After we’ve had done with the lawyers, let’s line up the telemarketers and telephone pollers.
Later that night… I’ve had six calls from pollsters so far today. There ought to be a law! Or a bounty or something.
Archive for October, 2008
Then the Telemarketers
Monday, October 6th, 2008Ha’azinu 5768 – This Is the Way Love Is
Monday, October 6th, 2008Deuteronomy 32:4-5Â He is the Rock; His work is perfect. For all His ways are just, a God of faithfulness, and without evil; just and upright is He. They have corrupted themselves: they are not His sons; it is their blemish; they are a crooked and perverse generation.
God does not violate his own Law, nor does he force anyone else to do so. “They have corrupted themselves,” and they deserve their end. We all do. It is solely by his mercy and his obedience to his own law* that we escape destruction.
* If God keeps his own Law, does that mean he is under the Law? That he is accountable to it? Of course not. He is accountable to no one but himself. Likewise if we keep the Law, neither does it mean that we are under it. We are under the Messiah, and keep the Law for his sake and for the sake of those who see it.
People Smarts
Saturday, October 4th, 2008IMDb users give Smart People 6.5 out of 10 stars. I’ll bet they were ambivalent over The Absent-Minded Professor too. What do they know, anyway? I loved it, but maybe that’s because if I were a lot smarter and a touch more saturnine, I’d be Lawrence Wetherhold. If it weren’t for women, I suspect we’d all be somewhere in a Wetherhold-Toxic Avenger continuum.
(I just checked IMDb’s page on Professor. Yep. 6.6 out of 10. Pedestrians.)
They Who Dig a Pit…
Saturday, October 4th, 2008I heard a story at church this morning. A few years ago there was a woman in our congregation whose mother was grossly obese to the point where she could no longer walk or even get out of bed. One day she had to get her mother to the hospital, so five men from the congregation went to her house to help load her mother into the car. It was a long and difficult process full of humiliation and severe pain for the woman. She hadn’t done anything spectacularly wrong to deserve this. She wasn’t a wicked person. Over the years she had made lots of small, bad decisions: a choice on Tuesday to buy this instead of that, on Wednesday to eat an extra helping at lunch and another at dinner. Although none of those choices in themselves could be blamed for her current condition, the cumulative effect was devastating.
We are 300 million. Most of us are decent people. We aren’t evil. Yet we find ourselves in a very bad place right now, and it will be difficult and painful to get out of it. We borrowed for this and that, tried to save some people over there, minded our own business on that issue…and now we’re so overextended, so financially and politically bankrupted that nothing we could possibly do will fix it. There is no single person, no single wrong decision that brought us here. Rather there are millions of people, making millions of fatefully unwise decisions. Each one was just a shovelful or maybe a trowel or a spoonful of dirt. The pit is deep. We dug it, we’re in it, and there’s no ladder. In the long run, the only thing that will get us out again is a long series of morally and financially sound decisions.
Days of Seeking
Thursday, October 2nd, 2008Rosh Hashanah marks the beginning of ten days of reflection and repentance culminating in Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Yom Kippur is also a day of resolution, much as New Year’s Day is on the Gregorian calendar. The similarities end there, however. New Year’s is festive. Yom Kippur is somber. There are no real consequences to New Year’s resolutions. If we fail, then we are disappointed with ourselves, but little else happens. Yom Kippur, on the other hand, is about getting your life aligned with God’s plan. Someday the Messiah will return on Rosh Hashanah and will take his throne in judgment on the following Yom Kippur. In that year, the days between will take on a much more sober tone as we contemplate answering for our lives to the True King. Each year that he delays is an opportunity to set things right, to make up for past wrongs, and to grow another step closer to perfection.
In my own life, this past year has been marked by some dramatic upswings, but then some harsh downturns as well. Right now, I’m backed into several corners at once, and I have no idea what the future holds or what I’m supposed to do next. This has all come to a head in just the last few days. I have an unprecedented opportunity that isn’t likely to come my way again, but it consistently remains just beyond my reach. I keep saying to myself, “Do what’s right; let God worry about the consequences. Do what’s right; let God worry about the consequences.” But it’s little help. How can I do what’s right when I don’t know what that is? I have no wisdom or divine revelation. It seems that God has conspired with the heavens to place the Ten Days exactly where I needed them this year. I have just over a week to spend in prayer and fasting until Yom Kippur. I hope I’ll have some answers by then.
I wish I didn’t have to be so cryptic, but I’m asking for your prayers anyway.