Spiritual Antennae

Every time a group hunkers down to a really good discussion on prayer, it seems to inevitably be about petitions, whether your own or interceding for others. I wish people would remember, or realize, that listening is a very large part of prayer. I know we know that prayer is so much more than asking for things, but whenever it's discussed, those other things seem to disappear.

But when Paul says to "pray without ceasing", does he mean that we should walk around continually muttering about things? Does he mean that we keep up a constant stream of "do this, do that, bless hims" every minute we're awake? "With all sorts of prayers and requests"...

Or does he mean something else entirely? A while ago I came to think of it as always referring everything to God, eventually a sort of "always on" mode. Filtering it through Him, what He thinks about it. Kind of like having spiritual antennae, always testing, testing, to see what the Lord says about this or that. Constantly listening, constantly sensitive to when we do something wrong or when someone speaks error.

Again, though, that's probably only part of it, even though it's a constant.

Seek Ye FIRST...

Sheesh, I've been going about it all wrong this time. Ever since October...no, before that. Last summer, I think. Ever since then we've been working towards going back "out there".

Only now I keep coming across passages and columns saying, "Seek ME". I've found I've been pursuing missions more than Jesus Himself. I see it in an Oswald Chambers daily reading, in a magazine article, and especially in the "Perspectives" book/course. (If people want some meat to sink their teeth into, that's a good one to go to.) Yes, "The true greatness of any church in not how many it seats but how many it sends," (unknown), but anything can become an idol, even very good things. Pro-life crusades, songwriting....missions. Anything that gets our main focus. As P.T. Forsyth said, "the weakness of much current mission work is that [we] betray the sense that what is yet to be done is greater than what [Christ] has already done. The world's gravest need is less than Christ's great victory." (emphasis mine)

"And step by step you'll lead me....and I will follow You all of my days." (Rich Mullins)

Back By Popular Demand

Actually, it was more like, "You should have said 'so-and-so' and 'this person'", etc. So I have added those suggested names to my "who do you think of?" Character associations, thus:

1. Brad Pitt
2. Angelina Jolie
3. Johnny Depp
4. Catherine Zeta-Jones
5. Matt Damon
6. Cameron Diaz
and one extra:
7. Renee Zellweger

He is Risen!!!

Character Association

I'm just curious. I can't remember now why I thought of this, but I idly wondered about it and now want to as idly ask:

What character comes to mind when you think of these actors/actresses?

1. Harrison Ford
2. Kate Winslet
3. Tom Cruise
4. Keira Knightly
5. Russell Crowe
6. Nicole Kidman

"Mama Killed a Chicken...

...she thought it was a duck
she put it on the table with its legs stickin' up"

The past few days we've been putting a bunch of songs off of old albums onto CD's. I tell ya, people just do not know what they're missing if they have never heard some of that earlier Christian music. If they've never heard the original "He's Alive" (despite his "dolphin voice"--ask if you want clarification on that--it's a powerful rendition), or the early Christian alternative stuff, before it got monotone; the 77's, old DA, that kind of thing.

They've been so good to re-live, and I can't wait to play these things in the car as well! Why have we let them languish so? (Probably because it's easier to pop a CD in than take all the stuff off the crates our albums are stored in, hunt for the song you want, then put everything back when it's over.)

Just Musing

It recently occurred to me that I often hear people speaking on the armor of God, on "not flesh and blood but rulers, against the authorities". It also occurred to me as I was reading Ephesians that I don't often find stuff on Eph 4:29 (unwholesome talk, building others up), on I Cor 4:9, "For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena", or farther down, v 13"...when we are slandered, we answer kindly. Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world." Hmm. I probably have heard, "Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others," but I know not often enough. Nor very much on Phil 1:9 and discernment.

Love Askew

Over a decade ago I had an astonishing three months, months during which, I'm thinking now, we were probably under a special benediction since we were being prepared for our overseas life.

The starting point of the wonder began with something quite small, though. It started with an eye- and heart-opening temperament seminar. During this seminar I found out that I was liked. By people. By...God.

See, as someone who has never managed to keep friends interested in being friends with me for more than a couple or few years, I also internalized that to reflect on what I thought God must think of me. I'd had this subconscious feeling that God saved me because He had to, because He'd promised to save anyone who called on His name. But after that I was kind of left to drift to the back of the crowd.

But to realize He actually liked me, and wanted to be with me...that was earth-shattering. It was mind-boggling -- really! But I'm now wondering, why? Why did it seem so much more meaningful to feel liked than loved (as I technically knew I was)? As Beth Moore says as well in one of her studies: "...try to fathom that God doesn't just love us. He also likes us!"

Doesn't just love us? What definition have we come to for "love" to lower it so? Have all our well-meaning efforts to convince people that "love is not a feeling, it's an act of your will"; "feelings of romance don't last, love is acts" made it...duty or something? Is it that we have only one word for 'love' using the same one to describe our relationships and our feelings for chocolate, whereas the Greeks have at least five; storge, agape -- what about "phileo"? That's the friendship one; liking love. Liking and loving. Have we squeezed the phileo out of our love here?

There are times when, as they say, loving doesn't necessarily involve feelings, sure. But it seems to me that maybe in our effort to keep it from meaning what the media suggest it means, we've swung too far the other way, as we are wont to do. I don't know. Maybe I've missed something here. But I want some of the glory of love to be restored to it. And I want my love of God to have a lot of liking in it.

um...

If "...it takes more than one gallon of fossil fuel -- oil and natural gas -- to produce one gallon of ethanol," then how is that saving gas?

(emphasis mine)

Easter Thoughts

When "The Passion of the Christ" came out in theaters, we went to see it. The theater was very still throughout (though I know I was only just keeping myself from wailing). We filed out silently, rode home in silence, and continued on that day in a somber vein.

This was not the sweet, beckoning joy that most people think of when they think of love. This was a tremendous presence, something almost solid, landing in the room with the impact of a meteor.

That's what stunned me. Not the violence, the violence was barely endurable (but probably underdone in the case of the scourging); rather, the overwhelming love of someone willing to go through the horror for. . . . .us. That's someone worth following to the ends of the earth.

And that’s what I wanted to do when I got home. Just get up and walk out of the door, the house, and keep walking until I could walk up to Jesus.

"The Passion of The Christ" ripped me in half, like the veil in the temple. I had expected to be ripped, because I am an intensely empathetic person. What I hadn't expected was how it also rocked my soul, rocked it in a way it hadn't been rocked since the conference that led us overseas. No sermon I've heard since coming home has had that much power.

What I'm thinking this year is: Should we watch it on Good Friday again this year? I couldn't bring myself to one year, did watch it another, and last time I found movie standpoints creeping in.

I don't want that. I don't want to think of movie things when I watch it. I also know that His followers only saw His death once. Is it therefore wrong for us to watch a facsimile once a year, or is it instead a good reminder?

Asleep in the Light

is the name of a Keith Green song. It also seems to be the national theme. K.P Yohannan says that whenever he comes to America (which he doesn't much like to do), he is amazed by how saturated the country is by the gospel. We have so many books on so many subjects, so many Bible translations, and so many people analyzing minute points on Scripture that maybe it takes a visitor to see its overkill.

Why?

The image that comes to mind is that of a clogged drain. The Gospel isn't getting out, so it's building up here with nowhere to go. If the analogy runs true, it's also stagnating with its lack of flow.

I don't know if that's really the case, but I do know that the Gospel which is so freely, freely available here to virtually everyone is completely inaccessible to large parts of the world. America has approximately one Christian worker for every 230 people, but those who have never heard the Gospel even once have one worker for every 450,000 souls. 9% of the world's population speaks English, and yet 94% of all ordained preachers in the whole world minister to the 9% who speak English. I have to look up these statistics when I want to refer to them (I got them from "Why You Should Go to the Mission Field" by Keith Green, so they're probably somewhat outdated), but there's one illustration which stays with me much more easily:




the rice grain in the middle representing the number of Christian worker(s) among the unreached (only the sea of rice I saw was much bigger).

It was that same Keith Green tract which first convicted us and eventually led us overseas, and we've been longing to and working toward going back ever since we came back here. It saddens and frustrates me to hear people say (as we did before the first time we went out) things like, "I want to stay here and shake up the Americas". If all that engorgement hasn't done the job by this time, then his staying here is going to change all that single-handedly?

Of course huge things can happen from one person. Look at Open Doors, started by one man. Operation Mobilization, started by one. Jim Elliot and his four partners. (And look what else they have in common...they went.) But you know what's gonna "shake up the Amercias" the best?

Obedience. As Keith (yet again) said, "They have a rule in the Armed Forces that says, 'Always obey the last order received, until a new order is given". The last order we received was "Go into ALL nations...'" It may seem strange to say leaving the country is the best thing for it, but so often it's something like that. The best thing to do for your kids is to love their father/mother; the best thing you can do for your spouse is to love God more than them; the way to write a better song is not to go to songwriting classes, but to serve others.

But instead, while "we talk of the Second Coming; half the world has never heard of the first." -- Oswald J. Smith

Walking in the Dark

Whoever thought up this starting of daylight savings time earlier, and lasting longer, certainly never consulted mothers of young public-school-aged children. When my daughter still went to public school, I would fervently long for daylight savings to be over so I could walk her to her bus stop in the daylight. We used to have to use a flashlight, for crying out loud, to see our way to our rural waiting post. At least we were in a slightly civilized neighborhood; I feel doubly sorry for those whose houses are all by themselves surrounded by trees and who-knows-what animals.

And now they want me to start getting up in the dark again! Ok, so I don't have to walk her to a bus stop anymore, but others do. I just happen to like to wake up when there's at least a glimmer of dawn on the horizon. Sheesh, March 9th??? Give me a break!!

Maybe we should all move to Arizona.

Mysteries and More

I really like mysteries for some reason. I don't know why, really; I never really read Nancy Drew as a kid (or an adult)--wait, I do remember three non-Nancy Drews ones I did read as a kid...

Anyway, maybe it was when I discovered Agatha Christie. But even then I hadn't gotten to the point I am at now; when I head for the fiction section of the library for some light reading, I look almost exclusively for those little skulls on the side of the books.

While there are some enjoyable ones out there, I've been disturbed lately by how many I've come across recently where the heroine is getting married, but currently living with her fiance (or just living with someone). It's the norm all of a sudden. In fact, one book went so far as to declare that a certain mother character had "issues" because she, and this said in quite the scornful and incredulous tone, obviously expected her daughter to remain a virgin until she got married. ("That household obviously has issues.")

I don't get offended easily (hurt, yes; I'm unfortunately terribly sensitive, but not offended) but that so offended me that I lost all desire to read any more. And these aren't young authors writing this stuff (well, I think the "issues" one was); they're mostly women older than I, who you'd think have been raised with those older or at least 50's values.

I take that back, it's not sudden. It's been creeping in, step by step, and now it's a flood. At least, I hope it's still at flood stage. I hope it hasn't spread out and become an everyday, ordinary, always-been-here normal lake.

A Dry Spell

Wow, I haven't posted in a while. Just don't have anything to say. I could ask why men seem so much more content to let their grey hair show than women (almost every single older couple I know is this way), but after the last few posts, another one like that will likely turn this into a fashion blog. I've had a few things, off and on, but I can't remember them and I haven't been up to snuff lately, anyway, so...

Not that anyone's complaining. ;)

Believing Fashion

Years ago, I, for a reason I can't now remember, was observing a friend's make-up. She had on, or was putting on, what looked like grey eyeshadow. I asked if it was, indeed, grey, since I thought the object of make-up was to look less, er, grey (so to speak). She said, no, it was blue, and it was supposed to either make her eyes look bluer or otherwise enhance them somehow.

It didn't. It just looked like grey sitting on her lids. (Naturally I didn't point this out.) But one must follow fashion advice, mustn't one. Just like I should never wear green eyeshadow because I have green in my eyes. Takes away, or something.

Well, I've tried it and it looks pretty good, if done right (and sparingly). And no, this is not a fashion advice column. I just wish that people would realize that just cuz Angelina Jolie looks good with poofy lips it doesn't mean everyone does:

(Not the best comparison pics; for a better view, watch "Spy Kids" then "Night in the Museum", or even just watching "Night" by itself makes you realize that something is just wrong with her lips.)

Or who in their right minds would prefer:

yet practically everybody adopted the ironed hair despite the fact that it was flattering to but very few. (I don't mean naturally straight hair, which can be quite flattering, but the sticking-out-at-the-ends-deliberately-straightened stuff.)

I have a small, "rosebud" type mouth which I have no intention of poofing up even though it's crooked due to a bike accident I had when I was 15. My mouth size suits my face, as most mouths usually do; Jennifer Connelly looked much prettier in "The Rocketeer" than in her skinnier films, and Botox is just a creeeeepy idea. Open your eyes, folks, and see what looks--if that's what you're into--best for you.

Either-Or

"When someone asserts that we must choose between two things, when in fact we have more than two alternatives, he is using the either-or fallacy.

--The Fallacy Detective, pg 108

Yet among Christians this is the norm. You're only allowed to be either a Calvinist or an Arminianist, a futurist or a preterist (actually, there are four views but the principle is the same; no one allows you to be a prefuturist, for example), and so on. When are people going to realize that there is only one Person who never made a mistake in His theology, only one human who was perfect in all He thought? Do we ever think about the possibility that in following one "ist" or "ism" to the letter we might be following a doctrine rather than a Person? Why can't one be a Calminianist, or even not make up your mind as per preterist/futurist and shelve the matter pending developments (not necessarily events)? There are things I just don't know and though I may have leanings I realize I'm not seeing the whole picture, and am open to correction.

As an example, I became a Christian almost 27 years ago, and for approximately the first 25 years had only heard of, had been taught, the futurist view of eschatology. I didn't even know there was any other view, let alone four. Now that I have read about all the views, I realize there are some very valid* points in at least two of the views and all have possibilites, and I am shelving a conclusion (suspending judgement), although I'm currently finding one view more valid than the rest. But I'm not insisting that everything this view says is correct and that all others are not worth looking into or that all others are heretical.

I guess it goes back to the old thing of examining things for yourself. Or maybe just being willing to listen. Reminds me of a song I once wrote about that...

______

* "very valid" seems akin to saying "very pregnant" but I wanted to emphasize the validity and can't think of a proper way to do that. Maybe our resident grammarian reader can suggest one.

That Abraham Post

Ok, I guess I finally need to post this. The idea came to me a while back, and reading this post this morning prompted me to once again attempt to dredge it up out of myself. (Is "dredge up" redundant?)

The thing that occurred to me was that the only "plan" God had for Abraham's life was to have a kid. He commanded Abram to move, and to have a child; granted, when he was too old to, but still, he got written up in the Hebrews Hall of Fame, studied, mentioned almost every time God was mentioned ("the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob") and all he basically "did" was move and have a child. This is not to belittle his accomplishments in any way. His move to another country and culture was a big risk and the child he loved so dearly he was willing to sacrifice, and was the foreshadowing of The sacrifice. Still, he didn't lead people out of 400 years of bondage, found a ministry or write best-sellers. So maybe some of us can take another look at what we haven't done. Maybe the only thing that's required is to move and have a kid or two. ;) Maybe the only thing that's required is that we give of us everything we have.

Age of Machine

I wasn't the one calling it Big Brotherish this time.

The imagination boggles at the places this goody could be taken.

Big Brother creeping up behind you

This post really belongs at my husband's blog, but until he starts putting 'em up I'm gonna do it. Sorry, this is sort of choppy; I'll probably refine it over the coming days.

____________

"There is nothing wrong with your thermostat. Do not attempt to adjust the temperature. We are controlling your power consumption. If we wish to make it hotter, we will turn off your air conditioner. If we wish to make it cooler, we will turn off your heater. For the next millennium, sit quietly and we will control your home temperature. We repeat, there is nothing wrong with your thermostat."

California is considering a measure that would require, on new homes and any renovations of the heating/cooling system in existing houses, a thermostat with an FM receiver so that the state could override the programming during peak hours or emergencies to save energy.

California, the home of rolling blackouts, and brownouts; every summer that I lived there I remember the power going out at least once. Not because lightning hit a transformer, the common cause here, but because "California's population growth and its affluence have strained the state's electric and natural gas resources. Famously, rolling blackouts have occurred due to shortages of electrical generation during peak periods." But instead of building new energy plants,

"In other words, the temperature of your home will no longer be yours to control. Your desires and needs can and will be overridden by the state of California through its public and private utility organizations. All this is for the common good, of course."

One can easily see a way around this; room air conditioners and portable heaters could make up any deficit when your power's zapped off, but then, they're back where they started; more energy is being used to make up their attempts to control it.

Sounds kind of like certain light bulbs previously mentioned.

And To All a....forced toxin

(revised version)

Thanks to a newly signed bill, by 2012 incandescent light bulbs will be gradually unavailable for purchase starting in 2012. Light bulbs will have to comply to new, more efficient standards, and currently the only ones that do are Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs. I'm all for saving energy, but I'd like to be able to restrict my own lighting usage without the government's interference, thank you. I do not have a deranged desire to put toxic materials in every room in my house:

According to an April 12 article in The Ellsworth American, (Brandy) Bridges had the misfortune of breaking a CFL during installation in her daughter’s bedroom: It dropped and shattered on the carpeted floor.

Aware that CFLs contain potentially hazardous substances, Bridges called her local Home Depot for advice. The store told her that the CFL contained mercury and that she should call the Poison Control hotline, which in turn directed her to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.

The DEP sent a specialist to Bridges’ house to test for mercury contamination. The specialist found mercury levels in the bedroom in excess of six times the state’s “safe” level for mercury contamination of 300 billionths of a gram per cubic meter.

The DEP specialist recommended that Bridges call an environmental cleanup firm, which reportedly gave her a “low-ball” estimate of $2,000 to clean up the room. The room then was sealed off with plastic and Bridges began “gathering finances” to pay for the $2,000 cleaning. Reportedly, her insurance company wouldn’t cover the cleanup costs because mercury is a pollutant.

Given that the replacement of incandescent bulbs with CFLs in the average U.S. household is touted as saving as much as $180 annually in energy costs — and assuming that Bridges doesn’t break any more CFLs — it will take her more than 11 years to recoup the cleanup costs in the form of energy savings.

Even if you don’t go for the full-scale panic of the $2,000 cleanup, the do-it-yourself approach is still somewhat intense, if not downright alarming.

Consider the procedure offered by the Maine DEP’s Web page entitled, “What if I accidentally break a fluorescent bulb in my home?”

Don’t vacuum bulb debris because a standard vacuum will spread mercury-containing dust throughout the area and contaminate the vacuum. Ventilate the area and reduce the temperature. Wear protective equipment like goggles, coveralls and a dust mask.

Collect the waste material into an airtight container. Pat the area with the sticky side of tape. Wipe with a damp cloth. Finally, check with local authorities to see where hazardous waste may be properly disposed.

The only step the Maine DEP left off was the final one: Hope that you did a good enough cleanup so that you, your family and pets aren’t poisoned by any mercury inadvertently dispersed or missed.

This, of course, assumes that people are even aware that breaking CFLs entails special cleanup procedures.

...It’s quite odd that environmentalists have embraced the CFL, which cannot now and will not in the foreseeable future be made without mercury.

Read the full article here.

Why not instead do something like make it a law that major businesses canNOT set their A/C temp below a 73-76 or so degree range in the summer, thus enabling me (and maybe others) to abandon my practice of taking my sweater with me when I shop in the dead of summer? I've actually seen it set in the high 60s! (Or set so that the thermometer registers 75 or thereabouts, which is most people's comfort zone. I set mine at 80, but not many people like that.)

Guess I'll have to put bug lights and candelabras in everywhere instead.

Thank you to Pith for the story (and sending me the links after repeated pestering).