Soul and Spirit | Ain't Complicated

A Cheery 2010

Good morning! Let me tell you some of what I’m cheery about and thankful for this morning. (I’ll leave some space at the end for you to add some of your own cheerful thankfulness.)

🙂 We made it to twenty ten. We’re ten years past the old projected end of the world (2000). Furthermore, we have yet to be struck by the fearsome Y2K bug.

🙂 The story in the EU Times is likely untrue. (You know the one about the Russians expecting “outbreak of civil war within the United States before the end of winter.”)

🙂 Only one of my business partners has dealt gracelessly with me.

🙂 Our immediate Roth kin are to show up today to celebrate our Christmas, sans the usual gift exchange.

🙂 I got a good night’s sleep last night despite the trials that have come upon me in the last month.

🙂 I finally get to put up the new calendar I got from Christian Light Publications. (I also need to find a place for the one I got from Rod & Staff Publishers.)

🙂 This new-to-me, hard-to-find, IBM trackpoint keyboard works wonderfully!

🙂 My two-year-old grandson Trenton just came into my office to show me a bulldozer he must have found in our toy box.

🙂 My body still works so that I can get up from here and go outside to feed the cat, lose the dog, and sing to the cows.

🙂 It doesn’t matter whether or not we have started a new decade.

Here’s a story I’ve been sitting on since December 22. I wonder what Christmas was like for the Johansson’s…and what’s happening with Dominic by now. I just did several Google searches and turned up nothing new.

An appeals-level court in Sweden has affirmed the “kidnapping” of a 7-year-old boy who was snatched by police from a jetliner as it prepared to take his family to their new home in India.

The days-old decision from the Administrative Court of Stockholm affirms the state custody of Dominic Johansson, who was taken by uniformed police officers on the orders of social workers even though there was no allegation of any crime on the part of the family, nor was there any warrant, according to the Home School Legal Defense Association.

The group, the premiere homeschool advocacy association in the world today, has been alarmed by the case that developed apparently because school and social services officials in Sweden objected to the homeschool program for the child.

[…]

“HSLDA is gravely concerned about this case as it represents what can happen to other families who might wish to homeschool their children,” Donnelly said. “Furthermore, in response to inquiries from HSLDA, Swedish authorities have cited the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child to explain and defend their actions.

[…]

In a posting at the Swedish newspaper Varlen Idag, Mats Tunehag, president of the Swedish Evangelical Alliance, worried about the injury being inflicted on the family.

“Annie is from a Christian family in India, and they had planned for some time to move there to live, work and to homeschool Dominic. Due to the harassment from Swedish authorities the trip was delayed. But finally in June this year they were on their way, sitting on the plane bound for India. Then the police came rushing into the plane – as if they were to apprehend dangerous terrorists – and snatched Dominic, saying he is to be taken into care. Can anyone imagine?” Tunehag wrote.

So…what happens here in the United States if the USA becomes a signatory of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child?

Source: Court endorses ‘kidnapping’ of 7-year-old

Cheery 12.26

🙂 I’m warmer than the 25 degrees outside.

🙂 A quick glance at the news shows an absence of USA No Longer Free news.

🙂 We had a very nice non-traditional Christmas Day.

🙂 I’m glad I’m up, though I didn’t want to get up.

🙂 “Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow.”

🙂 I expect WordPress 2.9.1 to be available by Monday at the latest.

🙂 Time for some hot green tea with a drop of oregano oil in it to help finish off the cold bug.

He Came!

“And the light shineth in darkness” (John 1:5).

“He was in the world” (John 1:10).

“He came” (John 1:11).

“But as many as received him” (John 1:12).

“And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us…full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

He came…to turn my darkness to light.

He came…enlighten me.

He came…that I might know Him.

He came…so I could receive Him.

He came…to give me the option of becoming a child of God.

He came…to show me His glory.

He came…to live among people such as I am.

He came…full of grace and truth…for me.

Thank you, Lord Jesus, for coming!

[The Scriptures say in John 1:5 -- The light shineth in darkness]

from John 1:5

A Mechanical Shepherd

Well, not really a mechanical shepherd, but a shepherd who looks like a mechanic and a mechanic who acts like a shepherd. But makes a much-too-long title.

Every Christmas we trot out the crèche again. We peel off the newspaper wrappings and arrange the usual cast of characters—three wise men holding presents one kneeling; three shepherds one with lamb on shoulders; infant bearing adult’s demeanor, arms outstretched; Mary genuflecting by the straw crib; Joseph hovering over his wife.

We say the usual things about the shepherds: “See how God loves the humble. See how He revealed himself to those rough men and not to the wise and learned. Were there no great scribes and teachers in Jerusalem that God should pass them over to go to a field?” We say all that but we would drop dead with surprise if in our day God brought important news to Joe Homeless in South Philadelphia and gave him the assignment of delivering the message to the local accredited Bible schools. He wouldn’t get past the receptionist.

I met a real live “shepherd” last week in Bernville, Pa. His name is Andy Merrick and he looks a little rough, to tell you the truth. It’s because he spends a lot of time under cars and at car auctions, buying and repairing vehicles for missionaries. In high school his friends took bets that he wouldn’t live past 19. God had other plans. After he got saved, Andy thought part of that plan was Bible school. But when he tried to wrap his mind around Greek and Hebrew paradigms, he didn’t know why he was there, and he says the teachers didn’t either.

Andy went to Peru as a missionary for 18 months and noticed they were working with lousy equipment, so he came back home and started collecting and fixing cars for them, till his neighbors in South Jersey objected to the fleet on his lawn and he had to ask God for more land, which the Lord obliged him with.

Andrée Seu wrote that (and a bit more) over at WorldMagBlog: The shepherd thing.

Christmas Bummer

What you’re about to read will take you in a direction different than you expected to go:

He sees her as we circle the parking lot a second time, an aimless, wandering circle, a time-killing circle while we wait for their mother to finish a bit of shopping. I have already seen the woman — a girl, really, with tangled dark hair and downturned gaze. She sits on a little concrete median between the entering and exiting traffic, and she holds a cardboard sign asking for money. Not even money, just anything. “Anything helps,” her sign says.

I have already seen her, and so, having nothing better to do, I am engaged in a lukewarm internal debate. Should I give her money? What will she do with the money? Should I drive across the street and get her McDonald’s? Don’t poor people eat badly enough as it is? What about teriyaki chicken from a nearby Japanese place? But will she turn her nose up at that? Will the drivers behind me hit their horns when I stop to give her the money or cheeseburger or chicken with rice? Will people look askance at a man stopping to talk to a young woman on the side of the road? There’s so much to be calculated, you see, in the doing of small good.

Then Caleb sees her. “Dad,” he says, “there’s a woman in the road holding a sign. What does it say?”

“She’s asking for money,” I tell him. We talk about the reasons why a person might be so poor that they take to begging in traffic. They mostly come down to bad choices and illnesses of the heart and mind.

“We should give her some money,” he says.

[…]

I am proud of my son and I want to be like him and I am afraid one day he will be like me, all of these thoughts in me at once, and so what I say is that I love him.

If you only read what I have excerpted above, you are cheating yourself. You really should read the full story over at Sand in the Gears.

Then clean out your gearbox.

And a joyous Christmas to you as well.

Update: Avoiding Eye Contact

Hey, Sister!

You’re held to a higher standard!

Let down by a Mennonite

Such are the inheritances of my up-bringing that I still have a twinge of conscience regarding shopping on Sundays. So it has been with a certain kind of nostalgic pleasure that I have noted that Amish and Mennonite businesses are closed on Sundays in Sarasota. “Good for them” I have thought, “they hang on to some healthy counter-cultural traditions”.

I hoved up to “Sam’s Club” this afternoon, to buy some catfish at a good price. The store was out of stock!.

As I entered the store I saw a 70-something Mennonite woman easily identifiable by her attire as she left “Sam’s Club” with a full cart/trolley.

I felt betrayed.

Before you react against the above writer, read his full post, especially the conclusion.

That said, I react with dismay (and worse) at this kind of Mennonite witness, for I also am a Mennonite.

But…why is this a Mennonite witness? Why not a Christian witness?

The question isn’t merely, “What has happened to the Mennonites?”

It’s also, “What has happened to the Christians?!”

Sunday observance just doesn’t matter anymore.

That’s too bad.