Happy Mother's Day

If you are reading this today (Sunday, May 11), and you are a mother, then happy Mother's Day. If you're not a mother, and yet you're reading a blog post with such a mother-directed title--shame on you.

Shovels

Shovels are useful tools. So are power-drills.

an amazing thing

Every time that I learn something new about the Bible, it becomes just a little more astonishing and amazing to me. I just recently learned one of this things, and now you too will have a chance to learn this thing.

In the Jewish culture some 2,000 years ago, a boy at the age of twelve became a man. At this time, he was allowed to begin learning his father's business. For example, if his father was an ironsmith, he would begin learning how to work with metal. If his father was a carpenter, he would begin learning how to build tables. He would be about his father's business.

So from the age of twelve, he would start learning. When he turned thirty, he had the knowledge to begin his own trade. His father would take him around to those he worked with and those he was friends with. The father would introduce the son by saying, "this is my son, in whom I am well pleased."

If something sounded vaguely familiar in these paragraphs, it means you've probably heard two rather largely important stories in the Gospels. When Jesus was twelve, he and his family went to Jerusalem and visited the temple. On their way home, Mary and Joseph discovered that, in fact, Jesus was not with them. So they went back to Jerusalem and spent three days searching for him. When they found him, he was in the temple discussing theology with the priests.

When they asked him what he was doing, he said, "you should have known that I'd be about my Father's business." Hmmm. . .

When Jesus was thirty (remember that number?) he was baptized by John the Baptist. When this happened, the clouds opened up and a dove descended from the sky. And a voice said, "this is my son, in whom I am well pleased." Hmmm. . .

New Month Day

Happy New Month day. Today is the very first day in the month of May. Everyone shout hooray and say, "hey! This is the way to June!." May your day be colorful and lacking in gray, because they say that the way to be happy is to force it that way.

I've run out of words that rhyme with May, but I'll be back soon. Keep reading, okay?

Mitchell

things that don't make sense

In the town that I live in (Coleman, Texas), there is an interesting thing that has been done with the streets. Intersecting Commercial Avenue, we have First through Thirteenth Street. However, intersecting these streets is Fifth Avenue. Fifth Avenue and Fifth Street intersect with each other. How did this happen?

Well, however it happened, it did. When I first encountered this, I was shocked speechless. Both signs said "5th" in large letters, and I failed to notice the tiny letters saying "st." and "ave." After a while, I got used to it. I don't really notice the strangeness anymore, I just keep going.

Christians tend to do that also. There will be some incongruity that doesn't quite fit, that doesn't make sense with the things we've been taught. However, our lives are much to busy to spend all our time trying to think through these things, and so we just push ahead. Eventually, we just forget about it.

Here's one of them:

Look up at the stars. These tiny points of light are massive balls of flame billions of lightyears away. A lightyear is the distance it takes light to travel in one year. So if the earth is only a few thousand years old, as it is according to the Bible, how could the light have reached us yet? How can this be?

At some point in the future, I will write about my theory as a comment to this post. However, in the meantime, I would like to hear your ideas, because they could (probably) be better than mine.

A Story

Today I'm going to tell a story.

Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Jimmy. Jimmy, when he was very little, went to church every Sunday. In Sunday-school he learned all about Jesus. Jesus was a friendly-looking man dressed in bright colors who lived in drawings populated by other bright and colorful people. For some reason, every once in a while, those pictures were less bright and more gray. The Jesus person looked sad in those pictures, and was usually nailed to the wooden thing at the top of the church steeple.

Then, Jimmy got bigger. He moved up to the next Sunday-school class, were he began to memorize verses from the Bible. He memorized things like, "for God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten son, so that whosoever believed in Him would not perish, but have everlasting life." He didn't really know what it meant, but it sure sounded nice. It was often abbreviated with things like, "God so loved the world," when the pastor noticed people getting bored.

Jimmy kept growing, and one day he realized that he was supposed to be actually doing something, and not just memorizing Bible verse. So he found one of his friends in school, and invited him to church. He was immensely proud of his good deeds, and decided he should do even more.

When he got into his teenage years, he graduated from Sunday-school to the Youth Group. The Youth Pastor there was always talking about "witnessing to the lost." So he decided to try it out, since that's what a godly person should do.

So Jimmy told one of his friends about Jesus. This friend was an atheist, and told Jimmy so. "But why?" Jimmy asked.

His friend had lots of convincing arguments. Jimmy just laughed and said, "well, you're wrong. The Bible says that--"

"Wait, I don't believe in the Bible," his friend said.

Then Jimmy was confused. Now what should he say? So he went to his Youth Pastor, who showed him several verses in the Bible that demonstrated how true it must be. Jimmy, once again armed to the teeth with knowledge, went after the unbelievers once again. But once again, he was conquered. The fact that he was using the Bible to prove itself for some reason didn't work.

So Jimmy began to have doubts. If there was no good reason to believe in the Bible, why should he believe it? He also started to realize how much better life could be if he didn't have to follow all those silly rules. This, of course, meant the end of Jimmy's time in church. He looked back upon it as his "religious phase," and laughed at all those people who actually still believed such an old-fashioned idea.

The big question is, why is this story so common? What are we doing wrong? I think the answer if fairly simple: the church is only teaching the easy things. We say, "this is what the Bible says," because that's easy. But we don't explain why we should believe the Bible, which is a necessary piece of knowledge in order to survive in this world.

Maybe it's time to figure this out.
Mitchell

Leading Worship

I have begun a new thing (for me). I now lead worship for a very small group on Saturday evenings at a not-quite-church. This is the reason why I got the electric guitar shown in a previous post. This is a thing I have wanted to do for a long time, and only in the last few weeks have actually started.

However, I have discovered a problem with our current system that we call "worship." Basically, it's the fact that we have "worship leaders." You see, this term implies that there is someone "leading" the worship, which is true. However, then we look at the worship leader. In order to be accurate, the leader of worship has to be God, but the worship leaders we have are only humans.

So here's a better term: "worship helper." All they really do, after all, is give people someone to look at while praising God.

Somehow, though, I don't think that it's going to catch on.