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GOD told me to do this

i hate it when people blame GOD for them backing out of their agreements. every now and then i will have a chaperon or volunteer that will tell me that they need to back out of a commitment they had made to the ministry because GOD has told them to. usually, this means that they are quitting a retreat, bible study, or mission trip or maybe they are bailing on a some teaching they had said they would do. the problem i have is that if you dig a little deeper it’s not real hard to find the real reason that they “have to” back out of their promise. maybe it’s a ball game that they were given tickets to, or it’s an event with friends that they would miss if they went to the retreat, or it some other great opportunity that they really want to do.

actually, i don’t have a problem with any of these reasons. i understand that sometimes things are just going to “pop” up and you have to adjust your commitments based on what happens. i just hate it when people blame GOD for their desire to back out of promise. come on, grow a back bone! don’t make GOD look bad by making it appear that HE changes HIS mind all the time. If GOD was the one WHO lead you to say “yes” (because i never take “yes” answers without at least a week of prayer on both my part and the part of the person i have asked) then GOD isn’t going to cause you to bail on that commitment later. i just hate it when people blame GOD for their own decisions.

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the election

i am so ready for the presidential election to be over. the reason for this is not because of the constant press coverage of it. instead, it is because of CHRISTians who continually tell others how GOD has picked their candidate. most of these CHRISTians have been conservative and have told me that it is my CHRISTian responsibility to vote for george bush. i’ve heard CHRISTians say that if you are a bible believing CHRISTian then you have to vote for bush and i’ve heard others say that they have no idea what will happen to the world if john kerry wins the election. this is ludicrous! CHRISTians on both sides (conservative and liberal) have picked their issues and decided that only those issues matter to GOD.

sojouners, a website dealing with faith, politics, and culture has an interesting advertisement based on that. here’s the advertisement.

no matter who wins the election for president of the united states of america GOD will still be on HIS throne. GOD is the only governing authority that i trust and i will place my faith in no one else.

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how to fake being sick

it’s interesting to see what type of internet searches end up linking to this blog. there have been some odd ones in the past. today i believe i have been “googled” for the subject of which i may be the most proud. if you google for “how to fake being sick” (you need to have this phrase in quotes) then this blog will appear on the first page. i found this out by back tracking a visit made from a search engine. we have had guest visiting us on this blog simply to find out how to fake being sick. this whole thing comes from a post i did back in january about the family being sick. it’s nice to know that my writing on this blog has helped people with serious needs. 🙂

of course, it is a little sad that our world has now reached the point that people now have to search the internet in order to figure out how to fake being sick.

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all saints eve

happy reformation day aka happy all saints eve aka happy halloween.

as most of your know tonight was halloween and you may not know this but alot of people like to dress up in costumes and go from house to house begging for candy. it’s an odd custom but people seem to love it. as a kid my family and i loved halloween. each year we would convert our house into the best house in the neighborhood to get candy from. we created a dummy that we would hang with a noose from the biggest tree in our front yard (btw, the dummy was not my dad – HA). our yard was littered with graves bearing dressed up mummies, vampires, and various other ghouls which would come to life whenever anyone passed by them. then we would take our stereos and play sound scary sound effects out of our windows. when i was a kid i was convinced that it was the scariest thing the world had ever seen.

of course, that was looking through the eyes of a kid which also seem to make things bigger and better than they actually are.

when i was in high school at northview high school we had several places that we were convinced were incredibly scary. one of those places was the “witch’s grave.” this was a a tree that had a hole in it and inside that hole were the supposed remains of the witch. the “mythology” around the tree/grave was that hundreds of years ago a witch had been killed and buried in the hole of the tree. her skull was still supposed to be in the tree and if you were truly brave you could reach into the hole of the tree and touch the skull of the witch. of course, it was actually just a dog skull or something similar. it was truly scary when i was 16 years old and it was midnight. so everyone and their momma would drive over the the farmer’s property where the witch’s grave was found and then reached into the dark hole to touch the skull. it was incredibly chilling at the time.

it was even more frightening since the only time i went to the “witch’s grave” we were chased away by the owner of the property. we went to the tree and jumped out to go touch the skull. as we were convincing each other to touch the skull the farmer came out of his house and started screaming for us to leave. if we hadn’t of been convinced by his screaming we were definitely move to action by the shotgun in his hands. the deciding factor was when he shot the gun off in the air. we hoped in our vehicles and got out of their as fast as possible. i’m not sure how scary the “witch’s grave” actually was but i know for a fact that the shot gun was very frightening.

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the fair

this afternoon the terrell family went to the greater baton rouge state fair to experience the wonder and majesty that is the state fair. everyone needs to experience eating greasy corn dogs and then going on the tilt-a-whirl. there is nothing quite like riding a fair attraction that was placed together by a worker making minimum wage. apparently, the fair has standards for the workers who run their rides. these worker standards seem to be as follows:

  • all fair employees who operate rides must hate all kids and barely attempt to hide this hatred. it is even better if you frequently shout at kids for no apparent reason.
  • all fair employees who operate rides must hate all other human beings and barely attempt to hide this hatred. an easy manner in which to display this hatred is to sneer at anyone who ever asks you a question (no matter how good the asked question might be).
  • all fair employees who operate rides must be able to convey to all those who ride their rides that the operators have very little idea how to operate their rides. looking at the ride’s control in obvious dazed, confusion is a great way to make the riders worry about your skill at operating the machinery.
  • all fair employees who operate rides must be more concerned with watching the things going on around them than they are with actually watching their rides. talking on your cell phone is a great way to ignore your ride.

i’m not sure how they test for these qualifications, maybe they give a personality or dexterity test to figure out who would be best in these positions. all i know from my experience at the fair today is that they seem to have done a pretty good job at getting people who meet the above qualifications.

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y..e..l..l..

this morning the fam and i went to see noah play a flag football game. noah was great (here comes the proud parent routine) – he caught a kick off and returned it, made the only pass reception of the game, disrupted a possible interception, and did a tremendous job blocking. the best part was enjoyed the game, which hasn’t always been true.

this game pam, adam, and i sat closer to the cheerleaders than we have ever done before. i had never understood how much entertainment we had been missing by not sitting by the cheerleaders. the group is composed of girls in second and third grade who have no actually connection to the team. they are a cheerleading squad who merely picks one team to cheer for each week. the other team is merely left without cheerleaders – left to wonder why life has so greatly rejected them and why no one wants to cheer for them. i’m not sure how they decide to cheer for each week – maybe it’s which ever color rhymes with their cheers better, or maybe it’s a coin toss, but a decision is made and that decision determines which teams gets the support of the 7 to 8 girls who have come there to cheer.

of course, this random selection apparently throws the cheerleaders off every now and then. this became apparent by the fact that every now and then the girls would forget which team they were cheering for. so one cheer which went

    y.. e.. l.. l..,
    y. e. l. l. everybody yell
    go green, go green, go green! (noah’s team color)

by the end of the cheer the girls had forgotten which team they were cheering for and thus “green” was left out of the cheer and replaced with “who are we cheering for?”

as you can tell these girls were really into the ball-game and their spirit lifted everyone up in to the fervor of what is second and third grade flag football.

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do i offend?

i love tony campolo and mike yaconelli. it was a very sad day when yaconelli died. part of the reason i love what they have said is because they constantly challenge me. they force me to rethink things and i appreciate that greatly. of course, during the process of looking at things from a different prospective and considering why we as CHRISTians do and/or believe things they often end of ticking people of (sometimes i’m one of those people who are ticked off). i’m okay with this because i understand it’s part of what they do and i believe i know their hearts and the care and concern they have for followers of CHRIST. they’re goal is never to just make people mad – instead they point out something wrong and then have options for making it right. they offer answers rather than just causing controversy. they have earned the right to “tick” people off because they have and do care so much for those who follow CHRIST. they don’t say things just to tick people off. instead, their controversial statements are always a part of brokenness and sincere desire to follow CHRIST better.

so here’s the point i have been leading up to – recently i’ve been running into more and more youth ministers who seem to enjoy being at the center of a controversy. sometimes it seems that they make statements just to tick people off. there doesn’t seem to be a real purpose to the statements other than causing an argument that the speaker than can the respond by saying how “sometimes it’s hard to hear the truth.” they get to be a “rebel” and feel like their standing against something but their actually just “rebels without a cause.” they want to be campolo and yaconelli but they never have answers. they have the ability to tick off people but nothing to offer past that. oh this makes me furious.

of course, the worse part of all this is that i find myself doing the very thing i hate.

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when bad things happen to people who deserve them

i don’t wish bad things to happen to anybody but i have to say that i laughed real hard when i heard about ashlee simpson’s vocal track / lip synch mess up on saturday night live. if you haven’t seen it here it is for your viewing pleasure. i really don’t wish ill towards celebrities who posses very little real talent (a group of which i believe ashlee simpson would be a part) but i do enjoy it when it is shown for all to see how little talent some professed celebrities actually have. that’s what happen saturday night.

of course, the best part is that ashlee simpson has previously addressed the issue of lip-synching by saying the following:

“i’m totally against it (lip synching) and offended by it,” she said. “i’m going out to let my real talent show, not to just stand there and dance around. personally, i’d never lip-synch. it’s just not me.”

none of this really matters. ashlee simpson will still be able to lip-synch all over the place and be a celebrity, have her photo taken constantly, and be allowed to talk with authority about things which she actually has no idea about. teens and pre-teens all over the world will still think that she is incredibly talented, has her life all together, and will want to be like her. it’s just nice every now and then to see that no matter how many people brag about the emperor’s new clothes there’s really nothing there but a naked old man.

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sabbath retreat

i’m beginning to work on a sabbath retreat for my students based on the sabbath retreat that youth specialties stopped doing earlier this year. right now i am just planning this thing out. i’ve never done anything like this before and therefore i have ben hoping to find other people who have done retreats like this and use their experience but it appears that very few others have done this type of retreat either. a few people have helped with some suggestions and i have found two resource websites that i believe will be truly helpful – the youth ministry and spirituality project who used to head the sabbath retreats that youth specialties put on and practicing our faith put on by the valparaiso project on the education and formation of people in faith.

here is a list of what i am hoping to do during the retreat as of right now:

  • journaling – each person will journal 30 minutes a day
  • cooking – each person will participate within the meals of the day
  • digital photography – each person will be responsible for going and taking pictures of something they see that amazes them – these pictures will then be shown to the group and described.
  • a group movie each night – this will then be discussed for spiritual meaning.
  • quiet & solitude – each morning will be started with solitude. we will have to teach the kids how to do this.
  • reading – each participant will have to bring one book that they simply want to read – it can be for no other reason than simply enjoying the book – not for personal growth or school.
  • large group study through the lost sheep – similar to what I did with the youth ministry staff and what mike yaconelli did during the spiritual formations conference.
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i can’t believe i don’t know this stuff

i’m pretty sad and pathetic when it comes to this blog – software-wise. last night i finally learned how to add a little padding around the images that i place within this thing. for those who don’t know what padding is i’ll explain. padding is the space around your image that keeps the text from being right up against the image. adding padding to the blog is real difficult. you have to add the line “img pad=’10px'” to the blog. real difficult huh? it took all of ten minutes and that’s only because i didn’t know what i was doing. if i had of known it would have taken 45 seconds.

i’ve been doing this blog for over a year now (an eternity within a world of blogs that usually last two months) and i still don’t know much else than how to type in the text. i would change this whole thing over to “movable type” if i actually knew how to transfer my old entries into it and how to set up movable type in the first place. movable type is supposed to be better and would allow me to use “blogging software” to update the blog without actually going to the blog and also allow me to use “rss” to check the other blogs i read. of course, i don’t know how to do this nor do i even know what “rss” is so it appears that i will be stuck with bblog and reading the other blogs manually.

it’s sad that i really used to be a sort of computer geek (my dad and brother have always been bigger geeks than me – and bigger computer geeks too!).