Full and Drunk

The time since I last posted has intermittently gone faster and slower than a slug in molasses. I've been sick enough to loose 12+ years of weight gain and recovered enough to get back six of those years. My church and other family has helped us through sick weeks off of work with meals, money, visits and most of all prayers. You can look at how they have taken care of us and get a glimpse of the face of God.

And right now I can look out the window and see the hospital a few miles away where I spent a recent week. That was a week of slugs swimming in molasses. I'm much more comfortable viewing it from the outside. From this angle the sun is dipping low, creating blues and greys and hints of pink. Dinner is finished and now we relax, my bride is to my right and my son to my left, contentedly sucking his thumb and rolling the silky edge of his blanket in his fingers and watching Curious George. I taste a bit of rye on my tongue and after breathing in to feel its spicy bite I sip an anise liqueur.The flavors are very different but I find them highly friendly. I am enjoying life with a different perspective.

I am full.
And I am drunk.

Not full of food nor drunk on the adult beverage in my cup but full of thankfulness and drunk on the richness of the last week. My first week back to a full schedule in seven weeks. The kind of work that invigorates in the way it strips you down to a tired core. A start to the weekend with friends. Friends who we have great discussion about eternal things with and I so badly want to join the Christian family. (It's good to be His, now get on board!) Another friends daughter who stayed the weekend with us while in town visiting with her soon to be husbands family. It has been exciting to see her grow from baby to lady. It doesn't make me feel old so much as enriched to have been a part of her families life.
My cousin and two of her daughters came over on Sunday, bringing my Grandma and Grandpa who I haven't seen in probably 10 years. More than anything I was excited to see them. My mom and her mom have always been on the outs with each other and I didn't know my grandparents well growing up. I don't know what to think of their disagreements but they don't concern me anyway. My grandparents are my Grandparents. We caught up, but not enough to our satisfaction, and we'll have to see them again soon.
When they left I felt immensely heavy hearted even through the high of the renewed relationship. I wished that several other family members could be there to experience that joy. To feel so thankful for the kind of work that God can do through people who are not brought down by bitterness but lifted up in thankfulness. Sadly bitterness, unforgiving hearts and a lack of gratitude will keep their bearers away from real connection with God and man. My wife and I fight against that in our lives. I can look to my Dad as an example and we are surrounded by a church that promotes thankful living for God. By the Grace of God the legacy we leave for our son will be to live that way.
And only by His Grace and good work in our lives will it be possible.
It is a good day.

Are You Not Entertained!?

If you've seen the movie Gladiator you will likely remember the scene where Russell Crowes character slays four competitors with relative ease. The bloodthirsty crowd looks on with little reaction at the brutal death of the combatants. Crowe, disgusted with the "we're just killing people for entertainment" attitude hurls his sword into the the stands and demands "Are you not entertained!?"

                                           Well, are you?

I think the question is a worthy one for us Americans. Us guys get home from work and turn on the TV. We play Angry Birds on the bus or during business meetings. Our wives know what the Kardashians ate for dinner and who wore what on the red carpet. We know the stats for every baseball, football and basketball player and what they are getting paid. 

But we don't know or care about the 3,000 plus babies that we slaughter every day. We don't know or care about what the government is taking away from us or forcing down our throats.
And often the excuse is "It's to big for me to do anything about it" but yelling at the ref on your big screen seems to have such great effect in swaying him for your team.

Are you more concerned that Rob does (or doesn't) get voted off the island than you are about who your daughter is dating? Are the draft picks more on your mind than teaching your son what being a man is?

Of course some who are reading this are getting a little defensive. "What's wrong with entertainment?" "Our TV show is our family time." "Real men are into baseball, football, soccer!"  I'm just asking the question. Is your entertainment taking the place of reality? Of your family? Of your (gulp) social responsibility? Of your time with God? Do you have balance? Have you taken a break from your entertainment to see if you are unbalanced?

So here I am asking these questions, but what have I done and from which direction did I ride in on my high horse?  I cheered and jeered for Rob on Survivor, not missing one show in the first 20 seasons. Yes, seasons, not episodes. I watched the first season of 24 in a weekend, the second season the following weekend. And I've spent countless hours fighting imaginary bad guys on Xbox while ignoring my family and ignoring the world around me. So hopefully I've sent my high horse to the glue factory.

In all honesty what finally encouraged me to knock the dust off this topic that had been languishing in the dusty shelves of my brain was a series of posts on Facebook. If I recall I had posted about government theft of private property, an entire town in fact. There was a "like" or two at best. One comment. Then I had a series of posts about the Seahawks game. Likes and comments came in like water over Niagara Falls (30+ comments and 40+ likes anyway). There was so much passion and force behind the comments and really I got a kick out of it. It was good. And each one of those that posted are people that I truly love.
But then I posted about a serious matter. A senator or rep out of California was describing a gun he wanted to ban. His description was of something out of a science fiction movie and not an actual gun, though he was holding an actual gun and giving it sci-fi attributes. He wanted to ban something that he knew absolutely nothing about. Nothing. He knew nothing and was willing to use his complete lack of knowledge to remove his constituents right to defend themselves from a fool such as himself. After that display of foolishness I wouldn't have trusted him to put a toilet paper roll on correctly and yet he is still sitting in his office. And the comments on that posted initially were around one or two and maybe a like.
I hadn't posted any of those posts as a social experiment. But later it struck me that people have such a passion for entertainment and so little passion for living. I think its easy for us to get overwhelmed by it all. The gov alphabets (DEA,NSA,FBI,CIA) are all overstepping their boundaries, babies are slaughtered, wars rage, earthquakes flatten villages and cities, presidents are turning into dictators all across the globe and one is tempted to just curl up in a ball and suck a thumb. Or watch a game. Or unreality TV. Its a form of looking for a friend in the bottle. Its drinking away the broken heart. It is really a way to escape the trauma of life.
I write this blog to encourage Christians. I understand when an unbeliever says "I just like to be entertained,man". But I don't want to hear that from fellow believers. We have reason for hope! We have reason not to be apathetic. We are fellow heirs with an Overcomer. We can't take on the world by ourselves. We can't address every social issue or save every child from an the clinical executioner. We can't feed the poor or rescue the destitute. But we can do a lot more than sit on our asses and entertain our lives away. Because we have a Father who wasn't complacent we have an example of what we can do and a resource of encouragement. Some of us can adopt a child (and show them the joys of having a favorite football team). Some can make a small hot meal for some guy under a bridge. Some can make people aware that we have killed off babies (Not tissue. Not a non life form) so that we can have lives of convenience. Some can take our sons out camping, our daughters to their favorite restaurant. We can always serve our spouse more.
Be entertained. Be involved in celebration. Jesus knew how to have fun. Do enjoy the good things that our God has given us, by all means! But don't let those good things consume you. Let living, honoring and glorifying God be what consumes you. Improve your relationships,improve you neighborhood, improve your town and see what else God has planned for you.

                       Oh yeah. And GO HAWKS!

Real Freedom, Real Security

I recently read a quote that said,in effect, that "Nowhere is freedom held so sacred than in the hands that are holding it for the very first time".

For whatever reason when I read this I flashed back not quite twenty years ago to a street in Kiev, Ukraine. I was on a mission trip and it was our day off to see the beautiful, old city. Being obviously not local we sometimes were approached by beggers and one particular lady I'll never forget. She was elderly and came up to me for some reason and started on in an angry voice. Even though she was speaking in Ukrainian I could tell she was likely cursing me out. Our translators told her to buzz off and, after a bit, she did. It took awhile to talk our translator, Lyuda, (we joked that her last name was Kriss. Say it out loud if you don't get it) into telling us what the old lady had said. Roughly translated the babushka was angry at the hardship that Ukraines newfound independence had brought to her people. She was right. Life has gone from difficult to downright unpredictably difficult since Independence was declared in 1991. Teachers (who were highly valued and well paid) hadn't received a paycheck from the government in months. Many had resorted to bartering from their gardens to get necessities. People removed their windshield wipers so they wouldn't get stolen, and only replaced them when it rained.
These people had come from communism to the birth (of a sort) of freedom. Many were excited but many were fearful. From a communist/ socialist government you get a weak form of security at the price of freedom. Some people, like this old lady, had grown  accustomed to that security and lived in fear of the dangers of freedom.

Sadly there are many like that even in this country. They are like Red in The Shawshank Redemption, but without the excuse of already being imprisoned and institutionalized. And they really do prefer a secular legalism as a security over spiritual freedom. Sin blinds. It blinds so completely that it views the state to be higher than God. The "god" state provides a false security, and it provides new definitions, and if those definitions can be twisted it can provide "redemption" redefined. It can give the nod to perversion, approval of pre-natal murder, and the atta-boy to legalized thievery.
Simply put when people choose not to be a slave to Christ, whose burden is light, they will choose the oppressive burden of anything else. Freedom is scary when there are no Godly parameters to control it. But just as terrible is a government with no Godly borders. The founding fathers of this nation understood that. That is the reason we were such a great nation. People that govern themselves in accordance with the freedoms given in Scripture will experience a freedom not seen in all of history.

Ben Franklin nearly had it when he said " He who would trade essential liberty to obtain a little security deserves neither and will lose both". I  suggest that when our security and liberty are found in our Creator no government can take those away. And a government that understands this and incorporates it into their form of government will prosper.