Justice on the open market

Derek Webb said in a song "when justice is bought and sold like weapons of war the ones who always pay are the poorest of the poor."  He was specifically talking about the majority of poor people that are always killed in physical war, but there is another war going on around us now, in which justice is being sold and the weakest of the weak are paying the price.  I read an article in the newspaper last week that made me angry, but most of all broke my heart.  The article was giving examples of how the down economy is affecting abortion rates.  The examples were from an abortion clinic in California.  One story was told of a woman that came in to abort her planned fourth child because after re-evaluating their budget her and her husband had decided they just could not afford another child.  Another story was told of a woman that walked all the way to the clinic because she could not afford the bus ticket.  She interrupted one of the doctors half way through his normal spill of what this abortion would mean.  She would not let him continue any more on any talk about possibly not aborting the baby.  The article said she stopped him and through tears said that she had walked all the way there and that she was sure of her decision.  The article also tells of how the economy is making some abortions be pushed to the second trimester, because of insufficient funds from the families to pay for them.  In other words they are having to save for the abortion which pushes the baby further along its way before he or she is killed.  I am not using harsh language either.  That is what is happening.  Justice is for little ones is being sold in return for there parents convenience or the slight bit higher 'avoidance of a really hard time'.  God help us!  Have we become so numb that we can't see that we as a nation perform daily what would be considered grotesque if the babies were snatched unwillingly from the mother's womb, or if the same was done one second after delivery.  We have been numbed by scientific hoopla that makes things seem less cruel than they are.  Abortion sounds much better than murdering babies or the dissecting of infants.  We can handle the term abortion, because it sounds like you're getting your tonsils taken out.  This however is not the case.  Something as gross as the holocaust is happening daily and we shrug our shoulders.  Lord forgive me!  I may have just lost most of my readers with the last statement so let me explain.  What is it that makes murder wrong?  Is it the intentional physical pain it causes to another human?  Is it the pain it causes to the family of the victim?  Is it the robbing of the life that person could have lived?  Is it all of these things I have just listed? Yes, but there is something else much greater that we must see in order for murder to be as heinous as it truly is.  Knowing that each person born and unborn is first and foremost God's makes murder eternally horrible.  When the nazis committed all those poor people to gas chambers and other torturous deaths they in effect counted God as an unworthy Creator to create such people, and when we here in America dismember infants in the womb we do the same.  I am totally convinced that the only infallible argument that gives the dignity and value to every single human life is the fact that God has created us all.  He is the owner.  We have no right.  He forms their inward parts in their mothers' wombs the Scripture says and we here in 

America think it is our right to take them apart.  Do not think that just because you have not directly killed an unborn baby that you have no part in where we are here in this country.  We all have at least played some part with our nonchalant attitudes about it.  

   Before I end this I want to say a few things.  This is without a doubt a very sensitive issue.  I know it is quite possible that someone that may read this has had an abortion.  If you have read this far you are probably very broke up about it.  I am not trying to be harsh, but it does no good to tell you something that is not true.  If you are broken about it know that I do not wish to throw stones at you.  If I could I would hug you and tell you that there is wonderful news for you though.  If you are alive today it is because God is being patient with you.  Let His kindness lead you to repentance.  He loves you.  He created you.  He has promised that if you will receive Him as your Lord and Saviour He will forgive you.  He sent His Son Jesus to die for the sins of the whole world and that means there is enough room for yours.  I personally believe that all little ones that die go to be with Him.  You may see your child one day singing a great welcome home song for you.  I don't know, but I do know for a fact that whosoever believes in Him shall not be disappointed.   

Thanks again,

Ryan

A Tree Is A Stick To Garrison

Yesterday afternoon I went out in the back yard with my little boy Garrison.  We had an awesome time.  Its amazing what an amusement park a 40ft by 40ft patio home yard can be to a 17 month old.  He loves going outside.  As a matter of fact, me and my wife have been having to spell it out to each other when talking about it because when he hears the word he runs to the back door and tries to turn the handle to go all the while looking and whining at us.  So we are now at the spelling words stage I guess.  Anyway, so we are outside and I set down in a chair and just watch him.  He just staggers all over the yard jabbering about everything.  He is starting to sound out words, (when he wants to) which is pretty cool.  So he starts bringing me all the sticks in the yard and saying something like 'ick' or sometimes if he's doing good 'tick.'  Well after he brings me about five he walks over to one of our two trees and points and says 'ick.'  So I say 'no buddy that is a tree.'  He shakes his head walks in a circle and points at it again...'tick'.  I never did convince him that what he thought was a big stick was actually a tree.  He heard nothing of it.  It was an ick to him and that was that.  

Well that got me to thinking.  So many times in teaching and learning we get caught up on terms and miss the understanding.  We teach children the rules without the life.  We memorize without attaching it to life.  Sure we make a distinction in the English language between a live tree and a dead tree.  We call the live one a tree and the dead one a stick or a log or something else, but the fact is Garrison is right.  The tree is just a big live 'ick.'  Now of course later on I'll explain that we call the live one a tree and all that good english stuff, but for now he has the foundation to build on.  I just think we teachers discourage our students because we teach the rule the rule the rule without it meaning anything more that crammed memory for a test.  Rules attached to life are all that matters to children and adults.  Information unless it affects us has not benefitted us.  Well now I am going off a little on another talk.  Hopefully my point is clear.  This is not only for formal school teachers.  This is for all of us who ever have the opportunity to help teach anyone anything.  Everyone you come in contact with can learn.  We  make it seem so difficult.  It does take some discipline to excel, but it is much easier to do so if all of the information we are trying to learn is not just memorized, and the terms taught just because they are to be taught.  Understanding will take us much further that memorizing.

I really do think all of this goes back to your foundation.  I am absolutely sure that things can never be seen completely right until the Creator-creation relationship is restored.  It is amazing how much clearer everything is when my mind has been renewed by Him and His word.  This stretches to every facet of life.  

Thanks for reading,

Ryan

A People Pleaser; the biggest slave of all

There is a big difference between being and appearing to be.  These may overlap sometimes, but they are not the same.  I had a situation that reminded me of that this weekend.  I won't go into detail, but I told myself that I am done trying to appear as anything.  I'm going to be.  Now that is a heck of a lot easier said than done, but that is my new resolution.  So many times I have let what I appear to be dictate instead of acting the way I ought before God.  I'm now wondering if the whole thought process of wanting to appear christian is good at all.  Now hopefully if I love the Lord Jesus with all my heart and love those around me then someone will ask about the hope that is in me, like it says in Peter.  But going around tip-toeing is not loving.  It is self/image protecting.  I'm not here promoting the idea of using liberty as a cover to sin either.  I pray that if that is in any of my motive that God will break me of it.  It didn't seem to bother Jesus that some called Him a wine-bibber and a glutton.  As a matter of fact as I was typing a verse popped in my head that He said.  Beware when all men speak well of you.  So I should not hold the opinion of all as my measuring stick.  Jesus must have drank and ate with sinners.  I think the Bible says that.  I know He turned water into wine.  He put Himself in places that at first glance could have looked like He was doing something wrong, and some folks accused Him of sin.  Yet we know He was absolutely perfect.  He did not concern Himself with appearing in any way.  He just was.  He always pleased the Father.  

My point is this.  There will always be folks around questioning my motives and even actions if I really go out and love people.  If I love people and tell them about the holy God of Scripture, not the American replica, that we including myself at the forefront have presented, then I will not be accepted by everyone.  But what am I losing.  I have lived the other side too, and found that no matter how hard I try please everyone and avoid every single possible appearance of evil, someone will be offended.  And all to often my motive becomes hoping that I appear Christian in the way the audience I'm around at the time defines it.  I'm sick of it.  God help me just love Him and everyone I can around me.  I would love any insight or comments anyone would like to offer on the subject.

Ryan

A Who From Whoville

So we teachers at MGM high are giving graduation exams this week, well some of us.  I don't guess they trust the P.E. guy to give tests, so I am holding some who are not taking it.  Anyway, what this means is we try to find something interesting to do for four hours.  Today we watched two movies.  One was "Horton hears a Who."  I actually really enjoyed it.  Maybe I'm just a weirdo, but I couldn't help noticing the constant parallels between the movie and God and us.  I am not referring to God as an Elephant that talks.  Thankfully He is not that.  But we certainly are a lot like little whos from whoville or however you spell it.  I can't see it in my head right now.  Anywho....its not that we look like that much like them, most of us, but that our situation is very similar.  We think we are so much bigger and that our affairs are so much grander than they actually are.  We are just a speck in a humongous jungle on a humongous earth in an even more humongous universe.  But we don't know it, or at least we don't act like it; that is usually until something tragic happens and we realize afresh just how small and fragile we really are.  For those of you who have not seen the movie you are missing out.  From another slant in the movie, the mother kangaroo keeps bashing Horton for believing in something he can't see. (another christian parallel)  I was just reminded today again that I am small and insignificant in this whole big thing we call life.  I have some anthill size accomplishment that I love to turn into mountains, or at least hope they will one day.  How really silly we all are with our big chest poked out and our nose poked up.  We are really just tiny little puffs of smoke.  

Now that news can be either freeing or depressing.  Either way I think it is a fact, so ignoring won't help.  It is depressing if we have no one who really is significant that knows us and cares about our little speck of existence, but it is freeing if we allow it to break us away from the slavery of trying to make it, trying to prove that I am important in the big picture, that I matter.  Because the truth is that one day the most well known well respected of us all will die and those that think we are like that will too.  However, we can not only be freed from the slavery of trying to make it, but be freed to know the One who is high above the stars and stretches to the furthest galaxy.  We can stop trying to matter, because we do matter to One that truly is significant.  We can then laugh and really not mind to much being a who from whoville.  Man, I'm telling you.  The times when I am most freed to live and love and be joyful is when I am so secure in Him that the stings of fallen reputation to those around or whatever may come just doesn't matter that much.  We have a perfect example in Jesus.  In phillipians chapter 2 it tells us that the reason Jesus was able to get His hands dirty serving was because He did not have to continually worry about His identity. He knew that He was the Son of 

God, therefore He could bend down and wash His own peoples' feet.  We can be ok with being whos if we find our meaning in something greater.

I appreciate you reading,

Ryan 

Here I Kneel

I will never experience what my wife has.  I will never be able to say with completeness, I understand.  I have never carried a child for 9 months inside me, or one day for that matter.  I have never felt the little wonder moving around inside me late at night so I can't sleep or had heartburn so bad I can't lay down.  I have never loved and cared for a beautiful, but into everything 16 month old while I had another 6lb one inside me taking my energy too.  I have never had to feel the burden of knowing that I work hard every single day for my beautiful little boy that can't say thankyou yet, and for a husband that is to selfish too many times.  I have never had to feel the burden of friends making jokes that 'I must sit around and eat snacks and watch T.V while Garrison plays.'  I have never had the burden of justifying what should come natural to women with little children.  I have never had to have my body scared because I love my babies so much.  There are so many things that you Emily have had to experience that I must just step back and kneel.  You are my princess and I love you,

Ryan 

The Great God of Logic and Feelings

I can't wrap my mind around the concept of a Being that can be personal and loving to one million different people at the same time.  My head and heart stop right here.  I can't possibly understand how this is possible, and I can't possibly feel how real this truly is.  Yet Paul prayed in the New Testament that we would know the width and breadth and depth of the love of Christ which passes all understanding.  Think about that.  He prayed that we would know something that is beyond our ability to understand.  I can remember when Jesus started becoming personal to me that I wrote in a journal that God must dissect seconds to be with His children.  I wasn't at the time writing to explain the concept of the omnipresence of God.  I was just so overwhelmed that the God of the universe cared enough to be personal with everyone of us.  He doesn't just tell us if you do this and this my angels will write it down and you will go to heaven one day.  No!  He comes to us personally and turns our hearts eyes to His.  This is to awesome to fully understand, but man I'm so thankful its true.  As A.W. Tozer says.  We can always be confident that when we look to God we have kind eyes looking back at us.  If we really let this sink in more we our lives would change dramatically.  He is just as present with me while I am calling role at school as He is when I am singing a song in church, though I may not realize it.  

This is such a freeing concept that ties with another one.  God is.  I may find out different things or see more light to show me Him more clearly but He is and always was the same.  This may be the most stabilizing fact I know.  God is.  Now I can search things without fear that my foundation will prove false.  I now have a sure place to see life from.  His name is 'I am'  

Continuing down the trail

So it has been a good while since I posted something.  I want to continue what I was talking about on my last post.  I was typing about thinking about things in relation to the beginning of creation.  It has been pretty freeing to me.  I say that not like I have found 'new light' but instead rediscovered what has always been here.  Now this may seem silly or over-simplistic, but its valuable to me and maybe it will be to somebody else.  

One thing I was thinking about today was the fact that there was no written language in the beginning.  Now this has a lot of implications.  I'll list a few I can think of.  God must be much more aware to everyone than we tend to think of Him.  Now of course God was more aware to Adam and Eve before they fell into sin, but I am talking about after that.  God was just as present during the unwritten years as He is now in the written years.  Now hold on a minute.  I know that the Word of God is the brightest light to show us Him, and the message of the gospel of Jesus must be believed for us to be born-again and made right with God.  What I am saying weakens none of that truth, instead I thing it strengthens it.  God is so much more aware to those He hasn't saved yet than we think.  I think Romans establishes this fact as well as many other texts.  The whole Bible establishes this fact really.  They know at the deepest root of who they are that God made them and is near.  The gospel breaths on this fact.  It does not come upon us like magic.  The good news about Jesus (the gospel), comes to all people that hear it not as another language, but as more of the same truth leading us to the God who has always been so near.  Once again the Word of God is essential as well as the Holy Spirit of God to convict us and draw us to God, but it all builds off of the light we already know from the beginning of creation.  

That is just one implication.  It also affects the way I think about education as well, which is becoming more and more important the older Garrison and soon to be Allie Parker get.  

Anyways, thanks again for reading

Ryan