Defend the Schools!!!

Interesting thoughts from Dr. Voddie Baucham

As many as eighty-five to ninety percent of professing Christians send their children to the government for their education. That is simply an astonishing figure considering the fact that the Christian community fought mandatory government education tooth-and-nail for it’s first fifty years of existence. Since then we have gone from fighting against government schools to fighting for them and implying that those who fight against them are fundamentalists, anti-intellectuals, and racists.

He then links to this post from ethicsdaily.com which ends by saying:

We believe public schools advance the common good and deserve the intense support of people of faith. We think the demonizing of public school employees is morally wrong. We contend that hate speech against public education bears false witness.....

Rather than retreat from public education, goodwill Baptists must be known as the ones who speak up for public schools and refuse to give up on one of our nation's most important institutions.

Leading us all along the way...

Here We Are--Don Moen
***The first ten seconds of the video are messed up... it then repeats.

Here we are lifting our hands to You.
Here we are giving You thanks for all You do;
As we praise and worship Your holy name
You are here dwelling within our praise.

For every answered prayer,
For always being there,
For love that hears us when we call,
For arms that lift us when we fall,
You have always been right beside us
Leading us all along the way;
We made it through
Because of You...

Here we are lifting our hands to You.
Here we are giving You thanks for all You do;
As we praise and worship Your holy name
You are here dwelling within our praise.

For days we cannot see,
For all that's yet to be,
The trials we may have to face
When we'll be leaning on Your grace;
It will be Your strength that saves us
Your love that makes us strong;
And through it all
We'll sing this song...

Here we are lifting our hands to You.
Here we are giving You thanks for all You do;
As we praise and worship Your holy name
You are here dwelling within our praise.

Switch Gears:

Having received word that my blog is "depressing" I shall endeavor to post something that often helps me out of my "depression".

I had heard this song before from the VCD it was originally on. Then, to my utmost heartbeak, the VCD malfunctioned, and now is merely a relic. I had wanted to hear it again....and then I found it on youtube!!!

Blessed Are You-- Paul Wilbur

Blessed are You O Lord our God,
Eternity's holy King;
Blessed are You O Lord our God,
Whose Word brings on the evening.

Bar'chu et Adonai ham'vorach l'olam vaed
Bar'chu et Adonai ham'vorach l'olam vaed

By wisdom O Lord
Heaven's gates open up
With understanding You order the seasons;
Creating day and night
Turning darkness into light
Arranging the stars to Your pleasing.

O blessed be the King
To the Holy One we sing
Lord of Hosts is Your name;
O everliving God rule over us
Now and forever the same.

Pieces

Having grown up in a culture other than the one my parents grew up in, I have a mixture of the two that is the definition of me.
It has been almost 5 years (4 Years 10 months 10 days, and I've lost count of the hours now...) since I left the culture that I grew up in. I have used the language only slightly since then. I keep some parts of it up in songs, thoughts, dreams, and occasional reading of letters that people had/have since then given me. I have felt the steady decline of less-used words. Things don't come as easily, and I sometimes stayed for hours, trying to translate "simple" words that I had completely lost the meanings of. Then, there are the times where random words fly at me, and I instinctively "know" what they mean...and then I begin to question myself. I roll the words around on my tongue, finger the meaning, and try to remember if I was really sure as to its meaning.
Opening my Cebuano Bible is a rare occasion. Every time I do I am confronted with words which I never really understood. I am still somewhat ashamed of how I stuck with the slang, but not that the old words were used that much either. Englisera and mishmash had taken the place of a lot of "functional words". Religious terms thought up/applied by the original Bible/song translators have little normal use in the first place. Almost like a ghetto child would hardly be able to comprehend the meaning of an KJV passage.
Last night, I was suddenly struck with a mental image that I knew I needed to turn into a poem. The problem is, that the image was in Cebuano (don't ask me how, it was), and I could not get the words out of my head. I "knew" but I could not form it into a cohesive word package.

It was then I realised that I was TRANSLATING. I was taking english expressions, phrases, the turn of the words....I was trying to fit them into this Cebuano picture. I could not help but burst into tears. It was like I had lost a peice of myself. I could no longer meld into my other half, the side of me that was brown, with brown eyes and black hair, the side that gets goose-bumps (it had happened) when the temperature is below 65, and others are working up a sweat. Next thing that will happen is that I will forget how to swim!!!!!!!!!!!

Then as I cried, a little voice started coming through. I wrote out the most lovely poem I have ever written. It was a heart-poem in my heart-language (one of them, at least). It came for someone who was struggling. It came from someone who was struggling.

Our struggles make us. Our struggles break us. Our struggles force us to take the little million peices to the foot of God's throne. Our struggles make us say: "Here, You take them, because I am at the end of my rope."
Life is a struggle.

I am in little peices.
Oh, and just an FYI: The poem is not available to read. I often find that putting poems up is a very open/vulnerable thing. When I am dead and my older sister publishes all the bad ones in a posthumous volume, you can look for it and remember.

Phil 1:6

being confident...that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it...

Psalm 68

¹⁸ You have ascended on high,
You have led captivity captive;
You have received gifts among men,
Even from the rebellious,
That the LORD God might dwell there.

¹⁹ Blessed be the Lord,
Who daily loads us with benefits,
The God of our salvation!
Selah
²⁰ Our God is the God of salvation;
And to GOD the Lord belong escapes from death.


28 Summon your power, O God;
show us your strength, O God, as you have done before.


³² Sing to God, you kingdoms of the earth;
Oh, sing praises to the Lord, Selah
³³ To Him who rides on the heaven of heavens, which were of old!
Indeed, He sends out His voice, a mighty voice.
³⁴ Ascribe strength to God;
His excellence is over Israel,
And His strength is in the clouds.
³⁵ O God, You are more awesome than Your holy places.
The God of Israel is He who gives strength and power to His people.

Blessed be God!

Hosea 2:14

"Therefore I ....will bring her into the wilderness,
And speak comfort to her...."

B-Day meditations

I am now 19, dear blog-readers.

Yes, THE age. What is so important? I don't really know. But for some reason, my young mind always saw 19 as THE age.
I would surely be perfect by 19. (rotfl!)
I would be married, or getting married soon. (hey, little girls have all this planned out right?)
I would be jaw-dropping beautiful (it doesn't hurt to wish?)
and most purely loving. (well....even little girls exaggerate sometimes)




Now, I am 19.

Well...... you can see for yourself!

Open-ness

OK, so I said I would post about sunglasses.

Well, I was engaged wholly as a salesperson for 10 days. I knew our products, I had seen many of them, remembered others, memorized prices, etc, etc. I would judge people when they began to approach our tent whether the cry of "kamot!" "Nathan! kamot!" "Rea, kamot!" would ring out (it means hands or, more liberally "watch their hands!") or whether we would get up, and help the customer with a description of all the items they were likely to be interested in. Nothing perturbed me more than to have uppity people come in and stalk around the tent in sunglasses. Sunglasses, while they may have a purpose for helping one's eyes, are a barrier.

Luke 11:34-35
The lamp of the body is the eye. Therefore, when your eye is good, your whole body also is full of light. But when your eye is bad, your body also is full of darkness. Therefore take heed that the light which is in you is not darkness.

They cover the person's eyes (and in some cases most of their entire head) and you cannot tell if the person is utterly annoyed with you even saying hello/helping them/talking about 15 different types of firecrackers, or if they are completely at a loss to know what they are looking at and need help to find what they thought they wanted.

Most of the older generation would walk up and take their sunglasses OFF (or shove them up to the top of their head) when they entered/or were about to enter the tent. The rest of the people with sunglasses (and how can you see the lovely colors or notice details of interest and intrigue when your wold is a grey-blue?) would usually walk around in a very testy/bored way, and walk out.

I have had glasses for what seems to be most of my life now... I had never had the opportunity to wear sunglasses, because they are not (or were not?) made to fit over glasses, and the ones that are made for your glasses are/were rather expensive. Most of my family does not wear sunglasses. In fact, not many people I know do. So, this week was interesting in that I was unable to communicate well/much at all with people whose eyes/face/physiognomy was hidden from me. (I believe I first learnt that word from Jane Eyre...and I just googled it's spelling, so I know it is correct, although it's definition is most interesting....and I am highly pleased with my depth of language.....*pride moment*....ok.....I'm over it now)

So, when you want to talk to me....and when you want to be open with someone--don't wear sunglasses.
And if you want to really get to know someone....have them take off thier sunglasses.

But--the real test of knowing someone is when they can wear sunglasses and you know exactly what they are thinking....ie...I said some of this to my sister and she was wearing her new sunglasses, and she said "Well, what about me?" And I said, "1) I already know you. 2) We say the same thing at the same time, so I know a lot of how.what you think. 3) I can tell from your body language, and I don't entirely need your eyes."
Although...there have been times where even the sunglasses make it hard to tell her moods....

Culture Trend

I have been completely socialized these past 10 days. I have seen/been around/talked with more people in this space of time than in moat of the past year. I noticed two very overwhelming cultural trends/fads (I think trend is a better word, because fad indicates that it is a passing freak of style or popular, whereas trend tends to imply a deeper root cause/reason for the outburst of whatever may be currently popular).

First, is a culture of death. We all know the stereotypes of Emo, Goth, etc, etc. It goes beyond black hair/chains and makeup. I would like to know one thing I have not seen decorated or in a motif without a skull (or skulls) or skull-and-crossbones, or some type of visual representation of death. Tattoos, clothing, chains, jewelry, fingernails, bandannas, sunglasses....even underwear! (Hey, when they don't know what a belt is for, I can't really help but see...not that I had a choice or that is was in any way shape or form at all anywhere near possibly tolerable -- yes, that is a lot of adjectives and adverbs). It has been so trivialised, that it is included in everything. There are even little pink skulls decorating children's T-shirts.
I remember when my grandparents bought a pair of little boys swim shorts for my younger brother. They were typical tie-died blue Hawaii board shorts, decorated with hibiscus flowers (yes, for boys!). When it was given to him, mother grabbed it up and looked at it closely. Something very hard to see at first, but the pistil of the hibiscus, instead of being little dots of pollen, was a miniature skull!!! I remember being quite horrified that something so ugly would decorate any article of clothing, much less pollute a flower....or be substituted for one!!
However, it is now SO commonplace, that even classy, or "upper-middle-class" people think nothing of donning this insignia and it has even become a "fad". The best way to pollute the meaning of anything is to make it popular. Even well-to-do people who came in with $100 bills in their pockets wore them.
We are now surrounded by a culture of death. Life is so meaningless, so useless, so purposeless.... Satan is more than glad to dominate Hell and Earth and bring more people to end their lives by desensitization to such gross paraphernalia, and then embracing it.

Second, is a culture of fake. Everything is made in China. Use it once and you have to buy another. Fake nails (it took them 3 times as long to pick up change...not to mention fake nails are just SO pitiful...because there is no way anyone other than a blind person could not see that they are FAKE!!!), fake hair (this applies to the dyed and the add-ins and the dreads), fake body (fake plastic even? Agh! Don't ask!), fake tan (orange anyone?), fake height (heels or a slump), fake smile (as in...this is a situation wherein I must look like I am amused), fake suave (bling and slicked hair), fake posture/presentation (sunglasses : see other post for a note on those).....even some people have a fake gender!!!!!! (I will probably remember those two very STRANGE "women" for a very long time... *nightmares*)
Makeup masks the true self into what you see painted on a billboard. You change yous height and hair to attract fake love. You talk cool and swagger and show your underpants to attract fake honor..... It is a cruel downward spiral. Yet, it all means nothing.

It overwhelmed me. Completely shocked me and made-me-take-astep-back-and-try-to-understand.

The people of York City need life
They need something real.

Am I here to show it to them?

Gentleman in a Rebel (Part 2)

This was not originally intended to be a two-part, but now it is....

So...I was walking into Rutters to get a refill on my drink. As I got within 5 feet of the doors I see a young man about to (or at least he gave all appearance of walking towards the the doors) exit. Instead of reaching to door, and opening it to leave, he halted momentarily, and began perusing a shelf of cookies.

I reached the door, opened it, and as I was crossing the threshold, he suddenly lost interest in the toothsome display and exited before the door shut.

It suddenly struck me: He stopped and appeared occupied so as not to have to open the door for me. It was most shocking and intriguing. It was very politically correct and it was perfectly unintentional-looking. I decided to blog about it.....