The Scapegoat

I am still cleaning up from the water that flooded our basement. Cardboard file boxes got wet and had to be sent to recycle. Now I am sorting and deciding what to save and what to discard. Today I found something that I have not seen in twenty years. Many years ago at a church assembly a pastor was passing out little plastic goats that he called “scapegoats” to help people focus their angers on that little scapegoat rather than other people.

It seemed like a good idea at first but then people began to think about what that means. It makes that little piece of plastic shaped like a goat an idol and it also does nothing to relieve our feeling of anger. It was pointed out that we need to really face our causes of anger and pray for help in solving our causes not transferring them to a plastic idol.

That toy goat is now missing its horns and is going to a place where future archaeologist will dig it up and wonder “What is this?”

Drug Company Niaspan ads

I have been taking Niaspan for ten years to raise my HDL to prevent heart attacks and strokes.

A few weeks ago I began to notice a lot of TV ads for Niaspan which is a very expensive drug. Those ads came out in advance of  a study about the effectiveness of  the drug that proves it is not effective for reducing heart attacks and strokes. I bet the drug company knew in advance of the ads that the study results were about to be released.

Now what do I do? I am waiting for my doctor to investigate and advise me. This drug has unpleasant side effects and if it is not doing me any good I want off of it.

A Most Sacred Moment

The church was silent except for the occasional sound of plastic communion cups being returned to their trays and deacons moving from pew to pew. The quiet was broken suddenly when four year old Amanda shouted, "I want some refreshments too, mommy." How do you tell a four-year-old that it's not refreshments but a sacred act of worship?

After worship Amanda's grand mother and I took her back to the church kitchen where we gave her a piece of the communion bread. It was a stale hard cracker.  Amanda's reaction was a turned up nose and "Why do you eat that?" After the bread she had no desire to try the juice.

          Our communion service every Sunday is for me the most sacred part of the Christian worship service.  In fact it is the one part of Christian Worship that is different from the other two religions that worship God. The elements of our worship service are very much the same as a Jewish synagogue except for communion and reading the New Testament.

Understanding what we are doing is as important as why we are doing communion. It is not the actual bread and cup but the condition of our awareness when we eat and drink that makes the difference in how sacred that moment is for each of us.

Timing Worship

We have a man at church who is of the opinion that God only wants worship services to last sixty minutes. He gets that idea from his memory of worship when he was a child. He is not happy that our worship service usually last about an hour and a  half and each Sunday he spends the worship time recording the time for each section of worship.

According to him the congregational prayers should only take two minutes and the sermon ten. He was in shock when I told him that my first preaching professor told us that a preacher who preached for less than thirty minutes was NOT doing his job. In the early days of our country Sunday worship often lasted four hours in the morning and another three in the afternoon. Things have changed. People today have had their attention span reset to television’s ten minute segments. It use to be fifteen minutes but more commercials lessen the time available for program.

My friend in church is missing the point of worship by being focused on the time it takes. Our worship is so good that for me the time flies by because my soul is involved in the act of worship. His time goes at a snails pace because he is focused not on worshiping God but on keeping track of minutia. When you spend your worship time – timing worship – you miss out on God’s time and the joy of praising the Lord. 

She Missed Breakfast

My mother was always fond of her breakfast. Many times on this day of the year she would remind me that she gave up her breakfast for me on May 28, 1942. Mind you she was glad to do it because I was finally going to make an appearance. Not that she was given much of a choice in the matter.

It was not just that morning that mom made sacrifices for me and my brothers and sisters. I am so thankful to her for giving me life and teaching me the value of living it as a Christian. She taught me about the bible and about God’s love for me. She taught me to love God, love others and love myself in that order. I am what I am today in large part to the foundation that she carefully laid for my life.

Even today though her mind is damaged by strokes I know that she holds me in her prayers every day.

Thank you MOM I love you very much.

More on Health Care Issues

I saw an  ad on TV warning against the what they call Oboma-care health care  and using scare tactics showing a government bureaucrat getting between the patient and doctor saying you can’t give that treatment.

The big problem, and I speak from personal experience, is that my health insurance company has been telling my doctor for years that I can’t have a treatment unless I am willing to pay 100 percent of it. They are already doing what the ads are trying to scare us with. How dumb do they think we are? They pulled that trick several times before and they think it will work again.

 

Fear of the unknown or what might be moves people to action against their own best interest. It is the same arguments of fear with medicare.

 

The very real issue in these arguments is money. How should health care money be collected and spent? There are no easy answers. Instead of arguments from fear we need to examine other ways of talking about how we do health care for all our citizens with out breaking the bank to pay for it. Clear heads and common ground are needed but political re-elections seem to be the guard at the gate. All we seem to have in both major political parties are self centered career politicians. Well that is what we have to work with and we keep sending them back to congress.  

Trivial Time

The paradox of our time is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.

We spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.

Our time is precious and far too often wasted on trivial concerns. Take a few moments of your precious time to consider your place in eternity and the trivial will melt away.