Rich v. poor

I’ve been listening nonstop to a CD called “CompassionArt” and I’m loving it.  I read about it a long while ago in a Christianity Today magazine, but I finally got a hold of a copy.  To anyone who hasn’t yet heard about it, check out http://www.compassionart.tv/ and no, I have no idea why it’s a “.tv” ending, I don’t even really know what that means, to tell the truth.

The CD has made me consider why it is we love poor people so much.  I hope that doesn’t sound callous, but the truth is, I’m not poor.  I’m not obscenely wealthy, but I’m not destitute, either.  And I could mention all the times where we’re told to care for the sick and hungry (“When I was hungry, you fed Me…” etc.) but a huge part of being a Christian is ministering to the broken.  Not just the outwardly needy, but the inwardly needy.

But the outwardly needy are the most receptive to Christ’s power, it’s true.  Which is why I’ve never seen a CD or book dedicated to the wealthy, I suppose.  In fact, I recently was looking through a book called “The Message of the New Testament” by Mark Dever which spent a while discussing the wealthy and what that all means (and why Jesus didn’t come to minister to the wealthy).  Which is important, obviously, since the Bible does talk a great deal about the wealthy and camels and needles and the selling of possessions.

For all the places in the Bible where there are qualifiers (or non-qualifiers?) such as "neither bond nor free" "Jew nor Greek" "male nor female" I can't seem to think of very many equalizers about the rich.  In the Old Testament the rich and poor both had to give the same amount to the tresury, and in a day to come, the rich and poor will both get Beast-marks on their foreheads, but other than a few potential verses in Psalms or something, I can't really think of any further verses to that effect.

But it’s odd to me, how much we leave that corner of the world untouched.  It’s much easier for us to give a gospel tract to the hobo who will appreciate having something to read, but the wealthy person is usually going to reject you.  So we usually don’t even try to minister in that direction.  It’s much easier to go to the parts of the world where we feel we have something tangible to offer.

I’m not sure if this made sense.  And truth be told, I’m not exactly one to talk, since I don’t do much evangelizing on either end of the spectrum.  And I don’t want to be taken the wrong way, either—I love the CompassionArt CD, and I love what they’re doing in that regard.  I appreciate all the ministries to those who need it, and I’m not saying that nobody goes out to the wealthy.  What I am saying is that I find our gravitational tendencies curious.

Or maybe I’m just rambling and not saying anything at all.  Oh well.

'Tis (not) the season

On the twelfth day of Springtime my neighbor showed to me
Twelve mosquitoes chomping
Eleven lenting ladies
Ten lovely lilies
Nine eggs a-hatching
Eight rabbits hopping
Seven fish a-swimming
Six drippy rain boots
Five soggy dogs
Four geese heading home
Three thunderstorms
Two daffodils
And a robin in an oak tree

In celebration of the first day of spring, some friends and I composed this little song and went to our local Starbucks to sing it to another friend. All was good and well... until I realized that I had Christmas songs stuck in my head. In March.

Did I mention these were Christmas songs I got stuck in my head?

I don’t even believe in the holidays, pretty much. I mean, come on, Santa Claus? But there is something admittedly pleasant about the holidays. I mean, for a couple weeks in a year, people do the whole thing where they try to be vaguely nice to everyone, spreading the peace-on-earth thing, or at least attempting such. When you’re not a Christian it’s a little futile, but at least they try.

So when I was flying this year on the first of January, it was extremely odd to see the airports take down their decorations at the first possible moment. I’m so used to people keeping their decorations up until February that it seemed a little surreal to see the watchful-eyed TSA guys removing strands of tinsel from around the security check points. Mind you, when I was flying it was about 4:30 in the morning, so they were literally not wasting so much as a minute.

But that brings me back to the holiday spirit thing. It’s always a little depressing to realize that the cozy season in over, and from now until April life is going to be one long episode of angry snowaphobic drivers, regular uncleanly lyriced songs in the stores, broken Christmas merchandise sales, and lots of not-as-cutely-lit snow everywhere. Sigh.

Which is why of the two and a half weeks in the year that I like Christmas music, the half week after New Year’s is one of them. I suddenly find myself saddened by the end of the holidays (which I’ve already admitted to being silly, since I don’t do the holidays) and wanting to bring it back in some small degree. So I depressedly listen to maybe two days worth of Christmas CDs and hope that no angry drivers will slip and slide their way into me, and that I don’t become roadkill.

Not that I’d mind the early admittance to Heaven, I’m just saying, it’s hard on those that survive, and I don’t want to cause that much pain.

Wow, I get really off-topic, don’t I? Not to mention, the weather here is quite nice right now, so my snowaphobic neighbors can (hopefully) put away their fears for another year.

Discoveries, of a sort

So last Friday, I guess it was, was when I realized Google Chrome was in existence, so I was like, "Oh hey, I don't want to forget about it" so I came to blogger here and typed a little sentence and apparently typed "Publish Post" instead of "Save Now" like I had thought.

Which is why, when I came back on Monday and turned it into an actual post instead of just a surprised phrase, it said the post was from Friday. How crazy is that? That's hilarious, if I had some crazy controversial blog (slash widely-read) it would be beautiful to post something on a subject one day, and then go back and change it to be the opposing view on the same subject, but it would still be marked from the day I originally posted it, so people would be all like "Oh yeah, I agreed with Friday's post," and someone else would be like "Are you crazy? It didn't even make sense!" and they'd be talking about two different things and not know it.

I was lying awake last night (if that's the correct lie/lay thing, I can never remember) pondering the difference between "O" and "Oh" and I came to the conclusion that it's "oh" when it's an exclamation or thought expressed (Oh my, what a funny-looking baby) but "o" when you're using it as a form of address (O postal carrier, what did I do to deserve this bill?) and it took my sleep-fogged brain about 45 minutes to come up with that, and when I woke up this morning I realized that I already knew that. Goes to show that those people who think up clever things in the middle of the night are made of sterner stuff than I.

Wordly wizzen

I have no idea what "wordly wizzen" means, but it seemed fun at the time.

But I was just thinking about the word "weaved." As in "they weaved their way through the throne room, hoping to see Princess Hoighty-Toighty spilling her lemonade again." Does it seem to anyone else that the word weaved there should be different? Like maybe "they weved their way around" or even "they weft their way around" would make so much more sense. Some other version of the past tense of weave.

Not that I claim full knowledge of past tenses of anything, but I was just thinking about that last night and decided to share.

Google gets shiny

How did I not know about this? Google Chrome? I just saw it the other night and downloaded it (obviously) and I'm so proud of them. I knew they were going to come out with their own internet type thing any minute now. But I'm just surprised that it was now and I hadn't heard about it.

Actually, I haven't been reading my Google Friends newsletters recently, because I've been busy and lazy (not to mention my general apathy towards technology) so I suppose it makes sense that I missed it. And apparently it's been out since September? Have I been asleep these long months? Long rant short, I was able to download it on Friday, and so now our computer has Google Chrome.

I haven't decided yet how I feel about it. It has a lot of good features (like the homepage having the most frequented sites and all, that's cool) but I don't like their history deleting system (can't selectively delete like in Firefox) and the fact that I had to change my options to have a little home button was a little weird. I use the home button all the time, because my homepage is Google, and, well, I use Google all the time. But in general, I'm proud of Google.

Oh! I seriously love the thing where the web address bar doubles as a Google search bar. I guess that's why I didn't really need my "home" button after all!

Of course, now we have three internet options on our computer, Microsoft, Firefox, and Chrome. So one of these days I foresee somebody in my family getting tired of it all and deleting two of them. So long as Firefox doesn't go. And Chrome. So IE can go.

Sorry, Mr. Gates.

Font weirdnes

For some reason all my font sizes and stuff are different every time I post. What did I ever do to this crazy thing to make my sizes all weird and different?

Anyhow, just thought I should note that I had nothing to do with it, it's all related to Blogger somehow.

Technological pressures (or, lack thereof)

I've pretty much decided that I'm not going to post on the weekends, obviously. But also, there's no way I'm going to feel obliged to post on a regular basis at all. For one, I find it difficult to check my email every day, and all those social networking sites? Not so much. Of course, I use that word "all" fairly liberally, because I only belong to one, but I do go for weeks at a time without logging on to it.

Which is ironic, because this is a time period where I will have more time then I ever will again in my whole life. Well, that's presuming the Lord comes before I get old and have lots of time again. But for now, I have a bunch of time, but I don't use it for computer-related things. Which I'm OK with. I semi-recently decided it would be cool to read through the Bible in a year (I usually just read and see how long it takes) but I decided that since I do have all this time, I should read more than I usually do. But since I don't have any sort of inkling regarding how much I have to read to complete the Bible in a year, I just sort of read random amounts at a time. I know that if you're doing the traditional in-a-year thing, you're supposed to read three chapters a day, and five on Sunday, but since I began reading the Bible this time in August, and didn't decide to finish it in twelve months until February or something, well, I have no idea how much that sets me behind. Every once in a while I'm like "according to the page numbers, I have X amount of pages left, so that means..." but since I'm bad at math, well, I never get any farther than that.

Which is a terrible thing to say, I know. I mean, it would be appalling if somebody were like "I never really learned how to read well, so I just don't read, or maybe I've forgotten how to read by now" so it's awful to use my lame-o math excuse. But I am fairly bad at math, no joke. Which is why I have my "gmail goggles" feature turned on where on late nights, I have to do math questions before I can send my emails. I have it on the easiest level, but it's something, right?

Apologies and vomit

I have no idea what was in my head as I was writing yesterday. Seriously, Nancy Pelosi was the best I could come up with? Not only that, but I wasn’t very polite about it. I don’t know her personally (uh, obviously) but I’m sure her job is very challenging and it’s not really her fault that her speech writers gave her a “verse from Isaiah” that isn’t legitimate. So anyhow, Nancy, if you ever read this, I’m sorry if I came off rudely.

In other news, well, nothing. I was in Borders with a bunch of army guys today, and they all held the doors for me, which was nice. Usually there’s one polite guy who holds the door open, but by walking through the open door I usually walk past him, and have to open the other door by myself. Not that I mind, actually, and I’ve never even given it a second thought until today, when I realized that if there are lots of polite men in one place, they can open all the doors at one time.

Oh, and I was reading this verse in Isaiah the other day about the priests and prophets who drank so much that they vomited all over the tables and there was no clean place. It’s when I read verses like that that I fully appreciate being able to make mental images in my head without the accompanying smells.

And then in Ecclesiastes there was this hilarious verse about Solomon looking for wise people and he could only find one in a thousand men that was wise, but he looked in a thousand women, and couldn’t find even a single wise one. First, I never noticed that before, and it caused me amusement, and I hope I have opportunity to bring that up one time.

Secondly, Solomon had a thousand wives (slash concubines). Coincidence that he used that number? Well, maybe. But my personal theory is that one time he realized that he was surrounded by countless women who were ALL DUMB! It’s bad enough when a guy realizes that his one and only wife is foolish, but to realize you’ve got a thousand of them?

No wonder the guy was so depressed!

Sleep says hi

I decided to just up and do it. Start a blog.

And I know, it’s not like I’ll follow through (do I have any motivation to follow through with this? Really?) but I keep on wishing I had a blog, so I figured, hey, why not?

And it’s named, for those who wonder about such things, Hopeful Rambles because, well, as everyone knows, the best sort of rambles are not aimless wanderings but instead “To speak or write at length and with many digressions,” which I foresee a large amount of in the future of this here blog. As for the hope? Well, I’m a Christian, and as such, my life is a hopeful one. Also, the title “rambles” was already claimed as a blog name. But I do still live life hopefully, honestly I do!

I know this is my first post and I’m supposed to write something clever and witty that will make my friends want to stay and read on, but I’ll let you in on a little secret only like three of my friends will ever hear about this blog from my lips so I pretty much have nothing to be worried about. Praise the Lord.

So I should be thinking of things to say to introduce my yet-blasé blog, but it’s like 2:00 AM and I’m not very clever at such an hour. Apparently I’m wide awake (second night in a row where I just can’t seem to sleep, I’m beginning to think my years of sleep-full childhood are catching up with me just to remind me that being an adult is a terrible thing) but wide-awake is no indication of a sound mind.

Chances are, this will mostly be me talking about how wonderful Google is (how sad it makes me that they’re so crazy liberal) and random things I find in my Bible reading I feel like sharing with someone but don’t know with whom to share them. Or maybe I’ll pull a Nancy Pelosi and just make up verses to talk about at random. How does that go? “Taking care of creation is an act of worship. Something something something something.” That’s what I hear when Nancy Pelosi opens her mouth. I’m sure if she ever said anything worth noting I’d be told about it in short order, so I’m not too worried.

Seriously? I just spent valuable hook time talking politics? A sign of the times, my friend (I say singular because I doubt more than one person will ever frequent this place of such promising brilliance) that such a politically-unsavvy soul such as I should be talking politically-related items at 2:00 in the morning.

That’s it. I’m going to bed. If this never pans out into a more-than-once kind of blog, I’ll consider telling my friends, but until I post something of more substance, I shall lay this crazy place to rest.