I had a dream......

The room was full of all the most intelligent people in our country.  There was Sarah Paline, Rush, and Glenn.  McCain was talking to Huckabee.  Hillery and Michelle were sitting on a couch chatting and laughing.  They were all there.  Letterman.  Brokaw.  Oprah.  Barrak.  Bush.  Even Al Gore.  Looking around the room, you would wonder how all of these folks who normally disagree are all together in the same room.

A waiter made his way through the room with a tray full of various finger food items.  Then there was a bright flash.  The room was full of light!  It was so bright that all darkness was pushed out of the room.  Everyone's attention were instantly drawn to the source of the light.  It seemed to come from the Back corner near the hall.  Yet the light seemed to come from everywhere, and nowhere.  But everyone ended up looking into the corner of the now brilliant room.  There was something there.  Or someone, anyway.  

This dazzling figure looked around to all of the faces.  He looked into every pair of eyes.  Looking past the their own self images into their inner most selves.  Then he spoke....

"Folks, I come with a message from the Lord.  He has said that He knows your sin.  He knows your self righteousnesses."  He raised his head toward Heaven and prayed.  "My Lord in Heaven, I have come here to give your message.  Thank you for your faithfulness."

Then looking back at the crowd of leaders, He said, "I have put you where you are to give you a voice and responsibility to care.  Turn from your evil ways and do what is right.  The fate of the people of this country are in your hands.  Choose wisely.  Make just decisions.  Lead with my Truth.  I have placed you where you are and I can take it all away.  Do not continue in your selfishness!  For it will lead to your destruction.  Study Me.  Love Me more than yourself.  Serve others.  Give to those that are in need but do not burden the people.  Hear my words you fool hearty people.  Follow my ways and I will be with you till the end of your days."  

The room went dark.  The darkness and silence filled the room.  Soon murmers rose.  Wispers flowed through the crowd.  And soon the room was all abuzz and had returned to the old lighting and you could see the faces of perplexed people.

No one in the room would ever be able to explain what happened there that day.  Some tried to blame it on a odd joint hallucination.  Like a multi-person acid trip.  But the one thing none of them could deny, it happened.  And all of them were there.  Some of theleaders from that day heeded the message.  Some did not.  With in a year from that day, half the people in that room had been either voted out of office, fired or arrested for the wrong doings.  Their sins found out.  The others that kept their faith in the message, did right by the people of the country.  God would rise up others that would take the place of the fallen and lead our country to one the knew and feared Him.

Just as I was enjoying this new world, I woke up. I realized that it was all a dream.  But as I prayed, I began to become aware of God's message from that dream, His Kingdom comes through His people, not through Government.  If we want this country to change we need to do it from one person at a time.  Just as He has done in your life.  

Love Him with all your heart, mind, and spirit.

Joe

When it snows......

Normally, the world around us is found to be busy.  When wwe go outside, there are sounds of leaves and sounds of kids playing, squirrels and birds, cars and lawnmowers.  There are many sounds and they are all ablaze in activity.

But then the leaves begin to fall giving us more sounds of the rustling and crinkling of those multi colored sheets of autumn.  There are Halloween hauntings and decor.  Trash bags of leaves litter the yards.  Kids still play but now with sweaters and jackets.  Still movement.  Still noise.

But then one morning, the world seems different.  Even the light in the house is different.  The sounds coming from outside are muted and  hushed.  You look out the window and there is a blanket of pure white snow.  Excitedly you dress in the warmest clothes.  Open your door, and step out.  Out here there is silence.  The sounds of the house waking up and the sounds of life in the world before you are drowned out to nothing.

The think layer of snow seems to blanket the sound as well as the earth.  Any sound that is made travels in all direction leaving you wondering where it even came from.  It sounds far away yet very near.  Even the crunch your steps are drowned out.

The trees are covered.  They are like tall sentries tucked into bed from a long watch.  A wall of knitted branches with lines of brown, green, and white tangling together to close in the world.  Snow is falling from a steel gray sky that covers you in an odd sense of comfort and warmth.

You stand there in the snow, letting the new flakes fall around you.  You can not feel them, yet the are there.  What is falling from the sky?  A cold weightless flake.  Another and another they fall.  Not much as they fall but together they steal the sounds and smother the world.

The snow does not kill or destroy but covers the life around to let it sleep.  Let it rest.  You can feel that comfort as you watch the snow falling lovingly to the ground.  A quite whisper of soothing music comes to your ears.  Not the bustle of activity you hear in the very spot at other times.  But it is a lullaby for a world who is tired and weary.

Let the snow come.  Take a rest.  When the snow comes...

Fall is coming

The other day my kids started singing a Thanksgiving version of Jingle Bells.  I have been writing this song in my head ever since.  So for my kids, here is "Running Through the Leaves."

Running through the leaves
It's our favorite way to play
Some stick to our sleeves
We're laughing all the way

We hear the dinner bell ring
Making our spirits bright
For it's a day to sing!
Let us eat tonight!

Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is on its way;
Oh what fun it is to eat
And enjoy this thankfuilled day!
Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is on its way;
Oh what fun it is to eat
And enjoy this thankfuilled day!

Tolerance and the Kingdom of God

I have heard much in the way of defining marriage and gays and so on.  Preferences and rights and protests and religious bigotry.  On Aug 4th, a court in California repealed the State's law defining marriage as between a man and a woman and defining domestic partnerships and their rights.  Essentially, the ruling says that gays and lesbians are allowed to marry because marriage and domestic partnership are two different things and they deserve the same rights and status as married couples.

As a member of the Body of Christ, I have to as myself what I believe and why.  Then I have to compare it to God's view.  God sees people not laws and deeds.  He clearly says that homosexuality is wrong.  But so is divorce, theft, sex outside of marriage, lying, idol worship, killing, etc.  We live in a fallen world.  It is a world full of people.  And with people, you have sin.  With sin, you need Jesus.  Sin is sin.  We all sin.  So why are we not compassionate towards all sinners equally? 

Why would we let a divorced individual serve in church but exclude a gay person?  Why is it that we can embrace a drug addict and not a gay couple?  We have laws in some states that allow a man and woman who are living together to receive rights as a married couple even though they never really married.  My brother and sister-in-law fall under that.  But if they were the same sex, they could not get the same rights.  Yet is sex before marriage not also a sin?  There is a double standard there. 

I don not ask anyone to bend on the issue of any sin and ever think it is some how OK.  But what I ask is to seek His Kingdom and wisdom in living with sin in our own lives and in others.  Look at the plank in your eye before removing the speck in an other's.  Gay folks should not be treated differently.  They are sinful people just as we are.  Love the sinner but hate the sin-- all sin, even your own.  Then we will see the Kingdom of God in our lives.

The ultimate sacrifice: LIFE

Pro-life, pro-choice, pro-capital punishment, anti-capital punishment, pro-euthanasia, anti-euthanasia, etc.

All of these revolve around the issue of life.  You could even throw in pro war/anti war issues too if you wanted to.  But I am really exploring the issue of euthanasia.  I heard a radio host talking about a guy named Garry Phebus.  Mr Phebus is a man from Georgia that wants to donate his organs-- now.  He has Lou Gehrig's disease.  This is a terminal illness.  Right now he is fairly healthy as far as the illness goes.  He cannot walk much and his vision is poor.  But his organs are in good condition.  All he wants to do is donate his organs now.  He knows he is dying and his life will only get worse.  He wants to have surgery to remove his organs and donate them.  This will kill him of course.

He talked it over with his family and wife who all understand what he wants to do.  No doctor will do it.  Only three states offer assisted suicide.  He is also looking into other countries that might do it.  Our current way of looking at this issue is that life is the most important issue and must be preserved even if the individual does not want to live. 

I must say that this shakes a few of my thoughts about life.  I work in health care and have seen people in suffering conditions.  You don't know how much pain you can feel when you are caring for someone who lays there dying.  The sound of their breathing.  There vacant look in their eyes.  The lack of movement.  Cleaning up any waste (there usually is none), swabbing and moistening their lips.    Death is hard to see.  Suffering is worse.

But should we help people die?  I am inclined to yes.  If you think about it this way, they have nothing much to live for except to make their family feel better.  The dementia patient that has no clue who they are or their own family.  They cannot talk.  They cannot comprehend.  The cancer patient whose organs are failed or failing.  The Lou Gehrig's patient who has nothing but suffering to look forward to.  If the only reason they continue living is to make their loved ones feel better, is that good enough.

This host believes that this guy should be allowed to donate his organs now.  I may not agree with every point he made but I have to consider one:  what about that person who needs a liver?  Are they not important?  If that person gets a liver, they will live a good quality life.  Garry will not if he lives. 

I am in fact, thinking that what he wants to do is more Christ like than what we all do.  It may just be the ultimate sacrifice.  What do you think?  Thoughts, comments?
 

The trouble with girls.....or is it me?

As a boy, I always wanted to get married.  I loved the idea of being married because I wanted kids.  I wanted a wife too but I don't think I really joined the two together.  Partily because I was scared of girls.  But mustly because I liked girls for a TOTALLY different reason I liked kids.   But it is hard to have one without the other. 

But I often felt that I would probably not have a family.  I never thought I would have a girl who would marry me.  I was ugly.  A nerd.  A reject.  Me talking to a girl would have been amasing.  Atleast intimantly.  So I thought that ultimantly, I would be single all of my life.  My desire was to have someone to love.  A wife, and a kid or two.  I had a few girlfriends through the years of puberty.  Most were because they liked me and voiced their feelings.  My way of dealing with the fear I had, and justifing not facing that fear, was to say that if she really liked me, she would ask me out.  Fact is, I was just too scared. 

As a matter of fact, I remember in high school, a gorl named Michelle and I started talking a bit and then she started dating a guy named Chris.  After that, I was talking to her and she confessed she had a crush on me once.  But, she said I never acted on my feeling and so I missed my chance.  I was dumb.  You se, I had crushes on so many girls in school.  I just never acted on them.  Paula, Michelle, Nikki, Kelly, Rea, Karla, April, Ect.  I could go on and on and on.  One of them, Danyelle, did get my number and called me.  We started dating and were going to get married.  That is a different story.  Key is, she called me first.

Perhaps, the strongest feelings felt towards a girl in high school was Ann (name changed to protect her privacy).  She was the girl I crushed on the hardest and longest.  And we became very close.  We shared private feelings and emotions.  But I never acted on my feelings.  I just loved her.  I was sure even to this day, she never felt the same.  We did "date" once.  For a week.  You know, the whole, "we are going out" thing but never really going out.  She broke up with me because she said, "I was the kind of guy she could fall in love with."  I don't know if I believed her.  Still don't know.  That was the begining of my senior year. 

Funny thing is that we continued to be best friends.  We talked all the time on the phone and even passed a notebook of notes to each other back and forth in school.  I remember that I kissed her once.  It was the sweetest softest kiss I had ever had.  Of course she was the third girl I had kissed.  The first girl almost didn't count since she was very agressive in wanting to kiss me and I did not really like her.  The second was Danyelle and I certainly wanted to!  But with Ann, it happened at a class party at school and never went anywhere.  I still had Danyelle and she had a boyfriend.  We just got too close while dancing.  But I could have acted.  I could have pursued it.  But she had said she just wanted frienship when we broke up.  I respected that.

Now, 20 years after I graduated high school, I am married to the most beautiful woman and have three kids.  Did I ever get over my fear of girls?  No.  They still scare me senseless!  But some how, I had a brief moment of courage, or insanity, and asked my now wife out on a date.  After that, she has made it easy to be myself and not fear her.  I say insanity because I liken that act with jumping of a cliff.  I did it when I kissed "Ann" and when I kissed another girl when I was in the Marines.  I did it when I asked Charity out.  And kept doing it with her because she drew me to do it.  Like that light to a moth.

So is the trouble with girls or is it me?  I would say it is me.  Because I of this I sometimes wonder if any of the girls in my past ever wonder what would have happened if that cute but slightly off nice guy had asked them out.  Or if "Ann" ever wished things were different.  If I had acted on my feeling, I would never had known my wife.  But I would not have cared.  I couyld have gone out with Michelle.  I could have done a lot.  But now, I know.  Now I have a lot.  Now, facing the fear is worth it.

Oil Spoiler