Recognizing the Risen

In a devotion a co-worker gave last week, he was sharing from a chapter in Ravi Zacerious‘ book Jesus Among Other Gods. One minor point really jumped out to me: Jesus’ enemies seemed to understand some of His teachings better than the Apostles.

Matthew 26:62-66 tells about the chief priests and Pharisees who asked to have guards placed by the tomb because they remembered Jesus saying He would rise again in three days. They were afraid the disciples were going to steal His body, so they could pretend He had risen. Yet when the disciples saw Him, they thought He was a ghost (Luke 24:37). Can you imagine the disciples practically falling out of their chairs, “Ahhk, wha…what are you doing here?” And it is not like the disciples had never seen anyone raised from the dead before either.

I think sometimes we are too close to a particular situation for our eyes to focus. I hope you don’t miss seeing God work right under your nose this spring.

If someone takes your tunic

This morning in my men’s group we read and discussed Matthew 5:38-42, part of the Sermon on the Mount. Reading it is hard, applying it is even harder. But then on my drive into work from small group I heard an awesome story on the radio about a man who was robbed at knife point when he was getting off a New York subway. He handed over his wallet thinking “If you’re willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then I guess you must really need the money.” As the robber was walking away the  man called after him, “If you’re going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm.” The rest of the story is a perfect example of why Christ tells us to love our enemies. Listen for yourself.

Savannah for St. Patty’s Day

We spent the weekend in Savannah, GA. It was the first trip for either of us to that Georgian city. We were visiting our friend Rachel. We choose this past weekend because Savannah evidently has a huge St. Patrick’s Day parade and party. The parade we can vouch for, it was three and a half hours long. The partying, we could tell lots of people were excited about that, but we pretty much avoided the night life, neither one of us was much for getting River Faced.

The parade has the tradition of letting lots of former Grand Marshals ride on the back of convertibles followed by their extended family. Also, girls and pre-noon-drunk women would run out and kiss random soldiers, firefighters and Shriner’s on the cheek. The boys from a military school were especially popular targets.

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The weather was about 5 degrees too cold that day, but that’s what I get when I try to dress too optimistically in March. One of my favorite sights was this Ewok dog.

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The day ended with paying $20 to park in an unlabled garage for 1.5 hours. Saturday consisted of eating lots of yummy food and walking around town. The She Crab Soup at The Pirate House and Rachel’s breakfasts were especially good. The most unexpected fun was when the power went out for about 2.5 hours Saturday night. There is something about having to light candles and use flash lights that is honestly kind of fun.

A side note – books on tape are amazing at helping to kill time on the long drive. A pleasant surprise – we got to meet Jen’s grandpop for lunch on the drive home.

More Pictures

Welcome to the New Old Blog

Judging by the previous post, it doesn’t look like much has happened in the last two years. On the contrary, we got married, have done some great traveling and have enjoyed getting to know extended family. As far as the blog goes, in the last two years, all of my writings have been about marketing and design. Jen and I (and Pablo) wanted a place to keep friends and family in the loop with our lives. All the work talk has been given a proper home over at: www.petervcook.com. All the old, non-work related posts (ie. the Katrina relief trip from two years ago) have decided to move over here to their new address.

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So welcome, to day one, of our little two person and dog family blog.