But you probably already figured that out, since I haven’t posted for almost a month!
All is well. Very busy. I’m paddling down Life’s whitewater rapids right now, and it’s all good. Even when it’s not, it still is, because God is.
Will be back soon!
In the meantime, you might want to click on the “View Bloogroll Posts” link in the navbar to the right, to read what some of the excellent bloggers on my bloogroll are saying these days.
God bless . . .
He works through people like Kumar (as reported on the excellent Letters from Kamp Krusty):
Kumar was on a crowded bus in Chennai, India. He heard God’s voice. “Unmistakably,” he says. I heard God say, twice, ‘Seek Me.’ That was it. Twice.”
Just “Seek Me”?
“Just ‘Seek Me’. And I knew it was God, but which God? I was Hindu. Was it Vishnu? Calli…? No idea. I just knew it was God. Somehow, I knew it. Unmistakable.”
And Kumar isn’t the gullible type. He has multiple advanced degrees in Aero Engineering and Physics, for starters, from the M.I.T.-equivalent in India.
He studied and researched, but just wasn’t satisfied that it was one of his familiar gods, and eventually found a friend with a Bible — a “good luck charm” — and traded a textbook for it. He started reading, got confused, but eventually was pointed to Jesus.
He became a Jesus-follower. Costly decision.
You should go read the rest. And then come sit with me in speechless silence.
[Hat tip: Jared]
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.–For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.–He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward.–And he came and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.
But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. Turn to me and be gracious to me; give your strength to your servant, and save the son of your maidservant.
Taken from today’s Daily Light on the Daily Path.
Wow, what a game!
You had the underdog, battling back after having already been beaten once by the seemingly invincible champion.
You had the favored team, under the shadow of allegations of wrongdoing.
You had a close, close game that went down to the wire.
Congratulations to Blake’s soccer team, the Fury, for winning the Cy Fair Classic tournament (10-year-old Rec division)! They defeated a team that had been caught fielding non-roster players the previous day, and had already beaten the Fury once.
The final score was 2 to 1. Blake scored one of our goals. Well done Blake!
(Oh, the Super Bowl was pretty good too, I guess 🙂
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
– Romans 5:1-5
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
– 1 Corinthians 13:7
You’ve heard of a fool’s hope, forlorn hope, false hopes, and “all we can do now is hope”. Hope seems to be a most milquetoast emotion, the way we often talk about it. Hope seems the last resort of the weak.
But not in the Bible. In the Bible hope is strong, it is virile, it is tough. Hope is a warrior. Hope sees the victory, before the battle has even begun. Hope bursts forth, the fruit of suffering that has produced endurance and a character strong enough to hope.
Hope is not a salve to numb us or a delusion to hide us away from hopeless reality. Hope is Reality. Hope is something that sets us apart; it is a key aspect of what we call holiness. Hope charges the bunkers of despair, hope outflanks its lines, hope takes the enemy camp. Hope is the flag raised on the Mount Suribachi of our fears, and hope doesn’t give heed to the bullets.
Hope is a primary trait of Biblical love, and Biblical love is something else which is as high above our often weak, watery view of love as the stars are above the earth.
Hope laughs at the darkness and sets it alight. Hope is rooted, grounded, anchored, and secured in Jesus. Hope has no fear of our problems, of our darknesses, of our heartbreaks and our loss. Hope has seen the Beloved tortured and nailed to a cross, beaten bloody and killed by His own who did not recognize him. And three days later Hope was born anew as the stone tumbled away and the powers of death crumbled. Hope has seen the worse the enemy can bring, and has seen him defeated. Hope will see the defeat of the principalities and powers that plague us today.
Child of God, your deepest dream will come true. In your flesh you will see God. And He will make all things right.
And because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts, we hope.
I’m hoping my good buddy Scott, one of the original Bloo testers, won’t mind me testing my trackback send against his blog.
It works find against other Bloo blogs. Now needing to test it against something non-Bloo.
So I’m sending a trackback from here to this post on Scott’s blog.
(Also, Scott, I’m putting you on my Bloogroll!)
“Therefore http://cialistadalafils.com/ I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
– Matthew 6:25-34
As I read this passage, while simultaneously observing our culture (and myself), a few things jump out at me:
First, Jesus was admonishing his listeners to not be “anxious about their life”. Notice their worries: What shall we eat? What shall we drink? What shall we wear? These worries were not the same worries most of us have in the 21st century West. When we worry about “what shall we wear”, it’s because we’re having a hard time choosing from all the clothes in the closet. In Jesus time, they were worried about not having any clothes. Ditto for “what shall we eat”; they weren’t stressed because they couldn’t decide between Mexican and Steak. they were stressed because they were running out of oil and grain, and harvest was still two months away.
For the most part, we have it so much better than they did, materially. And yet I am surrounded by people consumed by their worries. I know people, who have almost everything they could possibly wish for materially, socially, spiritually, and familialy (new word!), who are paralyzed with fear for the future and with uncertainty about the now. I want to tell them “don’t worry! Just live!” But then I look at myself; all it takes is just one tear in just one of the multiple safety-nets that I have been blessed with to start me revving the engine of worry in my own life.
For many of us, worry is something that we wrongly think comes at us from the outside. And yet in the Bible anxiety is rightly shown to be something we do, and that we should not do. “Do not be anxious” is a command, much like “rejoice!” is a command. It is in our power to refuse anxiety, and Christ tells us to do so.
And it’s only because of Him that we can do so! This universe can be a scary, lonely place, even for well-heeled, modern, 21st century types like many of us. But the Gospel, the Good News proclaimed by Jesus, includes the wonderful reassurance that our Father knows our needs, and He cares for us. No matter what happens in this life (and there are many bad things that can and do happen) He is there, and in His hand is ultimate healing, ultimate sustenance, ultimate protection.
We are not alone.
Jesus calls us to focus our lives on what is really important. Have you ever noticed that worry does a great job of crowding out of your mind the things you need to be focusing on? Like living, for instance. Worry sticks our feet in plaster, befogs our eyes, and stuffs our ears with cotton.
Jesus tells us to throw all that aside, and live, setting our eyes, minds, thoughts, and actions toward the Kingdom of God that Jesus Himself has inaugurated, and toward the righteousness that is the banner of that Kingdom.
“. . . and all these things will be added to you.”
[Note: this was cross-posted at Thinklings]
My daughter, Bethany, is in her freshman year of high school. Also attending her school is a young actor named Tony Oller, who stars in the Disney short series “As the Bell Rings”. Throughout this first semester Bethany got to know Tony a bit (they say hi in the halls, are MySpace friends, etc)
Today we got a fun surprise. Bethany was a bit shy about telling us this, but it turns out that awhile ago she sent a picture of herself and Tony to PopStar!â„¢ magazine as part of a contest.
And, wouldn’t you know it – if you know Beth, this is no surprise, actually 🙂 – here she is, right on page 32 (I scanned this in tonight).
Awesome.
And here’s the magazine cover.
Some more, somewhat random thoughts on our recent trip to Ukraine (to read all my Ukraine posts, click here):
– I irritated the Ukrainian customs officers quite a bit at the Kiev airport. Not because I was trying to; more because I was clueless. But they waved me through anyway, with a roll of the eyes, two quick flicks of the wrist and a sound kind of like “Pfft pfft”. I’m sure they were thinking ” *sigh*, Amerikanski“.
– The experiences and sufferings of the Crimean Tatars in World War II, and in particular the event they refer to as the Deportation, are incomprehensible to most of us. To the Tatars, the deportation is the key to how they see themselves; it’s a big part of what makes them Tatars. I hope to write on that soon.
– I wondered how the DJ at the Matisse restaurant knew were were Amerikanskis. Jill made the wise observation that we were the “fat and loud” group – a dead giveaway.
– Europeans absolutely, positively do not believe in ice.
– In Ukraine, when you buy groceries, you have to pay for the grocery bags. When you buy french fries, you have to pay for the ketchup.
– Plov tastes good.
– I’ve been told that the dollar is weak when compared to the Euro. Ukraine, thankfully, has the Grievna as it’s currency. . . Amsterdam, unfortunately, does not. A normal meal in Amsterdam cost us the equivalent of about $110 US dollars, prompting my one and only episode of trip-stress.
– I really liked Grievnas.
– Ukrainian currency features pictures of writers and poets.
– I was, evidently, the only person in all of Ukraine wearing white Nikes. Another dead giveaway.
– In discussing cultural differences with Aliye, she made the interesting point that we seemed more “open” with our kids. In their culture, adults will not usually play with their kids. Aliye was intrigued by how, in her words, “we seemed like equals with our kids”.
– Did I mention how I, in a swirling snowstorm, stared down the entire former Soviet military apparatus to regain a lost bag at the Simferopol airport? More on that in a later post.
– Ukrainians are more reserved than we are. When we were on the bus in the Kiev airport that shuttled us to our plane, our family was laughing and joking. I remember the sideways looks that many of the other passengers were casting at us. They were just quietly riding, no doubt thinking ” *sigh*, Amerikanskis”
– I joked with the kids that we should pretend to be from Canada while we were in Europe, to avoid confrontations with anyone who was not happy with American foreign policy. So now and then we would drop an “eh” or a “what’s that all aboot?”, so as not to blow our cover.
– No one ever confronted us about American foreign policy, even though it was pretty obvious the whole time that we were Americans.
– I said “Spasiba Bolshoi” many times on the trip. It means “Thank you very much”. People were wonderful to us.
– I also learned how to say “Excuse me”. It is “Ees Venitye”. The way I remembered it was because it rhymes with “Pleased ta meetcha”.
– I want to go back.
If you get a chance, go check out the changes on Thinklings, which is the group blog I contribute to.
It’s also the first blog I ever wrote for. Hard to believe we’ve been going at this for nearly five years.
It’s based on Bloo too (and is, as is this space also, running a pre-release of version 1.00). It’s been through three blogging packages since I first revved it up; it started on the venerable old B2, then went to WordPress, and finally to Bloo.
My Thinklings brothers are some of the best friends a guy could ask for.