We’ve got to get ourselves some of those vests……and mustaches.
Archives For November 2011
Call us sappy and sentimental if you want, but this is ridiculously cute and hilarious in the way only children can be.
Enjoy.
And if you don’t enjoy it, then expect 3 ghosts to visit you on Christmas Eve to sort things out, Scrooge.
Here’s a new song for carolers to try this year. Because nothing says Christmas like Planned Parenthood.
Also, has anyone ever heard of this pebble thing he’s singing about? If so, where and why did it start?
My family has a holiday tradition of going to see a movie the night of Thanksgiving and then again on Christmas. It’s not a particularly innovative or interesting tradition, but with all of us being grown up and spread out it’s the only time we get to have a family outing anymore.
This year we saw Hugo. Not the greatest Scorsese movie (I’ll let GoodFellas
As we were leaving the theater I decided to swing by Best Buy to see what sort of line had begun to form for their midnight Black Friday opening. Not surprisingly it looked like people had been camped out for several hours. The line back up all the way to the corner of the store.
Then we turned the corner. The line wrapped around the corner.
Then we drove down the side of the store. The lined continued down the side of the store.
Then we drove around the back of the store. Not only was the line wrapped around the back of the store, but it continued into the back parking lot and loading dock, zig zagging around trailers, a dumpster, and cars.
Such is the insanity of Christmas.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
And I don’t just mean the obvious, that we don’t all have to camp out the night before to snag great deals.
What if we stopped passing out junk at Christmas to people that don’t really need more stuff, and instead started giving real gifts to people who are really in need?
Here’s what I mean….
A few years ago my wife and I decided to do something somewhat radical for Christmas. We decided not to get each other Christmas gifts.
It wasn’t because we didn’t have the money.
It wasn’t because Scrooge is our personal hero and we loathe Christmas.
It wasn’t because we’re lazy and don’t want to hunt for gifts for each other. (Although, I must admit we don’t miss that stress.)
We were tired of fighting the Christmas rush for stuff that would probably end up in the trash in a few years. We were tired of stressing over finding “just the right thing” for each other. We were tired of not being able to actually enjoy Christmas for all of the craziness.
Most of all, we were tired of pretending that at Christmas time we were doing anything that was remotely Christ-like.
So, we gave up getting each other Christmas presents and we bought a goat.
Seriously.
Hang with me here for a second and I’ll explain why.
For Christians, Christmas is the season of Advent, the time when we celebrate God’s gift of Himself to the world for our salvation. The tradition of giving gifts goes all the way back to the wise men from the east who came to visit the infant Jesus, bringing him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Every year, the thought is, the church reenacts this moment by giving gifts to each other.
But I don’t think many of us would argue that this holy act has been turned into a moment of materialism, selfishness, and greed.
In the biblical narrative, the gift of the wise men was meant to symbolize the kingship of Jesus. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh were costly, royal gifts. But if we take another look at the nativity story, I think we can find a better model for gift giving, than simply giving each other “nice stuff.”
Take a moment, step back, and look at the bare bones of this story. What’s going on? A poor family, who is confined (most likely) to a cave because they couldn’t find a place to stay the night, is visited by strangers of means who bestow upon them gifts whose value could significantly change their lives.
Now take a moment, step back, and look at what we do for Christmas. What’s going on? We buy our family and friends (and sometimes ourselves) stuff that will entertain us or maybe make us look good for a little while. Strangers without means usually don’t make it on our Christmas shopping list.
Not very “Christmasy” if you really think about it that way.
This is why I think we should ditch the gifts and buy goats for Christmas.
Or chickens.
Or a cow.
Or mosquito nets.
Or a well.
Or school for an orphan.
Or safe harbor for victims of the global sex trade.
Obviously you can’t pick these things up at Wal-Mart. You’re going to need to get a “gift catalogue” from someone like World Vision or Heifer International. There’s a new one out each year, packed with ways to radically change people’s lives. Look through it, pick out something, and change the world.
This is our new Christmas tradition.
Our World Vision catalog comes in the mail sometime around November. We pour over its pages and we cry. We cry at the fact that only $50 stands in the way of hope and safety for sexually exploited girls, that it only takes $70 to send an orphan to school for an entire year, or that a mere $18 can buy bed nets that will quite literally save the lives of an entire family.
We cry because we realize that all the money we’ve been spending on junk for ourselves could have saved someone’s life.
I realize that the idea of fundamentally changing Christmas from a time of stuff giving to a moment of life giving might not be realistic.
But what’s realistic about a teenage girl giving birth to the savior of the world? What’s realistic about a baby being God incarnate? What’s realistic about a God who chooses to let His people kill Him, rather than destroy them in His just wrath? What’s realistic about a dead man coming back to life and walking out of his own tomb? What’s realistic about uneducated fishermen dropping their nets and changing the world?
Nothing. But such is the reality of the kingdom of God.
You don’t have to wholesale abandon Christmas presents this year. And I’m not telling you to break your child’s heart with empty space under the tree on Christmas morning.
But what if you began simply, by getting together as a family and choosing to give up 1 thing together so that with that money you could save someone’s life that you’ve never met.
Imagine what would happen if we stopped waiting in crazy lines at Best Buy every Christmas and instead we all bought goats.
Christmas would be less stressful.
We might actually enjoy the holidays.
Gifts of life would replace temporary junk.
The world would change.
Things would never be the same.
The kingdom of God would come to earth.
And Christmas would once again be a holy moment truly worth celebrating.
You can buy a new sweater, a video game, or an iPad anytime of year. This Christmas, buy a goat.
Grace and peace,
Thanksgiving is, of course, a time to pig out reflect on all the blessings we have been given during the previous year.
As part of that, many families like to go around the table to let everyone share one thing they’re thankful for.
If your family practices this tradition and some of them are not Christians, then we want to encourage you to take the prompt from this video and let them know you’re thankful that God will zap you into heaven one day, leaving them behind to suffer through the Great Tribulation.
Yes, this video is a little longer than normal, but that’s because it comes with bonus features!
Not only does it comes with a full length, 15 minute video you can give to those heathen relatives to watch after you’ve been raptured (8:50 mark), it also includes a wonderful song you can sing with your family around the dinner table tomorrow!
So, enjoy and happy Thanksgiving!
Apparently typing the name “Jesus Christ” in a text message may become illegal in Pakistan very soon. The Lord’s name is part of a list of over 1,000 words that the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has deemed ”obscene” and/or “explicit”.
Along with “Jesus”, texters in Pakistan will also be banned from using such wonderful words as: flatulence, fingerfood, fairy, and Wuutang (apparently that is the Pakistani spelling).
Seriously. Here’s more of the list.
I think we need an Occupy Pakistan movement to rise up and defend the people’s right to text about the Wu-Tang Clan farting after eating fingerfoods given to them by their fairy godmother.
Tragic. Simply Tragic.
(Technically the picture below is unrelated to the story from The Washington Post. But technically speaking it’s hilariously awesome and therefore technically related.)
Don’t text Jesus in Pakistan?
By Melissa Bell, The Washington Post
“Do not forget to strap on your helmet before getting on your motorcycle.” “I got the tickets for Twilight. Hurry up or you’ll miss showtime!” “This teacher is so boring. She’s killing me.”
Next week, these text messages could be banned in Pakistan.
Do the above sentences seem innocuous? Harmless perhaps? If a proposed ban passes in Pakistan, none of the above sentences could be sent as text messages.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) compiled a list of over 1,000 words, the majority in English, that they deem “pornographic or offensive to Islam,” Newsweek Pakistan reported.
A document online that purports to be the banned word list reads like a primer on junior-high-level sex slang with some surprising additions, including the terms “Juggalo” and “Jesus Christ” (who knew the Insane Clown Posse had a following in Pakistan?).
On Monday, Newsweek reports mobile operators postponed implementing the ban, saying they needed further clarification, but that the ban could take place within a week’s time.
This has the feel of an article from The Onion, but it is not. Herman Cain made a campaign stop at “The Holy Land Experience”- the Jesus themed park in Florida. The article is full of wonderful tidbits, but this excerpt is probably the most presidential:
He (Cain) did have a slight worry at one point during the chemotherapy process when he discovered that one of the surgeon’s name was “Dr. Abdallah.”
“I said to his physician assistant, I said, ‘That sounds foreign–not that I had anything against foreign doctors–but it sounded too foreign,” Cain tells the audience. “She said, ‘He’s from Lebanon.’ Oh, Lebanon! My mind immediately started thinking, wait a minute, maybe his religious persuasion is different than mine! She could see the look on my face and she said, ‘Don’t worry, Mr. Cain, he’s a Christian from Lebanon.’”
“Hallelujah!” Cain says. “Thank God!”
To read the entire article, click here.
Introducing what we hope is the next great fitness craze: “The Gospel Line Dance.”
Now you can praise the Lord while you burn off all that gluttony!
So come one everybody, let’s get “electrified by Jesus!”
As some of you might remember, Pastor Steven Anderson broke onto the scene with his epic video on how America will be destroyed if men don’t “pisseth against the wall”.
Well, Pastor Anderson is getting back to his roots.
In this video, we learn that “femi-nazis” who “don’t know their place” are trying to keep men from using the bathroom in a biblically appropriate manner.
Your biblical bathroom instructions begin around the 4:15 mark
Nothing against the guy leading this ministry. I’m sure he’s doing great stuff, but this story from the LA Times was literally an episode of King of the Hill.
First the story.
By Mike Miller
Times Community News
It was sundown in a mostly deserted parking lot tucked off Westminster Boulevard. The skateboarders had stopped, as they do every Thursday, to listen to the man with the Bible.
A single lamppost shone over the makeshift skate park, where ramps and wooden ledges sporting the words Gravity Youth covered the parking spaces. Two dozen or so skateboards lay on the ground as their owners sat on the curb. Aaron Morgan asked how many people had come for the first time. One hand shot up.
“All right, guys,” Morgan said. “This is skate church, so whether you like it or not, I’m going to preach the word of God to you.”
A stack of pizza boxes sat at the end of the curb, but Morgan, the youth leader at the Sanctuary in Westminster, made it clear they wouldn’t be opened until he finished speaking. As the sky went from hazy to dark, he held forth about hypocrisy, free will, Jesus’ sacrifice and the perils of apathy.
Morgan guessed that most of the teenagers were congregation members of the Sanctuary, a church with heavy ties to the skateboarding world. He would welcome more newcomers without ties to the church. He told the boys to each bring a friend next time.
Now for the aforementioned episode of King of the Hill.
It’s really scary how similar they are…
