Elizabeth Elliott profundity

I was recently listening to an old recording I have of Elizabeth Elliott. She just made the profound statement that originally prompted me to keep the recording:

"there is nothing worth living for unless it's worth dying for"

I love that quote.

How many things on this earth and in our lives do we each consider worth dying for? Life has so much more meaning when you are surrounded by those whom you would die for. Those who are surrounded by "things" that they believe bring them pleasure would admit they would surely not die for them. Thus they don't know the level of meaning that they can obtain for their own life if they would just trade in their things for meaningful relationships.

There is a secular song written for and performed by none other than The Monkees. I love the lyrics in the second verse of the song, "The Door into Summer". It speaks of the man who spent his life building up his pile of "things" and the ultimate regret therein:

With his travel logs of 'maybe next year' places
As a trade-in for a name upon the door
And he pays for every year he can't buy back with his tears
As he finds out there's been no one keeping score

We cannot serve many masters, effectively. We cannot put 100% energy into more than one thing. Yes many can get a way with 50/50 if they are affective and things fall into place just right. However that is not reality because life doesn't fall into place all the time as we plan. Yes we can give 50% to work but our career may suffer. Yes we can give 50% to our family but our family will suffer. People tend not to be happy when they give 50% to something. Therefore one thing
inevitably gets more attention. It is usually those earthly things that bring us immediate gratification that get most of our attention.

For example, children are a long term investment. The effects of what you do or don't do with our children today will not be seen for many years to come. However if a man puts all his time into the workplace, he may get pay raises and praise today but ultimately it does not matter. Let me explain. I recently attended a funeral of a friend from my church. Several people got up to speak about the life of this woman. NO ONE got up and said they were happy that she worked more hours than expected or she always did great work on the job. People spoke about how she hugged and how she listened to others without judging or how she always was there to talk. People who were really touched by how she treated them were the ones who testified to her life.

Who or what are you living for? Is it worth dying for?

I think J.C. Watts would be the best choice

I think J.C. Watts would be the best choice for VP. I think it would be brilliant on so many levels. Close your eyes and listen to how well he speaks and how passionate he is. Next read what he writes and what he believes.

Unfortunately we live in a race-inflamed climate, especially this political season. Obviously, Obama is half black and technically his dad is not "african-american" since he is from Kenya.

Therefore with JC Watts, we would counter the "blackness" on the Democrat side with a man with actual "slave blood". I must reiterate that this means nothing to me but there are people on the left that base their votes on this idiocy. Having JC would call out the guilty white liberals who are voting for Obama to solely make themselves feel good. Perhaps it would also put to bed once and for all that Republicans are NOT the party of racism but the Dems are - although sadly I seriously doubt it. It is too ingrained in the political minds of those on the left.

Mr. McCain, make the right choice.

What if you had six months to live?

We have a great friend in our church, in her 50's, who is dying of a very aggressive cancer. I went on a missions trip last February with her and many others to Hackberry, LA to build a house.

She had untreated melanoma on her back for a few years and it has now spread throughout her body. She was officially diagnosed in July. It is now the first week in August and the doctors say she has hours to days to live. At the end of this month it will be 6 months since our mission trip. I am looking at photos from the trip. I can only think, what if we could go back in time and tell her that she would be with the Lord in 6 months. What if...

I will miss you Deb. You will be with our Lord soon!

No T.V. and the impending joy

It goes without saying that I am no big fan of T.V. Yes I watch some shows. I love the History Channel and National Geographic channel and Discovery Health.... yada yada.

With that said, last saturday we lost power to our home from around 2am til 10pm. It rained all day so we couldn't go outside either. No lights, no computers, no internet and, above all, no T.V.

With my whole family in the living room I stood up and said 'Isn't this great! No distractions from TV. We can talk and play and just pay attention to one another!'. That announcement was met with less than enthusiasm from my TV family. However there was no choice in the matter. We ended the day with so much reading time and face time and family time, it was wonderful. I spent quite a bit of time just laying down talking to my 8 year old daughter about all sorts of stuff. My wife and I even talked more.

Don't let your TV become a substitute for family connections. God bless.

Response to a news article about a failed abortion

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Article in black/brown. My comments in red. ------------------------------------------------------

Baby Miraculously Survives Abortion, Expected to Live 'Normal' Life

{The whole headline makes me think I am in la-la land or some bad dream where I am the only one that sees that the emperor has no clothes. Let's begin by recognizing that they use the term "baby". Apparently since the tissue mass kept on living after it's attempted murder, then it now qualified as human.
They also view this survival as a "miracle". I am so perplexed at the use of this term here. They are attempting to kill an defenseless baby but the baby does not die like they all wanted it to. Therefore, a divine power stepped in is the conclusion they draw? We are not talking about someone surviving a car accident or a gunshot to the head. This was a willful and legal murder being carried out. Perhaps the headline writer actually knows it is wrong and is quietly cheering.
Lastly "expected to live 'normal' life" kind of struck me funny too. I must give them credit for at least putting normal in quotes. How confused will this child be as he tries to come to term with the fact that mom chose to have him killed because she thought he had a kidney disease.}

Thursday, June 05, 2008

A mother who decided to abort her son because he may have inherited a life-threatening kidney condition is overjoyed that he survived the procedure.

{The operative term in this byline is "may". Would mom be overjoyed if the baby survived but still had the condition? What is she actually overjoyed about? Does she realize she did something wrong? I will never know.}

Jodie Percival of Nottinghamshire, England, said she and her fiancee made the decision to abort baby Finley when she was eight weeks pregnant.

{Another routine mention of couples having babies before marriage. How committed can couples really be? Yet we wonder why western culture is declining.}

Percival's first son Thane died of multicystic dysplastic kidneys — which causes cysts to grow on the kidneys of an unborn baby — and her second child Lewis was born with serious kidney damage and currently has just one kidney, the Daily Mail reported.

{This is tragic and I praise God that both of my children are healthy. I cannot imagine what it must be like every time they get pregnant only to wonder if that baby will die too. But I also don't understand why they chose to kill it rather than the possibility that it will die of an inherited disease. In the UK, the moral standard has been lowered so much that abortion is kind of like getting a tooth pulled, especially if you may have inherited bad lateral incisors.}

"I was on the (birth control pill) when I became pregnant," Percival, 25, said. "Deciding to terminate at eight weeks was just utterly horrible but I couldn't cope with the anguish of losing another baby."

{There is without a doubt, no question, that she was put in a position that I would not ask for my worst enemy. I am sure it is beyond horrible. But folks, that is where faith and prayer are supposed to come in. Since a foundation of faith may be missing from her life her response to losing another baby was to kill the baby... get it?}

A short time after the abortion, Percival felt a fluttering in her stomach. She went to the doctor for a scan and discovered she was 19 weeks pregnant.

"I couldn't believe it,' Percival said. "This was the baby I thought I'd terminated. At first I was angry that this was happening to us, that the procedure had failed. I wrote to the hospital, I couldn't believe that they had let me down like this.

{I don't even know how to relate to this. Well once I called my auto mechanic when something broke down after they 'fixed' it ...
I too was pretty bummed and I felt let down. Ya, I was angry too at first. Ugh! This is a baby she is talking about here. I wonder what she said in her letter.}

"They wrote back and apologized and said it was very rare," she added.

Dr. Manny Alvarez, managing health editor for FOXNews.com, said Percival's situation is actually quite common.

"Women that have early terminations in weeks six, seven and eight, many times the pregnancy is so small that doctors miss removing the baby," Alvarez said. "The danger is that the failed attempt can damage the baby. That is why these patients who get early terminations need follow-ups."

{Again the more I read this article the more I want to yell "but he has no clothes on". The doctor actually said the danger of failure can damage the baby. OK, he called it a baby first and foremost but his use of the word danger intrigues me. Isn't his goal to damage the baby so much that the baby dies?? Why does he consider it a danger that failure to kill the baby can hurt the baby??}

Another scan a week later confirmed the baby also had kidney problems, but doctors told the couple the baby was likely to survive, so they decided he deserved another chance at life.

{Awe how charitable. I hope Finley someday appreciates his parent's benevolence.}

In November, Finley was born three weeks premature. He had minor kidney damage but is expected to lead a normal life.

{Praise God}

The supernatural invitation

Christ calls on us to do that which can only be described as supernatural. The dictionary says supernatural means "of, pertaining to, or being above or beyond what is natural; unexplainable by natural law or phenomena; abnormal." Oswald Chambers wrote "...the relationship which He demands is an impossible one unless He has done a supernatural work in us."1 Chambers said we can only be disciples of Jesus if we are made one, supernaturally and "as long as we have the deadset purpose of being disciples we may be sure we are not." Therefore the supernatural nature of Christ is put within us once we accept him as Lord of our lives. The manifestation of this supernatural blessing in human beings fascinates me because is it so contrary to our earthly understanding while its embodiment is so evident in how lives are changed.

I, like everyone else, was born sinful and self-centered. Until Christ entered my heart I lived my life making sure I got everything I wanted, desired and "deserved" regardless of the effect on others. If someone wronged me, it was only natural to make sure I wronged them back or somehow make their life miserable with a passive-aggressive form of payback. Why was I engaging in this payback? Because the conflict I was engaging in was solely human to human. The other human hurt me, and now, to feed my ego and sense of self-righteousness, I had no choice but to hurt him back, until I felt he paid for it. Of course the amount he had to pay was subjectively based on my mood and how much I liked or disliked him that day.

However what if I was wronged by a person and I decided only to forgive? What if I was at peace with that decision? What if I was wronged and I decided to help the other human paint his house - free of charge? I am certainly not trying to win the battle... right? My earthly sense would tell me I was admitting I was a loser or I was weak. Well what if I said that with these choices, I actually won the battle between the other person and myself? Confused?

Let's look at another example. Take a man who from age 12 was drawn to fill an appetite for pornography and/or drugs. They ruled his life for 30 years. He was doomed to die or end up in jail. His habit had wired his brain so deeply that kicking these addictions was considered impossible from all earthly viewpoints. He accepts Christ's invitation and the day eventually arrives that he no longer desires drugs or porn. Did someone do surgery on his brain to re-wire it? Well, in a sense, yes. But not someone of this earth.

The power of Christ upon taking ownership of a man's heart and mind cannot be explained in human terms. Why does a man who is addicted to drugs or alcohol or pornography lose his desire for them either immediately or over time? Why does a woman who was abused by her mother suddenly no longer feel anger toward her mother but seeks to introduce her to God? Why would a spouse who has not been treated well by or has been neglected by his husband/wife for years decide to rub his/her feet without asking? Why does a man whose history has consisted of using his fists to influence people become a person with whom you want to approach because you now feel safe? In a human sense, these are miracles of the human spirit. What in the world does that mean? Even humanists have to evoke the terms miracle and spirit - both non-physical entities - to describe these changes.

In each case I am sure that Christ's Holy Spirit has entered the heart of each situation I mentioned here. We have an invitation from God that we can accept or deny. We have been told by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount to do that which is supernatural. Do we choose to obey or to continue to seek our own way.


1. "My Utmost for His Highest" by Oswald Chambers.

Black and White Americans are each other's greatest allys

There is a phenomena that I have observed in our American Society today that is evolving and should be acknowledged. Black and white Americans have more in common than many of us think.

There are two major cultural ties that we share and one more that is bringing us closer every generation. The two major ones are Religion and Language. The majority of Blacks and Whites are Christian and predominantly protestant. Nearly all blacks and whites speak English and don't speak a second language. The third one which is not as obvious is pop-culture.

Religion

The fact is the majority of blacks and whites are Christians. Each also values the faith in Christ that they share. I have been to Christian events, like Promise Keepers, where black and white people are drawn close by the sharing of their faith. Islam and Christianity are not the same. Islam in its extreme is quite hostile to Christianity. In the 21st century these two religions are in a battle for superiority. This puts the majority of blacks and whites on the same team.

Language

The majority of blacks and whites in America speak English and only English. In the last 40 years and more so throughout the the 21st century, Spanish speaking peoples from south of the US border are coming to this country and refusing to assimilate. Part of this refusal is not giving up their language for the English language. Language differences are even more balkanizing than religion because of the difficulties of communication. This again puts black and white Americans on the same team. Have you noted that tensions between Hispanics and Blacks seems to be on the rise, especially in southern California? Violence seems to be provoked by the Hispanics who see blacks at their only threat to taking over as the country's largest minority and all the benefits that come with that title. I would suspect in their heart of hearts that white Americans are quietly siding with their black, English speaking brethren.

Pop culture

There was time one hundred years ago when English and Italian Americans were clearly distinguishable but today you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who doesn't consider them both white. Although blacks and white may never have the same skin pigmentation, their friendships and the lines of distinction are fading with each generation.

TV and movies have shown black and white Americans as allies and friends for 30+ years now and it is pretty much ingrained in the minds of our youth that it is the natural order of things for blacks and whites to be friends. George Jefferson had white friends back in the 70's. Raven (of That's So Raven) has a best friend who is white. How about the fact that the largest demographic that listens to and enjoys black rap music is young whites...?

Look at commercials and you will find blacks and whites enjoying the same products, foods, etc. It is everywhere now and the taboos all by "last generation". You will also find that Black/White interracial marriages are far more prevalent today than ever.


I could go on and the evidence is always mounting that in the 21st century black and white Americans need each other more than ever but the first step is to look at those ties that bind us and not focus on our differences.