Isaiah and I were sitting on the couch this morning and Isaiah started to tell me about his long term life goals. This is what he said:
Mommy, when I get big, I want to do what Daddy does. (I asked him if he meant be a pastor) Yeah… and be a Daddy!
I would be the bestest Daddy in the whole world. If the son said, “I want to go to the carnival.” I would say, “Yes. Maybe tonight or maybe tomorrow night.” And if my son said said, “I want to go to the Play Museum.” I would say, “Maybe tonight or maybe later.” And if my son said, “I want to buy a cool ornament for the Christmas tree.” I would say, “Yes.”
I’m going to have 4 kids: 2 boys and 2 girls. And I’m going to name them John, Zachery, Chloe and Leah. And that will be good, because we already have a Leah.
And Mommy, what do you think Leah will do to her children? I think she will treat them like I’m going to treat mine.
And I’m going to be a train driver and a gold collector, a builder and all the cool stuff. And be what Daddy does and go to the gym and even be a wrestler.
My husband made a comment the other day that really caught my attention. We were discussing some recent events in the news and he said, “It’s interesting that the gay community is about 4% of the population of the United States.” However, the media, movies, and even popular opinion make it seem that the percentage would be much higher.
The reason this conversation sparked my interest is because Ron Luce has predicted that if things continue in the same vein they’re currently in, only 4% of teenagers will grow up to be genuine Christian adults. So, theoretically, in the next generation, the Christian community and the homosexual community will be about the same percent of the American population. When Christians hear a statistic like that, we seem to throw up our hands and say, “That’s horrible! Oh poor us.” I say, “Not so fast, people!”
I was recently at a conference, where the speaker claimed that about 10 years ago, 12 members of the gay community met in a hotel room to strategize how to shift the culture of our nation in their favor. They drew up a plan that encompassed movies, music, TV, politics, etc. And it worked! Our country’s perspective regarding homosexuality has undergone a drastic change, to the point it has become a socially viable lifestyle.
Here’s the bottom line. If gays can bring that much of a cultural reprogramming, being about 4% of the population, Christians can transform our country that much more, with Holy Spirit backing us up! We are completely able to bring cultural reformation, to be a driving force that shapes the face of our nation and advance Kingdom principles.
But. The homosexual community did not change a nation’s mindset by acting “straight”. They didn’t think they could advance their agenda by pretending to be like everyone around them. And neither can the Church. We need to lose the idea that we can talk the same, walk the same, be entertained the same, and look the same as those around us and still achieve a change in our world.
If we desire to bring cultural reformation, we must be focused, strategic, purposeful and wholeheartedly committed to our goal. We must lay aside the weights that hold us back and keep us from walking in our destiny of advancing the Kingdom. There are people waiting for you to show them the truth, to change their perspective on life, to show them Jesus. Walk as children of light and transform your community and ultimately the world!
I’m surrounded by knitters: experienced knitters, free-spirited knitters, thrifty knitters, picky knitters, even knitters that knit in church. Finally, all this knitting peer-pressure got to me, and I took the plunge into the world of needles and yarn.
I’ve been on this knitting adventure for a couple of months now. I know 3 different stitches (2 I learned on purpose, and 1 by accident). I can slip a stitch for the edges (which I think may be called “selvedge,” but I’m not too sure on that). I can cast on and off… if I have a diagram in front of me. I’ve given other novice knitters advice and showed someone how to do a stitch. I even joined the knitting group at my church.
So, when I finished my first scarf today, I was feeling pretty good. In fact, I felt like a “real” knitter. I decided I was ready to start my next project all on my own and began searching the internet for a pattern. I was wanting to knit my daughter a scarf, so I put something like “kid scarf knitting patterns” into the search engine. What came up were patterns for kids to knit… and I didn’t understand a word of them!
OK, not completely true. I understood enough to know they were way out of my league. “Cables?” Are you serious?! That put a bit of a pin in my big old knitting ego. Maybe I’ve still got a lot to learn from my knitter friends.
In the mean time, I did find a pattern I think I may be able to handle. And as long as I keep knitting, I think I’m a “real” knitter, even if I have no idea what “cable needle at front of work” means.
You know, I’m not really a big fan of the whole Daylight Savings Time concept…
Firstly, it’s just confusing. I don’t get why we need to save the daylight at all, not to mention all the clock confusion. It used to be fairly simple, I’m guessing, when all the clocks had hands. But in our digital/computer/cell phone age, things get a little hazy. Some technology automatically updates itself, some asks your permission to update and some doesn’t bother at all.
For example, I like to use my cell phone as my alarm, but since I couldn’t guarantee if it would change itself over or when it would choose to do it, I couldn’t risk it. Thus, I was stuck using an alarm clock, but even a basic clock isn’t completely to be trusted. We had some friends who dutifully set their clocks back one hour, not knowing that the clocks automatically corrected for Daylight Savings. Needless to say, they got up REALLY early the next morning.
With all the clock confusion, the day after a time change is riddled with chaos. One clock says one thing and one clock says another and instead of being able to casually glance at the time, you have to go through a whole mental checklist to determine if you are looking at a clock that you had changed, one you hadn’t gotten around to yet, or one that changes itself.
Besides all that, Daylight Savings is discriminatory. It’s a plan that is purported to be beneficial to all, with no consideration of parents of small children. Little kids have internal clocks that cannot be set forward or back. So while the rest of society is doing little happy dances because they get to sleep an extra hour, all the moms and dads out there are groaning in agony, knowing that 6:00 am is the new 7:00 am.
My kids already enjoy waking up at the crack of dawn. So we have a loose rule that they’re not supposed to come out of their rooms until the sun is “awake.” Which has been keeping them in bed until about 7:20 am. Unfortunately, not only are children’s internal clocks unable to be set back an hour, but no one sends the sun a memo about Daylight Savings Time either. So the morning after the time change, the sun “wakes” up the same time as it did the day before. But now that is 6:20 am. Ugh.
So those are my complaints with Daylight Savings Time. I’d take them up with the guy that originally came up with the idea, but I’m pretty sure it was Ben Franklin and he’s kind of unavailable. Plus, he made some impressive discoveries regarding electricity, and I’m a huge fan of electricity, so I’ll cut him some slack.
I’m really wanting to blog more…
When I first started blogging, I thought I had to record each minute detail of my life. If I missed a couple of days of blogging, I’d do a recap, so that no one missed one second of my amazing, fascinating existence. Yeah. The thing is… no one really cares what I had for breakfast. Shocking, I know.
My next blogging tactic was to only write about the “really interesting” stuff. But again, my idea of really interesting and what was actually interesting to other people was vastly divergent. I realized this, hopefully sooner than later.
So I finally settled into the mode of only blogging when I “felt it.” I’d lay in bed at night and write Pulitzer worthy blog entries in my mind. But when I got up the next morning, I never felt it. So all that genius was lost to the world. In fact, blogging when I felt it, was a nice way of saying I never blogged.
And now, I’m sinking to the epitome of bad blog entries. I’m blogging about blogging.
Bear with me, oh reader. I truly am going to attempt to get back on my blogging bandwagon. I will try not to bore you or tell you about my breakfast. I will endeavor to amuse you and challenge you with good-enough-to-win-a-Pulitzer blog entries. And I assure you, I won’t blog about blogging… for a while, anyway.
But how often do we do the same things to our spirits?
I’ve had times where I felt a restless boredom with life and it was so easy to watch a movie, pick up a book, call a friend, go shopping… anything to distract me and fill my time. All the while, what my spirit was really craving was the washing of the Word, the streams of deliverance, the river of Jesus’ presence.
Have you ever needed direction, so you ran around getting advice from every person you knew; when the real solution was to still your heart and hear the voice of the Lord? Have you ever been depressed and sought solace in sleep, in food, in music; when Jesus was just waiting to comfort you in His arms? Have you ever wanted to learn more about the Lord, so you bought the latest Christian best-seller; when Holy Spirit was longing to reveal Himself to you through your Bible?
The examples are endless, but I think you get my point. We are so quick to sell ourselves short and settle for good things that will temporarily meet the need, but in the long run just leave us empty again. We neglect what is necessary to sustain our souls, intimacy with the Father, and then wonder why we can’t seem to feel fulfilled. We are trying to satisfy our spiritual thirst with a piece of fruit, when Holy Spirit is offering us a glass of water.
When little boys are in the bathtub and they have to pee, they pee. When little girls are in the bathtub and they have to pee, they come running downstairs, naked and dripping wet, screaming, “I have to pee!” Never mind that there is a potty chair in the bathroom they were showering in… apparently little girls need Mommy’s approval to use the facilities.
At least that’s how my little girl does things.
The guy leading the intercession set at IHOP just commented that the Lord spoke to him through his Bible reading that morning. Then he admitted that he was 2 days behind in his daily Bible reading plan, but that God knew that and used it to speak to him.
I thought that was just another cool illustration of how God isn’t after our works… He’s after our hearts! The Lord didn’t say, “Well, I had a word for you, but you’re not on
schedule with your reading, so I’m not going to reveal it too you!” Jesus didn’t care that the guy was behind in his Bible reading plan. He just wanted to speak to him where he was at.
The Lord is so amazing and graceful! Much more so than we give Him credit for. We’re harder taskmasters for ourselves and our spirituality than He ever is. It makes me think of a line commonly found in Gospel music, “He’s been better to me than I’ve been to myself!”
When I was growing up, I had a friend who’s mom wouldn’t let us scream. It was the foremost rule of their house. You were not allowed to scream inside. You were not allowed to scream outside. The ONLY reason to scream was if there was an emergency.
One time we were playing in their camper and somehow managed to get the door locked on ourselves. My friend and I looked at each other and said, “This is an emergency… we can scream!” And we milked it for all it was worth. We screamed our lungs out, until our throats hurt. But it was the most amazing fun, because we finally had an excuse to scream. When the mom heard us and let us out of the camper, we got praised for screaming at the correct time.
I don’t remember specific anti-screaming rules at my house, so as a kid, I thought my friend’s mom was super strict. I mean, a ban on screaming was highly restrictive to a child’s playtime. The rule was so serious, the kids got time-out’s for screaming, and if you were playing at their house and screamed (whether you were aware of the rule or not) you got a time out too. What a mean mom!
But. Now I am a mom and I’ve come to realize something. That lady wasn’t a shrew… she was just trying to preserve her sanity!
My son’s favorite pastime is roaring: like a lion, like a dinosaur, like a monster… it doesn’t really matter the animal/creature, as long as he can roar! My daughter loves to respond by screaming in terror. Sometimes this terror is happy terror and sometimes she’s genuinely frightened, but either way it comes out as screams. And if roaring doesn’t work to get his sister to scream, Isaiah resorts to screaming himself and Leah happily chimes in.
They love screaming so much, they use it like commercial breaks between playing. Isaiah plays Thomas Trains and Leah plays Little People Castle for awhile, and when they both get bored, they start screaming. Isaiah plays legos and Leah plays babies, and when they both get bored, they scream. They scream back and forth at each other during the previews on their movies. They scream while they sit at the table waiting for me to serve the food. They scream in the bathtub. They scream outside. They scream, scream, scream!
And I’m losing my sanity! By the end of they day (or sometimes at the beginning) I’m screaming too… screaming at them to stop. Why, oh why, did I not make a NO SCREAMING rule? While was busy judging my friend’s mom, I should have been learning from her example. She was one smart lady!
