2. We are always in transition - will be until we get to glory.
3. Real friends are precious
(2) Alabama 29, Tennessee 9
Thank you Pops for your Princess!
more God has blessed us with.
t there is no higher calling on my life than growing intimate with God and loving Katie as Christ loves His church. Everything else takes a distant third. So please pray that we will exemplify this in our marriage.
Karen went to her first Homecoming "Soccer Game" at her new High School. She want with her new friend Allison who is also a pastor's kid.
o us is to learn how to take refuge in Him, and not in any flimsy redoubts of our own devising.
In an article in USATODAY the recently released tax returns of Sarah Palin were discussed. Here are a few paragraphs:
"The Palins gave $3,325 to charity last year, or about 2% of their income. In 2006, they donated $4,880, or 3.8% of their income. Those donations included clothing and household items given to the Salvation Army in her hometown of Wasilla, Alaska, the tax returns show. Comella said the Palins also gave money to local churches.
Biden and his wife, by comparison, gave $995 to charity last year, or about 0.3% of their income, and averaged charitable gifts of $369 over the past decade, his tax returns show."
As a long time pastor, I know that many treasurers struggle with knowing what people give to the church. If they are not spiritually strong they become bitter when they see what people drive and where they live and then see what they give. (A note to myself - "Make sure the next treasurer is closer to the Lord and know that Christian folk have many areas of immaturity, giving is one of them.) Someone has to know, IRS knows, the giver knows, but bottom line
- God knows. There is an interesting episode from Christ's life, (Mark 12, Luke 21) actually about 2 weeks before he w
ent tot he cross to turn away the wrath of his Father from those who would believe on to himself. He is watching what people give at the temple offering "plate".
He is
close enough to see what the rich gave, the middle class but he mentioned a widow giving, the lower tier of the socioeconomic ladder.
A secular view of this would either be this is an invasion of privacy or that the poor should not pay taxes, especially "Church taxes". But a secular mind does not know the pleasure of giving to someone that has given us everything. These minds miss the difference between a steward and and owner. A steward never owns and really neither does an owner unless you know the owner is God Himself!
This reminds me of a joke about an IRS agent that called a church to verify that a parishioner had given a large amount of money. The pastor who answered the phone said - if he hasn't - he will soon!
I wonder if all of the TAX returns of church members were put in the USATODAY or the local paper if giving would go up! It probably would - but it would be giving from pride or prestige - and that is not the reason Jesus talked about the wid
ow.
When I picture the widow in my sanctified imagination, I see a happy lady, who is trusting in more that her bank account!
With one child married and four to go - I liked this list and think Katie did it right! - So did I!So then, whom could you marry? A long time ago we came up with something we called "Esolen's Rules." They're only half facetious. But they are an attempt to get at the normal:
1. Don't marry a woman who likes cats but does not like dogs. You may marry a woman who doesn't like either, or whose reason for not liking dogs is that one of them bit her when she was a toddler. But a woman who likes cats but does not like dogs will be a Joan Crawford or Jane Wyman. Ronald Reagan married Jane Wyman, and look how sorry he was about that.
2. Don't marry a man who is neater than you are. You may, however, marry a man who polishes his tools and puts them away after use....
3. Don't marry anybody, man or woman, who says, "I'm going to call you at eight," and then leaves you waiting by the phone for an hour. Exceptions can be made for people who are kidnapped by Arabs, or who have epileptic seizures.
4. Don't marry anybody who insists on a separate bank account, bed, bathroom, vacation, or zip code. It makes no sense to be one flesh and two wallets.
5. Don't marry a woman who spends more on makeup than she does on food. In general, don't marry a woman who engages in the sin of reverse gluttony.
6. Don't marry a man who does not like dogs. Such men do not like children. Don't marry a man who does not like children. On the other hand, I have known at least one excellent man who thought he didn't like children, until he had some; seven, I think, at last count. Perhaps the rule may be rephrased: Don't marry a man whom you cannot imagine rolling on the ground in a wrestling hold, with a Labrador retriever or three children, or hollering on a ferris wheel, with a Labrador retriever or three children.
7. Don't marry a woman who exercises so frequently that you cannot tell if she is a woman or a very strange looking 13-year-old boy. I'm going out on a line here, but the real purpose of the rule is to determine whether she will mind getting fat, as happens when you are going to have a child. In other words, don't marry a woman whom you cannot imagine having a child. Do not marry a woman who does not like children.
8. Do not marry a man who treats his mother or his sisters discourteously. As he treats his mother, so will he treat you. But by all means do not marry a man who takes his direction from his mother, or who is ruled by his mother's ambitions. Mama's boys are unhappy, and they make their wives unhappy too. So are the mothers of mama's boys, come to think of it. Unhappy days are here again.
9. Do not marry a woman who sneers at innocent male pastimes, such as football. Such women do not really enjoy the company of men, and after a period soon reached, do not enjoy the company of their own husbands. They are also the most ignorant of what men are really like. You may marry a tomboy, so long as she's a girlish tomboy and doesn't take the sport with dreadful seriousness. You may marry a Daddy's girl, so long as she is not spoiled when it comes to money.
10. Never marry anyone who is secretive about money. Such people are also secretive about sex.
11. Never marry a man who lets you take the initiative in everything. You want a jellyfish, maybe? You want Burt Lancaster instead.
12. Never marry a woman who never lets you take the initiative in anything. You want a porcupine, maybe? You want Maureen O'Hara instead.
13. Never marry a woman who does not laugh at your jokes or your buffoonery. That is one of the nicest ways in which men "serve" women, and women respond by taking delight in the antics. That is why God made impersonators of Marlon Brando, Sean Connery, and Homer Simpson. It may in fact be the principal justification for the existence of Marlon Brando, Sean Connery, and Homer Simpson. This rule is simply an instance of the more general rule that you should never marry a woman who does not genuinely admire you, nor should a woman marry a man whom she does not admire.
14. Never marry anyone who delights in "exposing" you in public. Teasing does not count; in fact, never marry a man who cannot be teased. You can marry a woman who cannot be teased.
15. Never marry a man who is not admired by respectable male friends. The people in the world who know a man best are the men he works and plays with. They know well if he is a cheat, a thug, a loser. You may marry a man who does not have female friends. If anything, you should be suspicious of a man whose friends are principally female. The men may be avoiding him, and there is a reason for that.
16. Never marry anyone who is not interested in looking at your fourth-grade yearbook. This means: never marry anyone who seems unaware that he or she is marrying also a family, a hometown, a past, silly friends, comedies and tragedies. Never marry anyone who does not want to meet your father and mother. If your sister doesn't like him, dump him. If your sister doesn't like her, dump her. That is why God created sisters. Their approval, however, is not a sufficient condition; they will occasionally like losers, but they almost never detest good marrying material.
17. Never marry a feminist of either sex. That would be as bad as marrying someone with the soul (not the occupation, but the soul) of a lawyer.
18. Never marry anyone whom you catch in a lie, even a little one. Trust us on this one. People in love are about the most gullible creatures on God's green earth. In fact, beside the dictionary entry on "gullible" there's a picture of a woman in love, eyes looking dreamily upward, hands holding her chin; and a picture of an indignant young man defending the honor of his beloved, who would never do such a thing, no sir!
19. Never marry a woman who does not like to feed people, or a man who does not like to help out with the removal of a junked car, regardless of how much he knows about junked cars. By all means marry a woman who enjoys seeing men eat, or a man who looks at a mudslide and says, "I can make a really fine wall out of that."
20. Never marry anyone, man or woman, who scoffs at virtue, who reduces "good" and "evil" to arbitrary counters in the war of all against all, whose humor is flippancy, who looks down upon janitors and maids, who cannot delight in making simple things (like a batting T or a thank-you note), who thinks tradition is old and shopworn (such people are followers of every fad that comes), and who is never, ever, just relaxed, grateful for a shady seat under the maple tree in fall. That is another way of saying that you should never marry anyone who does not know who God is.
Just to let you know what you might not know!
New Research from Barna on Green Evangelicals
Barna surveys evangelicals about their enviornmental views. Here are some excerpts:
One of the intriguing findings of the research is that millions of evangelicals - often perceived to be on the sidelines of the green movement - have become more environmentally conscious in the last year. Yet, evangelicals do so with some skepticism about the environmental movement, specifically the implications of climate change. Evangelicals are concerned about what they perceive to be media hype surrounding global warming, as well as skepticism about the role humans play in causing it. Moreover, evangelicals express strong concern that proposed environmental solutions would hurt the poor, particularly in developing nations...What makes Americans skeptical about global warming? The survey explored five common objections and discovered that roughly half of Americans maintain some reluctance about climate change for each of the following reasons:
A majority of the Christian community, regardless of how it is defined, believes that global warming is happening. Still, only a minority of churchgoing Catholics (36%), non-mainline Protestants (36%), and mainline Protestants (45%) are very certain climate change is occurring...
- 49% of Americans contend that some solutions proposed to help global warming would have a negative influence on the poor, especially in other countries
- 48% believe the earth has undergone climate change before and the current warming is not primarily caused by human activity
- 47% indicate the news media have made global warming a bigger story than it deserves
- 47% agree that the U.S. economy is not strong enough right now to take on the problem
- 46% say that if America leads the way tackling the problem other countries will not follow suit and it would hurt American businesses and workers
Evangelicals are among the most skeptical population segments when it comes to global warming...
Click here for the full story.
