I am a meteorologist and a former youth leader at church…I have a lot to say on both subjects…and then some
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.
I’ve been looking for a just news podcast feeds as of late. It’s been hard to find. I can find lots of opinion type podcasts about the news, but no mp3 files of the news. I know that for late breaking news, that a podcast doesn’t work, but I’m just looking for a news summary. I found one here at the Denver Post. They give you the choice of all the news or the just segment you want. Becuase I’m just looking for the National/World news that’s typically what I download. Currently, they don’t have a RSS feed, so I have to download it manually. I wish that the national NPR site would do that with their news; they only do audio streaming. I noticed that Northwest Public Radio does podcast, but its usually regional news. WCMU doesn’t do that here, except for a few features. I’m may look some more later.
I recently purchased an AM/FM radio Headset. This has been particularly fun to use as I can walk in and out of the house with my little FM transmitter plugged into my Dell X50 PDA and play music or my latest facination podcasts. So this has given me some freedom around the house on my days off as I work inside or outside the house.
As far as podcasts that I listen to:
ARRL Audio News
The Catholic Insider
CoasterRadio.com
Coverville
Daily Source Code
digitalgrandrapids.com
ICM Raw Podcast
Illinoise!
Methocast
On the Media from NPR/WNYC
CBC Radio’s Quirks and Quarks
Rip and Read Blogger Podcast
Science @ NASA
sciencefriday.com
Skinny on Sports
The Godcast Network
The Living Word
The Whole Truth
Rev. Tim Podcast
Reflections
And so many more!
WGBH Morning Stories
Denver Post National/World News summary
Mars Hill Bible Church(sermon)
Gaylord Community Church (sermon)
I’m hoping to get the churches sermons online as well. We are beginning to the website going. I’ll let you know when that’s up and running.
I saw this article in Slate. The thing that spoke to me most from this article was that the big superheroes were celibate, realizing that there are things more important than self-gratification, like serving those who cannot serve themselves. I guess the last few months of me listening to not only my pastor, but a few others, has awakened in me the fact that to follow God is to serve all people and that my own pleasure isn’t what is important. Mary and I struggle with this as we try to draw each other closer to God, while we try not to allow the physical pleasures of life to interfere with that quest. The reason is that if you aren’t focused on God, then who do you do His will. His will being from what I have gathered from the Bible is summed up in the verse, “Love God with all your mind, all your soul and all your might, and your neighbor as yourself.”
If you read one of my earlier posts about the NWS – Upcoming threats to how people receive their weather, and my response to someone else’s response to my post you realize that I am becoming more active in social issues. I got the feeling a couple of years ago that I may not be in the NWS after about 5 to 10 years. While I don’t want to hasten my departure, my freedom, in Christ, is beginning to allow me to become more bold about things that I get angry about and keeping my focus on God, allows me, through my anger, bring about healing to those that need it. However, it’s that focus on God that you need to be able to keep and not the focus on your own pleasure.
Now before someone gets on me and tries to say that I’m not for pleasure or sex or what have you, I am for all of those things. However, if they become your overriding pursuit then your focus is wrong. I believe that in focusing on God, He will bring to you the pleasures of this life when the time is right. That is where Mary and I are at. We believe that God has brought us together and as we focus on Him, He will bring to us the desires of our hearts. (Psalm 37:4 my paraphrase).
So focus on God, and become a superhero.
Just got news on my sister and brother’s-in-law sites that the will be going to Korea next week to pick up Asher! Hurray! This will probably put Mom and Dad’s trip up north on hold as Mom was last known to go west to watch Truman while they are gone. I guess I need to make a call or two.
