I'm sorry! (and ticked)

Now that's creative thinking!

I'm sorry I so highly recommended last night's Dateline program. Let me explain:
I saw interviews with the two families on the Today Show, also done by Matt Lauer, on Thursday and Friday morning. On both of those shows each participating member of the two families gave very articulate and powerful testimony to their faith in God re. eternity and their trust in his good and perfect will in all things. They weren't smarmy, over-the-top caricatures of evangelical Christians, just quiet, dignified examples of mature believers. They answered Lauer's questions directly and didn't force "witnessing" into the conversation, but when one of his questions raised a relevant issue (e.g. "How did you deal with the sudden grief?") they responded with simple yet straightforward testimony.
That led me to expect more of the same in last night's program. It didn't show up in the first hour so I figured that emphasis would appear in the second, when they moved from a review of the facts to the families' response to the events. But it never did!
So I asked myself why. And I have a suggested explanation.
I thought about the difference between the Today interviews and the Dateline program. Know what I came up with? Editors!
The Today interviews were live. Whatever they said went out over the airwaves (or coax). But a team of editors made their decisions about what got included in the Dateline airing. There's no way that two families that so easily and readily included their faith in the Today interviews didn't bring it up when the Dateline crew talked to them. No way!
So, my apologies if you feel like you wasted two hours. And my irritation directed at Dateline. I'm thinking about a letter.
Don't know if the book written by the two families is worth reading. It's published by Simon & Schuster, so no connection to NBC.
Wish you all could have seen the Today interviews. They illustrated with great precision what it means to be a mature believer when the toughest of times arrives.

OK, time to lighten it up a bit. Check out this Japanese TV add for gum:
Tongue Twisters

I'm still in the hunt in my NCAA bracket. I'm not watching much of the tourney, and there's no payoff in our bracket. But this is the closest I'll ever get to success at b'ball. And I intend to enjoy it to the fullest. Think you'll hear about it if I win?

I'm anxious for tomorrow. I think we've anticipated the logistical issues as much as is possible. Realistically it will take a week or two for shakedown. And I'm praying a LOT for the Spirit's help as I try my best to accurately represent the Father's pain at the sacrifice of his Son.

It occurred to me last night that I'd thought about disposable cups, bread and juice for communion tomorrow. I even got one of those special bottles for filling the cups. But nothing to hold those cups. So this morning I got a piece of A/B scrap plywood out of the garage and headed to the woodshop. Two hours later we have a cup holder. Think large paddle with handles on either side and 35 one-inch holes to hold the cups. Didn't have time to stain or finish it, and the lines aren't as smooth as I'd like. But it will get us through tomorrow morning.

Something else is missing from Pathway Bible Church! So tomorrow we'll begin the Foundations hour with a Sven & Ole joke.

Tonight is Earth Hour. You can't have missed all the buzz about it. We're supposed to turn off all our electric devices between the hours of 8 and 9 p.m. to help save the environment. Phoenix is one of the cities participating, so all city buildings will go dark for that hour.
Not much of an issue here in Sun City since old people are in bed by 8:00 anyway.
But even though we sometimes make it to 9:00 we won't be participating.
You may have read that the positive impact on the environment from even significant participation is so negligible as to be unmeasurable. Whatever environmental problems are the result of human activity aren't going to be changed a whit by one hour's reduction of household energy consumption. It is at best, the experts confess, a symbolic statement.
So tonight thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people will turn off their solid state TV's, their lights and their computers to no practical end. At the stroke of 9:00 they'll turn everything back on, and tomorrow they'll get in their 12 mpg SUV's and drive to Starbuck's for a double shot caramel soy latte, and thereby go through more fossil fuel and emit more carbon in that one trip than they would save if they shut down their house for a week. OK, maybe a bit of hyperbole there, but you get my point.
Symbolic gestures only mean something if they're followed by real actions.
Which makes Earth Hour a joke.

So Sven says to Ole, "Hey Ole, did ya turn out da lights last night?" And Ole says, "Ya sure, you betcha ve did! Den at 9:00 I vent 'round and turned dem all back on."
Sven says, "Did it cause you a bunch of trouble to do dat?"
And Ole says, "Are you kiddin' me? After I turned out da lights Lena yust kept a 'talkin' and talkin', but I snuck out da back door in da darkness and she never knew I vus gone! Came back in yust before 9:00 and she hadn't missed a beat!"