Vision

“First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”

President John F Kennedy spoke these words in 1961 and inspired a vision that he did not live to see fulfilled.

I remember the great excitement in our neighborhood in 1965 when we went outside in the evening to watch the moving star that contained Ed White and James McDivit as it flew thru the night sky.

I remember the Sunday night of July 20th, 1969, when we rushed home from church that night, went to our neighbor’s house to watch on a color TV as Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon. America went to the moon 5 more times but after that the vision fell apart for many reasons. And by the time we go back, if we ever do, the pioneers who first went there will be gone.

All because we lost our vision.

Losing a physical vision is nothing compared to losing a spiritual vision. This is why God made such a big statement with the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Here is the vision God has for us:

2 Corinthians 5:15-17 “And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

Colossians 1:9-11 “For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father.

I challenge you to renew the vision that God has for you and view yourself as a new creation!

God is in us!!

One day, while a guy was out driving his car, he upsets a bunch of bikers that were also out riding. The bikers surrounded his car and make him pull over into a parking lot and get out of the car. The lead biker took a piece of chalk and drew a circle on the pavement. He tells him to stand in the middle and not leave the circle. Furious, the biker and his gang went over to his car and slashed the tires. The guy started laughing. This made the men angrier so they smashed his windshield. This time the guy laughed even harder. Livid, the bikers broke all his windows and keyed his car. The guy is now laughing hysterically, so the biker asks him what's so funny. The guy giggles and replies, "When you weren't looking, I stepped out of the circle three times!"

I think sometimes we act like that guy in the circle. We let Satan draw the circle around us and we don't venture out except to just step out and step back in again while the world is being destroyed. This morning I was in my circle and I went off the freeway exit and saw a man that is there consistently. I even know his name is Jesse. I was upset myself that I forget that he would be there so I went and got him some food. I did not want to justify my inaction by saying, "Oh, I will try to remember next time."

1 John 4:4 (NIV) "You, dear children, are from God and have overcome (the world), because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world."

Acts 17:27-29 (NIV) "God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.' "Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man's design and skill."

Since God is in us, I challenge you to find one thing today that will bless someone else and go ahead and do it, not putting it off until tomorrow.

Tagged

Tag, I am it - Ron Clark http://www.kokemushkeivogel.blogspot.com/ tagged me so here goes......

A book that has changed my life besides the Bible: "The Screwtape Letters" by C.S. Lewis. He gives a good picture of how Satan works on a human being to "undermine faith and prevent the formation of virtues."

A book I have read more than once: "The Stand" by Stephen King. What could happen when the "society" disappears and there is a clear choice between good and evil. (Except really no mention of God.)

A book that made me laugh: A book about pregnancy - my oldest is 18, my youngest is 8 - it has been a long time since I read it and I can't remember the name. And humor about labor is not the best subject in this house. However Bill Cosby's dialogue on his experience is priceless.

A book that made me cry: "Charlotte's Web" - In 2nd grade, I cried when Charlotte died.

A book I wish had been written: A book that says it is okay to say "life sucks" when it truly does. To feel great joy, I think we all need to understand that pain is not always punishment but a consequence. 1 Thessalonians 5:18 - "give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." Notice it says give thanks IN all circumstances, not FOR all circumstances. There is a big difference.

A book I wish had never been written: Any book about assisted or unassisted suicide. Why go to meet God when you are not prepared?

A book I have been meaning to read: "The Abolition of Man" by C.S. Lewis.

A book I am currently reading: "Renovation of the Heart" by Dallas Willard. When I was at Father/Child camp at Camp Yamhill in July, Tom Buchanan recommended this book to me. At the same time, his wife, Karen recommended "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman. In one fell swoop, two people used by God turned my spiritual world and my work world upside down.

I tag Jason Hill - http://www.jasonhill.blogspot.com/

How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?

Matthew 22:37-40 Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with allyour soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatestcommandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."


Ben Stein's Last Column...©
For many years Ben Stein has written a biweekly column called "Monday Night At Morton's." Morton's is a famous chain of Steakhouses known to be frequented by movie stars and famous people from around the globe. Ben terminated the column to move on to other things in his life. Reading his final column is worth a few minutes of your time.
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How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?

As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is "eonlineFINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.

It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.

Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.
How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.

They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.

A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him. A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.

There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament...the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards. Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin...or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.

But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.

Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.

By Ben Stein

How would you respond to Leonard?

AT LARGE
Literalism blocks Bible's big picture
By LEONARD PITTS JR.
lpitts@MiamiHerald.com

First Baptist Church of Watertown, N.Y., fired Mary Lambert for being a woman. They say the Bible told them to do it.

Nothing against women, says the Rev. Timothy LaBouf. The church is just trying to obey 1 Timothy 2:11-14, which says, in part, ``A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.''
So, after 54 years as a Sunday school teacher at First Baptist, Lambert was given the heave-ho a couple weeks ago. She and others have said the firing probably had as much to do with church politics as with scriptural injunctions, but let's stick with the stated reason as given in her letter of dismissal: The Bible forbids women taking positions of authority. There is, for the record, a similar injunction in 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, which warns that it is ''disgraceful'' for a woman to speak in the church.

So the church is scripturally right. It's just not right right.

INTRIGUING
The Lambert case intrigues me because it illustrates a point I've made on many occasions when people bring out Bibles to explain why gay folk deserve no civil rights. Maybe now, without the reflexive emotionalism that gay brings to cloud their view, a few more people will see the obvious: Bible literalism is impractical and impossible. Or maybe they won't see.
Allow me to share by way of example an e-mail I received last week from a gentleman named Al who took exception to a column I wrote condemning capital punishment. Said Al, ``When one criticizes the death penalty one criticizes God's judgment in the matter, as scripture ordains death for numerous crimes. It is not wise to criticize God.''

I shot back a note pointing out that among the crimes for which scripture ordains death are cursing your parents (Lev. 20:9) or committing adultery (Lev. 20:10). Did Al really believe those misdeeds should be treated as capital offenses?

''Only if one wishes to accomplish God's will in the matter,'' said Al.

I don't mind telling you, people like him scare me.

A GOOD CHANGE
As it happens, one of America's greatest churchmen recently weighed in on the question of Bible literalism. In a twilight-of-life interview with Newsweek, Billy Graham spoke of the way age and perspective led him to reject the absolutism of the left and right and to make his peace with the notion of God as a loving mystery. People of faith, he said, can ''absolutely'' disagree about the details of theology. ''I'm not a literalist in the sense that every single jot and tittle [of the Bible] is from the Lord,'' he said. ``This is a little difference in my thinking through the years.''
It is a difference people like Al would do well to emulate.

Or has no one else noticed how literally some Christians interpret those Scriptures that give them license to condemn, yet how elastic and liberal their readings are when dealing with Scriptures that convict their personal behaviors? Meaning that it's always a little more difficult to catch people being literal about turn the other cheek, do not store up treasures on earth, do not turn away the borrower, love your enemy.

Yet, you can't go to the store without tripping over someone who wants you to know the Bible calls homosexuality an abomination.

MOST IMPORTANT THEMES
People obsess on the fine print, yet miss the big picture, the overarching themes of sacrifice, redemption, love. In their selectivity, they are reminiscent of the Islamic fanatics who bomb and behead, citing some passage of the Koran as justification, yet conveniently ignoring a dozen other passages commanding mercy and love. People are much less apt to be selective in the direction of mercy and love.

I'll close by observing that Exodus 35:2 requires death for those who work on the Sabbath. Were I a member of First Baptist, I might wonder where the church leaders stand on that one.

Of course, I'd be scared to ask.

The Right Questions

From John Eldredge in "Wild at Heart"

Most of us have been misinterpreting life and what God is doing for a long time. We're asking the wrong questions. Most of us are asking, "God, why did you let this happen to me?" or, "God, why won't you just . . . (Fill in the blank-help me succeed, get my kids to straighten out, fix my marriage-- you know what you've been whining about.)

But to enter into a journey of initiation with God requires a new set of questions: What are you trying to teach me here? What issues in my heart are you trying to raise through this? What is it you want me to see? What are you asking me to let go of? In truth, God has been trying to initiate you for a long time.

James 4:7-8 (NIV)
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you.