This morning Grandma Forland asked Evie if she wanted an Egg. To which Evie replied, “Egg, please.”
Then Abby yelled out, “Eggs and buttered toast! Eggs and buttered toast!”
Evie joined in, “Bustoast! Bustoast!”
Evie will probably kill me for sharing this with the interwebs when she gets older and someone says, “Bustoast,” to her.
Abby is five today. Five years ago we were in the hospital and Jessica was in intense labor (at the time of this writing, according to my computer she’ll be five in a few more hours). I can’t believe how much has changed in our lives since Abby was born, but much of that change is in direct relation to our having had Abigail. I remember doing a lot of crying when Abby was born. They were tears of joy and I’m sure they mixed with snot as I whimpered, wept and rejoiced over the new life I was seeing in front of me instead of her wiggling in Jessica’s stomach.
Abby can walk, talk, chew gum, read, imagine and laugh. My mother has often told me that my smile is something she remembers most about me growing up and I can certainly say that Abby’s smile is what lingers in my memories as well. Abby’s laughter and calling me silly, or asking me to tickle her, is something that I will cherish and recall when I hand her off some day to a husband who will hopefully find her to be one tenth as beautiful as I think she is.
Abby is smarter than I think any other children her age are. I’m probably rather biased. I’m rather biased about my daughters and wife, but I think that’s acceptable. [editors note: I’m crying now so I’ll stop. What a pansy guy I am ;)]
Happy Birthday, Abigail Ruth! Your mother and I love you very, very much! I hope five is more wonderful than four.
The audio CD is 25 years old. I remember getting my first CD: Queen’s soundtrack to Highlander. I believe my second CD was Diamond Rio (yes, I bought a country album). After that I don’t remember. I’m glad that I can buy all digital now 🙂
Why on Earth do advertisers demand that commercials have weird, weird, weird implications? The latest maxi-pad (feminine napkin) commercial drives me bonkers! Who decided that they should describe a woman’s body part as a roller coaster? At what point in time does the average woman find herself in a situation where she thinks, “I have got to get a maxi-pad that can handle this Jennifer Garner/Alias type activity. Periods & my daily commute simply don’t mix.”
This sort of thing scares me mostly because I know they’re working on a more extreme commercial with tree chippers and chinchillas. I don’t know how they’ll fit, but its coming.
This morning I asked Abby about a song that I had heard her singing along with on a kids CD. She began to sing it. I joined in at one point and then she stopped and told me that in the recording of the song at times only the kids sang because they knew, “… the anniversaries**.”
** that is verses in case you’re not quite sure what she was trying to say
When you read quotes like this:
I’ve been using Vista on my home laptop since it shipped, and can say with some conviction that nobody should be using it as their primary operating system — it simply has no redeeming merits to overcome the compatibility headaches it causes. Whenever anyone asks, my advice is to stay with Windows XP (and to purchase new systems with XP preinstalled). – Joel Spolsky
Its hard to want to upgrade.
So, in the continuing saga or me against AT&T I went into their store recently (as in Friday evening) and I asked an employee, “I have a weak reception area that I live in, do you know which phone you carry has the best antenna for improved reception?” The perfect answer was given to me, “Do you have friends that have AT&T service? You could invite them over to your house and see who has the best reception.” If I didn’t want one of those blasted iPhones so bad I’d totally jump ship.
It is true that I think that 10% is an awfully small amount of money to do the Lord’s work. On the scale from 0% to 100% you’ll find me racing with a passion to the 100% side of the scale. You see I don’t think that ten percent is enough because of a desire to see people give more to God’s work, but instead I view that all of what the Lord has in your life is His. My friend and brother in Christ, Tony, once called me and told me that, “Someone ran into God’s car.” I chuckled because it was a great way for him to express his understanding that the car, which has monetary value, is God’s. The house that he and his bride are raising their three children in is God’s. Even the three children are God’s. There is no question on his mind that all things are God’s.
This brings us to the question of whether the tithe should be grasped as a New Testament concept. I’ll grant other Christians hold to a reformed view of theology which says that the church is the Old Testament’s Israel brought into a new covenant and therefore the things which aren’t done away with in the New Covenant are still valid for New Testament saints. I disagree with this view as a dispensationalist and I don’t want that to be confused so I’m going to just state it plainly: None of the Old Testament Law is for the New Testament believer. Lets take a look at why the tithe is also not acceptable in the eyes of the New Testament authors.
Pre-New Testament Passages and Thoughts to Consider
Adam never paid a tithe. Not one bit of what Adam had went to a tithe. Adam’s relationship with God was personal and there were no priests to go between he and the Lord. The sacrifices portrayed in the early chapters of Genesis show a relationship with God that clarify a respect for God’s ownership of all things that man worked for (as a result of the fall). By the time of the flood and God’s provision of Noah God still owned everything and even though it was Noah and the other seven on the boat as well as many, many animals they were all God’s. God had brought them all to the boat and when they got off of the boat it was at God’s direction. Noah sacrificed animals to God in recognition of God’s protection and provision for all that God owned. No tithe there. Surely Abraham must have tithed. Nope. There was no tithe in Abraham’s time, just sacrifices of praise and obedience. In fact Abraham had no written Law to observe, he merely had his conscience! There was no tenth offering, he knew God had provided all that he owned.
When the tithe was finally instituted it was for the nation of Israel it was given as a percentage to support the Levites and for the fatherless & the widow. Go ahead and read Deuteronomy 14:22-29. There you will see that the tithe was:
I think that its clear by now that the often cited tithe is not what we often call an offering or tithe by New Testament practices. With that in mind, lets look at what the New Testament shows us.
New Testament Giving Principles
The book of Acts starts out the church age with an amazing display of generosity between believers in acts 2:42-47 being the slightly greater context. Specifically verse 45 says that they began selling things to provide for one another’s needs. That’s not a ten percent offering. Its a whatever percent provision of grace. The recognition that all things were God’s things helped the believers get past any sense of possession that we often face as New Testament saints. From that point forward you’ll find other instances of giving as needed including Romans 12:13 further encouraging the believer to give as other saints have need and to be hospitable (hospitality will need to be a post of its own).
Philippians 4:18-19 covers the use of sacrifice in a New Testament metaphor, but it is merely a reference to the gifts of the New Testament saints being sent to the apostle Paul. It is not encouraging a literal sacrifice of animals or grains as previously used in Old Testament times. Instead verse 19 goes on to outline the fact that God has used the Philippian saints to provide for Paul’s needs. If we look for the application from this passage we see that
None of those things involves a set ten percent or a monetary percentage, but instead comes from the heart of an abiding believer. One who is resting in his or her relationship with Christ in the heavenlies (Col. 3:1-3). Because the saint is aware of the need the saint seeks out a way to fulfill it. This leads me to believe that the church is to focus more on getting to know one another than they are to focus on financial things!
One scenario that I read about just today discussed tithing in the context of debt. Since the debt is a prior obligation it should be noted that the believer should first pay the debt and with whatever is left over seek the Lord’s direction for the money to be given. Debt should be avoided in the life of the believer so that this problem goes away (while this is something I know I am currently attempting to get out of debt. I have walked in the flesh, too, and understand the need to abide in my stewardship of God’s money. Lesson learned). Giving during debt isn’t a required Law, but instead we should see that we have relationships within the body where we can see needs, both financial and physical, and give to those needs rather than believers being put into debt due to lack of resources. In this particular case I would recommend the believer give only what the Lord has provided in excess beyond the needs of paying creditors. Right now I am currently giving less than I would like, but instead of feeling guilt I rejoice that the Lord has given what He has and I look forward to the day when I can give even more to various needs in the body of Christ.
Conclusion
In conclusion the Tithe is an outdated Law that has been done away with and instead the New Testament saint is to focus on relationship and fellowship and looking for ways that the Lord may use them to provide for the needs of others. There is nothing in the New Testament that calls us to support a ten percent giving command, but likewise nothing says not to do it. Giving falls under Christian liberty (See Romans 14 and 15) where we are to give what our conscience feels is right. If that is fifteen, ten or one percent for you, then give what the Lord has put on your heart.
Whatever percentage you give, let it be with a heart of gratitude and thanks! May you give graciously because God graciously gave His mercy and love to you. Don’t tithe out of compliance with the Law, but instead walk in His grace and give as He provides.
Today I got a phone call from AT&T. Well, it was from a computer at AT&T. Or at least I think it was. It could be the nation wire tapping program just doing a routine monitoring of my line pretending to be AT&T. But assuming its AT&T a recording, yes a recording, told me to call AT&T to ask them about my account. It gave me the phone number to call, told me that I should call them about my account, and then gave me the number to call again. Only I had no paper to write things down with so I hung up, tried to dial the number from memory and then got a wrong number message.
A recording! Why is it that they can afford to do any number of things that are called advertising but they fail to offer the customer service experience that would make customers want to do business with them? Can you believe that in a customer service scenario they chose to use an electronic device to 1) irritate me like nothing else and 2) cause me to have to scramble to remember a number and 3) use a recording to communicate ‘an important message’? So I called AT&T’s customer service line that is published on their website and after a little pinball-like action through their automated system I arrived at a customer service rep named Leslie. Leslie was nice and helped me the best she could, she helped me determine that something had shut off my auto-pay plan (which has worked for some time now without a problem). Something had shut it off three months ago. And after accumulating three months worth of bills they were kindly letting me know that, finally, I should pay my bill. Three months! A recording! Agggghhhhhhh!!!!!
I don’t know who is responsible for the numbskullery that is their procedure and policy in dealing with billing snafus but this was a really irritating way to interrupt a Friday. So I’m going to pay my bill and attempt to reset my auto-pay program, but this is just irritating. Thanks for nothing AT&T. A recording!
I happen to have had a very forgiving set of parents. They put up with my playing loud music (live loud music, not just recorded loud music) and they would also put up with my thundering down the stairs when I descended from the second story of the house. As a teenager very few things I did were quiet. They endured it all and never allowed my brother to kill me no matter how much he might have wanted to end my noise at any given moment. One other thing they allowed me to do was to completely cover my walls with memorabilia from events in my life. I had everything up on my walls.
It all started with eight pieces of paper that I drew a face on with chalk. I took those six pieces of paper and made a large rectangle out of them (assuming 8.5″ x 11″ pieces of paper edge-to-edge that’s approximately 34″ x 22″). Then, next to the chalk drawn face things began to be stapled up. I initially wanted a ‘nook’ of focused cluttered above my desk but it didn’t take long before the organism grew to take up much of one long wall. After several years time I had stapled, tacked, taped or nailed pretty much everything onto my wall leaving only small bits of actual wall showing.
Ketchup flavored potato chips my aunt gave me, an engineers cap that had died throughout my junior high years, pictures, receipts, ticket stubs, advertisements, drawing and other assorted things arrayed my walls. People would come into my room and just stand there taking in the volume of crud that was mounted in the room. I have zero aspiration to replicate that cacophony of ‘decoration’ but it was fun while it lasted. It was passed onto me later that my parents were heard mumbling, grumbling and groaning as they patched the hundreds if not thousands of holes in the walls to repaint the room after having to remove the wallpaper. I got off easy simply removing the junk from the walls and putting most of it into garbage bags when I moved out 🙂