What a monster....

Today's sign of the Appocolypse...

Oprah gave a whole bunch of people this....

A TV with a refrigerator in it...

Now if that doesn't scream 'obesity' I don't know what does. Wow.

Halloween!

Here's a few pictures from some trick or treating we took Eli to this weekend. It was a lot of fun. I'll probably post some more after real Halloween. What cute kids...

KP

Nora Grace...

We had a baby girl last night! For more info, go here:

http://noragraceporter.blogspot.com/

Whoo hoo! Mom and baby are doing great. Eli is a tad bit jealous thought...

I'm an old man who listens to talk radio.

It's true. I'm now "that guy." I think I probably listen to FM radio about once a month in my car. The rest of the time, I listen to the NPR or my iPod. Today, I was browsing through my AM presets and I stopped on Dr. Dina Dell (spelling?). To my credit, I seldomly listen to guys like him (I have to hang on to at least a shred of my dignity).

So the good Dr. is talking about this study that such and such group conducted on people with heart attacks. Basically, they studied to see if people who prayed (people of Judea-Christian faith only) while in heart attack recovery healed quicker or became more healthy than people who didn't. Then he went on about how he expected that due to the placebo effect that they probably did. Well, it turns out that they didn't. There were some mental and social benefits, but no physical ones. Then he talked a bit about the implications of that and how they pertain to his own doubts about the existence of some sort of a divine being.

I found myself being a little put off by the whole thing. Honestly, I don't much care if the Doc spent his whole show tearing down the existence of a Creator. That's his prerogative. That didn't bother me at all.

What really bothered me is the trite view of our faith the church has projected to our culture. We've dumbed down who God is enough that we've trivialized him as a vending machine to the culture around us. We really just don't get what it's about do we? We spend our time in our churches praying for Aunt Louis who has a strange growth on her left toe and Uncle Steve who has lung cancer now (after smoking a pack a day for 10 years) and then throw out a prayer or two for the missionaries we throw money at every month. Then we go home till the next time.

Resultingly, our culture now sees the Almighty God as a weak man's way to make it through a harsh world. He's dumbed down to a nice grandfather in heaven who's chief concern is our sick friends and relatives.

But, I'm convinced that we're missing it. I've been studying John the Baptist a bit lately. That guy got it. He understood that this Jesus guy was coming to do something big. Something that was worth standing in opposition to the culture around him and shouting from the roof tops. Something worth loosing his head over... literally.

When did we let it become what it has become? When did it stop being something worth dying for and become not much more than something we cling to for comfort. Let's not forget that everything in the Christian faith is dependent on the willing humiliation of a God who took on flesh. I'm quite certain if he was willing to endure it all - the scorn, the suffering, the humanity it wasn't just so that we could pray for the quick recovery of our loved ones.

So then, what do we do? I'm tired of people like me screaming out problems with the church at the top of their lungs and offering no solutions.

Certainly, there is a place for praying for the sick, the hurting, the dying. Jesus did. Just look at the story of Lazarus. Over and over he tells us to take care of these people. And we should. And an element of that is certainly praying for them. But we need more than that. We need action. And not just in a every now and then programmatic way. We need need to be more like John the Baptist. We need to devote our lives to crying out "Prepare the way" and messages of true healing. And that happens in word AND DEED. We need to expect that of our brothers and sisters in Christ. If I'm not doing it, then they suffer. We're one body and we need each others gifts and strengths.

I guess for me that means I need to do a better job reflecting Christ to Century Business Systems in my speech and my actions. Even when I feel like I'm getting taken advantage of. Even in the midst of hardship, Christ models a response of grace (not read passiveness). And to my neighbors who love to drink beer in their truck bed with the radio cranked at 11pm at night.

It's hard though. It's easier to just read nice stories from the Bible and skip the hard parts and tell people that "we're praying from them." Or tell ourselves that God loves us so much He'll make it all better and the hard part will go away. But, sometimes He loves me so much that he doesn't make it all better.

And it's a disservice to the grace we've been give to live a faith that expects life to be that way.

Thanks for letting me rant.

I'm reconsidering Nora's name....

I'm thinking Superwoman... or maybe 4Fake. Sound stupid? It is. But sadly, it's real. Go here.

For those of you that wasted your childhood like I did...

Check this out! It's Tecmo Super Bowl from NES, only someone updated it with current rosters. Incredible. Good thing it's Friday and I have nothing to do at work...

World "Losing Fight Agains AIDs"

BBC currently has an article on their front page about how the world is "Losing Fight Against AIDs" Read the article, it's informative and horrifying. Especially in light of the fact that the problem is worsening in Africa and that Asia is well on it's way to the same infection rates. AIDs is changing what the world looks like. It's hard for me to imagine. The numbers of people dying are so large that I can't wrap my mind around it. Read the article if you've got a minute - it's got some pretty staggering stuff in it. Like:

Only a quarter of the people needing treatment were receiving it, meaning the other three-quarters would continue to spread the epidemic, which was still in its exponential growth stage, Dr Gazzard said.

For every one person that you put in therapy, six new people get infected. So we're losing that game, the numbers game," Dr. Fauci said.

It's a pretty terrible "game" if you ask me. If you're of the mind to pray, go to http://oldnaledi.blogspot.com We keep a weekly update of what's going on with our sister church in Old Naledi there. Clearly AIDs and it's aftermath are something we can't overcome on our own. But as Luke 11 reminds us, we have a Father who loves his children and hears their prayers. So, even if we can't all study, reasearch, give money, or go... we certinaly can and are called to pray. Here's a real tangible way to do that.