Gifts

With the extra time available to me not having to work due to the Christmas holiday I have had some great time to do things such as read. So I opened up “The Pursuit of God” by A.W. Tozer, the chapter I am on is titled “The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing” . “Ah oh” I thought to myself, “this isn’t going to be fun”, which traditionally in these types of matters means, “this will be good for me”. Tozer starts out that before sin God gave Adam all sorts of gifts, and it was good, but now, in the post-fallen world these “things” can cause problems. We cling to them. The words me and mine “are verbal symptoms of our deep disease”. I find it interesting that it is now the day after Christmas, where we rejoice because of the piles of things we have just received. Today, definitely doesn’t help to cure this disease. Just as God’s gifts to Adam were blessings, having things/gifts isn’t bad, the problem comes when we try to possess these things.

I was watching one of Christmas gifts and on it Jerry Seinfield said in one of his interspersed standup bits that he has had stuff stolen from his apartment several times. The first time was the worse, a “they took my stuff” attitude. But after that you don’t even bother calling the cops about it. I think we have to get to that point. Abraham had to learn that lesson a very hard way, he had to be willing to sacrifice his son in order to obey God. Afterwards Isaac was safe and Abraham had a wife, a son, sheep, camels, and descendants as numerous as the stars. “He had everything,
but he possessed nothing.” Everything we have is on loan from God. Tozer has a great suggestion for when his readers begin to examine themselves on this issue, I think it’s a great suggestion for whenever we examine anything before God: we “should put away all defense” and not resort to excuses. That really hit home for me, because I immediately want to make defenses when being confronted.

I think a former pastor of mine, expressed the attitude our hearts need to have in regards to stuff very well when he said something along the lines: we need to let things rest in the palm of our hands, making them easy to remove not trying to hold them tightly with our fingers clinched around them. Then it won’t be so bad if they are taken away, at least they weren’t ripped out of our hands and heart.

Christ as a Child

What is it like being God trapped in a baby’s body?

In our “Top of the Week” meeting at work this week, we had a little devo as we do every week. The conversation lead to a discussion about, the fully divine, Jesus as a Child. How much did he know and how much did he realize about who he is early on in this earthly life? Such as, God trapped as a helpless embro, was it just torture, once being able to do anything at all, and self-limited only to kick on occasion? Or did he grow into his realization as the Son of God and Savior of the universe as he got older? He did obvously know who he was when he was 12 and his family lost him back at the temple ?Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?? (Luke 2:49)

The discussion reminded me of a song: “I Celebrate The Day” by “Relient K” that asks that same question. And I think expresses it better then I just did in the previous paragraph:

And the first time
That You opened Your eyes did You realize that You would be my Savior?
And the first breath that left Your lips
Did You know that it would change this world forever?

The Times are a Changin’

General Mills should probably take notice and add a new iPod shaped marshmallow to me magical Lucky Charms.

Alright times are a changing. It’s taking me longer to post an update, I’m commenting on a month and a half old news article and kids are no longer looking for Lucky Charms at the end of the rainbow. According to a survey of 500 Welsh kids (we’re not talking about grape juice here people) 22% of them wanted to find an iPod at “the end of the rainbow”.

Don’t get me wrong I love my iPod (maybe too much, but that’s between me and my counselor). But kids in this century are sure getting expensive tastes. In the same survey adults said that they were hoping to find bikes, roller-skates and candy at the end of their childhood rainbows. Sweets and pets were still top ten responses for kids and adults, thank goodness for tradition. There’s nothing quite like feeding your slobbery dog a bag of Pop Rocks. But we found that dog digging through the neighbor’s trash and those Pop Rocks we like a jar of alabaster. I did have a bike growing up but I swear my bike didn’t start at $250 and come in 5 fruity colors.

Let me tell you, back in my day we were lucky to just have a rainbow. Much less a rainbow with iPods littering the backside. When we did find a rainbow we were happy if we found more than dirt. We loved those rocks, they made great toys. Pets? Footballs? Those were rocks to us. I sure wish poor Jimmy would just learn to catch. “Black-and-Blue-Jim”, that’s what we used to call him.

Elisha and Christ

2 Kings 2:23-6:7 is a series of miracle that preformed God through Elisha. After Elisha calls on God to curse 42 kids for calling him “baldy” 2 Kings goes on to talk about a series of miracles God performs through Elisha that are strikingly Christlike.

In 2 Kings 2:23-25 there is a story about the prophet Elisha who is jeered by some punks. Obviously, it is a bad idea to call a man of God “baldy”, because Elisha calls down a curse, and two bears jump out of the woods and maul 42 of the kids. Awwoh.

A chapter and a half later, a well-to-do woman’s son dies. This family had become good friends of Elisha, the son in fact was born after Elisha prophesied that she would have a son as a thank-you for their hospitality. Elisha went to raise the boy from the dead. Tried placing his staff on the boys face, that didn’t work. Elisha had to lie on the boy, face to face and the boy came back to life. God preformed an impressive miracle that day, one of the greatest miracles up to that point in time. A testament later, when Christ came along in human form many people thought he was the reincarnation of a previous prophet, He wanted to show that he was so much more then Elisha or any other prophet. In Luke 7 Jesus raised a boy, a complete stranger, from the dead after merely touching his coffin. In this same story Elisha non-verbally makes a point that Christ verbalizes hundreds of years later. Elisha had to touch the dead boy with his entire body before he was resorted back to life. A definite no-no according to Old Testament laws. By being willing to do this Elisha showed that there were more important things then the laws on the clean and unclean, a point Jesus talked about at length in Matthew 15:1-20.

Jesus one upping Elisha’s miracles happens on multiple occasions. A little later in the same chapter Elisha gave 20 loaves of bread and fed 100 men with it (I’m going to assume that these weren’t Wonderbread loaves which wouldn’t have too much of a problem serving 5 people each). They even had some left over. Wonderbread or not, Christ fed 50 times more men, plus women and kids, on a quarter of the bread and a couple fish. Then when the disciples picked up the leftovers, the crowd could have been scorned for leaving 12 baskets of food left over that starving kids in Africa could have eaten.

Moving on to 2 Kings 6, we read a story of an axhead floating. One of Elisha’s followers was cutting down a tree, during a gusto infused swing the axhead flew off the ax, into the lake and sank. The guy started to freak-out because he had borrowed the ax. Back then it was a little bit more of an ordeal then running to Wal-Mart and dropping $15 on a brand new ax. Elisha calms him down and asks where it flew. Dude points and Elisha cut off a stick (I guess there was another ax lying around) and threw it at that spot in the water. The iron axhead blops to the surface and floats over to shore. Back in Matthew 14, right after the feeding of the 5,000 story, we read about people walking on water. Jesus is walking to His followers on a lake (there in a boat, he’s not). Peter, one of his most gusto infused followers jumps out of the boat and starts walking on the water toward Jesus. Peter starts to get freaked-out by the wind and starts to sink. Jesus calms him down, reaches out is hand to catch people and they both walk back to the boat. Walking on water is so much more
cooler then already-really-cool bit of floating iron.

There are other similar stories such as people being healed of leprosy that I won’t go into now. But, I believe God intentionally conveys the stories of Elisha and Jesus similarly so that we can see that Elisha was a prophet sent by God and that Jesus prophesied and is God. Jesus didn’t just one-up Elisha in His miracles and actions, He more like five-uped him. Back to our first story, Jesus too was jeered by a crowd, but these were more then just some young punks. Almost an entire city wanted to put Jesus to death. Christ does not curse them, He forgives them, even the ones
nailing him to a post, so that you and I could live with him forever. And that really is the message of the New Testament compared to the Old. While we deserve to get mauled by bears, we’re not, we are given the chance to be forgiven, and I am so thankful for that.

September 11, 2004

Doesn’t is just seem waaayy too normal today to be September 11th?

Just three years ago today a major tragedy happened, but looking around you would hardly even know it. A quick check at Google News and there’s not even a mention of it on the main page (at least at the time of this writing). Ya the news outlets are mentioning it today, but there weren’t the myriad of TV news and special reports leading up to it. I wouldn’t be surprised if next year we went from September 10th to September 12th and skipped the 11th all together. Ok, its not that bad, but Have we forgotten how bad it really was?

Its funny how things that we never thought would leave the front of your mind, have a hard time from falling out the back.

Athens 2004

Olympics 2004! Here I am, firmly planted on the couch!

It is that time again. The time where we meet only minimal comments, for two weeks I’m dedicated to one thing, watching Olympics.

Pretty much everything else has been neglected, in a vain attempt to watch as much of the 70+ hours of daily coverage possible here in the United States. Yes I have to work and we don’t have cable but I am trying to squeeze in all the Olympics I can. I wouldn’t dream of trying to watch TV at work, unless I have to stay late or if the Olympics are on.

It really got out of control in 2000, because Asbury sends so many students to work at the Olympics, you want to watch more Olympics because you know people who are there working at it. I mean we went all out to watch Olympics. We had daily TV schedules printed out posted on the wall. We would eat dinner faster, stop doing homework, and pretty much not leave the dorm.

After actually working at the Winter Olympics in 2002 its like I have some sort of connection to the games. (I still have picture from that trip up on my Spring ’02 Album.) This year, again knowing about a dozen people working in Athens it gives me a little added interest. A
couple of those have started their own blogs to document their trip.

Asbury’s Blog
Joel Foster News
Stephen M. James at the Olympics
Scott & Kate’s Big Fat Greek
Adventure

And don’t you worry, I wrote this blog while sitting on the couch watching Michael Phelps win his second gold. I wasn’t about to miss some just to write my first entry in a month.

Summer Vacation

Times changed and now a summer vacation is one week, and we feel guilty case there is tons of stuff to do at work. But I had an absolute blast in Florida, everything I had envisioned doing I did, and more. That one week was better then most whole months of break.

I just got back from a wonderful week in and around Orlando, Florida. It was my good friend’s Steve Webb’s wedding. He asked me to be one of his Groomsmen so I knew I needed to get there a couple days early to help him with stuff and since my family lives down there I figured I’d make a week out of it. That was back in January.

It was just so good to go home, haven’t seen most of my family since Christmas and so I jumped at the chance to make a mid summer run to Florida, where its always hotter and the seaweed is always greener. (Mainly because there is no sea near Kentucky but I don’t want to get caught up in all the details.) I went down Saturday. I knew I really won’t have any wedding related activities until at least mid week, but when that started I would be slammed. I had to take advantage of that lull to spend plenty of time with family and old friends. I go with the fam to this new church they’re going to, it was really good. Funny that it was my first time at that church, but I saw so many people I knew that the rest of my family was waiting for me out in the lobby.

At about that point I knew I wouldn’t be board this week. I was able to see every old friend I had hoped to and more. From people I met once 13 years ago to people I haven’t talked to in 4 to the few friends I always spend almost every day with while in Florida. Then Jason flew in tuesday night, we had to drop off a CD on the other side of Orlando and my car broke down on the way back. Luckily and thankfully the only thing I had planned for wednesday was to go to the beach. We were able to delay that till late afternoon because after $150 my car was fixed. I am so thankful that it happened tuesday night, any other day I would have had tons to do or worse be driving to or from Kentucky.

When thursday came I was in full wedding mode, driving all around town, picking people from the airport making last minute plans, designing labels and generally trying to keep Steve from worrying about stuff. The rehearsal came friday night. Then we were in for a very cool and unique wedding and an awesome weekend. At the rehearsal dinner and all weekend they’re were some great speeches saying how important and proud everyone is of each other. Surprisingly everything was a mere five minutes late on Saturday, about the best you can hope for and everything went off without major problems. The reception was awesome and people did not fear away from the dance floor.

After a 15 and a half hour drive back to Kentucky all I have to say is “Thank you Steve and Mel for throwing a great celebration. Good luck and I am praying for you!”

Pictures are coming soon!

My Personal Pastime

We went to King’s Island yesterday. Its a fun ol theme park with a ton of coasters. It was only my second time going to King’s Island, my first was about a year ago. As soon as I walked in the park, my mind thought “ok, here we go, its time to have fun!” The next move was to grab some maps, one for everyone in the group. Then my sane side spoke up. “Ok, lets not be the theme park nazi today. I’ll just go with the flow.” For the most part, I held back my urge for theme park efficiency, wherein it is unacceptable to pass any one area of the park more than twice.

It the end it was a super fun day, totally wore me out. Got in the gate around 11am, stayed till the close at 10, and rode everything we wanted to. The crowds were mild and all of the lines were reasonable. Kyle, Julie, Rach and for part of the day Jen turned out to be one of the best groups of people to go theme parking with. If someone asked me what my favorite thing to spend a day doing, it would definitely be finding a good theme park and spend the day there. Growing up in a town with 7 major theme parks, it is my personal past time. I love it! Every day that ends with sitting in the front, riding The Beast at night and swallowing a couple lighting bugs has to be good!

Battery Explosion

Its not every day that stuff explodes in my life. For those of you who are secret agents this kind of thing might bore you but for us regular people its a little interesting.

This story is way old (2 months old), I was just waiting on pictures before I posted it.
We’ll I have some now, so here it is!

So, my battery blew up last Sunday. I was about to head over to the new house, to drop off some stuff and meet Jason and Rach for Church. As soon as I turned the key to start the car, BAM. The car didn’t, but it sounded like something blew up. After a bit of smoke, I opened the hood and this is what I saw:

Good thing for Triple A. So I call them up, thinking this $50 or whatever I pay a year is so worth it, only to realize that my member ship has expired. Good thing for roommates with Triple A.