SoBe

ok, so my trip to south beach...well, it was good. for starters here are some of the exceptional people that i hang out with. they are some of the best in the wireless telecom industry and i am proud to be associated with them. for grins the folks here represent Rural Cellular, US Cellular, Eloqui Wireless, XIT Cellular, Telus Mobility, and Bell Mobility Canada.

the hot chick

i was reading in genesis this week and came across an interesting story. it seemed that abraham was married to a hottie so, upon their moving to egypt and fearing for his life, he lied about her being his wife and told everyone she was his sister. abraham (who actually was still abram at this time) and his wife were treated very well and were given lots of gifts. after God caused bad things to happen to the king, the king found out the truth and sent abraham and his wife and all their new possessions back to where they came from.

ok, now i would ask - was it God's will for Abraham to lie about his wife and give her to live with the king? did God need for the egyptians to give Abraham all of those gifts of livestock, and gold, and food and so on because he (God) needed some help? could God not provide for Abraham outside of this scam?

my personal feeling is that God could provide anything, anytime, anywhere, anyway he wants to do it and i am guessing that most of you reading this would agree. i would also venture an opinion that the Father many times works in spite of us and not necessarily through us in order to accomplish his holy mission. many times this working in spite of us is misunderstood as working through us. the trauma is sometimes easily overshadowed by the slightest positive reaction. a large scale example would be the new plant life that sprung up from the mt st helens explosion or the way america "came back to God" after 9/11. the tiny positive results never justified the huge destruction that caused it.

ok, here's the point.

all my life i have been frustrated by believers using works of God to support their latest dumb ass idea. just like in the story of abraham, God can work good even through lies, laziness, or ignorance. you pick the downfall, God knows how to get the glory. BUT - all that being said, is it God's will for the lies, the laziness, or the ingorance to happen? of course not. or at least in my own understanding it isn't. you see just because people pray more or kiss and make up after a fight or whatever, that doesn't mean that what caused that to happen was from God. as believers we should be wary of anything that happens in the name of God that is not in the character of God. true we are all sinful humans trying to understand a holy and pure God and we will make mistakes, but let's just be careful to not tie our mistakes to his holiness simply because his goodness allows his glory to be revealed in whatever stupid things we do.

size does matter

came home from work today and my son was drinking his juice through 5 straws. when i saw him do this i quietly shed a tear. you see i know that unlike the other 2 rules that i haven't talked to him about, he understood the third rule of life - that being you can never have enough bandwidth (hence the straws). if you don't understand the bandwidth analogy then just stick with rules 1 and 2 - those being that you can never have enough money or sex. have a happy evening.

all day today dianna and i have been writing up a grant for our school. i have always wanted to do this, but for whatever reason just never did. it's been weird though as i have sat at my computer and listened to about 15 hours of european electronica XTC trance radio on itunes (itunes is the best even though i gave mac a bad rap a couple of weeks ago). maybe this is getting me prepared for miami as i am assuming they will have trace / rave / whatever they call it clubs everywhere, along with everything else. by the way, running concurrently with my business meeting there will be a gay life expo there as well. (not sure why i linked it to my site). part of me is excited. i would love to be able to show the love of christ to these guys instead of throwing stones and condemning them while i hope no one finds out about my own secret sins. no wonder the world hates christians. anyway i will probably just stare unconsciously and wonder where the lesbians are.

just kidding, damn, calm down.

it seems a lot has happened since i complained about getting the boot at ye 'ole lutheran church. to our surprise, when the other folks heard about what happened they resolved it for us. how cool is it to part of a family (of which we are still outsiders) where they take care of you like that. how ironic is it for me to be so strongly desiring to help build a young energetic crowd of jesus followers only to have it thwarted by guys who didn't get it and then have the father lead me to a crowd of folks twice my age who support me and pray for me in ways i've never known. they are clearing the roadblocks and wanting us (mostly Dianna) to charge on ahead. part of me is nervous, 'cause we will screw up eventually, and i don't want to leave the honeymoon status of where we are. it's like the new car smell and kids. you want your car to always smell new, but eventually the wife will take the kids to taco bueno where they all will eat the jumbo grande extra been burritto and on the way home...well let's just say the new car smell will be gone forever after that.

how much for a tooth

well it seems that tyler is going to be just like me in that his teeth don't fall out, they have to be pulled out. so we trekked to san antonio this week to see the dentist and had his two bottom teeth extracted. incidentally, these two teeth were the very same ones that he was born with. i'm not sure how these got placed on the baby order, but if you're out there and you read blogs, know that razor sharp teeth on a new born baby is a bad idea - especially if you have plans to breast feed - OUCH!! - ok, enough on that...

so me attempting to be the coolest dad in the world goes by the bank to see what neat coins they have, anticipating that my tooth fairy skills will be called upon later that night. well, tyler decides that maybe he may not get a good enough deal from the fairy so he decides that he doesn't want to put his teeth under the pillow just yet. it reminded me of my high school days when i knew that i needed to get serious with my walk with Christ, but i wanted to date that certain girl first, assuming that i would have more fun "backsliding" (sorry for the bad pun) then i would being a consummate Jesus freak.

where was i? oh yeah, well last night he decided that he did in fact want to see what the fairy had for him on one condition - he wanted a sorta tooth fairy waiver agreement which said that she (we just assumed it was a she) was free to verify that the teeth were his and free to leave the booty, but would she be so kind as to leave the teeth. ok, so now we are back on track. soon after he went to sleep we went in and traded the signed and notarized waiver for a 50 cent piece (coinage, not the "singer"), 2 new quarters, and 2 gold dollars with the indian girl on them. when he got up he found the teeth and the money all together so he's happy with the final results...and i'm tired. this is all too complicated for me.

by the way, no nasty emails about how dare me encourage him to believe in the tooth fairy. one of my biggest beliefs is that the failure of developed imaginations keeps us from many things the Father wants us to see. remember he is infinite, we are finite. you have to rev up your imagination a little to even begin to behold His glory and unfortunately most parents start squelching their children's creativity and imagination soon after they tell them that santa clause is a myth, if they even went that far. teach your children to dream, to wholesomely fantasize, to create, to whatever. you never know what God may ask them to do later in life.

i was lovingly corrected by a good friend of mine this afternoon who said that one of the problems in the church is that there are too many people like the two i described. he's probably right.

got kicked out of the lutheran school/church building last night by a well meaning but severely deluded elderly lady. it seemed that she alone felt responsible to insure that all the doors were locked and lights were off because after all her husband was a trustee (just another fancy name for committee member), regardless of the fact that we have been given every key, code, number, and so on for the whole place, and that we are there almost every day at all times of the day and night. like the last such person i dealt with, this lady doesn't know anything about what we are doing or what's going on - but if you ask her, she is the pillar holding up the building and the whole place revolves around her. i guess i have come to learn that if a person has to convice you that they are important, then obviously they aren't. people that are busy in ministry are not (usually) busy in causing problems. those that want to stir up trash usually do so because of their own insecurities and issues. thank God that there usually aren't too many of these folks running around.

miami anyone

so we are about a week away from our trip to the great state of florida, once again. of course this time we will be staying in miami, a first for me. part of me is really curious about the miami way of life, oops, gotta go.