snow

The snow was falling softly to the ground. It drifted lazily down, adding a fresh frosty layer to everything. Out the window she saw a husky walk by on a long leash, looking quite at home in the snow. The person walking behind it was bundled up against the falling snow. They disappeared beyond the view of the window, and everything was still once more, except for the falling snow. She noticed how flakes would come close to the window in the corner by the building wall, looking almost as if they had gotten lost and drifted there quite by accident. Then the flakes got smaller again, and she turned back from the window to the scenes in front of her.

practice

She walked quickly down the sidewalk, hoping this counted as exercise. Sometimes walking was good for thinking, but she did not really feel like thinking this evening. It was almost as if she had too much to think about. It was a cool summer evening, normal for this part of the country. The flowers were lovely, the grass and trees were green, and she thought briefly of the heat and drought back home. The pavement here was still wet from the earlier rain showers, and she could still catch the scent of rain in the air. As she rounded a corner she caught the sunset through the trees. It was the usual glowing pinks; pretty, but not the brilliance she could often see back home. She wanted to go home, but the time was not right yet. She ducked some low hanging branches and rounded another corner. More flowers, and a bird that did not look familiar in the growing twilight. She imagined it looked at her for a moment, sharing the moment with her. She kept walking, around the last corner. She saw a young man who was meandering rather aimlessly down the sidewalk toward her. In the world now, passing any stranger at odd hours heightened her senses. She smiled briefly at him as she passed, and was surprised by the smile he returned. It was brighter than she had anticipated, and there was something about it that seemed to light up his face for the brief moment it took her to pass him. Surely malintentioned men did not smile like that. People were a mystery, and fascinating. All their lives, intricately balanced and woven, meeting one another briefly or at length, all moving this way and that but ultimately toward the same destination. People were fascinating. She reached the door, unlocked it, and headed inside.

Luther and Christ crucified

 The heart of Luther’s understanding of Christ crucified is Christ our Redeemer, who “brought us back from the devil to God, from death to life, from sin to righteousness” (Large Catechism, 434) and maintains us in this. Christ is the heart of it, and without Christ nothing would be accomplished because we can do nothing apart from Christ.

Christ took ourselves upon himself when he took on human flesh, and in that incarnation and our union with Christ through faith we are given his righteousness and he takes our sin. Luther called this Christ wearing our mask. “Therefore when, inside our mask, He was carrying the sin of the whole world, He was captured, He suffered, He was crucified, He died; and for us He became a curse. But because He was a divine and eternal Person, it was impossible for death to hold Him. Therefore He arose from death on the third day, and now He lives eternally; nor can sin, death, and our mask be found in Him any longer; but there is sheer righteousness, life, and eternal blessing” (Galatians commentary, 6). This is called the happy exchange or the fortunate exchange. Christ takes all our death and sinfulness and gives us his righteousness and life. Luther likens this to a marriage, saying that when Christians are united to the bridegroom, Christ, as his bride, what was his is ours and what was ours is his, and he has conquered our sin (Freedom of a Christian, 4). Christ had mercy on us in our distress and in our sin, had mercy on us, and was crucified, died, and raised for us. Christ could take us on because of his divinity, and because of his humanity we could share in his conquering of sin, death, and the devil. Those things no longer have the final word, because Christ has overcome them. Luther says this is the comfort Christ gives us through faith.

In Luther’s Freedom of a Christian he talks about the two natures of humanity, the inner man and the outer man. The inner man is who receives the righteousness of Christ through faith after he realizes he is sinful and needs Christ and then believes in Christ. The state of the inner man determines the actions of the outer man, and this is where good works are involved. Just as a tree is known by its fruit, so is a man by his works. Luther gives an example: “A bishop, when he consecrates a church, confirms children, or performs some other duty belonging to his office, is not made a bishop by these works. Indeed, if he had not first been made a bishop, none of these works would be valid. They would be foolish, childish, and farcical. So the Christian who is consecrated by his faith does good works, but the works do not make him holier or more Christian” (Freedom, 7). Because a Christian is justified by Christ, because Christ has traded his holiness for our sinfulness and conquered sin, death, and the devil so that we might have life and righteousness, we do good works because they flow from the depths of our redemption and our new holiness we have received.

Thus Christ crucified and raised for us is the heart of everything. We trust Christ for our redemption and salvation and we receive faith to hold us in these promises and this new life that has been wrought through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

taking up the cross?

In one of my classes we had to write a paper about who Jesus is. As I was reading the textbooks and my classmate’s papers, I noticed there is much talk of discipleship requiring us to take up our crosses and to take up this mantle of self-sacrificing servanthood. In reflecting on this most recently, it has occurred to me that this seems to presuppose a lack of suffering before taking up the cross. If the call to discipleship means taking this up, we must not have already been carrying it. However, Jesus does not say these things to the people out of whom he casts out demons or to the sick that he heals. He tells them to proclaim what God has done for them, or to go their way and sin no more, etc. He speaks it while teaching, he speaks it to the rich, he speaks it to those who ask about it, but the healing is a different matter. Is that because these people already carry crosses, have already been crucified by their infirmities? They have already been sacrificed on the altar of social and religious norms and paradigms, broken by the weight of these burdens. Is there a message in this for today? Should we consider that some are already so broken by life that preaching a call for discipleship like this is not good news, but infirmity upon infirmity? They need to be healed first, and discipleship can follow.

Jesus is Stalking You

This is my article published in the Feb. 16, 2011 edition of Luther Seminary's Concord (Vol. 40, Issue 5).

Moral deliberation is something we do all the time, whether we realize it or not, so I was glad to see that as the topic for this year’s Mid-Winter Convocation. I was also glad to hear, in several different lectures, the speakers say the Bible does not function primarily as our Christian moral compass. I think it a disservice to the Bible to simplify its purpose like that. As Willimon pointed out, we proclaim Jesus the Christ before we proclaim moral and ethical declaration, and the purpose of preaching is to put Jesus among the people. It is God’s work above ours, so we do our part by getting Jesus out there, and then let him take over and finish the job.

It is the age old question of why we preach, and what ministry is for. Are we raising up good citizens, or children of God? Not that we cannot or should not be both, but sometimes we get the order reversed. As good Lutherans we know that works do not save us, and through Christ we are God’s before we are good.

Not that moral and ethical deliberation should be laid aside: we still believe we Christians are morally and ethically bound, and the Bible can inform that. The many workshops dealt with those sorts of issues, and how we work with one another when we do not agree on moral and ethical interpretations of Biblical passages. I think we are all too human to ever come to agreements about everything, but as Willimon reminded us, God specializes in taking the wrong people and making saints out of them. “It is a miracle, people, please don’t give up!” We are all still dependent on a gracious God to receive the sinner, no matter how good we are (or think we are).

So we come to seminary so we can learn more about moral and ethical deliberation and how many ways we are not as good at it as we might like to think. We have all heard some kind of call, though, and committed two or more years of our lives to this work. Willimon mentioned Matthew 28:18-20, popularly known as the Great Commission. In verse 20, Jesus reminds us, “remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age,” or, as Willimon translates it: “I will stalk you forever.” Willimon said, “to be a preacher means being stalked by the living Christ.” It is only fair to extend that to those of us who will not preach in a pulpit in front of a congregation but will proclaim the Word in other ways in our various callings (though I suspect most of us will formally preach at least once). It was not promised to always be easy, but go forth, dear community members, and do not fear. You are not alone, Jesus is stalking you.

thoughts on John 3:1-21

I am beginning to appreciate the wonders of a lectionary as I try to come up with a Bible passage each week to lead a Bible study over. I lately have started to wonder if I'm running out of Bible. Which is ridiculous, of course, but nevertheless there are passages I never want to touch, and after having done this for a couple of years I wonder how soon I can reuse passages. I usually end up preparing this the afternoon before (shh don't tell), so I settled on John 3:1-21 this week, even though in my old tradition it got a lot of coverage. Apparently Lutherans don't use it nearly so much, although I did find it in both A and B years in the lectionary. Regardless, this time I put out my own thoughts more so than my fairly typical group discussion model, so I wanted to put those here also.

As we get started, I would like to note that while Nicodemus is not present in any of the other gospels, he appears two more times in John, once defending Jesus' right to a trial (and getting some flack for it), and then towards the end when Jesus is crucified Nicodemus goes with Joseph of Arimathea to wrap Jesus body and bury it, and Nicodemus is credited with bringing the myrrh and aloes. So Nicodemus appears to have taken something out of this encounter.
Jesus tells Nicodemus that no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again (or from above) and Nicodemus asks "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?" I have heard a couple of different takes on this. Growing up, the impression was more that Nicodemus was being sort of sarcastic, not honestly asking but just being irksome. I started to wonder if that was really the best understanding, and later found some people who truly thought Nicodemus was confused and asking. Upon my own reflection most recently I thought quite possibly there is a bit of sarcasm, but out of a genuine confusion, not knowing at all what to say to what seems to be such an outrageous statement, and thus relying on mock certainty to maintain some composure.
When Jesus tells Nicodemus one must be born of water and the Spirit, some groups have used that water as argument for requiring baptism for salvation. Others have said that the water is a reference to physical birth, and I would argue more for that understanding, because then that also creates a parallel with the next statement, that what is born of flesh is flesh and what is born of Spirit is spirit.
Then there's this talk about wind and Spirit. For a random tidbit, the Greek word is the same for both, and in other places can mean breath, and Hebrew shares this peculiarity with the word for wind/spirit/breath. In thinking about this section, though, I wondered what it means. Truly, parts of this entire passage here have long been a bit confusing to me, although in some ways I think that is characteristic of the way John's gospel speaks, more so than the synoptics. I don't really think these couple of sentences mean we are going to go through life like tumbleweeds. It made me think, then, of the random people that touch our lives in brief moments. The stranger in the store who helps you when you've dropped some things, or the person you pass on the street who smiles at you when you are having a bad day, etc. We have never seen these people before and won't see them again. Maybe this is one way the Spirit blows through our lives.
In the next two verses Jesus switches to using some plurals, we and you, which makes me think it becomes a bit like Trinity vs humanity. Jesus says, "If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?" What are these earthly things? Laws? Worship? Justice? Since we haven't gotten being human right yet, how can we expect to get all the faith stuff right? Jesus is the only one who's done and seen it all, ascended and descended.
"Just as Moses lifted up the serpent...so must the Son of Man be lifted up." Moses was instructed to build a bronze serpent and put it on a pole after the Israelites got themselves into a spot of trouble with God and serpents were sent throughout the camp to bite them. Anyone who had been bitten and looked at the serpent on the pole would be healed. In this same way Jesus is lifted up on the cross, and if we look to that we can be healed. My study Bible also noted that this reference to 'lifted up' could also include resurrection and ascension, and I like that, because it makes Jesus being 'lifted up' more complete. The serpent Moses lifted up offered a temporary healing from a physical affliction, Jesus being lifted up offers a permanent healing for a spiritual affliction.
Vs. 17 says the Son was not sent to condemn but to save. Jesus was not like the angels sent to check on Sodom and Gomorrah, to see if they were bad enough to be judged, but Jesus was sent to save us regardless of how bad we were.
It is interesting that this passage ends with the bit about evil and darkness vs light and good, because Nicodemus has come to see Jesus at night. Jesus admits at the beginning that he thinks Jesus is a teacher from God, so it seems Nicodemus is looking for the light in the darkness. John's gospel likes metaphors, and light/darkness is a big one. Judgment comes when we do not seek the light but continue in our darkness, for the darkness keeps us captive. So we come to the light, Jesus, and we are freed.

million dollar jeans

I was reading my friend Phil's blog this morning about how we often have a misconception that Jesus, and God, come to us in nice clothes with a clean-shaven appearance. The Scriptures do not support this misconception. Jesus hung out with tax collectors and sinners, people considered 'dirty' by their very natures. Jesus' disciples ate with unwashed hands, so Jesus must have, also, or they would have washed like Jesus.
I think it's good to be reminded of this, and it made me think of my own job. I work as a cashier at Lowe's, so I get to interact with every kind of customer that walks through the doors, and they cover a broad spectrum of people. Some of them come into the store because they have to get things so they can go to work. Some of them come in because they need things to keep up their living spaces. Others come in just because they can, and there are nice, shiny, pretty things they can spend money on. Working in retail is definitely an exercise in studying sociology if you are paying any attention. Most of my favorite customers are the ones coming in because they work in some kind of maintenance or construction and have to buy supplies. These (mostly) guys (with a few women) know me and I know them, some of them I can do their accounts in my sleep, down to phone numbers and PO's. Most of them come in without suits or ties, maybe not dirty but definitely in work clothes (some of them do smell, but that's what happens when you work hard like that). They are nice, friendly, and seem pretty comfortable with who they are even though they probably don't consider themselves anything special. Then I have other customers, contractors and rich people building houses, and some others who come in from local businesses and the local university, who clearly feel they are superior to many of the people around them. They treat me and my coworkers as means to an end, acting as if they think we are clearly less intelligent and less capable than they are. There was a customer one day who was accusing one of my coworkers of ignoring her (except she was on her cell phone and he didn't know she was talking to him) and said that her plane ticket was worth more than a month of his salary. I have other customers, contracters and local big money/big name people who will come in and say 'do you know who I am?' Hate to tell you, but nobody cares, not if that means you are mean and unbearable. You aren't God's gift to creation; that was Jesus, and Jesus certainly wouldn't treat people like that. Another group that I have noticed some degrading treatment from is some of the people that come from the university. Every now and again I get someone from there who is a supervisor of something, or somehow kind of important, and they treat me like I am clearly an idiot because I just work as a cashier, so I must not know anything.
The point, really, of all of this, is that it is important that Jesus hung out with the losers, because that means God didn't forget about us. We don't always know why people are in certain situations, why they dress the way they do, why they might be homeless or out of work, but circumstances do not make a person bad or good. The rain falls on the just and the unjust, and the wind blows where it will, and we cannot make one hair on our head black or grey, so we should probably be a little more reserved in our judgments of others, because we never know when we are going to be judged with the same measure. I mean, look at Jesus.

brokenness

I have been thinking a lot about broken things lately, since my car was hit and had to be repaired. I only got it back a few days ago, and I am noticing, even though it has been repaired and cleaned and polished, it still is not exactly the way it was when it was new. It is not back to the way it was before it was hit. I realize that is the way all things broken are. Nothing that is broken is ever quite the same as before, no matter how good a job the repair was. There will always be a crack, or a quirk, or something that just wasn't there before. Injuries are like that. Serious injuries never heal back to the way they were before. There is always a periodic ache, or some sort of loss of function, or some other imperfection that just is.
Life takes its toll on all of us, leaving us broken or wounded and never quite the same, no matter how much we've healed. We learn to overcome our shortcomings, get around our handicaps, but after we've lived a while we're going to have some scars and reminders of the pain. Little things that never quite work the same, proof that we've lived.
Thankfully, our redemption is not about fixing what is broken but trading old for new. If grace was about fixing what was broken we'd still be not quite right, still wishing maybe we could go back to when everything worked. Instead, we are promised new life, new creation, the old will pass away and the new will take its place. We groan with the whole creation to be clothed in new life, and help each other along in our brokenness until our cracks and scars can be transformed into new life. Amen.

are we still doing this?

I just got yet another feel-good, warmfuzzy chain email. Some sappy story about helping the needy. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for helping the needy, being God to others, smiling when someone needs a smile. That part is great. When I have to keep scrolling to make a wish and pass it on to 22 people for my wish to come true the next day, that's where I get cynical. We just had this lovely story about how God works through people, then in the same pretty font it says if you don't pass it on you have no friends and thus basically are a bad person. I'm sorry, I don't recall God ever promising magic tricks and the granting of wishes for doing a good deed, much less passing on an email that probably has half a grain of truth to it. If some of us spent as much time and care actually doing nice things for people rather than forwarding chain emails, the world might half resemble the stories in those emails.
In James (2:15-16 NASB) it says, "If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,' and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that?"
Maybe inserting Scripture is a bit much. Or maybe, rather than cluttering people's inboxes with conditional words of cheer and good news, we could go out and actually do some of these things, which is much more profitable for all of us. At least, if you have a really good story to share, don't end it with making a wish and requiring it be passed on or 'you aren't really my friend'.

what's wrong with the world

I was just watching "What Would You Do?" that is an ABC program, and this particular episode was about seeing something happen and not doing anything about it, using a hidden camera and actors to watch how people react (or don't) to something happening. First they use this well dressed attractive younger female actor, who pretends to collapse while walking down the street in Newark (NJ). They said she never waited more than about 6 seconds for someone to stop and help and call 911. Then they decided to see what would happen if they picked a less attractive, homeless man. This time, it took much longer for him to get help: 3 minutes. Then they added a beer can. This time, they counted 88 people walking by before a woman with a cane (who they tell us is sometimes homeless herself) stops and asks passersby to call an ambulance for the man. She keeps at it until finally a woman does stop, and somewhat reluctantly it seems, makes the call. Then, when the cameras come out and start interviewing people, the woman with the cane just quietly walks off while other people stand around to talk to the cameras.
I was touched by this (enough to blog about it!) and disturbed. I was especially affected as the woman with the cane stands there, keeping an eye on the man (who was an actor, but she didn't know that) and never stopping to ask for help for him, b/c she did not have the means to give it herself, no phone, etc. Then she gives him a name, Billy, and keeps up with him after she gets the one woman's attention, and some other people finally stop to help. The pain in the woman's face as she asks people to help the man and gets ignored was painful for me to watch.
This show made me wonder how much it would affect other viewers, and also made me wonder about the world. Why is it that we have to be like this? Most people just do not expend that much energy on caring for and about other people, not in a deep way, and it hurts me to know that, but also that I am limited on what I can do. I also understand and experience the fears associated with this, and how that fear can keep one from doing what one knows is right. However, I guess if people can see this, and take it to heart, and if we can see that the world is not totally lost, that there are still people in it who care, maybe we can have courage to care too.

Did you know...

...we still have dinosaurs? Or maybe I'm reading that wrong. I guess so. My oatmeal asks "Does the term 'dinosaur' apply to all animals living from 230 million to 65 million years ago?" and answers, "No. In fact, some of the animlas living then, like cock roaches, sharks, and crocodiles are alive today." No, my oatmeal was not talking to me, this is written on the package. The other package tells me dinosaur teeth tell us whether the dinosaur ate meat, plants, or both. That I learned in school. I would like to point out, though, that this oatmeal told me this stuff back when I was a kid, which was like 12-15 years ago (which makes me feel really old, but anyway). I feel like the oatmeal had more trivia though, these always say the same thing, and have parts of other trivia on the sides that are cut off, but they all look like that, so I wonder who gets the rest of it. I also must say that I'm not surprised cockroaches knew the dinosaurs...some of them are probably the same roaches! That's also why they'll survive the Apocalypse (see a few posts previous). I just thought you might like to know. What did you learn from YOUR breakfast?

six plus eight equals insanity...

I had not really noticed the whole story about this woman from California named Nadya Suleman who recently had octuplets until tonight when I saw the story on the news on NBC's Dateline. I thought it was just another one of those stories about the woman wanted kids, and accidentally ended up with a few extra due to IVF. No. This one leads me to blog, and that does not happen often. I found the latest article from Yahoo! News after seeing the story on Dateline, so here's what I have to say. In fact, I'm just going to copy the article in here and insert my commentary.


LOS ANGELES – The Southern California mother of octuplets who already had six other children says she's done having babies. -Well, that's a relief. Good idea.
In an NBC "Dateline" interview aired Tuesday night, 33-year-old Nadya Suleman says the octuplets were a sign from God that she should stop having children. -sign from God? forget signs, most sane people would've stopped before six. and this eight was not really an accident in the first place, either.
Suleman also says she dreams of going back to her old life, before she had the octuplets on Jan. 26 and endured a firestorm of criticism and media frenzy. -sorry, maybe she should have thought about that before she put so many embryos in her body at one time.
Divorced and unemployed, Suleman told anchor Ann Curry that she still intends to go back to school and finish her master's degree. -I'm so glad she has solid plans for caring for all these 'creations' of hers. Children are NOT pets, NOT toys, NOT some fun experiment! They are PEOPLE!
Suleman says she'll support her children with student loans until she can find a job as a counselor after graduating in a year or two. -She wants to BE a counselor? I think she NEEDS one! What form of sanity justifies what she has done? How can she be capable of guiding others when she seems incapable of making decisions that will affect someone besides herself?

Another article says Suleman used IVF from the same clinic for all fourteen of her children. There is also an investigation about what they call a "violation of the standard of care" which involves the number of embryos normally implanted in a woman her age, and I am no physician and do not understand all the things here, but in some ways this legal slight is less important to me than what Suleman has done. I wonder if she ever stopped to consider the true possibilities. Did she consider her other children? The Dateline show I saw interviewed her other children, and all of the ones old enough to speak voiced concerns about having enough room in the house, about not wanting that many babies, how it would be crowded and noisy, and not to mention they suddenly must share half the time they already would get from their mother with all the new siblings. Then there's the fact that one of the children is already autistic, and because the octuplets were born so early (as happens with this many babies) there is a good chance at least one will have cerebral palsy, maybe more. I wonder if Suleman has ever seen a child with cerebral palsy? How can you know that risk, the many risks of this, and still decide to try it just so you don't waste some extra embryos? How can you imagine that being a single mother with fourteen children and no job is a good situation or scenario to raise those children in? Being a single mother with no job is a difficult situation to raise one child, much less fourteen. Did she ever stop to think about the ramifications for those children's physical and emotional needs? Food, insurance, all the things they'll need going to school and growing up? Did she forget they are people, that they need love, nurture, encouragement, so they can grow to be positive influences in the world? Did she consider how they might feel if she did this? Who was she thinking about when she said sure lets not waste embryos, throw 'em all in! Then she says she wants to be a counselor. I cannot fathom that. Far be it from me to judge, I do not know this woman and where she is from, but it looks like a selfish move to me, looks like maybe she could only think that she could find love from children because if they were hers they would have to love her, which is something that happens a lot in teenage pregnancies, or maybe she just wanted to be sensational.

I guess I really don't know what is going on here, but I am disturbed by the story and how the mother seems to consider it some fun game, presents herself to the media as not taking this seriously or having not taken this seriously, not considered the ramifications of her actions, and I believe we have the right to do harm to ourselves and make stupid decisions, but when we fail to consider the grave impacts we make on others with our stupidity and lack of thinking, when we forget to consider that even children are people too, there I think we have made a serious mistake.

surviving the Apocalypse

Have you seen Wall-e? I think it's a cute movie, and I love how he has a pet roach and feeds it Twinkies, in what is effectively a ruined Earth. So, after discussing my old marshmallows with my roommate, I have decided I should make a list of things that would survive the Apocalypse. If you aren't on the list, you probably won't make it, and thus stocking up on these things would be a rather moot point, but one never knows, and as they say, luck favors the prepared. Here goes:
Twinkies (I would imagine it might be possible, if one ate enough Twinkies, to survive the apocalypse by absorbing all those preservatives. if you didn't get sick first)
Marshmallows. They don't mold, they simply get less fluffy. I am beginning to wonder if one wouldn't be able to build a dwelling out of marshmallows, because they don't even melt well anymore once they get old, and they might even be a nice insulator...
Spam. That's all I've got on that one. It's spam.
Corn tortillas. I didn't know this before, but corn tortillas are a sort of miracle food. I don't know, maybe they have as many preservatives as a Twinkie (at least the ones from HEB), but we have some from who knows when, and they are still good as ever. They seem to never actually get bad. Who knew?
Roaches. Gross, I really can't stand them, but they are also notoriously difficult to kill, no matter how many times you kill them.
Ok, well I'm sufficiently distracted and can't come up with any more, feel free to comment with some if you think of anything else.

politics

In case you missed it, we just had a presidential election. Apparently that isn't as obvious as I would have thought, because my roommate, who works at the local radio station, got a phone call asking who our new governor was, and upon explaining this was not a gubernatorial race, he asked what he had voted for.
Yesterday, while I was at work, (I had been waiting for this kind of thing all day, and was surprised it took til after noon) I had a customer ask me what I thought of the election. I never really know what to say about these kinds of issues, so I said it was interesting, and either way it was going to be a change, and she said 'oh it'll be a change alright.' Then she said she wondered if Michelle Obama was going to redecorate. I was a little taken aback, and almost laughed. Of all things, to be concerned if the White House was going to be redecorated?? I have been intrigued by reading people's facebook statuses and otherwise hearing random comments from people, some enthralled with this outcome and others ready to pack up and leave the country. Some of my favorite has been the end of the world predictors. We have a presidential election every 4 years, and it has yet to precipitate the end of the world. I will grant that some leaders have taken over countries and bad things have happened, but I don't know that we are in that bad a situation. Maybe if we could all just take a little step back and not rush to the end of the world, it would really not be quite so bad as all that. Although I guess if we really are headed to the end of the world, well, bring it.

Today's OTHER Holidays

Today is traditionally Halloween in this part of the world, but it is also Reformation Day and Día de los Muertos. I wore red today for Reformation Day, and mentioned both holidays to a few people, mostly to odd/skeptical looks. Most people seem to be content with the dressing up and partying for Halloween. I am glad for the other two options of the day, however, because I long ago lost much interest in holidays because they didn't seem to have lot of meaning, and I like these two options because they do. I appreciate celebrating the souls of those who have gone before us, and I appreciate remembering the day that Luther began his challenge of the church. Both are, to me, more like what holidays should be, commemorating something important in our lives and histories. May we celebrate our lives as we remember those who are no longer living in this world with us, and may we embrace our theology and church as we work to make the world a better place and live in God's grace and mercy. Amen.

Acts of God...

I was looking this morning at the booklet that came about the new Worker's Comp stuff we'll have at work (I was supposed to go to the meeting last night but didn't...yea well). I ran across this in there, and felt it was worth noting.
"No benefits will be payable under the plan if: ...the Injury arose out of an act of God, unless your employment exposes you to a greater risk of injury from an act of God than ordinarily applies to the general public..."
Now, aside from the fact that I find this outright humorous, I also feel there are some deeper ironies. First, I find it interesting that we are very hesitant these days to speak of God in general, yet in these legal type documents any natural disaster type stuff is often called an 'act of God'. That in itself bothers me a bit, because it then seems to imply that God often and maybe only acts in ways that injure and destroy, which I would quite disagree with. Second, it does not, at least not here, define an 'act of God', so I would say then that they most certainly will not cover you if you happen to incur God's wrath and receive a lightning strike. Although, I wonder if one could argue higher risk for injury from an act of God by working customer service and being more likely to incur the wrath of a customer who has the power to call down an act of God... Clearly appealing for compensation under the premise of being cursed won't work either.
I really just find it rather ridiculous that this terminology is used at all. It was obviously not written by anyone with half a theological inclination, because that would leave all sorts of openings for dispute. I could argue that my employment exposes me to greater risk of injury from an act of God because this is not where God would have me and I am not compliant with God's will. Basically, the whole things just makes me laugh and shake my head and wonder a little.

Jesus vs social justice

I was reading the note from the editor in this November's issue of The Lutheran, and towards the end it quotes a letter from a reader who had decided to let his subscription run out because he thinks "many of the people writing for The Lutheran try to tie diversity and social justice issues to the ministry of Jesus and in doing so misinterpret the Bible." I just wonder, after reading that, what this person thinks the ministry of Jesus was about? I am almost afraid to guess. Why does this person think Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners? Is that not related to social justice? Jesus related to Samaritans, and that is not related to diversity? I don't think God really plays favorites with God's children. I think our human understandings limit our ability to appreciate the diversity of this world, but if God created all of us, why would God not love all of us and want all of us? God sent Jesus to redeem the world, and while we have royally screwed up this world, I don't think that means God has been limited in God's power to redeem. I think people have done many great injustices to other people. We are all human, all equal. All broken, needy, suffering, just trying to figure out how to live with what we have. I do not understand how some can be so cruel and lord over others. Well, I feel like I'm rambling a little, but I just want to point this out, and raise awareness, and ask you to think about this.

always secure your valuables...

>>Injured Driver Wasn't Buckled Up, But 12-Pack Was

(Citrus Heights, CA) -- Police in Citrus Heights, California, arrived at the scene of a car crash Sunday night to find the injured driver still in the driver's seat, without a seat belt. But the 12-pack of beer next to him had been securely buckled up. The suspected drunk driver was taken to a hospital with serious head and bodily injuries after he lost control of his car and slammed into a tree. The beer was reportedly uninjured.


As long as we've got our priorities straight....

what a gift!

This was on the Chicken Express sign in Seguin the other night when my roommate and I went there to eat. I must say, that is quite an amazing gift card they have available there. If you need gift ideas for the future or a very belated Christmas, I think this may be an excellent solution. Hmm, sounds a bit like a modern day indulgence....

quotes from philosophy

Here are the notable quotes I got from my intro to philosophy class this past semester. All but the one noted are from the professor. I should probably note that the meaning of the word philosophy is "love of wisdom."

"They're instituting things in public schools because children are overweight...I wonder if they'll call it 'no child left with a behind'?"

"It's October... Do you know where your parents are?" (??)

"Then the big essay. What's it going to be over? Probably something major."

"Assignments coming in late will be graded with prejudice."

"Did you write in red pen?" (peer to peer after seeing the one's unsatisfactory test grade)

"Hugging a tree is a good thing to do every once in a while. It's like hugging your great grandfather."

"Read Meditation II for God's sake... or your own sake."