Tuesday Morning Prayer

O You, who is the true Sun of the world, always rising and never going down. Your most wholesome appearing and light nourishes and makes joyful every thing in heaven and on earth:

We ask You to mercifully shine into our hearts so that the night of sin and the darkness of error will be driven away. Make your countenance beam on us so that we will not stumble in Your way or offend You. Let us walk as in the daytime.

Let us be pure and clean from the works of darkness.
Let us abound in all the good works that You have prepared for us to walk in through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Free Hugs

Monday Morning Prayer

O God, our Father, of whom the whole family in heaven and on earth is named:

At the beginning of this day, give our household the grace that will keep us in true Christian fellowship.

Grant each of us Your guidance and influence in all of our labors, pleasures, and trials so that our hearts will be at peace with one another and with You.

Graciously help and prosper us in the doing of our daily duties with a willing and cheerful mind.

Defend us all by Your almighty power from inward evil and from outward harm.

Father may all of this be granted so that at the end of the day we will not be left in sorrow, trouble, or shame. Instead let us have true unity and thankful rest through Your merciful favor and Your forgiving love in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

Sunday Morning Prayer

O Lord, our Heavenly Father, at the beginning of another week we come to You for help and light.

Grant, we ask You, that we make this a sacred day of rest to Your service. May we consecrate this day to find all peace and strength in You.

Make our hearts beat with devotion so that we may serve You in spirit and in truth. May we live this day laying a good foundation for our coming work.

Be with us in the worship services of Your day so that your saints may join in heart and soul. Be with us so that we may receive the blessing promised to all who sincerely pray to You and faithfully hear Your Word.

This we ask for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Saturday Morning Prayer

Almighty God, our Father and Preserver:

We give You thanks that by Your goodness You have watched over us during the night and brought us to a new day.

We ask You to strengthen and guard us by Your Spirit so that we may spend this day in Your service and glorify You. May we cause all Your blessings to prove fruitful, and may we only seek the things that are pleasing in Your sight.

Enable us, O Lord, while we labor in this life to always look forward to that heavenly life, which You have promised Your children.

Defend us in soul and body from all harm.

Show Your steadfast love to all men and women and little children according to their need and especially to those whom we love and are in any kind of trouble or distress. We now remember them before You...

Protect our country.
Protect Your Church.
Bless all who do good in the world.
Restrain and convert all who do evil.

And finally – be pleased to cast out of Your remembrance all our past offenses, forgiving them in Your boundless mercy. Purify our hearts so that we may lead a better life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Potential Theories

I do not remember most of my Lost theories, but I still don't think we've gotten far enough to know which theories are right or wrong (including the writers).

However, here are a few more ideas (none of which are my own) that are worth discussing:

1. The guy with the tumor on his backbone - could it be Locke? And would removing the tumor put him back in a wheelchair?
2. Are The Others sterile? Is that why they steal children and need a fertility doctor? And if so, is the reason they separated Jack from Sawyer and Kate that they, not he, is their real interest? Did they put Kate in the cute dress opposite Sawyer so that the two of them would REALLY fall in love and get "at it"?
3. Does the fertility doctor on the island have any connection to Sun becoming pregnant when she was previously unable too?

Friday Morning Prayer

We praise You, O God, with the morning light, and in the brightness of a new day we bless Your holy name.

For all You have given us –

the gift of life,
making us in Your own image,
allowing us to share as children in Your knowledge and love and in Your work and joy,
we thank you, Heavenly Father.

For all good things in the world,
for food and clothing,
for home and friendship,
for useful tasks and good pleasures,
we thank You, Heavenly Father.

For all spiritual blessings,
for the good example and blessed memory of Your saints,
for the secret influence of Your Spirit,
we thank You, Heavenly Father.

And above all we bless You for the redeeming life and death of Your dear Son, our Savior – Jesus Christ. Amen.

Jumprope

-- By Shel Silverstein

Worth a thousand words...

Yep, I'm that one. I've always been that one.

Crazy Lost Theory

Could there be two groups of "others?" One on the small island and the one on the main island.

When Desmond is talking to Kelvin in the Season 2 Finale, someone mentions the Northern shore of the island. The other replies with "Going to see the hostiles, then?" If the Hostiles are on the Nothern shore, but the actual others are off to the East on their little island – this would imply that there are two competing factions of others.

Also, both Benry and Goodwin instisted that their group was "the good guys." This implies that there are bad guys too...

Could Nathan be part of a different group? How many times have we heard "the others" state that they don't kill. They might not have used the word kill, but you get the point. Goodwin kills Nathan with no remorse or anything.

Nathan could be the "hostile" that Kelvin referred to. There are two groups of others on the Island – Ben's group of "goodies" and the "Hostile's"... Nathan was a Hostile and Goodwin knew it, that is why he had to die! The Hostile's are bad!

Just thinking...

Lost Junkies!

Here is a picture and cryptic message from Alvar Hanso!

Alvin's Real Voice

Do you remember Alvin and the Chipmunks? Then you probably know that a recording can be speeded up to make it sound squeaky like Alvin, Simon, Theodore.

But, do you know that if you slow down a Chipmunk recording, you can hear what the actual actors sound like?

Yep, that’s right. Listen (MP3) for yourself!

Hug O' War

--By Shel Silverstein

Alive and Well?

Alive and well?
An Article by Marty from The Briefing

I recently attended a large pastor’s conference where I was joined by 3,200 evangelical pastors, ministry leaders, seminary students, youth leaders and children’s teachers. It is always encouraging to be with so many people who trust in God’s word to turn people from idols to serve the true and living God. And this is just one out of dozens of similar conferences that gather Bible-believing Christians. Surely this is a wonderful sign of Christianity here in the States.

However, I am not sure what to make of it all. For, statistically speaking, even though Evangelicalism is on the rise here, our culture is pulling away from God faster than ever. Further, Christians—especially evangelicals—have an alarmingly low understanding of Scripture. Is what I see at conferences like these a fair reflection of the state of American Evangelicalism?

My experience of evangelical churches is this: I know a woman who teaches at an evangelical Christian school who rarely reads the Scriptures; I know an evangelical pastor who preaches more from Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life than the Bible; I know an evangelical church that gathers people in small groups to give them tips on healthy eating and coping with job-related stress while paying very little attention to Matthew or Ecclesiastes. And I could go on with similar examples for pages.

How do the two trends I’ve identified above square with one another? I’ve been reading Tom Schreiner’s excellent article on preaching and Biblical theology (PDF). Schreiner reminded me how it is that such a dichotomy can exist. He said, “[C]onservative churches may embrace the inerrancy of Scripture while denying in practice the sufficiency of God’s Word. We may say that Scripture is God’s inerrant Word, while failing to proclaim it seriously from our pulpits”. I would add that churches also fail to practise God’s word seriously in their ministry programs.

This is why there are so many evangelical pastors and churches who have no positive effect on Christianity and Evangelicalism as a whole in America: we assume our beliefs rather than practice them. It is easy to claim to hold to evangelical beliefs; you can post them in the church bulletin, use keywords like “inerrancy” and “justification” in your sermons, browbeat liberals for their opposing views. But it is difficult to actually put into practice the doctrines we hold to so fervently. And so it’s hard to find a church that centres its ministry on God’s word rather than on the culture.

My hunch (based on the fruit of our labours) is that most of our growing evangelical population knows little of what it means to participate in or run a ministry on the idea that God’s word is inerrant. As Schreiner points out, this comes back to our fundamental distrust in the fact that God’s word is actually sufficient. Simply put, our evangelical churches just don’t believe that God’s word alone is capable of producing God-glorifying Christians—assuming that they have reached the point where they think that that is the goal of being Christian.

Many cultural pundits say that Evangelicalism is alive and well in America today. I would agree it is alive, but I remained unconvinced as to how “well” it is.

W.W.L.S. (What Would Luther Say?)

What would Luther say about shepherds of Christ's church?

He must be of a high and great spirit that undertakes to serve the people in body and soul, for he must suffer the utmost danger and unthankfulness. Therefore Christ said to Peter, Simon, etc., “Lovest thou me?” repeating it three times together. Then he said: “Feed my sheep:” as if he would say, “Wilt thou be an upright minister, and a shepherd? then love must only do it, thy love to me; for how else could ye endure unthankfulness, and spend wealth and health, meeting only with persecution and ingratitude?”

Table Talk CXLVII.

Pastors are real fakes!

I don't know of any other profession in which it is quite as easy to fake it as in ours. By adopting a reverential demeanor, cultivating a stained-glass voice, slipping occasional words like "eschatology" into conversation....not often enough actually to confuse people but enough to keep them aware that our habitual train of thought is a cut above the pew level--we are trusted, without any questions asked, as stewards of the mysteries. Most people...know that we are in fact surrounded by enormous mysteries: birth and death, good and evil, suffering and joy, grace, mercy, forgiveness. It takes only a hint here and a gesture there, an empathetic sigh, or a compassionate touch to convey that we are at home and expert in these deep matters.

Even when in occasional fits of humility and honesty we disclaim sanctity, we are not believed. People have a need to be reassured that someone is in touch with the ultimate things. Their own interior lives are a muddle of shopping lists and good intentions, guilty adulteries (whether fantasized or actual) and episodes of heroic virtue, desires for holiness mixed with greed for self-satisfaction. They hope to do better someday beginning maybe tomorrow or at the latest next week. Meanwhile, they need someone around who can stand in for them, on whom they can project their wishes for a life pleasing to God. If we provide a bare bones outline of pretence, they take it as the real thing and run with it, imputing to us clean hands and pure hearts.

From the introduction of Working the Angles by Eugene Peterson.

Churches - 150 members strong

It just doesn't add up by Peter Hughes of Banksia, Sydney, Australia:

I want you to remember two numbers: 150 and 15. I was reading a book about a guy who was a church planter. His church had grown to about 150 and he decided it was time to plant another church. The problem was that he still had to work a part-time job because there was not enough income coming through the church. This got me thinking.

Most people, it seems, like a church where they know the pastor or minister. Sociologists tell me that this is about 150 people per minister; after that, it becomes too hard. In Sydney Anglican churches, the average giving per adult per week is $15 (actually it’s a bit less but let’s be nice). It costs a church $80,000 per year for a minister after things like superannuation and insurance etc., and let’s say another $20,000 for expenses like building costs (rent or upkeep), printing, insurance and other things.

So, let’s say then that it costs $100,000 a year for a minister to run a church. If people are giving $15 a week, this means you need at least 128 adults to break even. That is not far away from having to think about planting a new church if you want to grow. This means the church can’t afford another staff member until the new church is big enough (and now the first minister is trying look after 256 people across the new and the old churches—people who are frustrated they can’t talk to him).

The solution is either:

1. choose not to grow our churches, and once we get between 128 and 150, we stop reaching out with the gospel;
2. increase the average giving per adult to $30 per adult per week; or
3. be more generous to our ministers and let them spread themselves more thinly. We need to be happy with being in churches with congregations of up to 250.
   

None of these options are easy. I do not think that #1 is a Christian response. For some people, #2 is simply not an option. Others will find it hard to adjust to #3. But as it stands, it doesn’t seem to add up to me.

Poet Tree

Shel Silverstein

Incredible Power!

This is incredible power. He is ~180 lbs and throwing incredible weight! If you are not absolutely amazed, you don't understand what you are watching.

It make me wonder what Samson was capable of!

Sleeping Beauty

No doubt in this dog's waking hours he is a fine-looking canine, but while sleeping the ugly switch gets flipped. At that point all that is needed is quick action with a camera.