Children

I have a couple children. I love them quite a bit. I try to reason with them all the time just because that is what I do. In my world things are supposed to make sense. So I try to explain that to them and I expect them to right away see that daddy knows what he is talking about, what he is asking of me is quite reasonable, I don't see why I didn't see it from his perspective right from the beginning. Yeah right...  I don't suppose I have gotten that reaction from them yet, but they're 4 years old so maybe I am expecting a bit too much from them.

I am often surprised though how many adults can't see reason either. They also respond like children. Tit for tat. You did this to me so I'm not talking to you any more until you say sorry. I'm not saying sorry first - it's your fault, you say sorry first. I'm gonna block you from my Facebook account. You hurt my feelings, now I'm gonna be mad at you.

Children.

I have a situation with my extended family right now where exactly this is happening. There is some sort of a perceived slight and then all of a sudden the bottom lip starts to stick out and it is all about me and my feelings and how could you do this to me, now I'm not talking to you any more. Grow up people! And I have to say, it's kind of funny for me to say this since these people are all my elders LOL.

I had an issue that came up between my cousin and I a couple years back. We definitely saw the issue from opposing sides and we had quite a falling out about it. The issue involved several thousand dollars so it was quite serious for both of us. We don't live near each other and we rarely see each other so that could have spelled the end of that relationship and we could have just written each other off completely. No big loss right? Just some very infrequent awkward moments at family gatherings right? No, not right!

I would then be living with that in my heart. I would have poison in my heart! Yes, poison! How can you be whole when you have a section of your heart that is black with poison? God speaks to this in Matthew 5:23-24. He is not interested in any gift we have for Him if we have got a feud going on with our brother (or sister or parent or child or friend or co-worker or......). How can we think that we can offer up good things to God on the one hand and deal dirty with people around us on the other hand? Nope. There is a crucial disconnect there.

I want to tell you something that I found interesting. Your motivations for forgiving people can be completely selfish. Stop the Presses! What?!?! Alright let's hear this, I think this might be something that could maybe work for all of us. I know I am as selfish as they come. I believe God wants us to forgive each other out of a spirit of love and compassion for each other, however, let's just explore this other side of the coin for a minute. Do you really want to live your life holding on to your precious pain? Wouldn't it be liberating to let it go? Just for a second imagine what your life would be like if you didn't have to nurture that pain in your heart. You don't need to say the other person was right in order to let go of the pain and the anger. Conversly you don't need to convince the other person that you were right in order to forgive them for the pain their actions caused you.  You don't even need the other person to want to forgive you in order for you to forgive them. See where I'm going with this? Forgiveness is your choice and your choice alone. Nobody can take that away from you. You don't require anything at all from the other person in order to forgive them. You don't even require them to be alive.

Here's the rub - if they are alive, you need to tell them that you forgive them. Crap. It would be a lot easier if we could just forgive the jerks and never talk to them again. Right, it would, and that sentence shows why that just won't work. If we've forgiven them then they can no longer be addressed as "the jerks", and we need to resume relationship with them. If we've forgiven them what reason do we now have to not invite them into our home? Jesus does not call us to "forgive and forget". That is a saying that we made up, not something Jesus asks of us. We are unable to forget. What this means is that we are not required to put ourselves back into a position to be hurt from "the jerks" again, but we do have to stop calling them that and we do need to resume relationship with them.

Guess what? This is a happy ending. My cousin and I contacted each other and worked it out. How did we do that? We both decided that we didn't need to live holding on so tightly to our pain. Our pain was not that precious to us. Our relationship was more precious to us than our pain. We both gave the pain to God, because after all, it belongs to Him. He bought it from us on the cross. This does not mean we are best friends. This does not mean that it does not still hurt for us to see each other. It means that we have forgiven each other for whatever wrongs we percieve were committed against us. We still don't see the issue from the same perspective, but that is not important to us anymore. Now I don't have that weight hanging around my neck and neither does he. My respect for him went through the roof after we worked this out. He is a man who is working to be closer to his Saviour just like me.

However, the situation with my extended family continues. It is sad that these people just want to hold on to their pain. I believe it has become part of them. For them to give it up at this point would be to admit defeat. It would show weakness. That kind of thinking is soooooo flawed. True strength of character is shown in forgiveness. It takes immense strength and it is the path to victory, not defeat.

When I was a young boy my Uncle Dave said something to me I will never forget. I had acted out against him for something or other, I can't remember what it was, and that is not the point of this story. I was standing on the stairs in our house on Neil Avenue in Winnipeg, Uncle Dave was standing at the bottom of the stairs.  I had just apologized to him.  He very graciously said, "It takes a big man to say sorry". So true. I have never forgotten that moment.

My Prayer

Heavenly Father, I give you everything I've got:

My house,

My car,

My children,

My pride,

My reputation,

My time,

My comfort

My job,

My body,

My wife,

My health,

My safety,

Even all my failures.

It is all yours now.

Every praise, every word of worship, is to my God. 

Eulogy to the Incandescent Lightbulb

Before I start the eulogy, let me say this:  Government, you suck for doing this to us.  You’re always wanting to step in and control what we can and can’t do.  Why on earth did you pick on lightbulbs?  If you want to take away our choice in matters of energy efficiency then why not ban Hummers?  Or outlaw single pane windows?  Maybe put the kaibosh on hot-tubs and sports cars.  You randomly chose lightbulbs to be your battleground.  You trenched in and decided this was the issue you were going to die over.  This is ridiculous. 

Oh, one more thing before the eulogy, LED lightbulb manufacturers, you also suck.  Don’t try to tell me you’re not raping us all and getting the government to enforce it.  It is like winter tires – thankfully that is not enforced here in Saskatchewan.  I have nothing against winter tires.  I do have something against a government enforcing the use of winter tires.  I have nothing against LED lightbulbs – I think they’re great.  I also think they cost at least double what they should.  And I do have something agaist the government enforcing the use of LED bulbs (lets face it, CCFL’s suck, what other option do we have now?).

Now for the eulogy:

Incandescent lightbulbs, you sucked, but you were cheap and you represented choice.  For those reasons I will miss you.

Phobias

Arachnophobia: the fear of spiders.

Acrophobia: the fear of heights.

Astraphobia: the fear of thunder and lightning.

Trypanophobia: the fear of injections. 

Homophobia: um... the fear of homosexual people?

Why are we using the word homophobia? It is a new catch word that people are throwing about to mean "not accepting of homosexual folks". Doesn't really make much sense to me. I don't approve of their lifestyle choice. I'm not scared of them.

Psalm 119 - In Praise of the Law

Notice the title of this post is not Psalms 119.  It is only the one Psalm.

I am not going to type it all out here as it is much too long for that.  I just wanted to explain two interesting details of this Psalm that I did not know about before yesterday.

First, do you see those weird headings throughout the Psalm?  They are the letters of the Hebrew alphabet.  א - Aleph, ב - Beth, ג - Gimel, and so on.  There are 22 of them which is why there are 22 sections of 8 verses each in Psalm 119.  Here is the neat part, if you were to read Psalm 119 in Hebrew, each verse starts with the letter indicated.  Obviously this is lost in translation, but you can see that the author was looking to incorporate alliteration in his work.  He is using the entire alphabet to praise the word of God.

Second, every verse (literally, take a look, every single verse has it) points to the word of God.  Various different words are used throughout the Psalm.  Decrees, Precepts, Law, Word, Commands, Statutes, and so on.  I had never noticed this before although it is quite blatant.

Kind of cool to know these two little tidbits right?  Now read Psalm 119.  It becomes more of a poem or song instead of just a long chapter full of words.  It sure would be neat to be able to read the entire book of Psalms in the original languange.

Retirement Planning

Planning for my retirement has been getting more and more important to me the older I get. I've got a few things in place, but one of my primary retirement plans is to keep working as long as I can and not have to dip heavily into any savings until I absolutely have to.

I heard something interesting in Sunday School today. Jesus actually taught about retirement planning.

Luke 12:16-21. The parable of the rich fool:  "The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, 'What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.' Then he said, 'This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I'll say to myself, "You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry."'  "But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?' This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God."

How many of us would respond like this: It is irresponsible to not plan properly for the future - we will just be a burden on others if we don't make sure we take care of ourselves. True. But, God wants us to be taking care of the old, the sick, the orphans and the widows. Maybe he asks this of us because he would rather we all pay more attention to giving our money away now instead of piling it up in our new larger barns for our retirement. But if we don't take care of ourselves we will be just like the birds of the air or the lillies of the field! (Matthew 6:25-34) Yup, that's right.

Makes us kind of scared to think that way right? That's because we're not taking care of the old people in our lives like we should be. Neither are any of our friends or family. That's why we also think we're going to be screwed once we retire unless we save as much as possible for ourselves.

God is likely calling us to do other things with the majority of our money that we are salting away for ourselves.

...But:

We need enough to be able to spend time in our condo in Palm Springs after we retire right?

We need enough to be able to go on our annual winter cruise with our friends right?

We need enough to maintain our standard of living right?

We need enough to...

I mean, we've earned these things!