Trials & Suffering

I don’t know how to respond to this article about suffering other than to say that the people involved seem to be enamored with themselves.  Christianity doesn’t have simple answers for all things, but the things the people in this article are saying make me want to hurl.  Their attitude towards pain and suffering indicates that they have not read their Bibles, they haven’t evaluated the afterlife, and that they don’t understand the full potential of pain and suffering that could take place.  I once heard a teacher discussing this very issue bring up a good point: what if God was halving suffering from what it could be?  What if we, on this earth, were only suffering one one-hundredth of what we could be suffering?  Would we care?  Would we be thankful towards God for preserving us and letting us suffer so little?

I have written before about a former elder at our church who simply taught about trials and suffering and went over the need for the Christian to understand God’s use of trials and suffering in their life.  Hal actually suffered a lot as he died of cancer, but that cancer was not a trial he couldn’t fathom, he spent much time rejoicing that the Lord used it to bring people into his life that he could share the gospel of Jesus Christ with.  Hal saw that the trials and suffering were a beautiful gift that was only temporary.  He saw eternity with God as a clear and powerful goal that made the suffering less of a distraction.  Yes, he hurt.  Yes, his family and our whole church cried when he died, but we all know where he’s going and we all wept with joy as we came together to share stories of love, compassion and awesome counseling that were all part of Hal’s life.

The article linked to above doesn’t offer answers and hope, it offers hopelessness and really nothing worth keeping track of.

Snakes

I have seen two snakes, of the garden variety, around my house.  Two!  Its pretty cool to see those sorts of critters since we have a garden.  As if the snakes weren’t cool enough Abby today watched in rapt awe as a spider wrapped up an earwig near our back porch.  She said that it was wrapping the earwig in its yarn.  You just have to love kids’ vocabulary.

I Wish I Could Make This Up

Someone searched on the Interwebs and got to my site.  They searched for”Neopolitan Dynamite part 2.”  I can’t even imagine what the first movie about exploding ice cream would contain, let alone a sequel.  It seems that Hollywood is reaching pretty far now 🙂

A Day of Tears

Today at church we said good-bye to our friends the Pools.  They’ll be moving to Virginia later this week and we won’t see them as regularly.  Fortunately Rachel has family here so they’ll be back at times and we’ll get to see them.  I was very sad to see them leave.  The Lord has a plan for them and I’m OK with their departure.  We had to leave friends and family when we left Nevada and Texas.

One of the families we left in Texas was the Mason’s.  They’ve been planning and trying to adopt a baby from China for about three years now.  Today, in China, they picked up their baby girl Nadia.  Jessica and I had tears streaming down our faces as we watched these videos of Luanne & Mike holding their new baby girl.  They will be heading home after about a week’s time I believe.  We can’t wait to meet Nadia and see them again as a bigger family.

Many tears today, but we’re glad for what the Lord is doing!

iLustForAniPhone

I used an iPhone today.  Crap.  I totally want one – like I’d probably sell one of my internal organs for one.  Its cooler than cool.  It may single-handedly be able to reverse global warning and help find the cure for Paris Hilton.  Wow.

The downside is that I also want the $500.00 that it has as a requirement to get one 🙂

Color Me More Biaseder

If I wasn’t biased before – I am more biased now.  Microsoft has patented an adware framework.  They want to patent the concept and lets pray that they don’t use it.  You can read more about it here.  I’m a Mac & Linux fanboy, and I know that many of you know that, but please, for all that is good let Microsoft know this is unacceptable.

A Customer Service Story & A Joke

Today on my lunch break Jessica and I went to go close a bank account at a bank we don’t want to use any longer.  Upon going into the bank the two gals that were closest to one another behind the counter were bandying back and forth about getting married to a millionaire – together.  They argued who would get access to the money and who would have to sleep with the guy (they were definitely interested in the money and not the man who had accrued it).  Its the kind of customer service you dream of from a bank.  It reminded me of this joke:

A man is in a bar and finds a woman down the bar from him attractive.  He picks up his drink and slides on down next to her.  He looks her in the eye and says, “Would you sleep with me for $1,000,000.00?”

She sizes him up, thinks for a moment and then says, “Yes.”

The man looks back at her and says, “Would you sleep with me for $100.00?”

“What kind of woman do you take me for,” she asks.

“We’ve already established you’re a whore, now we’re just haggling over the price!”

Garage Sailing

This weekend we had a garage sale.  It wasn’t a huge affair but we offloaded a lot of junk to other families who seemed to think they needed them.  We had lots of baby stuff that new grandparents were excited to pick up and I learned some new things about people.  Some people were negotiators and some people were glad to get things at less than store prices.  Some people didn’t speak English.  One gal was kindly garage saling with a woman who was severely handicapped.  She helped me understand the woman and monitored the purchases to make sure that all of her money was spent.

I had one family show up and they low balled me on my PS2 – I didn’t flinch.  They paid for most of what they picked up in quarters.  I would have been unhappy accepting quarters for a PS2 🙂  The sale went well and we got to know a few neighbors as well.

The officially best moment for me was the group of guys stacking a couch & seat on top of a mini van and throwing ropes over the top.  Something about it looked horribly catastrophic.  They drove away and I didn’t find shattered couches near our house so I hope that they got it back to their domicile.

Pluralistic Poohs

Evelyn just climbed up into our recliner, dropper her Winnie the Pooh book off the side on accident and declaired, “Uh, Oh! Poohs, Poohs, Poohs!”

Something about the plural nature of Poohs just amuses me more than it should 🙂

The Fridge Saga Part III

Since our fridge is apparently the most important part of our lives I thought I’d point out that today the repairman came and upon arriving he disassembled various parts of the two chambers and determined that he needed to order a part.  That part should arrive on Monday.  The person designated by some computer some time after the part arrives will be hear sometime on the 23rd.  In case you’re keeping track that would be around three weeks of borked fridge time.  I think they need to rename our deluxe fridge a Kenless instead of a Kenmore.