EWwwwww. trained toilette elephants. Apparently the methane from the elephants is useful. What bothers me is the tourist show they’re making. I can’t see anyone with sense paying money to watch a dumping dumbo.
Can we just feed them peanuts?
Via Dave Barry.
James Robinson writes about love and grace in his post: WWJD? Love Somebody, Perhaps?. If there’s one thing that believers tend to do its talk about grace and lay down the law. Surely Romans 6’s talking about walking uprightly is important, but I have since moving to Denver found some really important truths to be a key to an effective walk with Christ.
The Positional Truths
Holly Hills Bible Church is very attached to the Pauline epistles where we learn that our position in Christ is settled. In the heavenlies we are hidden in Christ (Collosians 3), our salvation is secure and no amount of sin can separate us from God (Romans 8:38-39). Here’s the thing about Grace that is really key: it’s inexhaustable. We can in no way find the end of the love of God because He is infinite, and love is one of His perfect attributes. Therefore, His love is infinite as well.
Back to the positional truths. The positional truths are as follows:
When a person becomes a believer their sin nature has been crucified with Christ.
The believers are resurrected with Christ, ascended with Christ and then seated with Christ where we are hidden with him. Positionally we’re secure. I, no matter how much I sin stand confidently before God as one of His own due to the work of Christ. My works are nothing.
Our condition on this earth, as we’re sanctified (setting aside more and more of ourselves unto Christ, being conformed to His image), is never effecting our position. However, our position, because of Christ is being conformed to our position, which is hidden in Christ. The unbeliever’s condition and position are consistent because they are both directed towards the flesh, however, any inconsistencies that we have as beleivers are paid for by the blood of Christ.
I have found myself at times thinking things and realizing that they were not consistent with my position and therefore, as Paul writes, brought them into submission of Christ. My condition is effected by the flesh but not ruled by the flesh – Romans 7 is followed by Romans 8 where we learn of the victory that the believer has over sin through abiding in Christ.
Love Trumps Tolerance
Our pluralistic, relativistic culture touts tolerance as ‘the lord of the ring’ because it sounds to unifying. It’s not, it just allows for separation into categories while looking the other way. In engineering there is what is called a tolerance level that is the amount of error that is acceptable. Tolerance almost always has some limit. For example we can tolerate Christianity in our United States of American culture as long as we don’t have prayers in public places, no “In God We Trust” on our money and promote other religions based on the fact that none of them is actually true. We tolerate Christians, but once they’ve exceded a tolerance level then we must limit and control their practices. Tolerance is not friendly to justice, which is exacting.
Love, on the other hand looks past errors (I Corinthians 13:4,8) and is patient in growth and injustice. However, love is compatible with Justice because it says, “Let justice be done, there are consequences for actions” but is not contrary to still loving the person before, during and after punishment.
God Gets the Glory – No Matter What
One last thing that just recently hit me is that God gets the glory no matter what. If we’re righteous in our lives He gets the Glory of enabling us to be so. If we sin He gets the glory for being so gracious and loving. Ephesians 2:10 says that God has good works planned for believers – we’re going to do righteous things in our lives – we can plan on it. When we do those thing God gets the glory, we get rewards in heaven for it, and we get to be with Him as he reveals His glory to us. Wow! That’s so amazing.
Lord, We Give You Glory
I tried to sum up the concepts in this post two Sundays ago in a song that I’ve written. The lyrics are below and a rough and dirty recording is available to listen to as an MP3 (email me for guitar chords).
Lord we give you glory
Lord we give you praise
You are the first born from the dead
The one with whom we’re raised
Sealing our position
We’re hidden with you
We are your possession
Jesus we love you
Your grace knows no boundary
A gift from up above
Knowing me you found me
And gave me your love
I’ve got a lot of work to do today, but I had to post an Abbyism. She’s having a hard time understanding that my wheat allergies make most breads a bad food choice for me. So today during lunch she stated to Jessica, “Daddy can’t have bread because it makes him fat.” Yeah, that too, but it’s mostly the wheat.
My sister-in-law sent me this link to a Big Burger. Apparently this is real. Apparently these people have a death wish and want to die of a clogged heart within a day or so. If they don’t have a clogged hear their toilette will be after eathing that much meat.
This morning I was supposed to lead music for the main service. I was also lined up to substitute teach for the 7-12 year olds because Craig Kaes, my buddy, pal and Greek teacher was sick. However, they changed the service order on me at the last minute and so I had to pass on doing the meditation song (which is basically background music while the folks read the passage we’ll be studying and then have time to ponder the passage before the teacher digs in and serves up a piping hot dish of spiritual food). So, I went down to my classroom and waited for my class to be dismissed from the main service’s family worship time [there was some music I wasn’t involved in, part of the jumbling of the service]. I waited. And after about 5 minutes realized that I had no students [there are usually only 4 or so students max]. I could have done the meditation song, I could have done a lot of things. I could have been a contender. Anyway, I got to go upstairs and listen to the main teaching in the sanctuary after that. Oh, well. It was going to be funny.
I hope that all is well, and make sure you check out the video files I posted yesterday!
This would be my super cute niece being sung to by her super cool brother Brennan, my super cool nephew.
It’s a super cool 8MB video file.
I guess that also makes it super large.
Here is a video of Hawley doing lung exercises.
We went to swimming lessons again this morning and I learned something very important: don’t suck water into your mouth when attempting to breathe while doing the ‘Free Style’ stroke. Apparenlty sucking water into your mouth during other strokes is acceptable. I also learned that the ‘Back Stroke’ is not a massage technique and that it too requires some finesse. As you know I’m loaded with finesse so the swimming came quite easily to me. I was like a duck out of hell water there in that pool.
Apparently my old war injury in my shoulder makes it so that when I bring my left arm around something that resembles a really out of balance tire happens. There is no circle, it’s more like a wobbly limb waving around like a wobbly limb. I suppose it’s better than waving around like a wobbly lamb, but not much better. I was able to get the back stroke down all right after several laps. Unfortunately I’m so tired right now that the word plays above were actually funny to me. I suppose this is a good thing since my desk-jockey life involves as much exercise as that of a person who watches TV all day.
Next week we’re apparently going to be tackling the butterfly stroke. As graceful as that stroke is I’m sure that it’s going to look like I’m tackling it. On the football field. In swimming trunks. Wearing no goggles because the only good ones cost more than I’m willing to part with for the short duration of this class. Of course if I want to make the money we paid for this class useful I’m going to have to continue on with my swimming. I guess we’ll have to buy a house with a pool or a really, really, really big toilette.
My buddy Jon sent me a link to this Microsoft Map helping a person take the shortest route between two locations. Or you’d think that by telling the computer to return those results you’d actually get a short route.
My niece Hawley [pronounced Holly, it’s apparently a family name in Shari’s family] Elizabeth Peterman was born this morning at 10:20 PST weighing in at a slight six pounds seven ounces. She’s nineteen inches long and is apparently doing well. When my brother Ed called he was just excited and emotionally in the same place I was when Abby was born. This is most likely a good thing 🙂 I hope to get pictures today to be able to post for all to see.
Super good news!
Brennan and Hawley Peterman photo taken by Pete Leonard.
So last night I watched this movie with my friend Brian, it was a really freaky movie along the lines of Memento, and possibly sort of like the Matrix if you just count the philosophical parts and no action and no special effects, though there was some special effect work done. It had Jim Carrey being serious, Kate Winslet not hanging off of the front of a boat, and Elijah Wood standing the same height as everyone else. It also had the main male role from 13 going on 30 as well as Kirsten Dunst whom we all know from Spider-Man one and two.
This movie is really weird because they play part of the end at the beginning, and then fill inthe middle, play past the part they played in the beginning and then finish the movie with the end. I appreciate a movie with an ending at the end, it makes a sense of completion possible. I will warn you that Jim Carrey is not overtly funny in this film and that the language, while being English, is full of words that parents don’t want their children to hear or use, and that if used any more than it was in this movie falls over the line of bad script writing. In other words, there’s a lot of prophanity in this movie and you shouldn’t see it if hearing it throws you into a fit of vomitting, temporary memory loss or back pain. Women under 30 should consult a physician before taking this… whoops! I got way off track.
I really liked the moral of the movie because it was that if you’re meant to be with someone you’ll be with them no matter what. However, 95% of the people who leave the theater, or finish watching the DVD, will not be thinking that. Carrey is serious in this movie. Really. Don’t come looking for an Ace Ventura, Bruce Almighty, or The Mask. Don’t come looking for The Majestic either, because this is not filled with the feel good stuff at the end.
The idea behind the movie is that a doctor in the area can erase memories from your mind. By the end of the movie a lot of memories are erased from a lot of minds leading to catastrophe. However, a majority of the movie is played out in Jim’s mind where he [some description that would totally spoil the movie if you were to watch it].
So, how do I rate this movie after rambling on so long with great discontinuity? On a scale from 1 to 13, with 13 being the best, I’d give it a 9. It’s above average, but due to some graphic scenes, vulgar language and silly kissing from Kursten Dunst, it can’t be a 13.