What does it mean?

I once went to the Bahrain National Museum.



The museum included several art exhibits in addition to the cultural and historical exhibits.

I usually take time to look at art work, though I rarely understand what it means. If it has any abstractness to it I am usually at a loss for meaning. When the art is only shapes and colors with no discernible objects, I might as well be staring at a wall. I even saw one exhibit yesterday that I couldn't decide if it was art or if they had a blank spot on the wall and just stuck a blank canvas up to cover the spot!

Photography, paintings that illustrate a person or event, I can understand these. But abstract art or sculptures, I am usually at a loss. But this one, even I could understand the meaning beyond Bureaucracy.


Bureaucracy at the Bahrain National Museum

Let us not forsake one great commandment for another

When the lawyer asked Jesus, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?”he responded with two commandments, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself. He then says that upon these two commandments hang all the laws and prophets. Clearly these are fundamental in determining how we should behave as Christians.

Before Christ ascended into the heavens, he told the Disciples go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to observe all things that he commanded them.

I have several friends who are currently in the mission field. Now, granted all Christians are “in the mission field,” but when I say they are in the mission field, I mean that they are out acting with the sole intention of spreading the word of God. Now this should be a goal of all Christians, but many of us do this in conjunction with our daily jobs or lives. We wouldn’t call our jobs mission work, it is just something we do in life where we have the opportunity to spread the Word. For many this is in subtle ways, such as lifestyles or actions, though the occasional opportunity arises where one can have a talk with someone else about the Gospel. But for missionaries, they are “doing God’s work” so to speak.

When many people think of or talk about missionaries in the mission field it seems that there are two types. One group is made up of people who are like preachers whose job is only to convert people to Jesus. The other group is made up of people who do medical work or construction work, who do good things for people but never actually speak the word.

My friends who are missionaries have shown me through their lives that while the avenues of spreading the Gospel may be different, both commandments can be fulfilled. One may use the love of neighbor as a way of expressing the love of God to someone or to create the opportunity to spread the Gospel. The other uses the Gospel as a way of getting close to someone to love them as themselves.

In our daily lives one should not forsake one commandment for the other. Love of God and love of neighbor are both commandments that we are to live by. They are not exclusive of each other, but must both be done. We love others because God first loved us. If we love God but not our neighbor, we accomplish nothing. If we love others but do not share the love of God, we are doing it for our own glory.

Too Cool To Wear

Whenever Steve Coffman would announce a Lucinda Williams song on the radio, he would refer to her as "the sweet, sweet Lucinda Williams." Here is the sweet sweet Lucinda Williams singing 2 Cool 2 Be Forgotten.



Back in the 90's when I was in high school, a buddy of mine gave me a pair of Umbro shorts that were too small for him. This worked perfect as I had a pair that were too small for me.



I still have these shorts as they still fit.

I wore them the other day to go to the gym to work out. My buddy who was going with me laughed and said "the 1990's called and they want their shorts back!" My friend, please, how can a pair of free shorts ever be too cool to wear?

Wandering in the sky

I flew yesterday on a Airbus 330-200 owned by KLM. In the headrest in front of me was a screen. The screen allowed me to access music, movies, television shows, games, and a flight tracker. Between this, a letter I was writing, and a book I was reading kept for occupied for the 15 hours I was in the air. Now, most important to me is the music. In perusing the music selection, I found some Johnny Cash. Now, I know a ton of his music and own several albums, but one song managed to have slipped from me. Luckily KLM had it in their selection. The U2/Johnny Cash song, The Wanderer. I really enjoyed the song and listened to it several times to try to determine what it meant. I got nothing.

Not seeing is believing

In Ross King's song Better Days Await, he sings "Give to me the chance to see the thing that I am gonna be and I will trust in You. If it were that easy right now I'd be fine. But faith is more than living for the things that we can see in store and look so forward to. So maybe I'll just have to wait upon Your perfect time."

What if I spend my entire life counting on something to happen that never happens? Now, counting on it means that I have been preparing for it and doing what I can to see that it happens, but I cannot control it. I cannot make it happen. It may never happen.

Is this bad? I think I am better for it. I think the preparations have made me a better person. But what if my preparing for one thing causes me to miss another?

How easy it would be if God would just tell me what will happen in the future. I could then make the correct preparations and not miss the opportunity. Instead, He has told me to have faith and to trust Him.

The chorus of the song is "And I'll be fine, life is great. Better times await"

I'll be fine, life is great. Better times await. I trust in the Lord.

Should Christians remember Jewish holy days?

Most Christians do not celebrate the Jewish holy days and festivals, much less even know what they are. Should this be the case?

With Passover, we know that Jesus remembered the Passover every year and that the early Church celebrated it as well. God says to Moses in Exodus 12, "This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance." and "You shall observe the festival of unleavened bread, for on this very day I brought your companies out of the land of Egypt: you shall observe this day throughout your generations as a perpetual ordinance." Moses relays this message to the elders of Israel. And as we know, the Jews continue this ordinance even until today.

Now, as Christians, most of us are not biological descendants of Israel but are Gentiles, yet Paul writes that we are grafted into the same tree. In Romans 11, he writes "If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not boast over those branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you."

So these ordinances of God should be for us as well. Now, Paul does excuse Gentiles from portions of the law, such as the food requirements, because we are of a different culture. (Personally, I think this could/should be seen as John Wesley viewed sin, that it should not be a stumbling block to God's grace. That God's grace is so great that we must bring everyone to it and we can worry about the other stuff later. That receiving the grace of God is not dependent on following the commands of God, but one who receives the grace of God should follow the commands of God.) But I do not think that this would carry over to us not remembering the festival of Passover.

How many of us remember the Sabbath and keep it holy? "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy." I know that I do not, I regularly work either at work or at home on the Sabbath, whether it is celebrated on the Jewish Sabbath or on Sunday.

Christians are often the strongest proponents of displaying the 10 Commandments, yet how many even make an attempt at following them?

Perhaps someone could help me with understanding Yom Kippur. I know that it is the Day of Atonement, as ordained in Leviticus 16. It talks about that the people will be atoned for their sins, so I am not sure if it would continue into Christianity as we celebrate (should) our atonement whenever we gather with the partaking of the Lord's Supper. However, in Acts 27:9, we see that it was still done by the early Church.

With Hanukkah, I believe we see that Jesus celebrated it as described in John 10:22. (The festival of Dedication is Hanukkah, correct?) But I guess it is no surprise that a Jew celebrates a Jewish holiday. But are those who are grafted in exempt?

We see a very important reason in keeping these festivals and holy days, God says that we are to do it to remember what He has done. Could we remember it by another way? Sure, but God has told us how He wants us to remember them. When you go through the Bible, we see the words remember over and over and over. God remembers us and His promises and tells us to remember what He has done. Christians are not exempt.

It was just a joke

This morning at church, the worship leader was pandering to the crowd as he got ready to lead singing. He announced "Happy mother's day!" The keyboardist said "same to you." Mr. Keyboardist, I was the only one, but I got it. I loled.

In Sunday school, I was teaching and opened up with the following quote from a study. "Interviews with young adults suggest that they want their initial marriage to last, but are not particularly optimistic about that possibility. There is also evidence that many young people are moving toward embracing the idea of serial marriage, in which a person gets married two or three times, seeking a different partner for each phase of their adult life." After saying how jacked up that was I announced "I think I'll just stay single." I wasn't the only one, they got it. They loled.

It's on the internet so it must be true...

It must be true that North Korea attacked the Deepwater Horizon in order to force President Obama to use the only known method to stop the oil spill, detonating a B83 (Mk-83) strategic thermonuclear bomb in the middle of a UN nuclear conference, because I read it on the internet.

US Orders Blackout Over North Korean Torpedoing Of Gulf Of Mexico Oil Rig