Archive for May, 2008
this one cut straight to my core.
Regarding the Sabbath: “It’s hard to preach about a commandment The Church doesn’t keep.”
– Dr. Matthew Sleeth
two years ago, being the color-coded spreadsheet chart-and-graph making weirdo that i am, i decided to analyze chris’ and my starbucks spending pattern. in april and may 2006, we spent $237.21 (or $118.61/month) on coffee drinks that make us gain weight.
seeing it on paper like that was a shock, so we have cut back significantly.
well, at least, that’s what i thought.
i just went in and added up our starbucks for the last two months. in april and may 2008, we spent $42.82 (or $21.41/month) on coffee drinks that make us gain weight. actually, that is way more than i thought (and hoped) it would be.
monday, i shared with you a decision the pinkhairedgirl and i made to forgo our annual tradition of tattooing. with that donation, the one-month salary for a rescue center employee was just paid. with crystal’s donation on top of mine, two employees had their salary paid.
today, i am sharing with you my “no more paying for starbucks” decision. i am not going to buy anything at starbucks for the next year. the java chip frapp i am sipping on right now will be my last until june 1, 2009. i am taking that money ($20) and de-worming 128 kids a month. because really? that is a lot of kids with worms and that just isn’t right.
i am sharing these facts and figures with you not as a “oh, check out MY sacrifice” kinda thing…but to show you that we are putting our money where our mouth is (or perhaps taking away our money from where our mouth is?)
your starbucks fund can help feed children. even if you just gave up two or three lattes a month, look at what you can do.
as aaron said earlier…we are unapologetically asking for your help and sacrifice.
it’s your turn. you will make a decision today. what will you do?
WILL YOU GIVE UP YOUR STARBUCKS (OR _________) WITH ME? ONE YEAR. DARE YA.
i usually don’t answer my phone when i don’t recognize the number, but since it was a DFW area code, i figured…
what the heck?
on the other line was a very nice gentleman from american airlines. evidently they thought my online complaint from april had been resolved (because of this post).
he was super nice, apologetic, and even posted some miles to my american advantage account. and he told me my email to them was the first one to really ever point them to a blog post. and now they are going to pay a little more attention to their online reputation.
so…i wanted to share the happy ending with you guys. maybe there is hope for airline travel after all.
people have still been commenting and linking to the post “keeping your mouth shut” – about things you feel you can’t say in church.
i found out yesterday it was featured on a radio station in Australia! you can listen to the discussion online here. i have to admit: it’s pretty cool to hear “flowerdust” said with an aussie accent! they read some of the comments too…maybe they read yours!
the discussion is great though. take a listen!
pinkhairedgirl.net (her real name is crystal) and i have been friends for about five years or so now. and, every year for the last three years, we’ve upheld a tradition of body modification (tattoos, piercings, etc.)
this year was no different. she flew down to okc, we made an appointment…and this is what happened. (and seriously…could my freeze frame be any more awkward?)
after you watch, click here for more information.
another letter came in the mail for chris and me from linet, the girl we sponsor in uganda. that is three letters in the three months that we have been sponsoring.
“i want you to know how much my family and me love you.”
yeah, i got a bit misty eyed from that.
her birthday is sunday…i wonder what she’ll be doing?
it’s really easy for us to see how a seemingly nominal $32/month and the occasional birthday or christmas gift is helping her. i wish it was just as easy for her to see the difference she is making in our lives.
shaun was right. a trip like this will morph your life. i can’t believe it’s been three months since we’ve been home. honestly, i thought the emotions would wear off by now.
until i realized what i am experiencing isn’t emotions…it literally is a complete and unexpected reformation of my spirit. even though chris wasn’t able to go on the trip with me, god has been reshaping his heart too. we look at everything so differently now. it’s made our marriage stronger. it has changed the way we spend money. the way we look at the world. the way we look at the poor, the rich, and ourselves. we pray differently. we hope differently.
around 30 children have been sponsored from this site. i mentioned earlier that you all purchased at least 110 mosquito nets.
your lives are being changed, too. it’s been beautiful to see us all walk through this in different ways, together.
i haven’t posted a specific child who needs a sponsor for a while, but i thought i would today.
this is gipsi. she is five years old and lives in columbia.
In her home, Gipsi helps by making beds and cleaning. She lives with her father and her mother. Her father is sometimes employed and her mother maintains the home. There are 2 children in the family.
Gipsi is not presently attending school. Playing with dolls, playing ball games and running are her favorite activities. She also attends Bible class regularly.
gipsi has been waiting over six months for a sponsor. i pray that wait will end today. and i am assured whoever takes a step into this little girl’s life will be just as changed as she will be.
CLICK HERE TO SPONSOR GIPSI. please make sure you do not click the “select this child” button unless you are sure you will be sponsoring her, as doing so will make her sponsorship page unavailable for an hour or so, and someone else might miss their chance. thank you…
if you try to sponsor gipsi, but it says she has already been sponsored, you can always search for a child here!
a few people i known have referred to blogging as a grown up and online version of high school. you have all your stereotypical groupings…the cool kids, the nerds, the teacher’s pets, the testosterone-driven, and the moms.
(yes, the moms. i grew up in west texas and in high school, the moms had their own table. but i digress.)
based on the description of others, evidently i sit somewhere on the cool kids table. but since punctuality is not in my nature, i consider myself to still be standing in the lunch line, waiting on my rectangular pizza from a greasy lunch lady named helga.
(but again, i digress.)
i used to watch my stats and analyze them all the time. how did i stack up to others? will i ever break 100 subscribers? 500? 1000? will i ever break 100 authority on technorati? 300? 500? can i hit 10,000 pageviews a month, 30,000, 75,000?
let’s just say i became a little obsessed. especially since the giants of this blogging business are mainly men…i wanted to be the cool little sister who was able to follow closely behind.
to confess: jealousy was a commonly played tune in my head. all the cool kids went to all the cool conferences. they got free stuff. they met each other and it was all off the hook. i mainly sat behind my computer.
if only i could be one of them. if only…
and then i realized…
even if “if only” happened…would i really care?
don’t get me wrong. i love my blogging brethren. i have met many of my fellow bloggers in person and they are sharp, and they are amazing. they are impacting the church culture in so many ways.
but me? my heart and my passions are expressed in different ways. and that’s just peachyfine by me.
for example – i am not a conference-going kind of person. i am not uber-extroverted leader, and speaking to a billion other uber-extroverted leaders would probably make me curl up in a ball and suck on my thumb until jesus comes.
it took a while, but i finally realized that it’s not a large amount of influence that matters.
it’s the right kind of influence.
so, i look around.
kids living in poverty are being sponsored left and right because of the community on this blog. over 100 malaria nets were donated from the community on this blog. pastors who were broke and needed help were helped, mission trips were funded, people were prayed for, addictions were spoken about, and ultimately…god’s name has been glorified by this community BEING the church in relational and missional ways.
this blog isn’t about me. it is about us. a group of believers reflecting the love of christ to the world in a million different ways.
that’s the right kind of influence.
thank you for being a part.
i recently got a copy of jesus brand spirituality, a book by ken wilson, which came out this week. anyone who knows me well knows i love reading, but i read so much, i really only skim books to find nuggets that will stick with me.
this book, however, had me sucked in from the first couple of pages. technically, it had me sucked in from the title. last weekend, i read it in about three hours and highlighted/underlined so many things in it.
i’m going to have to do another post just to share all the insights, but i thought i’d share the first chunk with you now.
i should also say that nobody asked me to review this book…this is straight up out of my own felt need to share this book with you and express that i think it is one of the most important books any church leader or believer could read.
with that said:
- we can only hope jesus will continue to challenge every effort to hijack his brand, because he is, and always will be, the main attraction.
- jesus invited curious onlookers to help him do what he was already doing so that his actions would have greater impact…there were no faith quizzes to pass before you could help out; all it took was the willingness to go somewhere with jesus because you liked what he was doing.
- jesus was a mystic who prayed with his eyes open
- the roman empire embraced christian faith as the state-sanctioned religion. this in turn gave birth to the monastic movement as devout individuals sought a more spiritually enlivened form of faith, removed from the trappings of the empire (*my thought: we are on the cusp of this again, with people getting worn out from “trappings of the empire” and are longing for a deeper, more Christ-like faith)
- since religion can both illuminate and obscure jesus, sometimes we need to dig to find him. a good place to dig is the gospels. here, we find jesus on a mission from god to repair the world. in his glance, we catch an invitation for us to join him.
- caring for the most vulnerable isn’t a matter of compassion alone; it’s a demand of justice and the true sign of religion.
- as we engage with the realities that engaged jesus’ attention, we are more likely to encounter him.
- the gospel is a message with personal, social, and global reach. if it’s not good news at all these levels, it’s not good enough.
- have we front-loaded people with so many matters of belief that we are, in effect, asking them to swallow the whole package as a pre-requisite for a meaningful engagement with jesus?
- as a result of our long and productive love affair with rationalism, we tend to suffer from an anemic view of what we call “spiritual experience.”
anything resonate with you?
if you’d like to get your own copy…you can get it right here! i seriously can’t tell you how much this book rocks.
SEX TOYS AND VIDEOTAPE
(note to my mom and grandpa. please don’t read this post. thank you). :)
remember it is the week of hot sex over at one of the blogs i contribute to, deadly viper. we’re having an honest and biblical discussion about seldomly addressed questions about sex.
yesterday, my friend mike blogged about gay fantasies and homoeroticism. today, it’s my turn with sex toys and videotape…
here is what i wrote…i am closing comments here so please leave your comments there today!
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We got a lot of questions about sex toys. Someone even asked if making a video tape of two married lovers was Biblically alright.
Before we got married, Chris and I went through several weeks of premarital counseling — one or two weeks included what was okay in the marriage bed.
The key word in these questions isn’t vibrator or video, but BIBLICAL. And since these things weren’t really hanging around thousands of years ago, the Bible doesn’t literally state, “thou shall not have edible underpants.”
So, what does the Bible say about the yays and nays of sex?
1. Fornication/Adultery – Sex outside marriage either physical or mental/emotional (1 Corinthians 7:2, 1 Thessalonians 4:3, Matthew 5:28)
2. Homosexual acts – (Leviticus 18:22; 20:13; Romans 1:27; 1 Corinthians 6:9)
3. Orgies – (obviously violates #1 and sometimes #2)
4. Prostitution – (Leviticus 19:29, Deuteronomy 23:17, Proverbs 7:4-27)
5. Lustful passions – (having someone or something you can’t have – Mark 7:21-22, Ephesians 4:19)
6. Sodomy – Contextually in the Bible, this is a homosexual act between men. It is not referred to as anal sex between a man and a woman.
7. Incest – (Leviticus 18:7-18; 20:11-21).
So, what does this mean??
We are free in Christ, and we are free in our marriages – as long as we don’t do something that the Bible forbids. Paul says that nothing is unclean in itself in Romans…and that everything (within God’s law) is permissible. This doesn’t exclude what happens in the bedroom.
So…if a guy and his gal are BOTH cool with using some toys to enhance their love life, it doesn’t violate any Biblical principles, then…rock and roll with it, sweetheart.
For a porn-free, Christian based “Marital Resource” store (wink, wink)…go here – http://www.book22.com.
*Special thanks to Linda Dillow & Lorraine Pintus who covered this topic in their book, Intimate Issues.
