Dyson sucks

Have you seen the Dyson commercials? They are all pretty much the same. They show the product working and they show the Dyson guy talking about the product. Well, that guy weirds me out. He creeps me out all most as much as that scary little girl that used to do the grape juice commercials about 10 years ago. Their is just something about the Dyson guys voice combined with his vampire like looks that makes me uneasy every time I see his commercial, and he talks with an accent that isn't quite an accent from anywhere in particular, but just not where you are from. I even bet that people in the UK wonder where he is really from. He always tells his storey about how he was sitting around thinking about his vacuum one day, when he stumbled on an idea to make him rich, I mean to make the vacuum suck better. I want to know what kind of a person sits around just thinking about their vacuum cleaner?? Now he claims to have reinvented the wheel, in the form of this revolutionary ball that the new Dyson rolls around on. I am sure it works great, but in truth, I have never had any trouble maneuvering my vacuum around chairs and stuff. It's not like a small child ever jumps out between my chair and couch chasing after a bouncing ball, directly in the path of my speeding Hoover. I have never had to swerve out of the way of a wild deer that appeared, out of no where in the middle of my living room right in front of my vacuuming path. I really do not see the need to be able to turn on a dime with my vacuum. Most of my vacuuming is done in a straight line, and most of the things I vacuum around are of a squarish nature.

I can say that the Dyson guy, while being super creepy, has done a great job taking something some one else has invented and made it better. Not many people can invent something absolutely new, but almost anyone can take something that is already there and make it a little bit better. We in the Church need to become masters at doing the very same thing. We need to always be looking at the things we are doing and continually ask ourselves, "how can we make this better?". If we practiced this skill more, we would not find our selves so out of date and not in touch with mainstream culture. We don't have to compromise our beliefs to not get bogged down with out of date tradition that no longer fits our needs or ministers to the lost.

So, I just want to say, thank you Mr. Dyson. Your a little creepy, but we all should be fallowing your lead to make things a little better.

Stand up for the Rock

I love listening to music. I am not a great singer, as my daughter has let me know by asking me to stop singing please, and when I asked her why me and not Mom, she told me that Mom sings good and I do not. But I do like to sing in the car when no one is riding with me. I have loved music as long as I can remember, and have always wished I was more musically inclined. When I was in Jr. High, I joined the school band and played the trumpet. I spent most of my time in band goofing off with my friend Matt. We would joke around, flirt with the girls, and spit wads of paper through straws into the tuba when the band director was not looking. So anyway, I was listening to the radio while driving, and a country song came on the station I was listening to. If you do not know me very well, you may not know that I hate country music. You see, I grew up listening to rock music with some 70's folk type music mixed in. Now it seems like that every station you listen to plays a little bit of everything. My thing is that if I wanted to listen to country music, I would have the radio on a station that only plays country music. I don't know for sure, but I am pretty positive that the country stations are not slipping in a Journey song every once in a while, or a Justin Timberlake song. Why then, when I am listening to the style of music I like am I expected to suffer through a Taylor Swift or Rascal Fats song? It just seems crazy to me. It's kind of like going to your favorite Mexican restaurant and ordering a meal, and when you get your food you find out they have slipped a couple of egg rolls on your plate. Just because a lot of people like egg rolls does not mean that I want to eat egg rolls with my burrito.

The hole situation made me think of how tolerant and inclusive we are expected to be. I am all about loving people where they are the way Jesus did, but I do not have to accept behaviors I know to be wrong. Just because someone wants to justify their behavior by declaring it wright in their own eyes, and then screaming "don't you dare judge me!", does not mean that it magically became OK for them to do wrong. It is critical that we remember that God is the one who declairs if something is OK or not, and it does not magically become fine for someone to sin just because they have declared it not sin. We are also under no obligation to accept their behavior as acceptable just because they claim to think it is OK. In fact God expects us to stand up for what is right, and take a stand for Him. Jesus loved people, but he was not some week namby pamby non confrontational person that slid through life never offending anyone and never calling out any one about their sin. In fact if you read the Bible, you will find a lot of examples where Jesus called people out about their sin. He got right in the face of the woman that came to get water at the well he was resting at. He wasn't "fine" with her behavior, he put it out there and forgave her and told her to go and sin no more. That's the key to the whole thing, how can we share the forgiveness that Jesus offers if we are declaring with our actions, or with our silence and acceptance, that their is no sin, just a difference of beliefs and morals. That is why Jesus was so hard on the Pharisees, they believed that they were innocent of all sins. If we are never forced to face our sin, the realization that we are lost in our sin, their can be no forgiveness. More men die of cancer then women because they refuse to admit that they are sick, and they wait until the last minute to go to the doctor. By that time whatever they have has advanced to such a state that there is not a lot of options for them. That is why Jesus said he came to heal the sick, not the well. We all are sick with sin, but some people just refuse to admit to themselves that they are.

Getting Schooled

Whenever I can, I substitute teach. Yesterday I had to opportunity to teach at the local high school in an English class. During lunch several students came in to eat their lunch in my classroom. It seems that the teacher I was subbing for is a well liked teacher and allows students to spend their lunch time with her. One male student was talking, and explaining the mysteries of life to a few of the other students, and of course was talking loud enough so all of us in the room could benefit from his vast experience and wisdom. It seems that one of his other teachers is a Christen and was trying to share Christ, in a little bit of a pushy way, with one of her classes. He was giving us the low down of the conversation and sharing his displeasure with her and her message. He exclaimed that he was an atheist, and that he was not going to believe in some God who only wanted to make everyone exactly like himself, and that doing so even went against his very own laws. Of course, fighting against my shy nature, I had to say something about the subject to the young man. I told him that it sounded like he did not know much about the subject of God, and that he should be more informed before he made such statements. To which he did not have anything to say. He just kind of looked at me with a blank expression. Then I think his mind wandered, because he turned around and started talking about something else after saying something under his breath about his other teacher and her pushing her beliefs on to him.

Two things about this situation bug me. One is that people always seem to think that everyone around them automatically shares there views and opinions. It's like we are so self centered that it never even occurs to us that someone might have a different opinion then we do. Why would they? Doesn't everyone agree with me? Aren't I the most important person in this room? My mommy thinks I am! It has also been my experience that teenagers are not the only ones who think this way. I can not count the amount of times that an adult has just started in on some subject, just assuming that I would share their views on the subject, never even considering that I might totally disagree with them. Then I have to consider the very likely possibility that I have done the very same thing on many occasions. I am all for speaking up for things you believe and feel strongly about, but when you start speaking, you should always be aware of others, and never assume that they share your views just because they are with in ear shot.

The second things is when people speak from their ignorance. It was very obvious to me that this young man did not know anything about God or the Bible. He was sharing his personal opinion, and what he assumes to be true. He may have even herd some stuff from other people who where also wrong. Why do people do that? If I don't know anything about a subject, I would not go spouting my thoughts to people. I would never go up to Jake Hillis and start telling him about how refrigerators work, and what is inherently wrong with the whole system. Because in truth he has a lot of knowledge about the subject, and I have almost none. I have not studied how they work and why they work like they do. Just like that young man has not done any studying about God and who He is and what He does, or why He does it. That young man does not know what God's laws are, and for sure he does not know anything about what God wants from him or for him. But, for some reason he felt able to make some unfounded statement about God, and not only that, he felt he actually had the right to make some kind of judgement about the creator. How stupid is that? I wanted to stand up and push the kid out of the room, and tell him "sorry, no stupid people allowed." and all God wants to do is to show him how much He loves him. Once again we are all reminded why it's a good thing I am not God, and that God is God.

Good at friendship

I don't get to preach on Sunday mornings very often, so when I do, I enjoy it and try to make the most of it. This past Sunday I got an opportunity and I spoke on friendship. At first it may not seem like that important of a subject, but if you take the time to think about it, you will discover that relationships are really important to our lives, and of major importance to God. Jesus actually had many relationships while on Earth, and because he was never married, all of his relationships were friendships. He was the best there was at being a good and true friend. There are many examples Jesus gave us that we can model to show us how to be really good at relationships, but I think the most important thing we can get from Jesus on this matter is to make sure that we are getting our needs met from God and not looking for them to be met by other people in our lives.

Have you ever been friends with a person who needed your attention all the time. Who whenever you talked with them, it was all about them. No matter what struggles you were going through in your life, they were always going through something worse, and not only that, but no one could possibly understand what they were going through. Have you ever had a friend that needed your attention so bad that you were afraid to be caught talking to someone else. They were so possessive of you that if you were friends with someone else, they felt like you were cheating on them. You were a friend cheater, a feater if you will. Have you ever felt trapped by a friendship? Like if you were not their friend their whole life would just fall apart. It's almost like you become their life line and if you were to leave, they would not be able to cope with every day life. These are the type of friends that make you feel exhausted every time you spend time with them.

If you have never had a friend like that, maybe it is because you are that friend. No one can be everything to someone. We were not meant to get our needs met by other people. People can not meet our needs for long, and if we continually try to get our needs met by our friends we invariable become needy. From there it becomes this vicious cycle of being needy, trying to get your needs met by friends, which in turn leaves you feeling more needy. Now repeat and rinse, presto, you are a really needy annoying friend.

What's the answer? Get your needs met by God, and free up your relationships to be what they were meant to be. It sounds easy, but if we are used to getting our needs met by other people it can take some real effort and time to break this bad habit. It make take some time, but it is well worth it.

One thing Saraya loves to do is to make cookies from scratch with me. She had been bugging me for a couple of days to make some cookies with her, so I came home a little early from work and we got to it. What we usually do is that I will make a full recipe, and I will measure out and let her mix a partial batch. Usually I just try to estimate the amounts of flour sugar, eggs and other ingredients, and as a result, her cookies never come out the same. This time I tried really hard to measure out 1/8 of what I was making. I did pretty good to, except I messed up a little on the butter, and the egg was tough to split in 1/4. As a result her cookies came out pretty good. After they came out of the oven and cooled, her mom suggested that she take a cookie to her teacher, whom she really likes. Saraya took the idea one step further and wanted to bring enough for her whole class to have a cookie for snack the next day. So the next morning we took enough cookies for her whole class to have. She got to hand them out to each kid, and her teachers made a big deal out of it. Saraya loved it!

You know, Saraya could have just kept them all for herself and eaten them over the next couple of days, and she loves a good cookie. But she decided to take them all to share, and I think she enjoyed that experience even more. That's the place I am trying to get to with my money and possessions. I really enjoy spending all of my money, and using all of my stuff, but God keeps telling me to share because He knows that the experience of sharing my stuff would be so much greater. For some reason it is so hard to get in my head. I am the kind of guy that just would not take all of my cookies to school to share with everyone. I would want to keep them all at home so I could eat on them for the next couple of days and enjoy the fruits of my labor. Why should I share with you? You didn't make the cookies, you didn't even have the idea to make them. All you ever do is go to the store and buy those cheap Walmart made cookies and put them on a plate like you made them or something! You know what I would rather do? I would really like to bring you one cookie so you could see how great my cookies are and really know how bad you have it. Then I would go home and eat about ten of them in front of my TV, all the while knowing how much better my cookies are then yours.

It's incredible how sinful I am some times!

Peter Pan syndrome

I was putting my daughter Saraya to bed last night, and after we finished with the whole bed time routine, brushing teeth, reading a few books, and praying, she started talking about her pretend brother. She doesn't bring him up as much anymore, but he will pop up in a conversation at least once a day. I asked her if she would like a real little brother some day and she said that she wanted 2 brothers and one sister. She said that I was going to have one, she was going to have one and her mom was going to have one. I asked her what she meant by all of us having one, and she said that we were all going to have one in our bellies. I then told her that only mommies carried babies in their tummies, and that when she got to be an adult that she could get married and maybe one day have a baby in her tummy. She then told me that she did not want to eat healthy food anymore. At this point I was a little confused at how we had arrived at eating healthy food, so I asked her why she didn't want to eat healthy food anymore. She then proceeded to tell me that she didn't want to be an adult and that she wasn't going to get married. She said she wants to be a little kid and not an adult. That is when I understood her not wanting to eat healthy food anymore. At our house healthy food helps you grow up big and strong. So in her head, if you don't eat healthy food you wont have to grow up. I tried to reassure her that she was not going to grow up anytime soon, and that she could stay a little kid for a long time, and that she was always going to be my little girl no matter what. That seemed to be satisfied with that and felt good enough to go to sleep, that is after I went down stairs and found her Dalmatian puppy penny that she had left in my room.

A lot of Christians seem to have the Peter Pan syndrome. They become Christians, and then they never really grow up. They very rairly read their Bible, or pray, and they for sure never study deeply or meditate on the Word of God. Which leads to not a lot of self examination or growth. They refuse to eat healthy food and insist upon just drinking milk. As a result a lot of Churches are filled not with baby Christians, but with fat lazy Christians. You see, baby's are young, newly born. That is not what we have. We have older Christians who have refused to mature. When you refuse to eat right you don't stop growing, you just become unhealthy. Your muscles don't get as strong as they should, your bones don't grow or become as dense as they should. You brain doesn't mature and grow like it should. So the end result is not a 30 year old baby, it's a very unhealthy 30 year old.

So don't be a fat lazy Christian. Start eating healthy food!

kicked out

Well, it finally happened. I got kicked out of a co-ed church league softball game! I believe our Umpire took an immediate disliking to me when at the plate to pray and flip the coin, I asked him if he had brought a brush to clean the plate with. He said he had lots at home, but did not bring one because this was only a rec league. I jokingly said something along the line of, oh I see how it is, we aren't important enough for you to bring a brush. I was trying to joke around with the guy to put him in a good mood so he would have some fun, needless to say, it did not work!

Flash forward about 5 minutes. We are in the outfield, and I am playing short stop. A ground ball is hit my direction, I field said ball and throw the person out at first. However the ump did not see it as clearly as I did or as clearly as anyone else out there did and called the person safe. I must admit, I was shocked at the call and thought that he had totally blew it, but beyond shock, I was not feeling anything else. I surly was not mad or upset in anyway. Me being the funny guy that I am, and still having that Jr. high desire to make my classmates or teammates laugh, threw my glove down in mock dramatic fashion. All the while with a smile on my face, and not taking things to seriously. At this point the ump says something that I didn't hear clearly, so I either said "what?" or I just stood there looking at him with a questioning look on my face until I herd him utter the words "your gone!" again. I was in shock and disbelief. I immediately tried to explain that I was just joking and was not even mad or upset, to which he repeated himself and said that he did not care and that I was to leave the field. At that point all I could do was laugh and head towards the bench. A few of my teammates tried to talk to him and it only seemed to make the guy madder.

We ended up loosing the game and got put out of the tournament, though it was a close game, and we had a really good chance to win even though we were playing a team that had killed us earlier on in the season. But that is not the important part. The important part is that after the game I went up to the man and tried to say I was sorry and explain myself and my intentions to him. Sadly this only seemed to threaten him and make him more angry. He ended up storming off, not wanting to hear anything I had to say. As he was walking off I did tell him one more time that I was sorry for the misunderstanding. I then went over to the opposing team and apologized to them, and let them know that I had not gotten angry and was just trying to have fun. They were much more understanding of the situation, and in fact said that they had not thought that I was upset anyway.

I told that whole story to say this. I have been kicked out of my share of sporting events, and I can honestly say that every single one of them was warranted except for this one. In every single one I had let my anger get out of control, except for this one. In every single one I had let my competitive nature get the better of me, except for this one. In every single occasion I left the field angry, with nothing but disdain for the person that threw me out, except this one. In every single case, I had not apologized, and had not even thought of apologizing to the guy who had to throw me out, except for this one time.

God does not expect us to agree with authority in every situation. But he does expect us to submit to that authority. They may be wrong, but God says that He places all authority in their positions, and that we are to respect it. Not because they are always right, or because they are smarter or better then we are, but because He put it there. I don't know why God put that guy in that position, but He did. Maybe after about 10,000 years in Heaven, when all the important questions have been answered, I will ask God about that guy, and what His reasoning was behind it. I know He has a good reason for it, I just don't know what it is yet.