I am a meteorologist and a former youth leader at church…I have a lot to say on both subjects…and then some
Just finished devotions with the group. I have been journalling on my
expectations of of the week. Im not nervous about the week, but
excited. There may be challenges, but I feel really at peace about
the whole weekend. We just talked about James 1:2-4
[Jas 1:2] Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials
of many kinds, [3] because you know that the testing of your faith
develops perseverance. [4] Perseverance must finish its work so that
you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
Some observations from my journal book: Pure Joy –> contented –>
when we face trials–> develops perseverence –> dont quit becase the
trail is temporary –> You become mature and complete from the
perseverence –> and what is mature? To be able to not let your
emotions get the best of you. This will allow you to listen to what
God is telling you to guide you through the trial. I have been doing
that through this courtship with Mary.
What I mean is that she is great, and I cant picture my life without
her, but there have been things along the way with learning about
her. Mainly her kids, but as the two of us have said, love is a
choice. So to persevere through the things that make me nervous or
fear and still listen to God through the din that I try to
superimpose on my life and drown out God has been an experience. I
feel as if I could handle nothing, as long as Christ is with me.
Recently, I was reading a post on Wesley Blog about one possibility of growth for the UMC by church merging and planting. Then in reading an UMC news article about how some of the annual conferences in the Southeast Jurisdiction are confessing the racism of the past and trying to combat it in the future. This made me think, what if the UMC actually tried to plant two churches for everyone that it closes or merges and they didn’t in areas that bordered multiple ethnic groups? If the multiple groups began to go to that church, there might be hope in doing away with the idea that Sunday is the most segragated day of the week. I have to admit I can be a bit overly optimistic at times, but the idea is worth discussing.
I would have posted this earlier, but the schedule was getting crunched again. A lot of people have heard this news, but for those who haven’t…
It is amazing how God will give you something that you weren’t sure you ever thought that you’d be allowed to get, or in the scheme of things He gives you something even greater. That’s the way that I feel about Mary. God gave me her to take care of and He gave her me to take care of while we are on the earth. Well, things have progressed along well in the last 8+ months. Enough so that I was getting the feeling that a question was to be posed. I was waiting for God to let us know when it was time, and he answered. I can’t say that I can pinpoint what it was, other than questions asked by people, a series of events recently, and the feeling of peace that only comes when your will and God’s align. My only thing was that I didn’t have a ring. However, when I sat her down to ask her to marry me, I already knew that she didn’t need a ring then and there (we have since purchased a ring).
Anyway, I asked Mary to marry me and she said yes. So we are to marry on 23 September 2005. Yes in about two and a half months we will tie the knot. There are many reasons which deal with our schedule for the month of October and the fact that her lease runs out on her apartment 1 November. So we have run into a time crunch. Of course, we are looking at a rather small low key wedding so that we don’t have to go into too much debt. I’m low key anyway so we aren’t trying to get to wild with this.
So we are getting married!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
An author and leader (currently, the bishop of North Alabama) within the United Methodist Church (I recently saw a comic that said that’s an oxymoron, but I digress) William Willimon recently started a blog. He wrote a Sunday school curriculm called Why I am a United Methodist which I still have the book. It gave me my first ideas of theology and what it means to be a Christian in the Methodist tradition. I’m looking forward to reading more from him.
Hat tip to Locusts & Honey
I need to finish it up, but having my Pocket PC with me while waiting at the doctor’s office has been kind of cool. I keep having some rather deep thoughts that I begin to write down. While waiting for my foot to be worked on a few weeks ago, I wrote my thoughts about how warts and sin can be analogous. Now I have a few thoughts on being late and a follow up to my warts post. I still need to write something about the Alive festival as well. Maybe on Friday. We’ll see.
My brother-in-law has had a Flickr account for a while, and I’m not sure why I didn’t follow suit. Anyway, Mary and I were printing some pictures last night (a fellow employee wanted to switch so I worked the dayshift) and I was showing her pictures of Tru and Asher, my nephews, and she asked, “why don’t we do that?” So we began to upload some pictures. Since I didn’t reduce the size of them, we got to about 14 pictures and our quota for the month filled up. We are considering the pay option so that we can upload some more. The neat thing is that there is an RSS feed that you can subscribe to, so that you can be alerted for more pictures. Enjoy!
Well, I have returned from the Alive Festival with the youth group and have worked two days so far. Trying to get my routine back on track after travelling can be a bit trying with laundry and putting away everything. So until I can write up a good post on last week (and we all had a great time!) Here is a contemplative post that I wrote up while waiting in the dermotologist’s office to get my plantar’s wart looked at.
Warts and Sin
As I wait to get my wart removed, I thought about how a wart in amongst good skin is like Sin in a pretty decent person. I look at my life and while it has been good with the respect of trying to do the right thing, I still have done things which leave a blemish. A blemish that left untreated will grow, and is harder to root out when you do get it treated later.
In one of the Narnia chronicles by C. S. Lewis, one of the story lines has one of the kids turn into a dragon because of his own foolishness. He finds out that he can peel away the dragon skin to become who he was, but he can’t go deep enough to make the Change that is needed to become the boy he was. It isn’t until he allows Aslan, the lion, to rip so deeply that it hurts, so that the boy comes back.
My warts on the bottom of my foot are like that, I tried to peel them away but I had to go to a Doctor to have them frozen, because they were too deep. However, It doesnt end there. The doc gave me things to do to continue my healing. God is like that sometimes. To some, He gives a complete healing, and others he gives us the tools to help us make the right decisions and draw closer to him.
So what things do I need to work on? What haven’t I given to God because I’m trying to treat it myself? What does giving it to God look like? Maybe. Confiding to a friend of your problem and working on it together is one way. Part of it just comes down to trusting God and trusting the people that He has placed in your life to help you. They are His hands and feet, just as you are.
…little update. I’m getting ready to take off for the Alive festival in Ohio with the youth group! Can’t wait to see Thousand Foot Crutch!
Some of you may be familiar with me talking about Rob Bell, the teaching pastor at Mars Hill Bible church in Grandville, MI. Well, they have created a series of videos (about 10 minutes each) called Nooma (which is a trasliteration of pneuma – Greek for Spirit or breath). Mary and I have dug them so much that we decided to start a study of them over the coming weeks. So Thursday night we invited friends over to her apartment, since my house is a bit far out of town for everyone, to watch a video and discuss it.
The first one went over well, so Mary and I are excited to say the least. This is kind of a lead in/warm up for us to do this in the fall for Tabernacle (FUMC’s midweek family gathering).
Recently, in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, there was an op-ed piece by Mike Smith of Weather Data and a response by Dan Sobein the VP of the NWS Employees Organization (Our Union). Mr. Smith’s idea of the NWS withholding data is wrong, and Dan takes him to task about it, when it comes to Hurricane Charley. Mr. Smith claimed that there was a delay in releasing the data of 34 minutes from one of the USAF planes.
As I responded to someone on my blog a couple of weeks ago, who claimed that my dad and I didn’t understand the intent of the bill sponsored by Rick Santorum, was off base, in the fact that they claimed that there was a law needed to make sure that 100% of the data is released in realtime. However, as Mr. Sobein points out, there were technical problems and misunderstandings that caused the what was perceived to be a delay in the data. As I said in my response, no office withholds data or forecasts. This bill is not needed.
The second part of this bill is to limit the NWS. The commercial weather services would love to get us out of the forecasting arena to make more money, but as I stated before, if people can’t pay for the forecast then they are more likely to go out unprepared for the type of weather that may come at them. Part of prevention is preparedness, and the government has a responsibility to make sure that the information is there before the warnings begin to fly.
I have been more and more getting into social justice issues and this is one that makes me mad. There is a point when only the private sector can provide the same services and adequately cover the population at large. When I hear of these things I am immediately suspicious of the motives of the private sector. I’m all for free enterprise and capitalism, but when it begins to threaten public safety, by removing the forecasts that everyone has already paid for, and would prepare them for the coming storms before any warning is issued, then to me action to block this type of legislation is needed.
