Sunday, July 23, 2006
Best workmanship around
One of my good friends, Tom, is turning a hobby into a little bit more of a business. He is a woodworker by trade but has started making top quality tabacco pipes. They are some of the best quality I have ever seen, and very reasonably priced. Hand made pipes of this quality sell for hundreds of dollars. Check out Tom's web page if you are interested in such things http://thomasjlipspipeworks.wordpress.com/
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
WWJD....splash
Hi friends,
Well I’m kinda back to normal. It’s been wacko crazy here for me this last month. Where do I start. was in Tacoma for my Annual Conference meeting. Then was out at the fireworks stand that our congregation runs from 9am-11:30pm every nite of the 28th thru the 5th. Then I spent a couple days down on the Rogue River in S. Oregon camping with family. This week I am Mr Mom while Jennifer is in San Francisco with the youth group chaperoning a mission trip.
I have a few things I wanted to comment about but I’ll break them up so you wont doze off and get that slobber drool thing going on your keyboard.
Last Tuesday, while I was camping, I drove up the road a ways to where I could get a cell phone signal just to check any messages I may have ( going up to the bars as it were, cell phone signal strength bars... get it...) When I listened to my voice mail there was a message from my secretary Sue saying that the church had been broke into again. We had a break in 3 weeks ago but not a whole lot was stolen. This time quite a bit was stolen, not to mention the back door that was kicked in or crow bar-ed or something.
Anyway, not the message I was expecting to get. So I drove a few more miles into Merlin, Ore. and got a Coke at the little general store, let my blood pressure go down and then called Sue back to get the rest of the info.
When we United Methodist Ministers are Ordained we are asked a few questions, and one of those is about Wesley’s idea of entire sanctification. We are asked if we believe it and if we will achieve it in this life. I do believe it, and I pray that I will reach it. But I’m not there. I spent the next two days imagining what I would do to these SOB’s that broke into the church and stole thousands of dollars worth of equipment. We work so hard at helping people and making the world better through Christ's presence with us and then these dumb craps break in and do stuff like this! My blood was boiling. I wanted to hit them spit in their face... I was furious. I knew that wouldn’t be what Jesus would do (if I wore one of those WWJD bracelets I would have chucked it in the Rogue) For those of you that know me I don’t get angry easily and its usually not often, but this had me going.
I had a friend back in college that went down to LA to take a couple classes at a seminary there. While he was there, his car was stolen and stripped,. They took his Bible, notes from the classes and all his tapes along with the stereo ( that shows you how long ago it was ...yes I said tapes...) People would try to console him by saying things like “Well maybe they will read your Bible and God will do something miraculous and they will ‘get saved’ “ My friends reply was “Don’t tell me that! I don’t want them to get saved... I want then to burn in hell. I was stranded in LA for three days while they were stripping my car.” I kinda feel the same way. Luckily no one has given me the “look on the bright side...” speech yet.
It’s been a week since the break in and my blood is down from 100 degrees C to about 97 degrees. But all this does remind me that there is a pretty screwed up world that needs Jesus, and I need him too.
Well I’m kinda back to normal. It’s been wacko crazy here for me this last month. Where do I start. was in Tacoma for my Annual Conference meeting. Then was out at the fireworks stand that our congregation runs from 9am-11:30pm every nite of the 28th thru the 5th. Then I spent a couple days down on the Rogue River in S. Oregon camping with family. This week I am Mr Mom while Jennifer is in San Francisco with the youth group chaperoning a mission trip.
I have a few things I wanted to comment about but I’ll break them up so you wont doze off and get that slobber drool thing going on your keyboard.
Last Tuesday, while I was camping, I drove up the road a ways to where I could get a cell phone signal just to check any messages I may have ( going up to the bars as it were, cell phone signal strength bars... get it...) When I listened to my voice mail there was a message from my secretary Sue saying that the church had been broke into again. We had a break in 3 weeks ago but not a whole lot was stolen. This time quite a bit was stolen, not to mention the back door that was kicked in or crow bar-ed or something.
Anyway, not the message I was expecting to get. So I drove a few more miles into Merlin, Ore. and got a Coke at the little general store, let my blood pressure go down and then called Sue back to get the rest of the info.
When we United Methodist Ministers are Ordained we are asked a few questions, and one of those is about Wesley’s idea of entire sanctification. We are asked if we believe it and if we will achieve it in this life. I do believe it, and I pray that I will reach it. But I’m not there. I spent the next two days imagining what I would do to these SOB’s that broke into the church and stole thousands of dollars worth of equipment. We work so hard at helping people and making the world better through Christ's presence with us and then these dumb craps break in and do stuff like this! My blood was boiling. I wanted to hit them spit in their face... I was furious. I knew that wouldn’t be what Jesus would do (if I wore one of those WWJD bracelets I would have chucked it in the Rogue) For those of you that know me I don’t get angry easily and its usually not often, but this had me going.
I had a friend back in college that went down to LA to take a couple classes at a seminary there. While he was there, his car was stolen and stripped,. They took his Bible, notes from the classes and all his tapes along with the stereo ( that shows you how long ago it was ...yes I said tapes...) People would try to console him by saying things like “Well maybe they will read your Bible and God will do something miraculous and they will ‘get saved’ “ My friends reply was “Don’t tell me that! I don’t want them to get saved... I want then to burn in hell. I was stranded in LA for three days while they were stripping my car.” I kinda feel the same way. Luckily no one has given me the “look on the bright side...” speech yet.
It’s been a week since the break in and my blood is down from 100 degrees C to about 97 degrees. But all this does remind me that there is a pretty screwed up world that needs Jesus, and I need him too.
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