the asian tsunami – virtual prayer room

messy CHRISTian has set up a virtual prayer room on his blog. don’t be surprised if someone you know has been effected by the catastrophe. as followers of CHRIST we have to be involved in lifting up our brothers and sisters in prayer. remember scripture says when one part of the body of CHRIST hurts then all of the body should hurt. take care of your asian brothers and sisters by spending some time lifting them up to the FATHER.

the view – wednesday, december 29, 2004

i just wanted to give everyone a reminder that we WILL have the view tomorrow night, wednesday, december 29, 2004 @ 6:00 till 7:15 p.m. just like we always do. remember that it is a very rare night ndeed when we cancel the view. we even continued the view during the two hurricanes we had two wednesdays in a row during 2002 (isidore and lili. if we aren’t going to cancel the service for a hurricane then we definitely aren’t going to cancel the view just because schools are out or it’s the week of a holiday. GOD’s worship should never be canceled.

new year’s eve prep

we’re not doing a new year’s eve youth service – this way i get to spend some time with my family and personally i hate lock-ins with a passion. because of this i am using the service at the view tomorrow night to get our kids and adults focused on the new year. we are going to do a “redo” service based on the story of samson.

i love samson. he is such a major screw up. he had everything going for him. he was incredibly strong, apparently nice looking, and most importantly called by GOD. yet samson got all egotistical and screwed it all up. he messed up bad and it appeared that GOD would drop him. nobody would have blamed GOD for dropping samson. i mean samson did everything wrong and selfish. samson wasted the amazing gifts that GOD has given him.

i can relate to that. “wasted” is the word that i often feel like describes my life. i’m not incrediblly strong, nor am i very good looking, and truthfully i’m often not so sure that i have been called by GOD. the little bit i have i usually waste on myself instead of using to accomplish something for the greater good. most times i don’t bring GOd glory. in fact, most times i’m too busy focusing on myself to really care if GOD gets any glory at all. i wouldn’t blame GOD if he dropped me.

yet, GOD did not leave samson. when samson asked GOD for HIS help GOD was there. if you read the text you’ll find that samson didn’t even ask in a good fashion. samson didn’t ask for GOD’s glory, or say he was a worm or anything like that. nope! samson just asked for GOD’s help, admitting that he needed GOD’s help, and GOD gave it.

the LORD gave samson a “redo”. right then and there between 2 colmuns GOD forgot about samson’s past and used him. if GOD would give a screw up like samson a “redo” then HE’ll give me “redos” also. i think allot of my teens need that message. i know i do.

so tomorrow night we’re going to set up a coupe of columns and a paper shredder. i’m going to give each kid a card and then tell them the story of samson. after i’m through i’m going to tell them that if they have failed GOD during the past year and that failure still haunts them then this is the time to get rid of their past. paper shredders destroy what we don’t want others to see or what we wish had never existed. during worship our teens will be invited to write down their failures, ask GOD to forgive them, and then put their failures into the paper shredder.

“poof.” they’re gone. it’s a redo.

happy hanukkah

nativity

my dog is jewish. i haven’t seen her wearing a prayer shawl, blowing a shofar, or reciting the shema but i know that she must be jewish. it’s the only explanation that i can come up with for what happened today.

today was montana’s introduction to parkview baptist church. my family and i go to church at parkview, i work there, and the boys attend school there so it only made sense that we would introduce montana to the people who would see a good bit of her. montana is going to go with us to pick up the boys from school, she’ll travel around with me when i do errands, and sometimes she’ll just come hang out with me at my study. after all, a dog is an easy way to meet new people and meeting new people is usually about half the battle for me in ministry. thus montana is going to be involved with the church and therefore i wanted her to get used to the place and more important the people who actually make up the church.

so i made the rounds around the church office with montana in tow. everyone in the office loved her and she gladly returned their love. after all montana is a friendly dog. after finishing our visits around the church office i decided to take her over to the maintence building and introduce her to our maintence crew, larry, kirk and david. their all nice guys and montana instantly picked up on that fact. she got along fine with them and they enjoyed meeting her. after we finished horsing around in the maintence building montana and i left to go back to my study and start to do a little more work before heading home for lunch. this is when the problem developed.

at the end of the maintence building is a creche (nativity scene). it’s one of the old, cheap, plastic variety that lights up when a light bulb within each figure is turned on. i placed a picture of the nativity scene at the top of this post so you could see it. when montana saw the creche she stopped dead in her tracks. i know she stopped because i did not and she jerked me backwards. she stared at the nativity scene, began to growl and then barked several times. she did this same cycle of growling and barking several times. in fact, she barked so loud that kirk and david heard her and came running out to us.

“what happened” kirk said.

“i’m not sure. she just stopped and started doing this and she keeps looking at the nativity scene.”

david suggested that i walk her closer to the nativity scene to see what would happened. this seemed like a good idea to me so i tried dragging her over to the creche. 45 pounds doesn’t really seem like allot of weight, yet when that forty five pounds is a dog that doesn’t want to be anywhere near the plastic JESUS it becomes an entirely different story. all my dragging accomplished was getting montana to perform a semi circle around the nativity scene without ever getting any closer to it. all she did was growl and bark while making sure that i wasn’t able to get her any closer to the glowing plastic diety.

when i finally gave up montana turned into her normal friendly self.

this is why i say montana must be jewish. of course, she could be muslim, buddhist, or whatever else a dog can be. : ) all i know for sure is that she doesn’t like gods made out of plastic that glow in the dark. then again i’m not sure i really like those gods either.

SIDE NOT – this was my 200th post which is an occassion of great joy and celebration. please pause for a moment of silence in honor of the great moment. after the moment of silense please go get yourself a snack and eat it and dance a little jig in honor of the occassion. thanks for celebrating with me.

working on the design

if you are an internet explorer user i may need to apologize for the design of the blog right now. i’ve been adding a few “side bar” items – flickr zeitgeist and a list of my bloglines subscriptions. i’ve been able to add these and they look fine on my computer but i discovered at work that apparently the flickr and bloglines stuff show up on the bottom of the page when viewed on a pc using internet explorer. i have no idea how to fix this so it might be awhile before things are back the way they should be.

if anyone nows how to fix this let me know and i’ll gladly accept your help.

the most expensive restaurant i have ever eaten at

i’ve eaten at a few really nice restaurants in my life, restaurants that put a healthy fear of the check within my mind. i don’t eat at this resturants often but i’m not a complete stranger to them. yet today i encountered the most expensive meal i’ve ever had and it was at a restaurant i thought was supposed to be cheap.

my family and i ordered lunch from arby’s today. we had just picked up montanta and wanted to grab something to take home with us. i ordered for the family and then went through the drive through. when we made it to the pickup/pay window i gave the cashier my debit/credit card to pay for the meal. she left to go “swipe” the card. after seven minutes she came back and said “sir, i’m having a problem with your card.” typically, these are words that would strike fear in me – fear of overdrafts, fear of nsf fees, fear of bad looks sent towards me from my bankers. but not this time. i had just balanced our checkbook and i knew we had more than enough money in our account. so i figured it was a problem with the magnetic stripe on my card. we gave the cashier pam’s card and asked her to try it. after another 7 minutes she came back and said “i’m sorry but it’s still not taking the card.”

this was frustrating. i reached into my ” just in case” money, paid the bill, and figured i would look at the union planters website when i got home to see what was going on with my card. of course, when i finally received my order it was messed up but by then i was too tired of waiting to stay there any longer.

when i got home i discovered something other than just that my typically good arby’s food really stunk this time. what i discovered was that the cashier had “swiped” our cards for authorization 38 times. these “swipes” did not actually charge our card but they did but an “authorization hold” on the cost of the meal for each time the card was “swiped”. the way this works is that when you use a credit card or debit card it first checks to see if you have the money in your account. if you do then it puts a “hold” on the money telling your account to keep this money in reserve for when the credit card actually charges your account. the money isn’t actually moved from the buyer to the seller until the transaction is finalized.

well apparently our cashier had no idea how to operate the credit card machine and out of her ignorance placed 38 authorization holds on our account without ever actually finalizing the sell. apparently arby’s doesn’t require extreme intelligence from their cashier and it took our cashier a little while before she realized that she didn’t know what she was doing. since she was a bit of a slow learner it wasn’t until the 38th time of “swiping” my card that she finally decided she should give up. in college i trained rats for a psychology class and my rat didn’t take 38 times to learn anything. i guess arby’s can’t afford to hire rats and has therefore obtained employee with less intelligence.

since the meal was $19.22 and it took 38 “swipes’ before our cashier learned that she wasn’t going to be able to work the machine we have a grand total of $730.36 that is now reserved for in our account.

now this would not be good on our regular credit card account but it is definitely not good in our checking account. the bank told me that the $730.36 will stay “held” waiting for arby’s to finalize the transactions for four days unless arby’s withdraws their “authorization holds.” during those four days the $730.36 can not be used for any other payments. personally, my checking account doesn’t normally have a spare $730.36 lying around in it. after all, if i normally had an extra $730.36 just sitting around then i probably wouldn’t be at arby’s in the first place.

so i’ve decided to start the process of having these “holds” removed rather than waiting four days for them to naturally disappear.

i called my bank and they told me they would need a letter from arby’s on company stationary saying that the “holds” are released. i went to arby’s and they said “no problem” but unfortunately they don’t have company stationary at any of the franchises. this makes sense because fast food franchises rarely, if ever, need to send out “official correspondence.” an arby’s franchise is too busy making sandwiches to correspond with people. so the manager “faked” company stationary as best we could and faxed it over to union planters. after looking at the letter she made i’m fairly sure i know why the manager went into the fast food industry rather than graphic design.

i won’t find out if this has worked until tomorrow.

for now all i can say is that arby’s has gotten allot more expensive than it used to be.

montana

we just got back home from picking up “montana”, the newest member of our family. she is an 11 month old red basset hound that was at looziana basset rescue society. she is absolutely gorgeous and gets along with all the human members of our family. the cats are a different story. everything is very tentative right now. montana and oreo, our youngest cat, will get close to each other and then pull back in growls or hisses or just outright fear. keebler, our oldest cat, is just doing his normal thing and completely ignoring montana, oreo, and everything else that goes on in the world.

CHRISTmas traditions

a couple of days ago i posted an entry that had within it a history channel article on CHRISTmas trees. i had not read the other part of the website on the beginnings of modern CHRISTmas traditions until i saw it mentioned in ben’s blog. i was amazed and challenged by what i read within the article.

it mentioned a change in the tone of celebration of CHRISTmas that happened during the 19th century. before the 19th century CHRISTmas was celebrated with actions of “social justice”. those who had the most did acts of kindness and charity toward those who were in need. it was expected that the needy would receive justice during CHRISTmas. in fact, if someone did not take care of the needy during CHRISTmas there was a decent chance that they would be “terrorized” by those around them. during the 19th century CHRISTmas changed from a holiday of social justice to a family holiday. before the 19th century people celebrated the birth of our LORD by sharing “goodwill toward men”. now we tend to celebrate the birth of our LORD by focusing on our families.

i love the family aspect of CHRISTmas. pam and i had my parents and in-laws over for CHRISTmas this saturday. it was a world of fun. i really enjoy spending all the free time at home and being with my family. yet, i wish we as a society still had more of the “social justice” aspect of CHRISTmas. it would be nice to have at least one holiday that is focused on doing right by all those around us. according to scripture our EMMANUEL came to earth to free us from what holds us in bondage – sin, guilt, fear, etc. i can’t think of a better way to remember that GOD is WITH US than to focus on bring justice to those who are held by economic, social, or political salvery.

the international justice mission is an organization that fights for social justice. you might be interested in visiting their website.