Hey, Bubba. Look what I found behind that log!Macy gave me a gift after church this morning. The kids are doing the Advent calendar in Sunday School and this morning's candle was Hope. This is her edition of the craft in their class.
Macy is a twin; her sister is Bryn. Coincidentally, they're both 4 years old. And they are the cutest twin girls in the whole world. At lunch today we agreed we didn't think it was possible, but they're even cuter with their new haircuts. I'd post a pic but I don't want to pull one off of their parents' Facebook page without first getting permission. I have no doubt you'd agree they are the cutest...even if you have twin grandchildren.BTW, Evan - as in, "You have a BIG nose!" - is their older brother.
Somewhere in China, or Malaysia, or India, or wherever it is Costco gets their men's briefs made, is someone who thinks they're really clever. They're having a great laugh thinking about the "Size 32" labels they put on a package of size 28 whitey tighties. And yes, I know they were mislabeled because the other package of 32's was correctly labeled.
Ha-Ha. Yeah, real funny.
This robber needs to work on his technique...or find a new line of work.
Oops.
The current issue of TIME Magazine is a retrospective of the last decade. Their "Briefing" page - quotes from the news - features five quotes from the last ten years from people who got it all wrong. No less an expert than Bill Gates said, in 2004, "Two years from now, spam will be solved." Paris Hilton, in 2006, described herself as "an iconic blonde like Marilyn Monroe or Princess Diana."
Same issue, the "10 Questions" page, interviewed Ray Kurzweil, a famous futurist. (The difference between a futurist and a weatherman is that the futurist isn't around to get laughed at for being all wrong.) Kurzweil made several bold predictions about how life will change over the next several decades. By 2040 we will have multiplied human intelligence a billion-fold and we'll reprogram our biology.
Watch. Ten years from now the "Briefing" page will feature quotes from Mr. Kurzweil.
This morning at Pathway was...well...interesting. We had visitors. One couple is vacationing in the area from their home in Vancouver, British Columbia. In the, "It's a really small world" category, they are with New Tribes Mission, and served in Papua New Guinea AND know the Husas! (They're regional directors for NTM now.)
But wait! There's more!
They know a woman who was a teen in our church when I pastored in Prunedale, CA back in the late 70's. That's how they came to visit Pathway this morning.
Holly also visited us. She came up to me afterward and said, "You must be Swedish."
It was my good looks and smooth manner that gave me away.
My sermon was the penultimate in our series on the seven churches of Revelation 2-3, the message to the church in Philadelphia. While doing my prep I realized I could work through the section, explaining the various elements as we went along, but that would be particularly difficult in this case. What's written to the church in Philadelphia has everything to do with the agenda God laid out for Israel vis a' vis his agenda for the Body of Christ, specifically the Rapture of the church prior to the Tribulation prophesied in the OT. How would I explain that agenda as I discussed the elements of the passage when those elements don't come in chronological order?
So...I took a different approach. My sermon introduction took the first 20 minutes and 200,000 words. Picture someone talking so fast that the voice-over doing the legal stuff at the end of a used car commercial sounds like a good ol' Southern boy with a slow, easy drawl. From Adam all the way through to the Kingdom with plenty of detail in between. But first laying out God's dealings with and agenda for Israel, and explaining how the Body of Christ is a parenthetical interruption of that agenda, means all I had to do was read the message to the church in Philadelphia and it was all clear.
Jesus was (is) the Son of David, he is in sovereign control of all things, and he will take the Body of Christ away before the great Tribulation the world will experience before the Messianic Kingdom.
I don't know if it worked in their heads. That's one of the problems with preaching. Often, what makes perfect sense to the preacher during his prep hits a brick wall come Sunday morning. But if it didn't, it's too late now!
We talked about red stamps in second hour. More next week. We're putting together a list of commandments for resolving conflicts (arguments) within a marriage.
I'm going to sleep tonight. I might sleep tomorrow...and Tuesday, too.
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