Due to my addiction fascination with Mythbusters, I came up with a thought/question that I posed to Jon one night while we were out walking:
Given the reaction that happens when one puts a Mentos into a bottle of Diet Coke, wouldn’t it be appropriate for the TSA to ban them on commercial flights because some idiot could think it would be funny to stick one in a can of Diet Coke or Pepsi on a plane?
I’m just sayin’…
As many of you know, I did the media fast website for 9/11 4 years ago because I didn’t want to see all the images playing over and over and over again on TV as I felt it cheapened what people had gone through.
Well… I found something media-related that I actually *like* and approve of. It’s the 2,996 Project. You sign up and are assigned a name of a person killed that day. On 9/11, you post a tribute to them on your blog.
I really encourage people to sign up for this. If you hate the idea, that’s fine — you don’t have to participate. I’m just putting the word out because I’m #17xx of the 2996 they need and I’d love to see every victim have a tribute posted about them.
While surfing around the Blogathon frame (which is still up in case y’all want to see any of the *interesting* sites), I came across this:
My not-quite aunt (sheâ????s actually my friendâ????s mother) asked me today, â??œDid you hear that they want America to fight another war? They said â??˜Jesus is Coming,â???? so they want us to fight there, too.â???
I assumed she meant the Hezbollah-Israeli conflict breaking out in the Middle East. What appalled me most about this was the fact that it seems Jesusâ???? Second Coming, perhaps the most important event to Christians (or second most, if you think Immaculate Conception is the first), is being used as a persuasion method to go to war.
My Bible says that Jesus wants us to â??œlove our neighbors as we love ourselves.â??? I somehow donâ????t think the Son of God would want us to hurt each other, and, eventually ourselves.
If Jesus plans to come, thereâ????s no one to stop him. Right? But why should we use what will all ready (according to Revelations) be a rocky time as an excuse to make today even worse? I understand that many people believe that the end days are already upon us (President George Bush, Prince Charles, the Pope, and the King of Syria have been pinpointed as the Antichrist).
I just donâ????t understand the logic behind using the Second Coming of Jesus as an excuse for war? Shouldnâ????t we be somehow preparing ourselves? Isnâ????t this just pushing the world over the edge?
After all, when has love not been an answer for something?
Joy (the author) is right.Â? To anyone who is starting to tie the rumblings of the Middle East into Ezekiel, Daniel, and/or (especially) the Book of Revelation, could you do me a favor?
CUT IT OUT!!!!!!!!!!!
If Jesus could come down to earth, dwell among us, die for us on the Cross as an atoning sacrifice for our sins, and rise again on the 3rd day, I really think He can plan His own itinerary for his Second Coming tour and doesn’t need our help.
That is all.
Let me just say that the situation between Israel and Lebanon is making me sick.Â? S-I-C-K.Â? The Israeli offensive is akin to solving a playgroud fight with an AK-47.Â? It just bothers me that one country can be allowed to completely annihilate the infrastructure of another without people caring (OK… at least people caring in the USA — Lebanon to most here is probably “one of those darn Muslim countries”).
Does anybody else in the world freaking care?Â? I know the U.N. was talking about censuring Israel.Â? Why haven’t they done it?!?!?!?!?
I usually watch Countdown with Keith Olbermann to see what’s on Oddball and also who he has deemed the Worst Person in the World.Â? (It’s also a good way of keeping tabs on the stupidity that is Bill O’Reilly.)Â? Well… what I saw in the first 3 minutes of Countdown made me ashamed to be an American.
You see… the Idiot in the White House’s response to Lebanon calling for a ceasefire was to tell Israel to keep the civilian casualties to a minimum.Â? This is of course followed by the Israeli ambassador to the U.N. spitting back the whole “Axis of Evil” spiel which included pretty much all of the other countries in the Middle East.
Could someone please explain to me why the life of a Lebanese child is worth so much less than the life of an Israeli child?Â? Oh yeah… if the airports in Israel were taken out like the Israelis took out the Beirut airport, people would be up in arms all over the flipping world and the US would decimate whoever touched their airports.Â? So… explain to me why the infrastructure of Lebanon is worth so much less than the infrastructure of Israel?
Hezbollah should not have kidnapped the Israeli troops but… do you think that decimating the country of Lebanon is going to do anything other than infuriate them more so that more crap happens to Israeli troops?
Why the haitch-eee-double-hockey-sticks are we supporting a country with such a wretched human rights record?Â? Do we really think Jesus is going to come back and pat us on the backs for killing everyone off in the Middle East except for the state of Israel?
I am so ashamed of the idiot who claims to lead this country and of those people in this country who think what Israel is doing is right.
A request from a fellow Blogathonner:
I am blogging for The Armed Forces Foundation and I have an Expression Engine (EE) blog. What the hell does that have to do with anything? EE has a plugin which allows you to throw up a random quote everytime the page is reloaded. I thought, well, what hte hey. Why don’t I use it to my advantage during the ‘Thon?
I want to have random messages to miltary personnel show up on the blog during the ‘Thon. It could be as short as “Thanks!” to as long as “I really appreciate what you do for our country.” or longer.
But I need help. I need messages for the plugin to pull from. Send me some messages! You can do it here. You can do it at my related entry on my blog or you can email me at burningwords @ gmail.com (excluding the spaces there).
And pass it on to your friends and their friends and their friends…
I think it’s cool, so I’m passing the word on!
One of the downsides of being a pastor’s wife is that you can get kind of apathetic about your faith. Jon is an amazing preacher but for some reason I listen better when he’s not the one preaching. (Don’t ask me why — I feel guilty about this.) I do read my daily devotion and Scripture every day and all that; but I rarely feel *EXCITED* about my faith like I used to.
Yesterday, I was scouring the list of churches in the Lutheran World Federation looking for pictures to use as the header on my Blogathon site. Granted, I couldn’t really read what was going on with the Chinese and Korean churches because they didn’t really have English translations but I did see a Lutheran church in Tokyo that had many services happening with even a noon service during the week. Duuuuude! Other churches in Asia had outreach to foreign workers in their countries and I saw worship services in probably 13 different languages listed on the Australian Lutheran website. We do a fair amount of Spanish and Chinese ministries in the US but not Croatian, Estonian, Finnish, Thai, and others.Â? With the Latin American churches, I could kind of understand what they were talking about and their level of service and outreach was one that my denomination (the ELCA) only *wishes* it could attain. Again… duuuuuuuude!
Africa was definitely the most humbling. Many of the national churches didn’t have websites and this frustrated me until the Almighty whapped me upside the head with a 2×4 and said “Uh Jen… most of those people don’t have Internet access!!!!!” (Hey… making websites for African Lutheran groups: this could soooo be a new missionary thing for me.) The ones that did were just awesome in what they did: ministry to street children, AIDS ministries (especially in Kenya and Tanzania), agricultural assistance, etc. I know that the ELCA does provide quite a bit of aid in those areas (as does Lutheran World Relief, for whom I am Blogathonning) but I was just gobsmacked in how the national churches themselves were working in peacekeeping, poverty eradication, empowering women, and even amputee welfare and support. (This last one was in Sierra Leone where rebels chopped off limbs of men, women, and children.)
One of the things that irritates me about my fellow Americans is that we fail to really think about what’s going on internationally unless it affects our pocket books, is harped on daily by the president (i.e. IRAQ! AFGHANISTAN! 9/11!), or is an exotic place where we want to travel. One of the things I loved about the area where we lived in Minnesota is they had a Global Missions gathering which met monthly and heard from different people who had been out in the mission field and had done work with Christians outside the USA. I swear… I was excited to be with those people when we worshipped and fellowshipped because they were educated about the outside world and they genuinely cared about things like the Diamonds Without Blood initiative in Sierra Leone. (This is why I don’t have a diamond on my wedding ring.)
Maybe it’s just me, but it seemed like people cared more about things in the outside world when I lived in cities. Part of it could have been the non-homogenous population (i.e. not everyone is white) and the presence of different ethnic groups which had festivals and such. Part of it could have been that people interacted globally in business. Whatever it was, it wasn’t the “us” vs. “them” sentiment that I occasionally find here on the Hi-Line.
Anyway… the work I was doing yesterday made me excited to be Christian and Lutheran for the first time in a very long time.