Can You Go Back?

Driving in the car makes my brain search for things to occupy it's time. Yes, I think that cars are simply a way to get from one place to another and that "driving" is overrated and simple if you just use common sense. Anyway, I digress...

When I drive home from work I almost always pass the Church building that I spent about 12 years of my life in and out of. Most days I just pass it without even noticing, other days, my brain is still searching for something to think about and that building can open up doors that my brain walks through before I can stop it.

The other day I wondered if I would ever go back for a visit and I imagined how it might go - what I might feel. This is not the first time my brain pondered this and the result was not much different than usual - it might be fun to see a few friends, but it would be more trouble than it's worth. It would simply be a social visit and not about worshipping God.

Nothing new there, that's just about where my brain stops with that subject - but the other day it kept going...

Can you go back?

For most of my life, I was surrounded by a "sub-culture" that I called my "Church family" or just "Church". The "Church of Christ" was IT and that's all I knew. My grandparents, my mom, my friends, most of my extended family in some way, shape or form associated with this group. I went to a Christian college - that is to say a college associated with the "Church of Christ". At least MY understanding of what the "Church of Christ" was. My "world" was a certain size and shape and everything beyond that enclosure was just not important - not relevant.

God has lead me somewhere I didn't expect, but I am convinced that He led me and I'm just glad that I stumbled my way behind Him enough to get to where He wants me to be. For many years - maybe 10 or more - I have come more and more to the conclusion that A cappella worship is a preference, a style, not a mandate. Even when I wandered to where I call "Church Home" now, at first I still believed that my preference was A cappella worship, but that based on my options and what God had put before me that worshipping in a "non-A cappella" style was OK. In fact, I felt that it would be good to be able to go "back and forth" if needed and not be hindered ONLY by the "make music in your heart" clause.

Now my brain poses the question (as I'm driving home)... Could I go back?

The answer is generally "No". Not because I want to make a statement about the correctness of my position, not because of some resentment. Just simply this. I have grown and my view of God and His kingdom has also grown - it's a great deal bigger now. My world is bigger now and frankly I don't believe it would fit in the door of that building.

Things I've Learned on Tour 2008

OK, so Heartbeat Choir tour 2008 is now "history" - oh wait, that was last year. Let's try that again.

The "noise" has subsided on this year's tour... "Beyond the Noise" - HBC Tour 2008 is over. As always, it's bittersweet. On one hand, it's almost always good to be home and this time is no exception. By the time we rolled into the building last night I was tired and I didn't feel 100% well. Also, as is usually the case with teens on trips like this, the closer we got to home, the louder and more crazy the bus got. No sense in fighting it - the kids are going through the same thing the adults are going through - they just express it differently.

On the other hand, it's the "end" of a labor of love. This tour and this program was one of the best things God has allowed me to be a part of. The tour went as smooth as any of us could have imagined - God is good and His hands were all over this. The kids gave us no unexpected or out-of-the-ordinary problems. In fact, they were routinely WHERE we needed them to be WHEN we needed them to be there. Every stop we had comments about how great our kids were and how they blessed those around them.

As the tour progressed, they also did something amazing...

Every youth worker, student minister, choir director and chaperon on just about any trip like this asks their students to expand their world and try to get to know people outside of their close friends. We ask them to do this, but we know it's hard to do. They did it. It was heartwarming to look back and see almost every student sitting with someone else so often that we had hardly any way to tell which seat they had "laid claim to" at the beginning of the tour. It was nothing short of amazing - God was there and He was smiling.

Here's some of the things I learned on tour this year:

• Never let kids go to the pet store while on tour.
• Restrict the use of large fountain drinks on the bus.
• When God sends you somewhere that feels uncomfortable at first, just relax and get ready to be changed.
• Girls are afraid of bugs - even ones that don't bite and are completely harmless.
• Surround yourself with great, Godly people and God multiplies the results.
• Drink wristbands at an amusement park are GENIUS.
• "The Beast" is the best wooden roller coaster I have ever ridden ("Son of Beast" was a bit disappointing).
• Too much of a good thing is bad - case in point - cologne.
• Not all DVD players are made the same.
• Never, ever question what God can do with those that are ready to be molded.

H2O - "The Equalizer"

Water, H2O...two Hydrogen atoms bonded to one Oxygen atom. It's all around us. It's in us - about 60% of our body weight is made up of water. We drink it, consume it as part of the food we eat, we play in it, we use it to get around, we breathe it as water vapor.

It's life - without it there is death - with it there can be life.

The properties of water are somewhat unusual, the solid state of water (what we refer to as ice) is not as dense at the liquid state. That is somewhat unusual, but without that little natural oddity ponds, lakes, oceans and all bodies of water would be devoid of life once the temperature dipped below it's freezing point.

We call water a "universal solvent" - it holds many things that we need to live.

71% of the surface of Earth is covered in water - we live on a small portion of the remaning 29%.

Water is important - water is life.

I thought about some of this last week as I watched two men step into a pool of water we call a "baptistry". I watched as a man about 5 foot 8 inches dunked another man about 1 foot taller and much heavier than he. If the smaller man had to pick up the larger one off the floor outside of the baptistry using just his right hand (like he did in the baptistry) there is no way it would have happened. He would have thrown his back out, and the larger man would have fallen back and cracked his head on the floor.

But water is special.

If you're not convinced then just think about how God has used water.
- He used it once to destroy all but a handful of people and a bunch of animals in the world.
- He used it to bury the Egyptian soldiers chasing his chosen people in the Red Sea.
- He used it to make a point for Jesus' first miracle, turning ordinary water to wine.

He used it to allow us to share in Christ's death, burial and resurrection. He could have asked us to do some other sort of series of tasks that would have "looked" more like what had actually happened...He used water. Cleansing, healing water.

And...he made us bouyant so that a 5'8" man could baptize a man more than a foot taller than him and a lot heavier. God made water special and He wants all of us to pass through it before we're done on this earth. Every person...people we will never see or meet, bankers, lawyers, salesmen, mothers, fathers, basket makers, messengers, CEOs, rich, poor, young, old, free, slave, murderers, tax evaders, democrats, republicans, men, women...everyone.

Water is "The Equalizer"...

The Ultimate Lord of the Rings Trivia Question

We found another, so now here is the full question and it's answer:
3/31/08 - I found another!

There are 9 actors/actresses in the LOTR Trilogy that have ties in 12 other "blockbusting" trilogies - who are they, what are the other trilogies (or more) and their roles?

Hugo Weaving (Elrond) LOTR & The Matrix (Mr. Smith)

Orlando Bloom (Legolas) LOTR & Pirates of the Carribean (Will Turner)

Ian McKellan (Gandalf) LOTR & X-Men (Eric Lehnsherr / Magneto)

John Rhys-Davies (Gimli and Treebeard) LOTR & Indiana Jones (Sallah)
** He didn't appear in "The Temple of Doom"

Christopher Lee (Saruman) LOTR & Star Wars (Count Duki / Darth Tyranus)
*** Star Wars II & III (I consider them 2 separate trilogies) - check LOTR:Return of the King EXTENDED version (to consider him in all 3)

Ian Holm (Bilbo) LOTR & the Alien Quadrilogy (Ash)
*** LOTR 1 & 3; Bilbo did not appear in "Two Towers" - He was only in "Alien", the first of the "Quadrilogy". Also interesting, is that Ian played in "Alien" with John Hurt who had just played Aragorn in the first "Lord of the Rings" movie in 1978.

Karl Urban (Eomer) LOTR & The Riddick Trilogy (Vaako) & The Bourne Trilogy (Kirill)
**** If we include Bilbo, we have to include Eomer. LOTR 2 & 3 (Eomer did not appear in "Fellowship of the Ring") - He was in "The Chronicles of Riddick" which is just barely a "trilogy" because there are 2 live action movies (including "Pitch Black") and a third amime movie that sits (chronologically) between the two.

***** He was also in "The Bourne Supremacy" which (at this point) is a trilogy. (thanks for the help on this one).

Cate Blanchett (Galadriel) LOTR & Indiana Jones (Agent Irina Spalko)
****** OK, this is gettin crazy - Cate is in all three LOTR movies and she is in the new Indiana Jones movie "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull"

Brad Dourif (Grima Wormtounge) LOTR & Alien Quadrilogy (Dr. Jonathan Gediman) & Child's Play (Charles Lee Ray/Chucky) & The Exorcist (James Veranum)
******* OK, stay with me...
Brad is a busy guy... He is in the last two LOTR movies (extended versions), Alien Resurrection, All three "Child's Play" moves and The Exorcist III...wow.

“Much ado about Nothing” (Circular Reasoning III)

I just finished (well sort of) a book called "The Book of Nothing" - I say that I finished it, but I gave up on the last chapter.

It was interesting at first, then it just became a solid noise of blah, blah, blah... I love science and I have a passing interest in mathematics - this book is an exploration, of sorts, into the concept of nothing - zero.

It turns out that in the big picture of human existence on earth the concept of zero is very new. In fact, a few hundred years ago it was considered heretical to propose the idea of nothing of a vacuum. Another thing I learned from this book is that as little as 100 years or so ago, we thought that space was filled with something called "ether". It's amazing how far we've come in our understanding of God's universe in the last 100 years or so.

Barrow, the guy that wrote the book acts like a guy that knows way too much for his own good. The fact of the matter is, for all of the words in his book, he just doesn't get it. I feel bad for scientists that continually look for answers to existence in the "laws of nature". They conjecture what cannot be seen from what they can see.

I'm used to this, I've heard it all of my life, but one good thing about this book is that it allowed me to see inside the mind of just such a scientist. It gives a good look at how someone tries to take God out of the world. It goes back to something I've discussed before that we all do - "Circular Reasoning".

However, this guy takes it to the N^th degree... The reason I finally had to put the book down was because he was 5 or 6 circles into his reasoning and it was just nonsense. The last few chapters of the book are filled with conjectures based on the statements he made in the first half of the book. I believe that you can convince yourself of anything if you spin yourself in enough circles.

As far as I can tell, it comes down to this. There is a force in the universe they are calling the Lambda factor. The Lambda factor was something that Einstein postulated but later refuted. Cutting through pages and pages of droning about vacuums, cosmology and quantum physics, the bottom line is that any time these scientists can't make the numbers match up they pour the difference into the Lambda factor. The Lambda factor, in a nutshell, is a force that cannot be calculated, seen or measured but affects matter, gravity and energy in some fashion. They believe that it's there, but they can't say what it is (exactly), how much there is or how much it affects the other things they can see.

I appreciate a good, healthy curiosity about our surroundings - many, many great things have been discovered because of that curiosity. However, when you look at the facts -over and over and over again over the course of decades and centuries - and still take what you don't know and turn it into something that you are sure you just missed or cannot find yet or cannot be explained then it's not science anymore - it's agenda.

I expected an objective discussion on the facts instead heard a long lesson on circular reasoning. It reminds me of…

Bedevere: Quiet, quiet, quiet, QUIET! There are ways of "telling" whether she is a witch!
Villagers: Are there? What? Tell us, then! Tell us!
Bedevere: Tell me. What do you do with witches?
V: BUUUURN!!!!! BUUUUUURRRRNN!!!!! You BURN them!!!! BURN!!
Bedevere: And what do you burn apart from witches?
Villager: More Witches!
Other Villager: Wood.
Bedevere: So. Why do witches burn?

Villager: Because they're made of.....wood?
Bedevere: Goooood!
Other Villagers: oh yeah... oh....
Bedevere: So. How do we tell whether she is made of wood?
One Villager: Build a bridge out of 'er!
Bedevere: Aah. But can you not also make bridges out of stone?
Villagers: oh yeah. oh. umm...
Bedevere: Does wood sink in water?
One Villager: No! No, no, it floats!
Other Villager: Throw her into the pond!
Villagers: yaaaaaa!

Bedevere: What also floats in water?
Villager: Bread!
Another Villager: Apples!
Another Villager: Uh...very small rocks!
Another Villager: Cider!
Another Villager: Uh...great gravy!
Another Villager: Cherries!
Another Villager: Mud!
Another Villager: Churches! Churches!
Another Villager: Lead! Lead!
King Arthur: A Duck!
Villagers: (in amazement) ooooooh!
Bedevere: EXACTLY!
Bedevere: So, "logically"...
Villager: If...she...weighs the same as a duck......she's made of wood.
Bedevere: and therefore...

Villager: A Witch!
All Villagers: A WITCH!