...a second time?

I do not know what will come of this, but after a lot of prayer and reflection, I told the leadership at PCC that if they still need someone to preach in December, I would be willing to fill for them from time to time. There is a preacher filling in through November, and they may hire someone by that time, but if not, I will be available to at least fill in. I cannot explain it well in words, but I am hearing things from God that I have not been hearing for quite a while. It is comforting.



Next post: more backing for my own personal heresy! Stay tuned!

Please Pray

So much to write about, but too much going on in my head to get it all out. Right now, 9:43 PM, Wednesday, August 23, pray for my brother, Troy, and my sister, Tena Chaivre. For those of you who did not know that I had a sister, she came to our family only a few years ago. She is another person who shows that familial bonds often run deeper than biology. She needs a lot of prayer right now, as does her husband, Joff, and their three daughters. Troy right now is real sick. Hopefully, doctors will learn more about his situation tomorrow. Please pray for him.

Pray also for Mom and Dad, for my brothers, and me. I know I speak for myself when I say I need to feel the peace of God right now. Thank you all.

Random Musings

Isn't it much better to be moved to tears out of gratitude rather than guilt?

I may not know how to run my own life, but I'm sure I can run yours.

Do you remember when your hero died?

What is more suprising: one member of N'Sync came out? Or, ONE member of N'Sync came out?

Why do people want to stand up for reporters' first amendment rights when they violated other people's civil rights?

I thought New York was bad politically (and it is), but in New Jersey, you have to pay $10 for a driver's permit at the same time you pay $34 for a driver's license.

I have not yet seen the new Superman movie, and excluding Batman Begins, Marvel Comics not only kicks DC's tale in comic books, they also do in movies.

Not only is A-Rod not the MVP this year and was not deserving of the award last year, he has not been in the top five MVP candidates for his own team (Rivera, Jeter, Sheffield, Matsui, Giambi (this year), Aaron Small (last year), Damon (this year), and even players like Williams and Posada are more valuable to the Yankees success than the most overpaid non-clutch player in the history of sport).

Isn't it funny to listen to people say after one preseason game that preseason games should be cut in half to do away with injuries? (The first game is still the first game people!)

That whole "One Day at a Time" concpet is really pain in the behind when other people are reminding you that you are not applying it to your own life.

God bless all of you.

Lessons From Tolkien

I recently finished watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy again. It really strcuk me that at the end, Frodo is standing at the ledge holding the ring to throw it off the edge and be free of the burden he had to carry. It was so simple: his life had become consumed by the ring. It changed his personality. It changed his appearance. He quit taking care of himself. It affected his interpersonal relationships. It turned him into someone he was not. And at the end of the story, he can be free. He can return to his old self. He can become human (or at least hobbit) again. But instead, he turns and looks at Samwise and says, "It's my ring." As much as his life stunk because of the ring, he could not let go of it. The equation was simple: ring=terrible existence and the triumph of evil over good; no ring=return to normalcy and the victory of good over evil. But in real life, evil has such a hold on us that we cannot give it up so easily.

I really relate to Frodo. The last sermon I preached at Lawson Road was about how we are all a slave to something and it is much better to be a slave to Christ than to our sin. At the time I preached that sermon, I was definitely enslaved to my sin. I did not want to be. I wanted to be free. I wanted to reach out and say, "Help me!" But for some reason, I could not. I was like Frodo: "This addiction is mine." For Frodo, it took a surprise attack by the beast Gollum to free him from the ring. For me, it took being fired and then being forced to face who I really was. In the end, it worked out. Today, I can see that I am free from that which shackled me. Instead of being forced into slavery by my sin, I willingly offer myself to be a slave to Christ. Life is pretty cool.

What really surprises me about the Lord of the Rings trilogy is that there is only one character who never seems to lose hope. He never seems to give up. In fact, if anyone ever asks me who the real hero of the Lord of the Rings trilogy is, my response will always be: NOT Frodo, NOT Aragon, NOT Gandalf; the hero is Samwise Gamgee.

Vulgar Words

"Summer help." "Retail." I hope to never hear those words come out of my children's mouths. I love my job. I am so thankful the God has taken care of me in my new line of work. To get where I am now in just over a year is truly a blessing (In fact, I just got another raise to cap out salary-wise in my position.) But there are some things that just really bug me.

The warehouse from the home office is bad enough with their regular people, but when they get their summer help, it's a whole lot worse. Late trucks, malfunctioning trailers, and tipped over pallets really make another wise smooth shift turn into sheer terror. I am looking forward to eeryone's summer vacations being over and maybe it will settle down a little bit.

As for retail, they are the people who decide where the product goes on the shelves and how much room it should take on the shelves. Apparently, they are staffed by people who earned PhD's by the time they were 19 but can't find work in their chosen field, and so they spend their days trying to come up with the most asinine ways to organize the product and enforce those directives company wide. Just as an example, we have a product that sells 2 to 3 cases a day during the week and even more on the weekend. Because of a new item (that will not sell nearly as well), they cut back on the good selling product so that only one and half cases will fit on the shelf. That is right: the shelf will run empty every single day. That new product, by the way, has sold about four boxes. Not cases, individual boxes. I will not need to order it until sometime near the end of August. Oh well.

As far as church goes, we have found our new church home. God is glorified, Christ is Lord, the Spirit is present, and we enjoy Christian fellowship with our brothers and sisters. It is truly a wonderful thing.

What a Difference

This morning, Shawna asked me how I was feeling with some of the pressures weighing down on us right now. I told her I was really feeling a sense of despair I have not felt for the past 13 months. I just didn't care.

I just now put Xavier to bed. We have been allowing him to stay up 20-30 minutes later than his younger brother and sister to read before bedtime, and tonight he asked me to look at his Waldo book with him. (I only found Waldo first on one of the pages; all the other times Xavier was having to give me hints of where to look.) Right now, I can still say, "I don't care," but it is in a much better way. Things are not going the way I want them to. I have been able to share that personally with several people today. (If you are among those reading this, thank you.) My children love Shawna and me. They love each other. They love the Lord. I am sober. God will provide.

The Danger of Silence

In John 7, Jesus is in Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles and begins teaching publicly in the middle of the Feast. Many people question if He truly is who He says He is. They know where He is from. They know His parents. They know a lot, they just don't now if He truly is the Messiah. The people are stunned by the fact the Pharisees are silent and not challenging Jesus. In fact, some of them even say that since the Pharisees are silent, they must believe in what Jesus is saying. In other words, their silence equals their acceptance.

It is interesting to me that human nature tends to lean this way. If you do not speak against something, you must be for something. If this is indeed true, how dangerous it then becomes for Christians and the Church to be silent on issues. I do believe that the Church should not become overly involved in political matters. I do not wish to see churches or preachers publicly backing a particular candidate or party. I do not even really agree with participating in boycotts. However, we do need to be clear about what we believe the Bible teaches.

According to the Bible, there is right and wrong. There is good and bad. There are absolutes. There is one true God. There is a Son, a Messiah, a Savior who is THE way to God and a home in Heaven. Certain actions are sinful and we should be willing to stand up and say, "What you are doing is wrong." The challenge is to add: "But I love you and will continue love and walk with you. I can learn from you as you can hopefully even learn from me." It is easy to be quiet. But in the end, no one benefits from it.

Night

I just finished Night by Elie Wiesel. Wow. What a powerful read. I strongly recommend it for everyone. Most of you probably have already read it. It's only about 50 years old. I just can't believe there are people who try to say the Holocaust never happened. A friend of mine from Rochester just recently visited Poland and was able to take a trip to Auschwitz. When people are renedered speechless I tend to take notice that something profound happened. I would love an opportunity to sit and talk with Wiesel about how his relationship with God was not only affected during that time of his life, but how it has evolved since then. If you have never read the book, I would recommend it.