Religion

Wanted: Close Friends

I didn’t write any of this post just now. This first block I wrote almost nine years ago in the Fall of 1999.

“After six years away, we aren’t sure we want to return to our home congregation. The close friends we had there have all left.” Though I could understand the comment and sentiment well, and could even empathize with it, I was still cut. You see, I was one of those who was still in their home congregation. Their feelings left me feeling out in the cold. It seemed I didn’t count as a friend or even as a potential friend.

“I hope you don’t decide to leave. If you do, we will have no real friends left here.” The comment warmed my heart at the same time it made my heart sink. It seemed that I had allowed our good friendship to warp our friends socially. It seemed that in their estimation, no one else counted as a friend or even as a potential friend.

Have our congregations turned into ice cube trays with the cubes representing individual friendships that have little in common with each other? I hope not! Actually, I’m sure that they haven’t, but the previous two paragraphs ought to serve as a warning to us. We Christians must be experts at developing new friendships, even close friendships, especially within our local congregations!

Three of my good friends left. One went to the Caribbean, another to Latin America, and the other to the world. Sometimes I feel as though I have good friends at church, but no more real confidants. The strange thing is, I can so easily blame the church. You know, it just isn’t as warm and friendly as it used to be. Indeed. If I am part of the church and I am not establishing new close friendships, then, yes, the church isn’t as warm and friendly as it used to be. And guess who’s partly to blame! Me!

This next block I wrote even longer ago — Summer 1995.

Who in your Sunday School class will walk with you? With whom will you walk? Will anyone walk with you? Will you walk with anyone? You need someone to walk with you, especially during those difficult, perplexing times. And the person next to you or across from you has the same need. Why go it alone? Walk with someone!

“A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity” (Proverbs 17:17).

“A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother” (Proverbs 18:24).

“Woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up” (Ecclesiastes 4:10).

And this last block I wrote more recently (February 2003).

“Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do” (1 Thessalonians 5:11).

Be an active, responsible, accountable member of a faithful congregation. Within that local body of believers, be an encourager and a builder in the lives of the others. God will use them to encourage and build in your life.

I originally wrote the preceding blocks for Christian Light Publication’s youth Sunday School quarterlies.

Need for Speed

How do Christians justify driving over the posted speed limit?

Let’s see what kind of a list we can build here.

I’ll start the list with three excuses explanations:

  • “Not keeping up with the traffic flow poses a hazard.”
  • “The speed in this zone is illogically low.”
  • “A police officer told me they’re lenient on this stretch of highway.”

Important Disclaimer: What’s posted here shall not be considered self-incriminatory! 🙂

I’d Like to Do This

I saw this story yesterday, started a post on it, and forgot to finish my job.

Christians offered mobile prayer alerts

British Christians will be able to pray together wherever they are in future, by subscribing to a new mobile phone text alert service unveiled Thursday.

A Christian charity, Prayer in Action, has teamed up with a mobile phone company to offer the Prayer Mobile service, which it hopes will eventually reach 500,000 people across the country.

Subscribers will receive a text asking them to pray, simultaneously, on issues ranging from terrorism to homelessness and the credit crunch, said an official from the phone firm.

“Within the next two to three years, this service will be offered to about 500,000 Christians,” said Erik Fok, sales chief of Ecumen, a range of religious products for mobiles developed by telephone company Teimlo.

“With a world in turmoil, it’s amazing to think that we could soon have half a million people in the United Kingdom alone joining in focused prayer on an issue of national concern.

“This will be a force for positive change in our nation,” he added.

Prayer in Action boss Carl Brettle added: “In a world of uncertainty it’s great to know that the (service) will be able instantly to mobilise thousands of people to pray into the key issues that face society today.

“The Prayer Mobile text service pulls together one of the oldest traditions known to mankind with one of the newest most prevalent technologies available. Prayer is only a text away,” he said.

Last year Teimlo offered downloads of the Bible for mobile phones.

The Prayer Mobile service will cost 25 pence (0.49 dollars, 0.32 euro) a week, for which subscribers will receive a regular weekly alert.

That’s in the UK. Why can’t I do it here? And at no cost to subscribers?

And why don’t any US cellular phone companies offer Bible downloads? (Or do they and I’m just not up to speed on the curve?)

Would you subscribe to such a service?

PS: Notice among the categories Yahoo! chose for this story is this one: off beat. 🙄

News to Start Your Day

We start in Texas:

Texas defends separation of polygamist sect kids from moms

State officials Tuesday defended their decision to suddenly separate mothers from many of the children taken in a raid on a polygamist ranch in West Texas.

Texas Children’s Protective Services spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner said the separation was made Monday after they decided that children are more truthful in interviews about possible abuse if their parents are not around.

When state troopers and child welfare officials seized 416 children from the compound, 139 women accompanied them on their own and had been allowed to stay with the children until Monday, when they were driven back to the compound.

Only women with children under 5 could stay at the San Angelo Coliseum where they were being held.

[…]

Authorities raided the sect’s ranch more than a week ago in response to allegations that underage girls were forced to marry older men.

About three dozen of the women who returned to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints ranch spoke out Monday, after 11 days in temporary shelters. They said in interviews that police surrounded them Monday and gave them a choice between returning home, or relocating to a women’s shelter.

“It just feels like someone is trying to hurt us,” said Paula, 38, who like other members of the sect declined to give her full name. “I do not understand how they can do this when they don’t have a for sure knowledge that anyone has abused these children.”

[…]

The state is accusing the sect of physically and sexually abusing the youngsters and wants to strip their parents of custody and place the children in foster care or put them up for adoption.

[…]

Officials said the investigation began with a call from a young girl who has yet to be located by CPS. The women in the sect said they suspect she may be a bitter ex-member of the church.

The FLDS practice polygamy in arranged marriages, sometimes between underage girls and older men. The group has thousands of followers in two side-by-side towns in Arizona and Utah.

The church has repeatedly fought because of its lifestyle before. Men, women and children have been swept up in raids that took place in 1944 and 1953.

I’m still amazed CPS can get away with this. And I think I’m even more amazed there hasn’t been a greater outcry “out there.” Maybe this country is further gone than even I imagined.

(The rest of my comments and other news selections are below the fold.)

Read it all

The Olympic Torch(ing)

Unless you’re roosting in a cave near Atlanta or Atlantis or Atlantica, you know the Olympic torch is wending its way from Greece to China.

Well, this morning I thought up a “new” term: Olympic torching. But I figured I hadn’t really coined anything new. Good ole Google confirmed I was right regarding one of those statements.

Before I go further, I’ll take two paragraphs for an important disclaimer. I know I should be doing something else. I know I have customer emails to answer, Web pages to fix, and new products to add. I know I have taxes to file, bills to pay, and insurance to investigate. I know I should be writing a business newsletter, updating business records, and posting to my business blog. I know I should be spraying the garden, trimming the trees, and splitting wood.

But when the should‘s in life demand all of my time, I put my foot down (maybe even both). Once a while. And pull my nose away from the grindstone on the butcher’s block. And do something unnecessary. Such as posting to this blog. Or doing a sudoku puzzle. Or playing a game. Once in a while. Such as now.

Disclaimers and excuses aside, how about a little Olympic math?

Of the modern Olympics, which was the bloodiest?

Munich 1972, thanks to the Palestine Liberation Organization or some other Palestinian-Arab outfit. They beat the Israeli team.

How long ago was that?

36 years already.

And what was one of the new things at the Olympic Games 36 years before that one? Munich 1936.

That was the first Olympics that featured a torch as they use it today. And had some other new features apparently, including something to do with priests and rituals and mirrors and stuff.

What else about the 1936 Olympics? Adolph Hitler. You know, that guy that had something to do with Nazis and camps and holocausts. His team beat the Jewish team also. (But as a people, they outlasted him in the long haul.)

So that was the minus-36 side of 1972. And now we are on the plus-36 side of 1972.

I suppose the Tibetans are feeling torched by the current Olympic hosts. What else will China 2008 bring? Will there be an anti-Israeli tie-in somehow?

Meanwhile, you ought to read this article.

As Hank the Cowdog would say, “So there you are.”

A School Bus?

Off to school they go?

Part of the caption over at Yahoo! News Photos:

Law enforcement officials escort members of The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints onto a school bus in Eldorado, Texas, Sunday, April 6, 2008. Authorities took 220 women and children from the compound.

It’s interesting to me to see that school bus there.

At least it wasn’t Waco. (Who will make the Clinton-Bush comparison on that one?)

(Latter, by the way.)

Though I disagree with Mormons (original or revised or fundamentalist versions) on plenty of issues, I am blessed to see the beautifully-dressed, modestly-dressed, femininely-dressed appearance of those girls and women. Frankly, they remind me of the “conservative” branches of “my people” — Anabaptists.

In fact, those dresses look like the kind of wife and daughter sew.

Above all, love God!