at what price mercy?

I knew it all along. All you hear on the news is how this country is in a recession and things are so bad and blah, blah, frick’n blah. I am so sick of hearing it I could vomit, or as a colleague of mine would say womit. (He is Indian, the dot not the feather)

I have been saying that it was all a bunch of bull and part of the plan to drive the American economy into the ground so that we have to merge with Canada and Mexico. (Yeah, I know it sounds crazy, it is a long story that I will go into in a later post.)  Out of no where the puppets, some refer to them as anchor men and women, started telling us we were in a recession and the newest thing is we should start hoarding food.  Are you kidding me?  Where did this come from? People have been irresponsible with their money for years and people have been foreclosing on their houses for almost as long. Then one day they start telling us we are in a recession.  So, is it true?  Well I sure don’t think so, and finally someone besides me said it. She wasn’t very brave, but she at least made an attempt. I will copy and paste a part of the article.

“Economy grows by only 0.6 percent in 1st quarter of 2008
Wednesday April 30, 9:14 am ET
By Jeannine Aversa, AP Economics Writer

Economy limps ahead at a 0.6 percent pace in first quarter, better pace than expected

WASHINGTON (AP) — The bruised economy limped through the first quarter of this year at only 0.6 percent as housing and credit problems forced people and businesses alike to hunker down.

The country’s economic growth during January through March was the same as in the final three months of last year, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. The statistic did not meet what economists consider the classic definition of a recession, which is a retraction of the economy. This means that although the economy is stuck in a rut, it is still managing to grow, even if modestly.”

Did you catch it the economy grew over the last three months and wasn’t any worse than it was the last quarter of last year.  So that means that we haven’t gotten any worse in 6-7 months.  Gas prices are up exponentially, along with food prices, and they are on the tv telling us every day that the economy is so bad and they still couldn’t stave off growth.  It may have been smaller that past years, but I think half of that is from the pounding of the media telling us we are in a recession and to hoard our food and money.

Don’t always believe what people say, especially when they work for CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, FoxNews, etc.

First let me start by saying that I will be glad to get a $1200 check in the mail.  But does anyone see the irony of the government giving us money to help us out?  Everyone is excited and is acting like the government is doing us some big favor.  They are giving you back a little bit of the lot of money that you gave them.  HELLO?!  Where do you think all that money came from?  It is like welfare, food stamps or government subsidized housing.  The government doesn’t have some magic ATM they get money from; they get the money from us.  Then they give it to us when we have a hard time and act like they are being charitable.  Ok picture this, you are having a hard time, money is tight and the bills are big.  I tell you you have to give me a thousand dollars, if you don’t I will start to sell off what you have till I get my thousand.  Mind you in these hard times, you have had to cut back, but I am still spending more than ever…new house, new clothes, new secretary.  Then once I get the thousand, I turn around and give you a twenty because you are having a hard time, and tell you that I know you are going through a hard time and I want to help out.  You would probably tell me to take my twenty and shove it up my…

Point being, the government is giving us our money back and we are acting like they are doing us this great favor.  I’ll be grateful when they start cutting back as much as the rest of America.  They haven’t down-sized those suburbans that they (and their security people) drive in.  They don’t car pool or cut back.  They haven’t taken pay cuts or gotten rid of the unnecessary employees they have.  What do they care?  Gas may be heading for $4 a gallon, but they aren’t paying for it.  And everyone wonders why the government hasn’t done anything about gas prices.

Hey, there are plenty of oil wells in the President’s home state, I wonder if that is just a coincidence

i guess blogging doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with listening, unless you are writing about it.  I guess if you read more than your write you may be a better listener, but i am not sure.

At any rate…The other day i was listening to someone who was talking about being a good listener.  What they said wasn’t complex, but it was profound.

Have you ever been listening to someone talk and then you start to think about what you are going to say in reply to what they are saying.  We all do it, instead of listening to what they are saying we are already talking back in our head.  Whether they are talking with us for advice or just as a friend.  So often we focus on what we are going to say rather than what the person talking is saying.  Next time you are in a conversation listen, without thinking about what you are going to say.  You never know, the person may actually say something important.

I saw the following on a bumper sticker.  Life would be so much simpler if we could remember this one phrase.

“The greatest things in life, are not things.”

(Written 9-April, just found it)

It is amazing how hard it is for people to keep quiet.  I have always viewed quiet people as strong people.  I guess for some people it is just their personality and those people are ok.  The people that I admire are the ones who are quiet on purpose.  Quiet is not silent, but quiet to me is controlled.  The people speak, but only once they have thought through what to say and who to say it too.  I guess this line is different for everyone.  I take that back, the past week or two has taken a lot of the guessing out.  I have found out that some of the people I know are not as quiet as once thought.  Its ok I guess, I have learned that you don’t say anything to anyone that you don’t want repeated.  Every now and then though, you hope that people will go above your expectations and surprise you.  They usually do surprise you, but rarely by exceeding your expectations.

I guess part of this goes back to the reason that we need to have secrets any way.  Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a society or even just a small community where you didn’t have to keep things from other people?  Where people didn’t judge you or think differently of you.  I am not talking about hiding sin or immorality.  I am just talking about common, every day things.  Things that shouldn’t matter, but people are overly insecure and I think in some way feel in control when they tell a secret.

Well here’s to a future of no secrets and quiet; in heaven of course.  People talk about “the lion lying down with the lamb” and “no more pain and “no more tears;” that all sounds wonderful, but after the initial shock of heaven, the little things will start to affect every day life there; like no secrets, no judging, true words spoken at exactly the right time; other than God, it is the little things of heaven that will make it heavenly, at least to me.

I am listening to an old song, from 1996, by Crystal Lewis.  It is called, you guessed it, People Get Ready…Jesus is Coming.  We hear this all the time from sarcastic bumper stickers like “look busy, Jesus is coming” to church signs like “get right, or be left.”  But do we really believe this saying?  I mean really?  If I really believed that Jesus was coming would I get to busy to do my quiet times.  If I really believed He was coming, even if it’s not soon, would I not live every minute for Him and tell everyone I come into contact.  How is it that we can hear songs like this, sing along, say we believe it and then not live it.  God, help us live, more concerned about whether or not everyone will be ready to meet Jesus, than concerned about anything else.

One of the bands that I have liked continuously over the years is Caedmon’s Call.  They covered an old song a while back called Prepare Ye the Way.  It is a beautiful song, very melodic and up-beat, piano, percussion, strings.  It is a great reminder of what we are supposed to be doing as christians.  We are to prepare the way for the Lord and for the Kingdom.  If you get a chance you should check it out, it would be worth your time.

(I actually wrote most of this on Sunday, but just now got a chance to post it.)

I never realized the devastating mentality of these Bible time church leaders.

In the Bible (luke 15) it tells a story of sinners coming to hang out and eat with Jesus to hear what He had to say.  Let’s take a second to paint a current day mental picture.  Jesus is sitting down to eat with some friends and here comes a group of non-churchy people, Jerry Springer types.  People who had cheated on their spouses, habitual liars, pimps, tattooed and pierced, homosexuals, racists, and the list goes on…right behind them is a few of the leaders from some of the local churches.  I can imagine some of the people who are sitting with Jesus are getting nervous, wondering what on earth this group of people wants.  They just walk up, kinda slow, and ask if they can just sit near by and listen.  The group looks to Jesus, of course He is going to tell them that He can see them later, maybe tomorrow or at another out-door rally.  Jesus stands up and says that He would love for them to join them as asks everyone there to make room.  A minute later the original group is now speckled with sinners like spiritual salt and pepper.  Jesus continues sharing with the group and asks the waitress to come over and take the orders of His new friends.  Things are going surprisingly well.  Here come the church leaders, you would think they would be happy, but no.  “Look at Jesus, He is hanging out with all those sinners again and even those who have been accused of extortion from the church.”  If I was Jesus (thankfully for humanity I am not) I would be embarrassed.  Here are the people that are supposed to be my representatives, acting the fool.  I am sure Jesus was never as embarrassed as I would have been or never felt as awkward as I would have but still.  Imagine you are witnessing to a group of people about God and Jesus just showing them someone really does care about them, and then here come a group of people from the “church.”  Dressed in nice clothes and holding Bibles they start insulting you and the people you are witnessing to, talk about awkward.  We would probably start apologizing and feel really bad.  Luckily, like I said before, Jesus isn’t me or you and knew just what to do.  Jesus never skips a beat, he just goes into a story about how He desires to go out from among the group of believers to look for the “lost sheep.”  Basically telling the church leaders that He is intentionally hanging out with these people because He desires them to be a part of His group.  All of His new friends went from embarrassed and probably contemplating leaving to reassured.  Jesus was everything they thought He was…and more.

The older I get the more I begin to understand having a “vision”or dream or goal (whatever you want to call it) for your life.  Like I have said before, when you grow up in the church or spend a lot of time in the church you get accustomed to certain churchy words like vision and calling but I don’t thing that most people truly know what they mean.  I know I didn’t, I kind of understood the concept, but I didn’t have a full understanding or personal knowledge of these concepts.  I believe this is why having a mentor or small group of people that you learn from is so important.  It isn’t until we have a personal experience or something happens in our life that gives us understanding that we can understand the meaning of some of these terms.

For me I have recently realized how important vision casting is for individuals as well as for teams.  I have heard about it before and knew that it was important, but I had not had a personal experience with the concept.  I was recently reminded of a dream that I had several years back.  I have not kept this dream or vision in front of me and it slowly slipped away.  Thank God that I have realized that.

In Blue Like Jazz, Miller says something to the effect of, it is not the enemy’s plan to try to get us to commit some great sin, he just tries to keep us distracted and/or busy.  I think this is a true thing.  The devil can not make us do anything.  However, I still think it is funny to hear people say, “The devil made me do it.”  There may be some people that actually hear from the devil, like Charles Manson or Jeffery Dahmur, but for the rest of us, we do things on our own.  As Christians we often times find ourselves way off course, feeling distant from God and like their dreams and goals are unachievable and doing things we thought we would never do.  Almost every time if we trace it back to the beginning, of the veer off course, we will find that there wasn’t any big change, just little distractions.  One after another, little changes in direction.  Next thing we know we are way out in the middle of no where, but we were so busy or distracted that we never took time to be quiet with God for even a few minutes to make sure we were still on the right track.

We must be ever vigilant (or always paying attention) to what we are doing.  To put it simply, we must live on purpose, not always allowing life to just happen to us.  With God’s help we can be whoever we want to be and do whatever it is we want to do.  We just have to keep that always before us.

ok, so a while back I decided that I would rather have a job that I like than a job that pays more.  The only problem is our society doesn’t really work like that.  There is nothing wrong with making money, and making lots of it.  I like when I have money, but it isn’t worth giving up your life to try to get it.  I have found myself feeling bound by what I have.  The more money you make, the more you can spend, and usually we do.  Eventually you find ourselves bound to our job by our stuff.  There are bills to pay, commitments to be kept and we are forced to work where we can make the most money, whether we like it or not.  I don’t want to live that way.  I don’t mind working, don’t misunderstand.  I just don’t want to spend my life working a job I hate to buy stuff that I don’t need.  I would rather work a job where I can enjoy myself, work closer to home to develop a sense of community, and have the ability to be flexible and not worry how much I make an hour.