Education

"Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself."

John Dewey

How many folks would enjoy school more and teachers teach better and parents free themselves from guilt and children enjoy learning if we looked at education a little more like this.  Now there are certainly some things that I disagree with that John Dewey believed about education, but the quote above gets the essence of what I believe we are definitely missing in public schools and could be missing in many private schools.  

Ashes for Beauty

In talking to people, even very sincere Christians, I have found that we all have a hard time with the eternality of things.  We have a hard time with thinking of deserving hell for eternity.  Now I can't dive off into that right now, but try this out for a different angle.  Can you imagine feeling at home in a place of utter beauty and holiness where Jesus lives with His Father and the Holy Spirit, if it were not for the cross.  Honestly, I feel like Peter felt when he saw how awesome and holy Jesus was.  He said, "Go away from me Lord.  I am a sinful man."  If I'm dead honest, the eternality of things doesn't settle well for me all the time, but feeling comfortable in heaven with my sin is absolutely unthinkable.  I can't imagine it.  One thing I am certain of is that I don't deserve real Beauty.  I am not fit for a place like heaven, and I feel deep within my heart that I will go on forever somewhere.  So my only hope is that Jesus took my place of darkness and ugliness.  Without that, any hope of going to heaven when I leave this earth is gone.  I am certain.  Jesus is the only way.

Ryan 

Temples 'In Wait'

You know if I'm honest I have a hard time loving everyone I meet, but I shouldn't.  In fact, sometimes I have a hard time loving those that are the closest to me.  When I am unloving it is a sure sign of the fact that I have lost sight of God's love for me.  It is still there, but just not within my awareness like it ought to be.  Sometimes I feel especially aware of how blessed I really am and usually at the same time how much I don't deserve it.  This is one of those times.  This is not being over humble.  We sometimes think that people who think that they don't deserve anything good are being false humble; I pray I'm not.  I'm just aware that the love I've been given wasn't deserved or earned.  When God awakens my senses to where they ought to be is when I feel like this.  This state of being is not depressing though, and that may sound very weird.  I feel the most free to love when I don't go around thinking of my deserving love back.  When I realize that I am loved by this Awesome Creator who made all things and knows all things about me then I am free to really love people around me.  This is the state I think Jesus describes when He tells us that if someone sues us and takes our tunic (like a jacket) to give him our cloak (like a shirt) as well, or when He tells us to not turn away someone who borrows from us.  He also tells us to have dinners and make sure to invite folks that you know can not pay you back.  Some how for so long I have reshaped these verses to fit the my own American view.  I have quoted this many times almost as if it is a Bible verse.  'Give a man a fish you feed him for a day, teach him to fish you feed him the rest of his life.'  Well that has some wisdom in it, but it should not reshape the plain meaning of the verses I just quoted.  Well this is not the direction I planned on going with this post.  

The original idea I wanted to type about was the fact that every person that I come in contact with is either a temple of God or a temple 'in wait of God'.  Christians are the temples that God dwells in on earth, but people living today that are not yet Christians are just as valuable temples as those already occupied by God today.  The difference is not in the temple, but in the God who dwells in them.  Something very serious for me to think about is the fact that I have two beautiful little temples 'in wait' looking at their father and mother to show them in the next few years Who it is who made them and is waiting to move in and live with them.   I pray that God would help me and all of us see where our value comes from, and that it is not from within ourselves, but from the one who created us.  I think that if I really was aware of that all the time I would love people in ways that would make them want the source of my love.  It is becoming clearer and clearer to me that I can not escape this command to love others as myself and that this type of love goes hand in hand with loving the Lord my God with all my strength, soul, and mind.  I am always a little timid at typing stuff like this, because it puts the bulls eye on me.  One way I am always attacked when I sin is by being reminded of what I have said or typed or written to others and fail to do myself.  Nevertheless, the truth is the truth.  My standing does not make it stand.  It stands apart from me and without me.  

At any rate, it is the most exciting thing in the world to think about loving people with Jesus type love.  I hope my actions will begin to express my ideals more and more.

God bless yall,

Ryan

Just wanted to say

I just wanted to say that I have been convicted of my attitude lately.  It has reflected especially in the last two posts.  I'm not saying that I necessarily disagree with what I said, but I was not close to God when I typed either of them and it shows I think.  I am very aware again that its is not just what you say or type for that matter but the way in which you do as well.  I have wasted enough time on these trivial matters that will not be present in heaven for sure.  I read a wonderful devotional the other day that has been hanging around in my heart.  The thing that stood out to me and has been very precious and encouraging when I think about is this: we never sin and it only be ours anymore.  Every time I sin it placed on the Lord Jesus, or rather was placed there before the foundation of the world.  Even before I was aware of His love for me this was true.  "For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly." (Romans 5:6)

The argument that God would be just to send us to hell even if He had not sent His own Son to die for us has never been a consideration to God, since He had determined to have Jesus die for us before the foundation of the world.  Sin has always, when rightly seen cost God much more than us.  Without saying much more, I am sorry for anyone that has come possibly searching for life and found only a fading argument in the last two posts.  That is not to say that arguing is all bad, but I feel compelled to say that I know my attitude was wrong and I'm sure it came across.  There is a beautiful reality of a living Saviour that I would like to get back to.  He loves us all.  Do you know that?  I doubt it sometimes, but it remains true.  He loves us.  Ain't that awesome!  

"He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world." (1 John 2:2)

A Tribute To The David Crowder Band

If you can't tell already by the numerous David Crowder Band songs I have on my blog, I am a huge David Crowder Band fan.  I love their music.  I think their music is such a refreshing reminder that not all of what is new is shallow.  Not that all 'shallow' music is wrong, but in a day where lyrics are often said to be overlooked for a good beat, it is nice to see a band that I believe has both awesome music and possibly even more awesome lyrics.  Before I start, I must warn you that I may not be able to control myself once I get started.  Anyway here I go.

 Just a couple years ago they put out a CD called "A Collision."  I can honestly let the CD play from 1 to 22 and never want to skip to the next song.  I don't know if they meant to or not, but the CD progresses it seems from our first call to worship to the great entrance into the new Jerusalem.  Before I get off on all twenty two songs, I would like to highlight one.  It is one of the two songs that actually became popular on 88.5 the local christian station.  I can't recall the actual song title.  I think it is 'Wholly Yours,' but I could be wrong.  Here are the opening lines.....

I am full of earth
You are heaven’s worth
I am stained with dirt, prone to depravity
You are everything that is bright and clean
The antonym of me
You are divinity
But a certain sign of grace is this
From the broken earth flowers come up 
Pushing through the dirt

You are holy, holy, holy
All heaven cries “Holy, holy God”
You are holy, holy, holy
I want to be holy like You are

You are everything that is bright and clean
And You’re covering me with Your majesty
And the truest sign of grace was this
From wounded hands redemption fell down
Liberating man
But the harder I try the more clearly can I feel
The depth of our fall and the weight of it all
And so this might could be the most impossible thing
Your grandness in me making me clean

Glory, hallelujah
Glory, glory, hallelujah
So here I am, all of me
Finally everything
Wholly, wholly, wholly
I am wholly, wholly
I am wholly, wholly, wholly
Yours

I hope you are as blessed by this as I have been.

Thanks again,

Rya

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