Pirates & Gorillas

The other morning, Saraya was in my room while the news was on the TV. It was the morning they were reporting about a boat being attacked and prisoners taken. When the reporter was describing the attackers he used the term "pirates". I happened to look over at Saraya and the look on her face said everything. She then asked me if there were any Pirates in Jonesboro, with a really worried look on her face. I tried to assure her that the people they were talking about were not pirates like she was thinking, but I could not get the point across to her, so I just assured her that there were no pirates any where near us and that she was safe.

The incident reminded me of when I was small and saw a lot of reports on the news about "gorillas" attacking people, in what looked like jungle to me. I never asked any questions about it, but I thought that actual gorillas were attacking people in the jungle. I remember thinking, why do those people keep going into the jungle if there are crazy gorillas out there attacking people? I also remember seeing men in green clothing with guns tromping around in the jungle while they were reporting on it, and I thought, good, they have some men out there trying to stop those crazy gorillas.

I think that kids are unable to see reality some times because of their limitations. Adults on the other hand just refuse to see reality because they don't want to. To often I let my view on reality cloud my judgment and then I foolishly act on it.

I hate when that happens!

Taming the tongue

Well, I did it again, I managed to hurt someones feelings with my big mouth. Last night was our small group night, we call them cell groups, and we had a pretty good one. That is until we started taking prayer requests. A member of our group was sharing something important with us, and I was just not paying close enough attention to the conversation and did not realize what was being shared. So, I made some dumb joke, which had nothing to do with the request that was being shared, and made some other members laugh and talk. This of course ended up hurting that one members feelings, which I did not mean, and would never do on purpose.

Why do I do this? This same thing is something I have struggled with for many years. I just let my mouth get away from me and it gets me in trouble. When I realized what I had done, I went and apologized, and I have no doubt that our relationship will survive. While this was a good opportunity for us to practice some confrontation skills, I am going to try me best to avoid this same mistake in the future. However, I am sure I will one day do it again and have to end up apologizing once again for my words. It is amazing how powerful words can be, and not just what words, but how we say them and even at what time we say them. This has also been a good reminder to me to make sure I am aware of the seriousness of certain situations.

You know, some times life is hard, and some times I make it even harder.

Soccer star......Not!

Well, yesterday was Saraya's first Soccer practice. Let me just say that it was not a huge success. For most of it she tried to do what the coach told her to, without taking her hands out of her sweat shirt pockets. In her defense, it was cold and windy, and she was playing soccer, so her hands really weren't needed.

At one point, the coach decided he would split them up and try a scrimmage. This was not a good idea! Not a single one of them had the remotest idea of what to do, and Saraya just stood there with her hands in her pockets watching the other kids chase and try to kick the ball. When I walked over to her and tried to encourage her to get in there and play, she started to cry and ran to me. Saying that she wanted to go home. Even though I wanted to give into her, I made her get back in there and try.

On the way home, she cried again and said that she never wanted to play soccer and didn't know why I was making her. I told her that she could not just sit at home and do nothing, to which she responded that she just didn't want to play any sports. (that hurt a little to hear)

We are going to continue to make her play. She has never been very good with new things. She still wont eat skittles because they have an "S" on them instead of the "M" she is used to. Once she gets used to it, I think she will do fine. Plus her friend E is on her team and once he goes to practice with her, I think it will be much easier for her.

She may not ever love sports, or be a soccer star. But I think it's good for her to get used to trying new things. We can't go through life being afraid to try, and I don't want my daughter crippled by her fears later in life just because it was easier for me to protect her.

group life

I am a part of 2 small groups. One of them is on Wednesday nights and the other is on Thursday nights. The Wed night group has been going for a while and everyone in it kinda knows how small group is done and helps make sure that it runs smoothly.
The Thursday night group is a very new group. They are both new to our church and new to small group life. They are the perfect example of the busyness the world loves to put us through. My Wednesday night group meets around 6 and we are usually all headed home by 8:30. The Thursday night group is so busy and their schedules are so packed that we have pushed the start time back to 8:00, and most of them don't usually show up until 8:30. By the time we eat, talk and just get people settled down enough to start, it's at least 9 or some times even 9:30. Don't get me wrong, I love my Thursday night group, but most of the time it is really a struggle to concentrate on what God has for us that night for longer then a 5 minute stretch. There seems to always be something. I am not complaining, because I have seen some great things come from the times when we do concentrate on God, but last night I was just hit with the reality that a small group home study is not a natural thing with all people.

When new people come into an existing group they can just sit back and fallow the lead of the other members that know what to do. When you start a new group with all new members, you find out quickly that things you take for granted are sometimes things that your group does not even think about.

Again, I'm not complaining, I am just reminded that modern day Christianity is a culture in itself. With habits and norms that are especially particular to that culture. I am just hoping that I never get too caught up in all of that, making me unable to reach out to the lost, unchurched or to just some people that are new. It's a little tougher some times, but well worth it.

Just last night we had a child come down stairs and lay across both parents and fall asleep, another child texting the asleep child, the mother of the child answering the text, a conversation about cell phones, a breast feeding, diaper change, conversation about hair and pictures, burping, light discussion about burping, and an unsanctioned bathroom break. All of this occurred during the 20 minutes or so we were trying to have a lesson.

I think God used the time though! It's all good.

I'M BACK!

I know, it's been a while since my last post. I got really busy for a while, and then I just got out of the habit of blogging. Then it became a thing. It was this thing I was avoiding because it was hanging over my head. I knew I needed to get on here and post something, but there had been so much time since the last post that it seemed like it had piled up and it was to much for me to want to deal with. So I just avoided it. I even avoided reading any blogs. It was like when I was in Jr. high, and I had a big project that was coming due, and I had put it off for so long that I just didn't know where to start because there was so much to do and not enough time to do it all. So you just keep putting it off until the next day, and when tomorrow comes, you just put it off until the next day.
So I decided to just forget about catching up on anything and start new. I may or may not post anything from the past few months. Besides, I don't think anyone reads my blog that does not have regular contact with me anyway. So all 4 of you know what has been going on with my life anyway.
At least I have started, and now it should not be that difficult to continue on posting. Now I just have the pressure to constantly come up with good stuff to post. Will it never end?

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.