I am a meteorologist and a former youth leader at church…I have a lot to say on both subjects…and then some
I ran into this story yesterday, but then saw this on My Yahoo! this morning again and felt that I needed to comment on it. After reading this, you will understand that I am not necessarily right or left of center on the political spectrum, because just as you hear me say something like why I supported sending troops to Iraq (see my previous post here) then I write something like the following.
One of the things that I hear from politically conservative people is why we should fight for Iraq and support the troops and the president. That’s all well and good, and I do (my own cousin is in Iraq right now), but we have to realize that there are costs to everything we do. Just because Saddam was biding his time to become a major player again and we go in and kick his butt out, doesn’t excuse us from not helping the civilians that have been caught in the war and hold the military accountable. I support organizations that try to do just that. I didn’t know about this particular organization, but from reading its website, I would have supported it. I may still donate to it in the future.
One way they were trying to keep the military accountable was trying to get the reports of civilian casualties. I’m not a big numbers person, because behind each number is a person. However, we should all be informed and remember that we have brothers and sisters that we need to watch out for (Matthew 25:31-46), no matter who they are.
The last few months with Mary have flown by, and we are still in awe of the God that we worship, and know as the one who brought us together. The two of us have just passed the fifth month of courting. So many of our friends that are single, as well as the students in the youth group talk about wanting to date and find someone to couple with (I mean that in the marriage term and not the physical, though the two are at times confused for one another.).
The thing that Mary and I have been doing over the months is reading books together about courting and asking questions of each other before you ask “the question.” This has been great, because we have been able to talk about everything, which includes our personal pasts and problems that may jump out at us.
However, the big thing that we have seen is how God brought us together and how if we had concentrated on God and waited, we might have not needed to go through the pains that we did (although the pains we did go through did help us to grow). I guess what I am trying to say is that waiting for God to present someone isn’t as bad as it seems. True, society puts pressure on us to couple and makes you think that something is wrong with you if you aren’t married by a certain time. A case in point was my cousin who was getting remarried, (I’m not going into the details because they aren’t relevant) to someone who had never been married and was approaching 40. The people that they worked with asked, “What’s wrong with them?” Well, as far as I know nothing was. A similar thing happened to me, as Mary and I began to go out, when I was asked, you’re such a great guy, why aren’t you married yet? My only responses have been, God knew that I needed to heal over past baggage.
And that brings me to the conversations and the sermons that I have heard as of late. We, individually, need to heal, but we need to do it with the church family, and focus on God. And then, when God says we are ready, as strange as it sounds, God will present you with someone.
I know that the last part of my healing came a year or two ago, when I finally said to God (and meant it) that I don’t need to be married and that God was enough. While I wanted to get married, I would be content if I didn’t. Then after hearing someone read Psalm 37:4 [Delight yourself in the LORD; And He will give you the desires of your heart.(NASB)], I felt a peace that I would probably get married, when God presented her.
I guess the thing that I am trying to get across, as counter intuitive as it sounds, is don’t do the dating thing, because it only brings the heartache of breaking up, whether the relationship gets physical or not (and the more physical the more painful the break). Two books that talk about this are I Kissed Dating Goodbye and Choosing God’s Best.
I know that some have tried to tell us that we need to try out each other, but as Mary and I have focused on God, and struggle to stay pure (and I mean struggle) we have found that we have established a strong friendship and a strong spiritual relationship. Those who are close friends of ours, and Mary’s kids, have not raised any red flags with us (and believe me, I have friends that would, and so would Mary’s kids) about this relationship. So as we wait on God’s timing, we do it with anticipation on what He will do next and what we are to do next.
The preliminary outlook this morning showed that the cold front will be around Portland Friday morning. Which is a flip-flop back to what we saw two days ago. This front initially looks week. The current predictions along your route at the various offices, look mainly like rain west of the Wasatch. The Salt Lake City NWS office has a 50% chance of snow on Saturday/Sunday time frame along I-80. Looking at the web cams along I-80 in SW Wyoming, the snow is on the mountains with the valleys dry. The Riverton NWS office has slight chances of snow as you get over the Wasatch.
So the Friday doesn’t look bad, but Saturday/Sunday between Boise and western Wyoming looks like snow. Once you get past the Green River Tunnels on I-80 in western Wyoming, the forecast is for slight chances of snow, more than likely, by looking at the web cams, the snow probably won’t be heavy in the valleys, just on the surrounding mountains.
I read this article about a convicted rapist/murderer and the argument that his defense lawyer used to get him out of his death sentence. I am against death penalty on moral grounds and someday I might blog them, but the argument that the defense made and the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in favor of was of the life sentence becasuse:
The Supreme Court said that “at least one juror in this case could have been influenced by these authoritative passages to vote for the death
penalty when he or she may otherwise have voted for a life sentence.”
Very interesting, at least the court recogized that the Bible is authoritative.
The defense argument was this:
During oral arguments before the Supreme Court last month, defense attorney Kathleen Lord said the jurors had gone outside the law. “They went to the Bible to find out God’s position on capital punishment,” she said.
I’m not sure, but weren’t the majority of the founding fathers and those that crafted the Constitution, influenced by the Bible. And it makes it outside the law how?
The state was making the argument that is fairly tolerent:
Prosecutors had argued that jurors should be allowed to refer to the Bible
or other religious texts during deliberations.
If they refer to the Bible or other religious texts like say the Quoran or a Buddhist text, that’s not allowed either? Does that mean that no one gets a fair sentence, because somebody on the jury has a particular religious affiliation? I don’t know, but I think this is just getting a little too picky about how much we are to shut off our brains and not express ourselves…but that’s just my opinion.
Not much to say as of late. Things have been quiet. There has been a
reemergence of the sun the last two weeks, which has been great. As
much as I like winter, it is now time for the snow to go. I am
currently on evenings, so I can’t see Mary much this week. We have set
up ways to email each other during the evenings, so that we can send
cheesy messages to each other.
I am hoping to get the church sermon feed set up during the week. This
has been slow partly from procrastinating and partly from busyness of
the past few weeks. Though I am more motivated about this now than I
have been in a long time.
Not much else.
My Weather Links for your trip is up on my site now. I’ll try to update the overview as I see it by Noon each day. If you have any questions, call me around 12:30 am EST (9:30 pm PST) before I go to bed.
Here’s my overview (you can find it on the weather link page as well):
It looks like the models are starting to back off on the idea that the cold front we talked about last night will be in the Wasatch on Friday. Looks more like Saturday now in the preliminary graphics. The sfc High hangs on in the Great Basin Region through Friday now, so a Friday Departure looks good. Watch this closely though, I have see the models suddenly speed frontal passages up. Then rain out in the Plains on Sunday/Monday. I’ll try to update this for you on Tuesday.
What a great day! The morning started around 7 am when I got out of bed and prepared for the morning serivces. After getting everything together I was out the door by 750 am and motoring into Gaylord. This morning Mary and I were accompanied, by her two youngest kids Kaleb and Karlie. They are pretty great.
Kaleb, 14, is a really good skier so his Sundays until recently have been taken up with races. Although, he broke his collarbone a week or so ago, so his season is pretty much finished for this year. So he came over to his mom’s.
Karlie, 12, is a good actress and singer. Mary and I went to her play that the 7th and 8th graders did at Concord Academy (Boyne). She had the second lead part in “The Castaways.” She did a great job and once I get it all put together, will probably have some video up on Mary’s website.
The church services were pretty good with the kids sitting through both services well. (For those unfamiliar, Mary and I attend both of our churches. We have even taken the stand that we won’t refer to them as Her’s or mine, but by their names – Community and The Methodist church. We feel that they are both of ours.
We then went out to lunch at Appleby’s. It was good to finally sink my teeth into a steak. That’s a long story, and I had a Diet Pepsi with it.
On a whole, a great day. I wish that I didn’t have to go to work this afternoon.
This is becoming a broken record as I am seemingly swamped with stuff.
Most of it is pretty unimportant stuff, but I always find a way to make
it into a priority. That is the key, prioritzing and sticking with it.
My biggest problem is that since I conquered my anxiety problems, which
climaxed about 5 or 6 years ago, I have slowly slipped into being one
who gets side tracked easily. That has been my problem since I was a
kid. You can ask my mom and dad. They would send me off to clean my
room and sort magazines and throw out the old ones. I would go in and
then as I sorted the magazines, I would see an article to read, and then
get caught up in reading it. Mom or Dad would then find me in my room
reading and not cleaning. So now it is time to find that happy median of
doing the tasks that need to be done and still have recreation and fun
(i.e. Stopping to smell the roses).
So far for today, I have gone through a mound of e-work (like paperwork,
but it is electronic). Mainly just going through my inbox at work and
making sure that I got all of the things requested of me, done. I’m now
down to 12 emails on things that are either informational that I need to
read again or take action on in the future.
As you will see that there are a lot of things flowing through my brain.
I was telling Mary earlier today that I wish that I could just plug my
brain into the PDA and out pops my blog posts.
The last few months have been great! I have to get this out there.
This is almost like a prayer on this post and typically, the first thing
that I do when I pray, is talk about what I am thankful for. In the
last few months, I have seen speakers at the youth worker conference
that reminded me why I got involved with the youth and got me inspired
enough to find and learn more about their ministry, I acquired a
girlfriend that has been a blessing to me and just knocks my socks off
with the grace that she shows me, and I have a spiritual family that has
grown considerably as I have become more active Emmaus.
However, with all of the great things, I have found that God puts people
and events in our way to put our faith into practice as it says in James
2:26 “For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith
without works is dead.” (NASB) That’s where I’m heading with this mini
sermon.
Over the last four months I have been in contact with 3 people
that as I hear more from them, the more I realize that sometimes not
only is the church out of touch with what is going on, but that those
that are searching, are still missing the “forest for the trees.” I
should back up a bit though and tell you how I got started with this.
Recently Rob Bell, the teaching pastor of the Mars Hill Bible Church in
Grandville, MI, preached a series of sermons entitled Directions. He
talked about 6 directions which he descibes the directions the church is
going. Backward (looking at our roots), Forward(looking at our journey
through life), Inward(God wants to heal us), Withward(we journey
together), Outward(we need to help people outside the church), and
Upward (we need to learn to celebrate and praise God). The one that
this post is about is Withward.
This morning, after listening to Pastor Steve at GCC at 845 am and Rev. John at FUMC at 1030 AM, one thing jumped out at me from both services, we cover ourselves
up when we sin. Just like in Genesis after the fall (Specifically, Genesis 3), Adam and Eve, hid because they knew they were naked and they put on fig leaves. We do that, no matter what the degree of the sin. When we try to help some people, they have a tendancy to cover up and withdraw from a community that could help. Usually, they are ashamed of what they have become. Sometimes, there are those in the church that will condemn or some who give unhelpful “pat” advice (a whole other teaching as Rob Bell would say). However, there are those in the church, can be a great help, because, believe it or not they have gone through the same thing. It’s just a matter of getting plugged into the network of believers. Follow along to part 2.
So in my last post I stated that, as people, we cut ourselves off from a community
that could helps us if we get plugged into the right network at the church.
I guess that there are, currently, 3 people that have crossed my life
over the past couple of years where that is pretty evident.
1. A single mother, who is having trouble hearing from God, while her
child with ADHD begins to have fits of rage for no apparent reason and
is at the end of her rope. She commented that someone said that to
her that God won’t give you more than you can handle (a pat answer sure
to drive off someone going through which to them is something
insurmontable). However, she continues to withdraw from church and cut
herself off from God, by cutting herself off from the people who are
being used by God to help her and probably give her the support and
resources she needs.
2. A college student, who was at least in my estimation was strong in
the Lord as a high school student, and is now unsure of the path that he
is to take as he weathers the storms of life outside the home of his
youth. Again, when asked he usually covers up and says things are fine,
but when asked to help with a bible study, said that he felt that he was
bringing shame to Jesus. He withdraws from a community that could help
him with finding that direction, if not explicitly, then at the very
least implicitly.
3. A divorced friend who is still dealing with the wound of the
divorce. They had gone to a counselor to get help for things, and in
the course of the sessions said something that their spouse found
irreconcilible and due to their connections at church have withdrawn
from the community that could help and give support.
I know all three of these people. Do the situations seem familiar to
you? While I can only identify with one of these people(although I know
all three), my heart aches to help them be reconciled to the God that
loves them and give them the support that they need to heal and become
whole.
That’s the main thing, as Jesus said, the two greatest commandments are Love God and Love people. Showing that love to people in a way is showing your love to God. Helping them to become reconciled and whole is what God wants us to do. So if you have gone through something similar to what others have gone through, don’t cover up. Allow them to help you find for yourself what God did for them to make them whole.
