Suffice it to say...

that there is a post for today, but it got filed under, "Better left unpublished".

Remembrance

We may not be able to remember with our minds, but we all must remember with our hearts today.

This day reminds us of hope and sacrifice, of joy and loss.

I can't think straight let alone post

I've got an abscess. Great fun stuff. No posting today, nothing at all interesting at least. Let this just be a cry for prayer for relief from this aching face. I'm used to the people on the other side of my facing getting all the pain...

Happy Birthday, Mr. Graham

90 years young today.



Billy Graham

from the album "Outdoor Elvis"
Words and Music by Camarillo Eddy
©1989 Broken Songs

i don't know about those other guys
there's somethin' in the back of their eyes
but billy, you're the man
who don't use slight of hand
ain't wearin' no disguise
i love you, billy

i love the simple things you say
and you never seem to get in the way
no one is quite like you
compassionate and true
"just as i am", i say
i love you, billy

Death and other enemies

I've been surrounded by death lately.

Makes me want to spit, spit out things I shouldn't say. It makes me want to despise God and or what He is doing. Just this week a ten year old boy and his younger brother lost their dad. Yesterday, a family finds out that their fifteen year old will not be coming home, his body discovered in a field not far from our house.

My first instinct is to scream out "WHY"? I was pointed to Psalm 17 this week though, and realized that David says the same thing. But he doesn't stop there.
He rants, he wails, but he also grabs onto the reality of God's goodness.

Oh God, you are my God, and I will ever praise you. Even when its so dark. And its hard to focus when you're staring at the dark.

The Shack, part 4

The Shack's number one redeeming quality, along with its intriguing story, is that when you are done, you know God loves you. See, what I didn't like in the book, the knocks on the Scripture and heaven, and the humanizing of God, I blame all that on the author. What was good, I believe, brings glory to God. As a writer who could ask for more? Let God be God and every man a liar.

God is working good through evil. Hope.

God gives us thing we need hether we deserve it or not. Grace.

"I'm especially fond of that one." Love.

"I never get tired of looking at that." Wonder.

Here are just four beautiful things in The Shack.

Here ends my ideas. Up next, Velvet Elvis.

President Obama

I sure hope all you fear-mongers aren't right. I sure hope that America doesn't become a Muslim dictatorship. I sure hope that now that Dr MLK Jr.'s dream has come true we don't see the Confederate flag flying in the new Republic of Deep South. I sure hope that the terrorists don't take over the White House. I mean, just tonight I heard that there were hidden secret things happening behind the scenes so that the Democrats would get in and Obama, who is really a Muslim, dontcha know, would get in and kill even more babies...

Okay, we all know that there is more to these elections than meets the eye, but do we have to resort to all this stuff? Do we all know the real behind the scenes stuff? Isn't there a reason it happens behind the scenes? How can we make wild rash statements and expect people to take us seriously. If you don't like President Obama, vote him out next time... if there is still a democracy by then...

Sugar or Vinegar?

Having just been to a seminar where one presenter lambasted everyone and everything outside his ideals, and read another blog where, to score points, the writer’s sarcasm moved from clever to spiteful, I read Sunday afternoon this interesting point about an absolute favourite of mine. If you haven’t tried to read Chesterton, please do. You can go online, right now and find his stuff out there to read.



P.J. Kavanagh
The Bodley Head G.K. Chesterton 1985
pg xxiii.



“But what is most remarkable about Chesterton, considering what a battler he was, is not his enmity but his lack of it. It is astonishing how few enemies he made, if he made any. It was always to be seen that it was the idea he hated, not the man. The man he enjoyed; and if he could, liked. The more one reads Chesterton, and thinks about him, the more it becomes clear, quite apart from his views, how extraordinarily ‘Christian’ he was, in the everyday use of that word. He approaches most people’s idea of a good man. His brother made many enemies, so did Belloc, who gloried in doing so: “There is something sundering about Hilary’s quarrels,” Chesterton was heard to murmur, sadly. His were not like that. Indeed, Belloc regarded this as a weakness in him, and was wrong, because Chesterton’s lack of interest in drawing an individual’s blood on particular issues keeps the issues clearer, makes them remain of interest to us.
Those he argued with remained his friends. H.G. Wells hearing after his death of some secret kindness Chesterton had done him, said he was not surprised: ‘I have never known a man so steadily true to form as GKC.’ People who worked for him loved him, and stayed…”


Why can't we be more like that bird?


I’ve still got a couple of other thoughts on The Shack coming too…

Yule never guess what we did today...

November 14th is traditionally our first day of Christmas.


Today being the 1st... well, lets just say we got out Bing, Kenny and Dolly, Oak Ridge Boys, Vanessa Williams, even a new Johnny Cash... that's right, the Christmas music came out. The inlaws Christmas tree is now up.


Before you label us as crazy, they are heading out for a few days and so they thought they'd get it up so it would be up when they got back.

I love Christmas. I'm sure if you look here you'll see some pictures eventually, but I don't do pictures... not well anyway.