Mezzamorphis

This year, I’m thankful for…

…my lovely wife. As we close in on 13 years of marriage, I find that I love you more than the day we met. You’re the most beautiful woman in the world, the greatest mother, and my best friend. I can’t imagine life without you. God truly blessed me with the perfect helpmate. You allow me to do so many things, and support me in every one of them. I love you twice as much as yesterday and half as much as tomorrow.

…my beautiful daughter Ashlee. As you grow much too quickly into a young woman, it is my honor to watch you blossom. I love it when you’re silly, and love it when you’re serious. You are such a sweet and loving princess. I love that God made you so much like me. You’re my snuggle buddy.

…my awesome son Alex. You’re so funny to watch hop around when you play video games. You get more exercise in 20 minutes of Lego Star Wars than you would in an hour on a bicycle. Your sweet heart is a gift from God that I treasure and try to handle with care. Keep being awesome.

… my angel girl Katie. What do I say about you? When God made you he broke the mold, then banished the mold maker. Your fierce determination is matched only by your immovable will. I can’t wait to see what you are going to grow up to be. Every morning you greet us with a smile brighter than sunshine, then wish us goodnight with a snuggle and laugh. Even though you were unexpected, I can’t imagine life without you.

… my little David. I still feel like I barely know you. Just six months into your life, you push on through all the annoyances of being the youngest sibling. Your mom and I know the feeling and we empathize with you. You’re going to be the fair haired, blue eyed child, totally different from the others. God put a cute bow on our natural family.

… my parents. You’ve always been patient with me, letting me go my way with suggestions, but never making demands. I know you don’t get to see your grandchildren as often as you would like, and I wish that I could change that. We may disagree sometimes, but you’ve never held my opinions against me. You’re generous, loving, understanding, and the best parents a child could ever wish for. You make it easy to follow the fifth commandment. I’ll always be indebted to you for making me who I am. I’ll always love you.

… my church family. What do I say to such a wonderful group of people? Even with my mistakes, foibles, lack of confidence, and overbearing opinions, you all accept me. I’m humbled that you allow me to be a worship leader week in and week out. I’m emboldened by the work that you all do on a weekly basis. I’m so blessed to be part of a church family that truly cares for each other and the community around us, whether that community be Anna, Honduras, Ethiopia, or beyond. My family and I are supported in ways that we’ve never really experienced, and blessed because of it. This last year has been such a ride and I can’t wait to see where we go from here.

… my job. At a time when so many people are out of work, I’m blessed to have the job that I have. What makes it even better is that I’m able to thrive and grow in my position. Sure, there are the times of drudgery and fixing things that someone else broke, but overall I can’t be more pleased. Ray, you are as generous as you are kind and my family can’t thank you enough each month for my paycheck.

… my Lord and Savior. As I move forward in life, I realize that I can’t do it without the strength I get from You. I learn more about my faith through school, but I truly grow when I spend time with You. I pray that everyday I learn from my mistakes and I am able to turn those mistakes into successes for Your glory. Keep me humble, no matter my position. Keep me always looking to You. Really, just keep me. Each day is one more day closer to eternity, and I hope that I’m doing everything possible with the time I have to advance Your kingdom. I know that it can only be done through You, but You’ve given me my gifts and my ministry. I lean on you for the results.

I’ve spent a lot of time on Facebook in the past few weeks. One of the fun things is reconnecting with high school classmates and friends. It’s interesting to see the direction that our lives have taken since graduation. Most of us are married, with children ranging from none to seven. Many appear to be happy with where they are, with the snowy exception here and there.

One of the most interesting things about it to me is that we are all still connected to our hometown in some way. Many of our parents or grandparents still live there, and some never left the area. The recent death of one of my friends grandparents made me think that we are all still connected by that single strand. Something will invariably draw each of us back home, whether it be a wedding, funeral, reunion, or holiday. We don’t all descend upon that little town on the Kansas prairie at the same time, but we all cross into the city at some point.

There are exceptions of course. A few don’t have any reason to go back. I’m sure that as the years go by, more will move from the connected group to the unconnected. Slowly, living connections to our hometown will disappear and the only thing remaining will be that we grew up there and that many of us graduated from high school together.

That web of connections grows and blends together with time. Each of us has new friends and maybe new places we live. Those new friends are added into our own web, connecting us to their past, and they to ours. Our children will develop their own connections to other people, as will our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and so on. Each person that my life touches will, knowingly or otherwise, have a connection to a small town in south central Kansas, a family farm, and a community of people willing to do anything for each other.

That’s pretty cool.

I’ve been fairly agnostic about Twitter. I didn’t really see a good use for it. I’ve been roughly of the same opinion on Facebook status updates as well.

However, in the last few days, I’ve gotten more of an idea of the usefulness of said tools. I’ve found that he Facebook status update provides a sense of community with others that you are friends with. It doesn’t replace face to face interaction, but it can help keep people closer who are separated by great physical distances. If the status updates are honest, you can get a feel for the highs and lows, the ebb and flow of a person’s life. You can encourage them when they are down, congratulate them when they report something good, and just generally keep in touch.

Twitter is a little more difficult to nail down. The best example of something useful I’ve found is a weather update that I get from the chief meteorologist at WFAA in Dallas, Pete Delkus. Mr. Delkus uses Twitter to send forecast information and severe weather updates. I found it fairly handy last weekend when we had storms rolling through, and Mr. Delkus would update with when the storms would generally arrive in Dallas or Fort Worth. That is useful, timely information that I like to have.

I don’t really get into the minutiae of daily life from others on Twitter. It doesn’t really hold my interest all that much. Are there other things that you find useful about Twitter and Facebook?

I’ve only been using my Facebook account regularly since the beginning of November last year. As of today I have 73 friends. 19 of them are from my hometown, 18 are from college, and eight of them are family. Most of them are people I’ve not seen in years, much less talked to. It’s really a pretty cool thing as we’re spread all over the country, from Key West, FL to Anchorage, AK, from Brazil to Hawaii, with some soon to be in Ukraine.

20 years ago, a long distance phone call was a luxury. Now, we can call anywhere in the US with no extra charge. 15 years ago email was just beginning to become prevalent. Just last week the kids and I sat down in front of the computer and talked to my parents in Kansas and saw them in real time. It’s not a substitute for the real thing, but it’s better than nothing.

It’s an interesting world we live in. A question before I go though. How can God use these technologies to further His kingdom? Are there any ways you know of?

I read two stories today that, as a parent, really made me crazy.

First, from Ottawa, Canada. A judge overturned the grounding (yes, read the article) of a 12-year-old girl. The girl was grounded by her father because she was told to stay off the Internet and she refused. Therefore, she was not allowed to go on a school trip and was grounded as punishment. Now, I’m no expert on Canadian law, but this seems to be a gross imposition on the rights of the parent. If I choose to not allow my child to play video games (and it’s happened), they don’t get to play video games. When they are on their own they can make up their own rules, but until then, I’ll do it for them. If I were a parent in Canada, I’d be concerned that this might become a ruling that other courts may use against them.

Secondly, we have this story from Gloucester, Massachusetts. The high school in Gloucester has experienced a baby boom, having 17 girls become pregnant. Out of a 1,200 student population, they typically average four. While there are larger issues with the pregnancies that I’ll let you get from the article, I wanted to focus on one particular aspect of it.

But by May, after nurse practitioner Kim Daly had administered some 150 pregnancy tests at Gloucester High’s student clinic, she and the clinic’s medical director, Dr. Brian Orr, a local pediatrician, began to advocate prescribing contraceptives regardless of parental consent, a practice at about 15 public high schools in Massachusetts.

…

The pair resigned in protest on May 30.

I’m sure that the district has some type of privacy policy for the children, so that they can expect to come in and take a pregnancy test without their parents finding out about it. However, if you start noticing some frequent fliers in there, don’t you think it’s time to let the parents know that their children are obviously engaging in some risky behavior? It’s not time to start handing out the pill to them without parental consent, it’s time to bring them in, tell their parents, and let the parents decide what they want the child to do. My children will have a reasonable expectation of privacy when they are older, but they will know that whatever they do is subject to my supervision at any time.

I’m sure that the underlying reason for most of these girls to become pregnant is because they don’t get enough love at home. That falls directly on the parents, and they will have to one day answer for that. The girls need to know that there are consequences to getting pregnant. As the older girl in the article says, “…it’s hard to feel loved when an infant is screaming to be fed at 3 a.m.” Believe me, we know around here.

I’ve been tagged to produce this as part of a 123 meme. Here are the rules for this fun little bit of Internet foolishness:

• Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more (no cheating!)
• Find page 123
• Find the first five sentences
• Post the next three sentences
• Tag five people

So, the book that is nearest to me is “Christ and Culture” by H. Richard Neibuhr. It’s  really a great book, and it’s taking me forever to get through it, mainly because it’s written by a former Yale theology professor. Big words, long sentences, great thoughts. Here’s the quote from the book, which is actually taken from Matthew 22:21 and Romans 13:1.

“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. … The authorities are ministers of God.”

Yes, it’s four sentences. Call the Meme Police on me if you want.

This is part of Niebuhr’s larger thought of Christ being above culture, of people trying to create a synthetic view between Christ and the culture around them. This synthetic view tries to take into account that while we are under Christ, we are part of our culture, and we must have complete “awareness of the dual nature of our law, our end, and our situation.”

Actually, this page contains my favorite sentence in the book so far.

The New Testament contains no document that clearly express the synthetic view; but there are many statements in gospels and epistles which sound the motif or which can be interpreted, without violence to the text, as containing this solution of the Christ-and-culture problem. (emphasis mine)

That’s great stuff. “Without violence to the text”. How many authors do commit violence against the text of Scripture in order to make a point?

Wow. I got sidetracked. Here are my tags. Angie, Amy, Chris, LaShawn, and Patti.

I read this post this morning from Dan Edelen at Cerulean Sanctum and it really made me think. How do we treat our pastor? Do we think of him as the one-stop-shop of Christianity, or do we understand what his strengths and weaknesses are? You really need to read the linked post before going on, because you may not have the proper context of what I’m going to write about. I don’t want to quote everything Dan said, just pick out a couple parts.

Dan wrote:

It’s popular today to speak of The Five-fold Ministry of Ephesians 4, and many churches adhere to the idea that the pastor should be an apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, and teacher, but I can’t read the Bible and find folks who fit that mold.

…

Why are we not asking what the genuine biblical role of the pastor is? Perhaps it’s far more limited in scope than we’ve made it out to be.

If we consider the finer truth of the use of the word shepherd for pastor, what does a shepherd do?

• He protects the flock from harm.
• He tends to their wounds and diseases.
• He comforts them when they are afraid.
• He takes them out to a place where they can find the substantial food and water weaned sheep need to reproduce, tend their lambs, grow, and prosper.

Dan pointed out in an earlier passage that the New Testament word for pastor (poimēn) literally means shepherd. I want to take his word study of the five offices a little farther.

Apostle (apostolos) – a delegate, an ambassador of the Gospel, officially a commissioner of Christ

Prophet (prophētēs) – a foreteller, an inspired speaker

Evangelist (euaggelistēs)

• It’s tough

Heh. Big shout out to Amy. Thanks for reading what I have to say, even though it may not make sense some times.

Thanks to all those who sent notes of sympathy about Lilly Belle. A special thanks to Melissa in Texas who doesn't even know me and I don't know her, but she made a point to comment about BooDog and I really appreciate that. It's kind of odd to have readers that you don't even know, but it's neat all the same. Thanks to Amy and Derick also for the birthday notes. Sorry if I seemed a little down in my replies, but I'm sure you understand.

I do promise I'll stop talking about Boo all the time real soon. In fact, later this afternoon I've got a post queued up about electric rates. Exciting stuff for everyone I'm sure, but at least it's not tears and animals.