happy december

I am very grateful that one of my sons has a new job. With his previous job his entire day consisted of commuting, working, coming home, sleeping, and getting up to go to work. He worked a nine-hour evening shift. The new position is a nine-to-five, Monday through Friday job with a much shorter commute. In fact, he will have an extra four hours per day. (This is not an exaggeration.) It is similar work but more intellectually challenging and therefore more interesting.

He's happy. We're happy for him. Everyone should be happy for him**.

Be blessed!
RB

** If some bizarre reason you are not happy for him, then please seek help from a mental health professional. Referrals are available. :)

beowulf

We saw it today and the IMAX 3-D version is the only way this movie should be viewed.

efficient picketing

A colleague sent this link from NPR (you can read the text or click "Listen Now" on the site):

Union Outsources Picket Lines to the Homeless.

Hmmm...unions support paying "a living wage" but $8 an hour is not a living wage for DC. However, since union carpenter wages are so high it is too costly for them to take time off to protest. So it is economically efficient to use cheap labor to outsource, a win-win situation for both highly paid union members and homeless people.

Sure it is hypocritical, but it is efficient.

BTW, many political organizations and special interest groups do the same sort of thing, especially in DC and NYC.

nothing puts me in the mood for christmas like . . .

Dave Barry's Holiday Gift Guide:
A Dozen Hand(y) Selections for the Humorous Giver

[may require registration -- but it is free]

answered prayer

Friday was an absolutely wonderful day. I had a great night’s sleep of nine hours and awoke to a beautiful winter scene outside my window. (I may have spent twenty-plus years in the North Country but I still recall my snow-deprived childhood.) I wanted to go up to Massena but had to spend more than a half hour deicing the van. All the doors were frozen shut except the back hatch. So I crawled through to the front, started her up, put all the defrosters on, and set the temperature as high as it could go However, I didn’t mind in the least. There were other little chores to do while waiting.

Driving up Rt. 310 I caught myself going past 65 mph. The radio was off and I had been thinking about all I had to be thankful for. I then thought that if I had gotten a ticket, it would have all been worth it since the benefit of the gratitude was worth more than the cost of the fine. I did, however, slow down and set the cruise control. At 55 mph, the same gain can be obtained without the pain.

A bit after turning north onto Rt. 56 I noticed a state trooper passing me going south. I glanced down at my speedometer and saw that I was going past 65 again. I looked in the rear view mirror and sure enough, the trooper was making a u-turn.

I had forgotten to reset the cruise after turning onto 56. I then waited and waited, but the trooper was not making his move, but just stayed back far behind me. This is not unusual except it was going on much longer than usual. Maybe he wasn’t going to pull me over? I waited some more and still nothing happened. Finally I said, “I give it to you Lord. If you want me to have a ticket or not, that is up to you.”

Within a second of finishing that prayer, the light bar on the trooper's car lit up brighter than a thousand Christmas trees.

I just laughed out loud. I seldom have the privilege of seeing an instantaneous answer to prayer. This was as if the hand of God was on that switch in the police car, just waiting for me to call out to him.

I was probably one of the cheeriest yet sober people the trooper had ever ticketed. I think he even felt bad about it since he all but apologized after he gave me the ticket.

Afterward I went into a few stores, bought a few things, and greatly enjoyed the whole shopping experience. This is quite unusual for me.

I had an absolutely lovely day. Every part of it was lovely.

Be blessed!
RB

pleasant surprises on the day of the lord.

. . . If you are a nice person - if virtue comes easily to you - beware! Much is expected from those to whom much is given. If you mistake for your own merits what are really God's gifts to you through nature, and if you are contented with simply being nice, you are still a rebel: and all those gifts will only make your fall more terrible, your corruption more complicated, your bad example more disastrous. The Devil was an archangel once; his natural gifts were as far above yours as yours are above those of a chimpanzee.

But if you are a poor creature - poisoned by a wretched upbringing in some house full of vulgar jealousies and senseless quarrels saddled, by no choice of your own, with some loathsome sexual, perversion- nagged day in and day out by an inferiority complex that makes you snap at your best friends - do not despair. He knows all about it. You are one of the poor whom He blessed. He knows what a wretched machine you are trying to drive. Keep on. Do what you can. One day (perhaps in another world, but perhaps far sooner than that) He will fling it on the scrap-heap and give you a new one. And then you may astonish us all - not least yourself: for you have learned your driving in a hard school. (Some of the last will be first and some of the first will be last.)

~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Chapter 32.

I have always found myself admiring people whom others take little notice. I could admire the talent of the talented but seldom was as impressed with the one talented. I have been more impressed with less gifted folks who were struggling. I have the strange tendency to look at how people act when they are at their weakest, when things are going badly.

I have always kept this to myself because I thought that at best I just was being contrary. At worst, I was weird. I was afraid I was weird in a way that reflected something terrible about myself. I didn’t know what for sure, but it probably was not something I wanted exposed.

By admiring "people who struggle" - Christian-speak for losers - maybe I am showing myself to be such a complete loser that I could only admire other losers?

Then I read the above from C.S. Lewis. He understood and I began to understand. It is like the widow’s mite (Mark 12:41-44; Luke 21:2). Jesus admired what folks did with what they had, not with what they had. The Church, on the other hand, tends to admire and to look at results, at productivity, at what someone does for us.

Two examples of people I admire come to mind. I know an older, wiser woman in the Lord who struggled deeply with severe emotional and physical problems. She was not outgoing, no one sought her as a mentor, the more gregarious, younger female leaders (as did everyone else) found her easy to ignore. However, I got to know her and I was blessed. I learned to listen when she spoke and to seek her wisdom when she did not speak. I admired her faith and ability to sometimes just barely survive, to show up, to keep on walking with the Lord despite all that came against her.

I am thinking of a man tortured by emotional problems more severe than I can imagine. He shows up at church meetings and is faithful, although sometimes he feels that he is just barely holding on. However, I doubt if I could be so faithful with a fraction of his troubles. He is a man of faith. I can not think about him and still think that I have much faith.

After the Resurrection, I think we will all be quite surprised at some who get the best crowns. However when we learn why, there will be no disappointment, no envy, only admiration.

That will be a good day.

Be blessed.
RB

got leftovers? try the hot brown sandwich

Brown Hotel, Louisville, KY

4 ounces butter
Flour to make a roux (about 6 tablespoons)
3 to 3 1/2 cups milk
1 beaten egg
6 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
1 ounce whipped cream (optional)
Salt and pepper to taste
Slices of roast turkey
8 to 12 slices of toast (may be trimmed)
1/4 beefsteak tomato
Extra Parmesan for topping
8 to 12 strips of fried bacon
• Melt butter and add enough flour to make a reasonably thick roux (enough to absorb all of the butter). Add milk and Parmesan cheese. Add egg to thicken sauce, but do not allow sauce to boil. Remove from heat. Fold in whipped cream. Add salt and pepper to taste.
• For each Hot Brown, place two slices of toast on a metal (or flameproof) dish. Cover the toast with a liberal amount of turkey. Pour a generous amount of sauce over the turkey and toast. Add tomato on sides of dish. Sprinkle with additional Parmesan cheese. Place entire dish under a broiler until the sauce is speckled brown and bubbly. Remove from broiler, cross two pieces of bacon on top, and serve immediately.
[Source: The Wall Street Journal]

what about saturday?

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction....
~ 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 (ESV)

We are in the last moments of autumn, winter will soon set in, and after a wait, then spring will arrive. One of my favorite North Country sights during spring is to watch the cattle, especially the calves, head out to the fields after a long stay indoors. This is the same picture the Lord uses in Malachi 4:2b (“You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall.”) to express our joy on the Day of the Lord, when we shall be part of the Resurrection of those in the Book of Life. All our enemies, especially death and the grave, are to be so completely destroyed, “… that it will leave them neither root nor branch (v 1).”

The Lord showed me Malachi 4 late the night before the Black Hawk crash. The next day, Thursday the 8th, was one of those Fridays when we need to remember that Sunday, the Resurrection, is coming. It helped to remember, but whenever I said to myself, “It’s Friday but Sunday’s coming,” I still felt the weight on my chest, the lump in my throat, my eyes welling up. Yeah, Sunday’s coming but we have to wait. We still have to mourn.

We have a God who knows our sorrows. We have a God who watched his own son die a horrible death. We have a God that knew that Sunday was coming.

What about Saturday? What did God do on Saturday? It was the Sabbath, a day of rest. There was nothing for God to do but mourn and grieve at the loss of his son. God had to wait for Sunday too. God knew Sunday was coming but he still had to get through Saturday.

“Well,” you might say,”God only had to wait one day.” Yes, but to God one day is as a thousand years (2 Peter 3:8). Stay with me here. I want to get a bit radical: I want to take Scripture literally. I don’t think it means that one of our days seemed in a psychological sense like a thousand years to God. I think one of our days literally was a thousand years to God. (It’s an Einstein, relativity, light, quantum physics, and all that sort of thing.)

Think about it. What if God had to wait? What if he had to be without his only son for a thousand years? God was, and is, one with his son, but not on that awful Saturday. That Saturday Jesus was in the tomb, totally forsaken by the Father. The Father had to live with that. He had to live with that for a thousand years.

Who comforted God while he mourned, while he grieved? He created us to have relationship with him but who comforted God? Those that followed Jesus didn’t know what was what, let alone that Sunday was coming. They never comforted the Father. Everyone else either was celebrating the death of his only son or was oblivious to it.

No one comforted the Father.

No one ever mourned or grieved for a thousand years. No one ever lived for a thousand years. Adam lost a son but he had to wait only about 800 years (Genesis 4:25; 5:4). Adam also had a wife and later other sons and daughters to comfort him.

We have a God who can comfort us. No one ever mourned as deeply or as long as God mourned for his son. He is able to comfort us because he understands the excruciating pain that accompanies the mourning and the grief better than anyone. He knows the pain better than any of us since he suffered it more intensely and without any comfort from others. He has been there and doesn’t want us to have to suffer without his comfort.

Now some will be able to use God’s comfort to comfort others some day. This is good since, unfortunately, there will be future Fridays. Yes, Sunday will be coming. However, we’ll still need help to get through those awful Saturdays.

Be blessed.
RB

new yorkers know trees

NYC is the most cosmopolitan and cultural diverse city in America. New Yorkers don't need to be p.c.

Watchdog Groups Agitate to Keep Christmas Christian:
Lowe's Gets Stung for Advertising 'Family Trees'
By ANN ZIMMERMAN
The Wall Street Journal
November 20, 2007

As retailers begin advertising their hot holiday products and setting up their seasonal displays this week, no one will be more eager to check it all out than the 3.3 million supporters of the American Family Association.

The Tupelo, Miss.-based watchdog group will be hitting the stores and checking out ads as part of its Project Merry Christmas campaign, an effort to chastise retailers and others for purposely leaving Christmas out of their marketing. Supporters can also purchase buttons -- for a 90-cent "donation" apiece -- that proclaim: "Merry Christmas. God's good news!"

The group has already started agitating. Last week, someone brought to chairman Don Wildmon's attention that Lowe's Cos. holiday catalogue had a two-page spread of decorated trees it labeled "Family Trees" instead of Christmas trees.

Mr. Wildmon sent an email "action alert" to his members and between 11 p.m. Monday night and 7 a.m. the next morning, the home improvement chain had received 119,000 emails at its Mooresville, N.C., headquarters.

Lowe's spokeswoman Chris Ahearn immediately phoned Mr. Wildmon and apologized. "It was not our intention to be politically correct," says Ms. Ahearn. "It just slipped through the proofreading process. It was a play on words, but it was not well received."

The AFA has targeted Lowe's before. Two years ago, the retailer had banners in its stores over the trees calling them "holiday trees," part of the company's overall "home for the holidays" theme. Lowe's apologized then, too, and pulled the banners down, replacing them with banners that said "Christmas Trees." Lowe's asked them to call in the future if there was ever another problem, but apparently the group thought emails would be more effective.

"We found it's best if you talk after they heard from your supporters," explains Mr. Wildmon.

WSJ's Adam Najberg hits the streets to check if New Yorkers have their tree terminology straight:

latest photos

I uploaded two more albums of family photos:

1) 2007 September

2) 2007 October