The Econmics of GOD

I preached this a couple of Sunday's ago.
GOD'S economics are not our economics...
The economics of the good ole USA are in the toilet right now. We are seeing bailouts from the government for the banking, financial and the auto industries. We are seeing others lining up to get their handout as well.
I started looking at the economics of GOD, GOD does not do financial bailouts. He does bless us but he will not bail us out when we just show up with out bad money management and demand his help.
GOD will allow us to go through times where we are financially challenged because of our own bad decisions. When we make bad decisions, we have to pay the price or we won't learn out lesson.

I just wonder what we are teaching these that are responsible for the well beings of their companies, are we teaching them to manage their resources or are we teaching them that no matter what they do, someone will be there to bail them out?

Christmas

Wow, Christmas is almost here... I love Christmas except for...
the shopping lines.
the mall traffic.
the holiday music that starts in June.
the Christmas displays that go up on Easter.
the insistent commercials that I give my wife a Lexus as a gift or I am a schmuck.
the reruns of "A Christmas Story", "A Wonderful Life", and "Rudolph".
People running around with Elf hats on.
Christmas sweaters with stockings and ornaments on them.
cold weather.
shedding trees.
getting all the Christmas stuff out.
putting all the Christmas stuff up.

But I love...
spending time with Family and friends celebrating the birth of a Savior!

Hard things...

You know why does life have to be so hard sometimes? Why can't everything go the way that we would like it. As a church we have had to make some hard decisions and it doesn't always set well with a lot of people. As administrators we make decisions that affect not just ourselves but those around us. As people we make decisions that affect our day to day activities. Oh how I wish I could be wise like Soloman. Sometimes I feel like I have no business making decisions that really impact peoples lives. But then I realize that EVERY decision we make affects others around us. If we decide to be arrogant and rude, well we can put people around us in a bad mood. If we decide to be deceitful and pridefull we can cause people to loose hope. If we decide to be happy and joyful we can light up a room. So when it is so easy to see what we need to do, why don't we always do it?

Speaking of eating...

Man I am good. I know, that is so vain of me. But I made some pancakes this morning and then made cheese omelets for everyone in the house. I used a little bit of the pancake batter mixed in with the eggs, ala IHOP and they turned out great!!
There was nothing left when everyone got done!!
You know there are times when you go to cooking that you get to see the look on peoples faces and you feel all warm inside...

You are what you eat...

I was remembering my childhood the other day and how I hated some vegetables that my Mom wanted me to eat. It was not an option not to eat them, you had to set there till you did, that was how it was. I remember that slogan, "you are what you eat" and I thought of that today. We all know that fast food is not the healthiest thing for you. So if we are eating fast food all the time we are going to have problems. This country has a serious issue with overindulgence. You see we just can't help ourselves. We consume, consume and consume until we find ourselves in a real health problem. Now I am guilty as most, eating healthy that is, but there is another real problem that we have in this country and it is a perfect analogy of overeating.

Just as what we put into our mouths affects our cholesteral, our blood pressure and our waist lines. What we allow into our lives affects us even more. It seems that everywhere you look their is something on TV, in a magazine or online that we really should not allow into our lives if we don't want to have trouble. Not every housewife is a "desperate housewife", I have lived lots of place and never have I been in a neighborhood like that. Now I have never watched the show but I can tell you all the characters, what issues they are dealing with and what is going on just from the commercials that saturate my other programming. Turn over to some other station and you will find that every teenager is sexually active, which makes the young person who is not wonder why everyone else is. Go online and find some provocative picture that has been touched up to the point that the person on the screen is not real, and we have unrealistic expectations from the opposite sex and how they should look and behave. Take a look at the political situation swirling around Illinois with their governor being brought up on charges, so we hear all of the negatives and we decide that everyone is that way in politics. You see what we take in everntually becomes part of our lives. If you are watching violence, I think you are going to be prone to become violent. If you are consumed with things on TV, they will affect the way you view those around you.
We all need to go on a diet, and not just from the Big Mac...

Three Gifts...

The gifts given by the Wise Men, got me to thinking about a few things.

First, we always believe that there were three men. But I really believe that there must have been more than three. First figure that these guys traveled probably around 500 miles across the desert. They must have had at least part of an army to protect them on their journey especially when I bring up point two. So it wasn't just three dudes on camels who came to worship the Christ Child, but probably a party of 500 or more who came to worship him.

Second, we always see the figures of the nativity clutching a small chest as a gift. Can I tell you no man in his right mind would bring a small gift to an earthly king let alone the King of Kings. If you brought a gift to a king, and the king deemed it unimportant, he would have you thrown out on your ear or worse. I believe that these men brought more than a small chest of gold, frankenscense and mrryh. I believe that they brought a vast quantity of precious gifts to the Christ Child. The KJV version called them "treasures", now I think that three pounds of gold to be a good thing. And at todays rate, three pounds of gold would be worth $43,000.00. Now if you found three pounds of gold in a shipwreck, would it be called a treasure? I don't think so, treasure is used when the amount of wealth is exceedingly great. The last sunken treasure ship yielded an estimated $500 million dollars worth of treasure. Now that is what I call a treasure.

So when you see the three wise men, think on these points, that there were more than three who risked their lifes and fortunes to come and worship the Christ, and they brought "treasures" with them as a gift to the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

The inevitable...

yep, tax season is coming. Nah, I really haven't been thinking of taxes but of the other inevitable. You know the end of life as we know it. Now I believe that we just did not end up here on this earth by some random coincidence. I read this week about scientist that believe that some organic matter might have hitched a ride to earth on an asteroid and deposited the puzzle pieces of life here. Now I saw a few space movies and doesn't there tend to be a little heat when you enter the atmosphere, and would that not burn up the organic material? Well they are still thinking on that aspect.
So with that said I do believe that we are more than just a physical being. Yeah, I believe that we have a soul and as I do not believe in re-incarnation as I have never thought I was someone famous. All people who believe in re-incarnation never were some nobody in a past life, they were always a King or a Queen or someone famous, I would have been a baker or something silly. Anyway; I believe that when this physical body ceases to work that our soul is released from this vessel of flesh, and escape pod for you Star Wars geeks. Now the Bible tells us to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. That is way cool. We don't have to wait for a trumpet to sound, (unless we are still alive) and we don't have to sleep within the earth but we get to be with the Lord immediately.
So I started to think of those that are left behind. What will it be like to be in heaven and know that there are others that are still here on earth? Then I read the passage, that to GOD a thousand years is a day. So being the math geek that I am, I did some figurin'. 1000 years = 24 hours - so putting a little algebra to it, we can get that for every hour in GT (GOD time) would amount to 41.66666666666666 YEARS in our time. So lets say I die at 40, my wife is 40 as well and she live to be 81 (40+41.6666666=81.66666) I will have beaten her to heaven by ONE hour GT. So about the same amount of time it takes her to get ready when we go out I will have beaten her to heaven by. Barely enought time to steal some closet space before she gets there. Look at my kids who are still relatively young. If they live to be around 80 I will have beaten them to heaven by TWO hours. Yep about the amount of time it takes them to wash the dishes as they argue who is going to wash and dry (actual dish time is 30 minutes with an hour and a half of arguing time).
So when we look at life, it is as the Bible says; a vapor... at least in GOD time...

Brrrr part deux (that is 2 for those non French!!)

Well it is quite cold in Chicago as well. High today was 14, that was without the wind chill and well Chicago is not called the "Windy City" for nothing. It was icey, snowy and just plain "yuck" all day.
Enjoying some relaxing time working with me and the wifey, will get to fly home tomorrow and check out the football games and talk about feces, obnoxious bodily functions, and funny embarrassing stories with the "after hours" gang. Good times good times!!!

Brrrr.

First snowfall of the year. It has suddenly gotten cold in MidWest. Isn't is amazing the weather patterns we have here. It was around 60 on Thanksgiving day, then it was around 45 on Friday, then in the mid 30's on Saturday and then it snowed on Sunday, is going to be in the low 40's today and then in the mid 60's tomorrow. Wow what a week, it is like living in Lake Tahoe, where you can golf in the morning, ski in the afternoon and go for a swim late afternoon. Crazy...kind of like that "Day after Tomorrow" movie, everyone around here is looking like this.