Lame Joke Award

I had to write a special occasion speech for class, and decided ot have some fun with it.

"Thank you and welcome to the Comedy Awards, brought to you by the Idaho Comedy Commission (ICC). The ICC has long been a promoter of high quality, laughter-inducing humor, and as a result has sponsored tonight’s ceremony. Many awards will be given tonight, from the Wit Award, to the Facial Expressions Award, to the Klutz Award. But for the first time tonight, we will be adding a new award to our selection.
After years of eye-rolling and sighs of despair, the Idaho Comedy Commission felt it necessary to recognize the sincere efforts of comedians who never seem to be able to arouse more than a blank stare from their audience. The Lame Joke Award has come about out of sheer sympathy, in efforts to make the Comedy Awards a less depressing event. Our recipient tonight is a student at ICC (Itawamba Community College). This person was neck and neck with several other candidates, but her joke about the man who had to break into his music store because he had the wrong key, along with her French Cows joke, nailed the lid shut on that coffin. Ladies and gentlemen, my sincerest apologies on bringing those jokes back to your attention. And now, the Idaho Comedy Commission, with moderate pride, presents the Lame Joke Award to none other than Sarah Shields."

Some disheartening occurances.

Tonight I went with a close friend of mine to her dad's house. While I do greatly enjoy my friend's company, a big reason I went was to be there for her and give her a friend while with her dad's side of the family. You see, high moral standards are, sadly, the last thing on their mind. They respect my friend's beliefs, but that's about as far as it goes.

The language there is atrocious. It breaks my heart to see her dad's 5-year-old step daughter being raised in such an environment. She's so innocent, so pure in heart, but I know unless God works a miracle how she will most likely grow up to be. The worst part of it all is that they are so sexually loose. This is her dad's fourth wife I believe. They practically encourage promiscuity. My friend's cousin and his friend were there as well, which started said depressing events.

Her cousin has a girlfriend, who was there, but he and his friend had invited two other high school girls there to spend the night. They had just met them that day, maybe the day before. Her cousin had to ask one of the girls's names while we were at supper, but it was obvious what was going to take place later that night. I couldn't help but think of her cousin and friend as the fools Solomon so often speaks of in the book of Proverbs. The way they act and talk is nothing but foolishness, and beyond that immoral. I found myself angry at what they were doing to those girls. I'm sure the girls were far from innocent, and had, so to speak, been around the block a few times. But I couldn't help feeling sorry for them. They were giving themselves away to complete strangers, and completely deceiving their parents. Not to mention the legality issues.

I'm not a female, so I'm left to wonder what makes a girl give away the most special and precious part of herself like that. Is it to feel accepted? Beautiful? Loved? I could look into their eyes and see that they didn't know what real love is, for it seemed they had never experienced it. I could see the emptiness there, especially in one of them. It makes me wonder, did I fail? Could I have done something to stop what took place? Did I miss a chance to share the gospel? Who else has failed to share it with them as well, or have they rebelled against it? To the ladies out there, please save yourselves for the man God has set apart for you. The man you will spend the rest of your life with, who you will bear and raise your children with. No other man (or boy) deserves what you have to offer until you are united as one in Christ through marriage. It is too special, too amazing, too mind-blowing a gift to be given away at a whim.

Intolerance or Correction?

Suppose you and I are on a plane in Denver, heading to New York. The only problem is, your intentions were to go to Seattle. Would you want me to tolerate the fact that you think you're going to going to Seattle and let you fly to New York, or had you rather me inform you that you're on the wrong plane? We both know that it would actually be very kind and respectful of me to correct you.

Let's suppose that you and I are going through life, considering what will happen after we die. I know that there is Heaven, and also that there is a Hell. I have no doubts about this. Would you want me to tolerate the fact that you are on your way to eternal suffering and just let you go there? Or had you rather me inform you of the way to eternal life? Without Jesus, we are doomed to an eternity in hell, but through Jesus, God offers us forgiveness and eternal life. Please accept Him.

1 John 2:22-23. "Who is the liar the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son had the Father also."

Romans 10:8-11. "The Word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart- that is, the word of faith that we are preaching, that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. For the Scripture says, 'Whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed.'"

Confusion

The time is 11:22. I just woke up. I went to bed at 8. 8 A.M. Like this morning 8 A.M. What, you might ask, the heck did I go to bed that late for? It's quite an interesting story. I don't think I've ever been to an even with the times mixed up so badly. I was asked to play bass for the worship service at a lock in at the Church of God of Prophesy somewhere way off on the other side of the state. I'd have bet my right pinkie toe that I was told we were playing on Saturday. Thursday I found out from my drummer/friend/failed organizer (Nick, if you're reading this, I love you) that we play Friday night. No problem! I just rearranged the other 17.3 things I had to do this weekend and I'm set to go. We leave at 4. Nick called are 2:30 and said we leave at 3. No problem. I just fly home from town, throw all my gear in the car, and rush back to Nick's house. When we got there we found out that Nick wasn't asked to leave at 3, but at 4. As we were rushing to set up for the service which started at 7:30, we found out that it started at 8:30. During that time I also found out that we were staying at the lock in. All. Night. Long. When Nick said we would be home around 9 or 10, I thought he meant 9 or 10 P.M. He meant A.M. Of course we also found out the lock in ended at 5, not 9 (thank goodness). And of course my phone died during the worship service. But, all in all, I had a pretty decent night. The theme and the message were on unity. To be honest, I've never been a big fan of talking about unity. Just seems like something that should be a given within churches, and not something people have to fight for, and ironically, over. How about we all just get in God's Word, study it, know it, know HIM? If we did that we couldn't help but be united! All the divisions and issues, big and small, could be peacefully resolved. There's a shocker, eh? I think my mind would fry if a disagreement in the church were peacefully resolved.

Let's Get This Straight

Hello, all. I would like to announce that I am OUT of school. No more. Zippo. I am through. Till August at least. We clear on that? Good. The good news for you folks is that I'll, in theory, be able to blog a bit more since I'm not spending all my writing time discussing why an appeasement policy towards Hitler caused WWII on the school message boards. It didn't cause WWII on the message boards by the way, I meant it caused the real WWII. The English language just made it difficult to put that last prepositional phrase somewhere that made sense. Now that that's behind us, you have to be wondering what I did today. Go ahead, ask! Fine, I'll tell you anyway. Take a deep breath, and prepare for bluntness.

I went to a memorial service. Exciting eh? Actually, a good portion of it made me want to puke. I had no idea church events could be so un-Biblical. It also seemed a bit dead, which I found ironic considering the occasion, but that seems to be a common church problem. First of all everything was done out of routine, as in they did it just because they had always done it, and I honestly didn't catch a bit of worshipful attitude about it. Even prayers were said just because it was time to, like some sort of ritual. I guess that sounds familiar to many of you though, so I'll start on the part that got me to thinking. As we were about to go into "Victory in Jesus", the lady leading the singing said something along the lines of "My momma loves this song, now y'all sing loud so she can hear it. I know she doesn't even need a book." Considering the song-leading lady was headed for 75 afwul fast, I figure it's safe to assume that her mother has been deceased for quite some time. I didn't see any 100-year old deaf ladies in the congregation, though a few had to be shouted at to carry on much of a conversation. I have to admit though I had a hard time keeping quiet when I realized that singer lady actually believed her mother was looking down from heaven and singing with us. While thats a nice sweet though, it just ain't the case.

When it comes to heaven, we make things so dumbed down and so much worse than they really are. The truth is, IF her momma is in heaven, she is likely so busy worshipping God that she couldn't care beans about what's going on down here. So why is it we like to think our deceased loved ones are sitting there taking care of us? Frankly, I much prefer God to do that Himself. He does a much better job.

Some of you may have been shocked to see that I said "IF her momma is in heaven". I hate to break it to you, but that's definitely an "if". We seem to get the notion that all those who have died are, to steal the funeral cliche, in a better place. Why do we lie to ourselves? Why do we allow ourselves to believe that those who never placed their faith in God are now residing with Him? Are we too afraid of pain to admit that most of the people who's empty shell lies in each cemetery you drive by are likely suffering, burning, continually dying in a God-forsaken BLEEP? It's so much more comforting to believe that maybe they accepted Jesus at the last second. Is that possible? You bet. Likely? Sorry, but no.

The reason I'm bringing out the harshness is for those who are alive but dead spiritually. If we realized where most of the people we love and care about are going, we wouldn't let anyone else go there without clearly understanding that there is a way of salvation. If you had taken the chance to talk with your grandfather, your aunt, your friend's cousin's fiance, or the person you didn't really know that God laid on your heart, they might not be separated from God for the rest of eternity. But no, we let ourselves believe that they are in heaven havin' a good time feastin' with Jesus (hallelujah, glory be)! After all, they did attend church their whole life, they have to be there. Plus if we believe that, it saves us from having to ask that awkward question, "Do you KNOW where you are going?" And we would hate to do anything so uncomfortable. The cause of Christ just isn't quite worth the psychological discomfort that question might cause us or the other person, and we all know it's politically incorrect to psychologically discomfort someone. How about this: quit being a pansy and realize that BLEEP exists and people are going there way faster than you are telling them, and then DO something about it.

P.S. I speak to myself here too.

On How I Hate to Write

So here I am trying to write a 5-page term paper for my Old Testament Survey class. And you have to understand, I have absolutely no desire to write this thing. I have no desire to write whatsoever. So much so that I thought I would write a blog about how much I don't want to write. Ironic, eh? I reckon I had rather blog because I can use my natural accent instead of making a vein attempt of pretending to have a large vocabulary (as if i don't intuitively portray that characterization on here on given occasions).

I have to say the weather has been flippin' awesome here lately. A nice mixture of sunny and overcast with no rain, in the upper 70's/lower 80's with a steady refreshing breeze. Now I realize that sounds like summer to some of you Yankee pansies, but here in the South it don't get no better'n this. I have no idea where I'm going with this, but I figured it to be worth mentioning. I enjoy being envied I suppose. In all seriousness, the weather has made me think about how blessed I really am. On top of the weather, I've been blessed with an am amazing group of friends, both here in Webster County and in foreign states. I went to an amazing concert last night. I have been given the miraculous ability to read for 37 hours per day to keep up with school work, and still scrape up enough money to cover January's cell phone bill (yes, it's March, and you people are behind on your blog subcriptions). Moral of this blog: Enjoy the weather, love life, thank God for it. Y'all have a good 'un.

The Flood

I had to write a paragraph (which turned into an essay) in my Old Testament survey class that turned out to be so darn long I figured it was worth posting on here. I guess I just get carried away sometime but hey, I've been needing a good blog post =D.

Being a Christian and a firm believer that God's Word is always true, I strongly believe that when the Bible says it covered every mountain on the earth, it means just that. To claim otherwise as a Christian and say that "God didn't really mean it covered the whole earth, it was a figure of speech," leaves an opening to say the same about any other passage that contradicts what they want to believe. Unfortunately, this argument doesn't hold much water to those outside the Christian community, so a more rational argument must be used. Needless to say, the modern scientific crowd utterly shuns the notion of a worldwide flood. I believe to admit to such would also force a belief in a Young Earth and the rest of the Bible, but that's beside the point. Even Wikipedia slams a flood account with the mere title of flood accounts ("Deluge Myth"), shutting down flood-favoring evidence that even the ancients recognized without even an attempt of explaining the discrediting. I find it ironic that our society of "open-mindedness" is so closed minded to anything that poses the slightest opposition to their beliefs. Before I go quoting other sources I would like to insert my personal evidence that I have scraped together. At this time twelve days ago I was gazing down into the Grand Canyon, by far one of the most beautiful, jaw dropping places in Creation. It was almost too amazing to fully take in. The fact that it's there is evidence of a Creator to me, but again this isn't good enough in the scientific community. I was reading all the info on how over 400-some-odd-million years ago the canyon began to form and blah blah blah, and the more I read the more holes in the theory I saw. The biggest being the geography around the Grand Canyon. It does not flow down into a valley and continually cut deeper, but it cuts into a 2,000-foot-high plateau. This fact seemed to have puzzled those who came up with the popular theories, because the river could have much more easily gone around the plateau. How does water go up two thousand feet and the cut through solid rock down to where it should be? Well, a darn big flood seems like a good answer to me. The Bible says that the earth opened up and poured out water as well as with the rain, and the Grand Canyon could very likely have been one of those places. We also have no idea of the power of the currents that could have gone on during the rise and fall of nearly 30,000 feet of water. I realise that my Grand Canyon argument doesn't hold much water (aside from the Colorado River, haha) but it is definitely a reasonable hypothesis.
Some evidence mentioned on the Wikipedia page (that I have also read elsewhere, but wasn't able to find it right off) is the bounty of fish and sea shell fossils found way up in the mountains. Those salmon would have either jump several thousand feet, or they swam up there, and fish don't swim so well in the ground or air. Scientists often use the fact that so many flood accounts were given by so many ancient people to discredit an actual flood event because none are very much alike, but instead this seems to be evidence for a flood instead of against it. Why would everybody across the face of the earth write about an event that never happened? A catastrophe of that magnitude would certainly not be ignored. I could find more evidence if I continued to search but I'm sure I've breached a word limit somewhere a while ago with this post.