Talking Point Tuesday --- Florida Vacation (Part 1)

Here is a video from the 1st half of our vacation to Florida...Amelia Island. Next Tuesday I will post the video from the 2nd half of our trip...Disney World. Enjoy!

Media Monday --- M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E

Well, we have returned to Ohio from our Amelia Island/Disney Trip, and I really have no "Media Monday" topic because we did not watch the news, have Internet, or listen to the radio. Our biggest concerns were what time the parades and fireworks started and what to eat for dinner...and it was great! For the first time in years I had no clue who was winning the March Madness and nor did I care.

So I think everyone needs a "Mickey Mouse Week". Doesn't have to be Disney, or even far away, just a week to turn off the TV and computer and have a week of "Hakuna Matata". Maybe your stocks still tank, maybe your favorite team loses, etc...but you can deal with it all later.

I went to a conference several months ago by Dr. Daniel Spaite (M.D.) who wrote the book Time Bomb in the Church...he has done tons of research that supports those involved in ministry are "silently" killing themselves by not utilizing Sabbath rest. He suggests (if you want to really live healthy) that you must have some "Mickey Mouse Time" at least 1 hour a day, 1 day a week, and 1 week every quarter-year to allow God to refresh your mind/body/spirit/soul.

So next week I may have a news story for you...that's 7 days away...so you can start your week right now and not miss a thing! (oh, but be sure to check back tomorrow to see a video of part of our trip hahaha).

Florida Vacation --- Day 15

Well, today officially ends our vacation...but not before we get to take my niece Karley out to pick out her birthday present (she turned 3). Later this afternoon we will travel back to Ohio. Every 5th Sunday of the month is "Evangelism Sunday" in our kids church program at Grace, and I am speaking and doing a few tricks for each age level tomorrow morning. Then we will get right to packing for our move, doing all our laundry, etc, etc, etc, etc --- so if you were jealous of us over this last week, I think the tables have turned and we want to trade places with you!

See you back here on Monday for my regular Blog...if I am not too depressed.

Florida Vacation --- Day 14

Today is pretty much just a travel day. We will head from Virginia to my parents house in Pennsylvania. I am hoping we don't run into what you see in the picture above!!! Tune in tomorrow for the final day of vacation.

Florida Vacation --- Day 13

Today is our final day in Disney and we begin our long trip home...but not before having a fancy breakfast at the Floridian Resort (pictured above). Jen said it was her favorite, but we couldn't stay there cause it was completely booked for this week (maybe next time). Tonight we will be using another free Holiday Inn night (along with our free gas cards!) and driving up to Virginia.

Florida Vacation --- Day 12

Today we will be spending the day at the last of the Disney theme parks...Animal Kingdom. We will get to see the musical production of Finding Nemo live as well as the Jungle Parade. We have plans for a nice dinner tonight back at the resort.

Florida Vacation --- Day 11

Today we are heading back to Magic Kingdom and will watch the "Make a Dream Come True" parade in the afternoon, and later this evening we are going to some special production called "Hoop De Doo Review" (Jen said it was her favorite thing when she went to Disney many years ago). All I know is we get all-u-can-eat ribs! Pictured above is our resort that we have been staying at all this time.

Florida Vacation --- Day 10

Today we are sticking around our resort for the morning and the afternoon to rent "Sea Raycers" (pictured above) and play on one of Disney's famous mini golf courses next to our resort. This evening we will be heading back to Epcot to eat at a little Mexican place called "San Angel Inn" and then watching Epcots Illumination show later tonight.

Florida Vacation --- Day 9

Today we head into the city of Orlando for a special Sunday and head to the theme park called, The Holy Land Experience (pictured above). It is a replica of Jerusalem when Jesus was alive, has people acting out living history (so you feel like you are part of the events), and they present different Biblical events throughout "Jerusalem" throughout the day. It should be a neat experience, although I am not so sure the Ice Cream Machine in the picture above is historically accurate hahaha.

Florida Vacation --- Day 8

Today we head over to Planet Hollywood for the day and look forward to the "Block Party Bash" at 3:00 as well as the new Disney American Idol daily contest (maybe I'll try out!). We are also eating at a fun restaurant tonight...Mama Melrose (pictured above)

Florida Vacation --- Day 7

Today we head to Epcot Center in the morning and then this evening we have special tickets (front row!) to a production called "Cirque de Soleil" (pictured above) that is the central attraction in the main Downtown Disney theatre. Jen really wanted to go until she saw how much the tickets were, but she got them as a surprise for Valentine's Day.

Florida Vacation --- Day 6

Today we leave Amelia Island and head to Disney World. I have never been there, so we are heading straight for Magic Kingdom (pictured above) when we arrive.

Florida Vacation --- Day 5

Today is my day as I get to golf on one of the resort courses that runs along the Atlantic Ocean (pictured above). Jen will come along and be the cart driver!

Florida Vacation --- Day 4

Today is Jen's day as she will get a 60-minute massage from the spa attached to the resort (Ritz - Carlton)...pictured above.

Florida Vacation --- Day 3

Today, Jen and I are renting Segways (pictured above) to zip around the Island and check things out. Of course we will also do plenty of beach relaxing as well as a nice steak dinner tonight!

Florida Vacation --- Day 2

Today we journey off to our first destination --- Amelia Island (pictured above). It is an island resort just outside of Jacksonville on the Atlantic. If you watched American Idol this year, one of the "try-outs" was on Amelia Island and Jen said, "Wow, I would love to stay there"...and she had no idea I had already had the placed booked. So we are in an ocean-front room, and temperatures are supposed to be in the mid to upper 70's this week!

Florida Vacation --- Day 1

Nothing really exciting today, so you all don't have to be jealous yet! Today we are traveling 2/3 of the way to our first destination (that Jen has no clue about where we are going and what we will be doing there). Tonight we stay in Charlotte (pictured above) at one of our free nights in the Holiday Inn. Check back tomorrow to see where we end up!

Final Answer Friday --- Final Exam

Well, someone hit the number exactly! Jen sister Julie, pictured above (doesn't she look smart?), got the answer on the nose with 3.85. If this were the Price Is Right, I'd be giving you a $500.00 Bonus, but since it is just my dumb little blog, you can have 2 bonus points. Great job!

SPECIAL NOTE: Tomorrow Jen and I leave for Florida for 2 weeks for Disney World and other surprises Jen does not yet know about. I have a picture and very quick description of what we are doing each day scheduled to post on this blog every morning at 8:00 for the next 2 weeks if you want to stay up-to-date with where we are and what we are doing and want to be jealous of us!

CURRENT STANDINGS:

Jen - 4.75

Julie - 4
Joni - 4
Steve - 2.75
Dana - 3
Janet -2
Jeff - 2
Jerry - 1.5
Jason - 1
Jill - 1
Ron - 1
Renae - .5

Theological Thursday --- The Ugliness of Sin

I know I have made comments on here several times that we are all sinners and from a spiritual standpoint they all point us to our need for a Savior no matter how big or how small. So if we commit murder or tell a little white lie, even though from society's view one is far worse than the other, from God's view it just shows us that we need Him.

I never knew how to illustrate that well as many unbelievers have a hard time understanding that their sin is "bad" as people love to compare themselves to other "worse sinners". But these last 2 months I have been reading a lot of books that I've never had time to, and although I love to give my own thoughts and perspectives on things, I have to quote 2 paragraphs from Jerry Bridges book, Respectable Sins. He spells out the ugliness of sin (no matter how "big" or "small") with the best illustration I've ever heard:

If I spill black indelible ink on a rug you bought at the local discount store, that's bad. But if I spill the same ink on your very expensive Persian rug, that's really bad. Why? My act is the same and the ink is the same, but the value of the two rugs are vastly different. The extent of the damage is determined not by the size of the ink blobs on the two rugs but by the respective value of each of them.

This is how we should think of our sin against God. Every sin we commit, regardless of how insignificant it seems to us, is an assault on His infinite glory. And the value of an expensive rug, even if it is millions of dollars, is nothing compared to the value of God's glory.

So society views our sins from the perspective of the size of the ink blob. Did we make a big spill (murder) or a little spill (white lie)? But the Christian should view their sin in respect to what their spill (sin) is falling on --- God's infinite glory. And as we mature in the Christian faith, hopefully our spills get smaller and smaller, but our recognition of what we are spilling onto never ceases to grow.

It makes it so much clearer Paul's view of himself as a sinner. In 1 Corinthians (55 AD) he saw himself as the "worst of the Apostles" (15:9). Five years later (60 AD) when he wrote Ephesians, he called himself the "very least of the saints" (3:8). Finally, 3 years later (63 AD) when writing 2 Timothy, Paul called himself the "worst of all sinners" (1:15). So as Paul matured in his Christian walk, his view of his sin got worse and worse. It is not because his spills were getting bigger and bigger, but because his view of his awesome, perfect, and powerful God to which his spills were falling upon were getting clearer and clearer. May we do the same.

What Is It Wednesday --- Final Exam

Well, tonight is my final, final exam and I will graduate again with my second degree with a Master of Divinity. I've taken a total of 46 classes. That's 1,380 hours of sitting in class or 82,800 minutes or 4,968,000 seconds (but who's counting?). I've also written about 1,610 pages of papers or about 402,500 words or about 2,012,500 letters (but again, who's counting?).

So you question this week is simple --- What is my final GPA?

Scale runs from a 0.00 to a 4.00 --- Post your answer to the nearest hundredth (example: 3.23). Just so everyone is in the same ballpark, those who were here for my first graduation knew I graduated with honors which means my GPA was somewhere between a 3.70 and a 3.90. At that time I had finished 80% of my classes, so the final 20% of classes I took after that may have tipped it slightly above or below that range, but it would be a pretty safe bet to guess somewhere in between. Good luck!

Talking Point Tuesday --- Jerry's Birthday

Today is Jen's dad's (Jerry --- pictured above) birthday. He has been a great father-in-law (watching the Steelers, letting me beat him at golf, putting the family up in million dollar homes at vacation, etc, etc, etc).

The second time I met him, he took a good hour trying to convince me that the Earth "could be" flat and that it is not necessarily round. As a former math teacher, he spent a full day of class laying out the arguments for his students as well. I still to this day don't know if he really considers that the Earth could be flat, or if he just likes to present the arguments and possible evidence for fun. If anyone is interested in the arguments, there is a group called the "Flat Earth Society" (Click HERE) that is convinced the Earth is not round. But, I will have to go against my father-in-law on this one and go with my Heavenly Father who says:

It is God Who sits above the circle of the earth (Isaiah 40:22)

But in any case, Happy Birthday Jerry! Feel free to leave him birthday wishes in the comment section as well...and also with all his traveling now that he is retired, pray he doesn't fall of the edge of the Earth!

Media Monday --- The Direction of Government

Well, here we are with another week gone by, and you just can't escape government in the news. This week, Obama decided to take away the conviction clause that would allow doctors to abstain from doing abortions if it went against their religious beliefs (so much for separation of church and state/freedom of religion), he took away all the governmental bans on funding for stem cell research (so much for saving money and taking a scalpel to our budget), and we are hearing more and more about the government taking over the banks, health care, etc, etc, etc. So, what does this all mean?

Well, when we look at politics throughout all history, there are 5 models of government:

1) Anarchy (the people have total control/no government)

2) Republic (the people have some control/limited government)

3) Democracy (the people and government share control)

4) Oligarchy (an elite group of government have control)

5) Dictatorship (one person has total control)

Although these sound possible in theory, you can eliminate 3 of these as long term governments. Anarchy results from people rebelling against government and trying to tear them down. Every group of anarchists throughout history have had an agenda in mind as to who would take over power if they did overthrow the government...so there is no such thing as an anarchy rule (the people in total control) as it would eliminate all laws, military, etc, etc, etc (as someone would have to run these things)...it is only a temporary attempt to overthrow a government.

Same with dictatorship...even the most notorious dictators (ie: Hitler) had his group of goons working with him. In reality, he was the leader of an oligarchy, where a select few were in charge of the masses.

Democracy also doesn't work. Our Founding Fathers were very purposeful in not mentioning democracy in any of our founding documents. They believed 100% in a Republic....where a limited government would represent (not rule) the people. In a true democracy, majority would always rule...so a criminal trial would only need 50% for a conviction, if at anytime the senate wanted to overthrow the president they could as long as they got a 50% vote, if city council voted 5-4 to take your house away, in a true democracy they could without other reason. All democracies were very short lived and fail miserably and always result in a Republic or an Oligarchy (depending on if they give more power to the people or the government).

So that brief history brings us to the point of this post. Our Founding Fathers dreamed of and set us up as a Republic. The government is to represent the people. We know we can't have anarchy nor a dictatorship, and democracy can't and doesn't work. So we are left with 2 possibilities --- remain a Republic or become an Oligarchy where the elite government officials rule the people rather than for the people. All this nationalization and government control of everything is slowly taking us down a path I don't think we want to go. But maybe our time is up. Consider the cycle of great countries throughout history:

1) From bondage to spiritual faith

2) From spiritual faith to great courage

3) From courage to liberty

4) From liberty to abundance

5) From abundance to complacency

6) From complacency to apathy

7) From apathy to dependence

8) From dependence back to bondage

It takes about 200 years to go through this cycle and we are in year 233. I see us somewhere around #6 moving toward #7...and the Oligarchy would put us in dependence on government. Very scary thought. Where/what do you all see us moving toward?

Final Answer Friday --- Bowling

Here are the answers...

Guessing Jen's first roll - Dana (1 point)

Guessing Mike's first roll - Nobody

Closest to Jen's Final Score - Janet (1 point)

Closest to Mike's Final Score - Joni (1 point)

Filming the Video - Jen (1 point)

CURRENT STANDINGS:

Jen - 4.75

Joni - 4

Steve - 2.75

Dana - 3

Janet -2

Jeff - 2

Jerry - 1.5

Jason - 1

Julie - 1

Jill - 1

Ron - 1

Renae - .5

Theological Thursday --- Christians and Democrats

I recently saw a bumper sticker similar to the one above that said, "You can be Christian AND Democrat". I have also heard people make the argument that based on moral issues (abortion, same sex marriage, stem cells, etc) that you cannot be a dedicated Christian and a democrat. So what's the answer? Is it one of the extremes or somewhere in between?

Well the short answer is this --- of course you can be a democrat and a Christian. Neither party is perfect because both are full of sinners. There are some very strong Christians I know that work in inner-city ministries that are desperate for help as they see people hungry, in need of medical attention, in need of a home, in need of money, etc, etc, etc and believe that more help will come by way of the democratic party. They wish they didn't have to choose between abortion and watching their neighbors die due to lack of proper food an care.

From a Christian perspective, Jesus tells us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome a stranger, help the poor, etc...with the final comment of, "Whenever you failed to help any of my people, no matter how unimportant they seemed, you failed to do it for me" (Matthew 25:45). I think the key here in discussing Christianity/Democrats is how Jesus addresses this issue. In the Greek, Jesus continually uses the 2nd person singular when talking about feeding, helping, visiting, etc --- which means Jesus asks YOU (singular) to do these things. He is not asking us to expect the government to do them for us. It is our personal responsibility as followers of Christ. How dare we pass off to the government what Christ has called us (personally) to do!

So the big shame in the entire discussion is that Christians have neglected Christ's call to help those in need...and an even bigger shame that other Christians have gone as far as expecting the government to take care of the personal responsibility that Jesus left for us. If we were truly being the church and following the commands of Jesus, and we were all playing our part, this wouldn't even have to be discussed. So please do not choose a political party based on wanting the government to take our Christian responsibility from us. Instead exhort other believers as well as the church to take this need back where it belongs and where Jesus put it --- directly in the hands of each of His followers.

What Is It Wednesday --- Bowling

This week's question you won't be able to find on the Internet! Last Friday, Jen and I decided to go bowling. Neither of us have bowled since we moved to Ashland, so its been quite a few years! We decided to video tape just our very first rolls and also our final scores for this week's question. So this question has the opportunity for 4 points:

1) How many pins did Jen get on her 1st roll?
2) What was Jen's final score?
3) How many pins did Mike get on his first roll?
4) What was Mike's final score?


Here is a video to help you out...

So your answers in the comment section should look something like this:

Jen - 7 pins/102 total

Mike - 6 pins/111 total

You can get a point for each of us for getting the exact answer for how many pins we knocked down on our first ball each, and whoever gets closest to Jen's final score will get a point and whoever gets closest to my final score gets a point.

Talking Point Tuesday --- Karley's Birthday

Last week was my niece Karley's birthday (my sister Dana's daughter). She turned 3. Every year Jen and I like to take my sister's kids into town and let them pick out their own gift for their birthday. So this video is from last year and what she picked --- we'll get to take her out again for this years birthday when we are in DuBois later this month.

My sister warned us that she already had tons of babies and would want another one and to try and get her to pick something else out, but when her eyes hit the baby and stroller she wouldn't stop saying, "BeeBee BeeBee"...and it was her birthday and at least it made her happy for the day as she pushed the thing all over the mall!

Media Monday --- Steroids in Baseball

Well, the topic jumped to the top of the media again the last few weeks as Alex Rodriguez (one of the best players in the game) was caught and admitted to taking steroids (after he had previously denied it). It is getting to the point that if a player was any good during the 1998-2003 seasons, we may as well assume they had taken steroids. Actually, even average players may have been using during this time just to make them "average" (according to the list of players who have been caught). Those years will be forever known as the "Steroid Era".


But the big question now is what to do about it. There are a lot of arguments about the Hall of Fame (should players caught with steroids get in...and how do you know for sure who took them and who didn't?), questions surrounding broken records (should Hank Arron get his HR record back since Bonds took steroids?), whether or not we should just erase those years from baseball history, etc.


To me...this all boils down to one major point --- ENTERTAINMENT. That's what baseball is all about. Major League Baseball needs us (fans) in order to survive. How do they survive? They entertain us, and we pay to go to games, buy apparel, allow them to get advertising dollars by watching games on TV, etc. Right now the arguments seem to center on the players...it's all about them...but I think the center should be on the fans since we are the ones that keep the league going (would these players still play 182 games a year for free? Don't think so).


As a fan, I absolutely LOVED the 1998 season (Mark McGuire/Sammy Sosa Home Run Chase), and so did everyone else. In a strike shortened 1994 season, only 50 million fans went to major league games. People were fed up with baseball after that and only 50 million fans went to games during the entire 1995 season. But as the Home Run Chase Year began (and the steroid era) in 1998, over 70 million fans attended games...over 40% growth! That season has been called "The Season That Saved Baseball" and for good reason.


As fans, most of us like to see the long ball. I always loved going to batting practice an hour before the game (in 1999, I caught 11 baseballs at the left-field wall during batting practice and would always give them to little kids hoping to get a ball). All fans tuned into their TV's to see Sosa and McGuire at-bats that would automatically interupt whatever was on ESPN.


I am certainly not excusing illegal behavior or saying (as some have suggested) that steroids were necessary for baseball. But MLB needs to turn to its main source...the fans for some perspective. I don't care so much about the records --- after all there are more games in a year now, the fences are shorter, the equipment is better, etc, etc, etc. There are a lot of arguments that today's records aren't fair even outside of steroids.


So as the players continue to deny, argue, fight, apologize, etc --- the fans care about one thing --- keep playing ball and keep us entertained. We don't care to hear that you would have done just as well without steroids. As my former pastor used to say, "Don't Just Sing it...Bring It!"