacrificing love, the one thing Darwin could never explain.

So the Amish have given us a powerful demonstration of the truth of the Biblical worldview and, indeed, of the Light of the world.

Dancing with the stars is back! Need I say more...

Fall is coming and I love the fall.

Will be leading a small group and am very excited.

Helping in the children's ministry at church.

John's birthday is coming.

Vacation will be here before you know it.

Life is good.