life lessons

Every time I see the insanity happening in Baltimore, I think of two things: one, lessons my parents taught me. Two, I wish I could buy one way tickets to North Korea, China, Russia, Ivory Coast, Singapore, and Vietnam for every single one of those protesters.  Pull a stunt like throwing bricks or trash cans or moltov cocktails at police in China? That won't be a nerf bullet they shoot in your direction. Damage someone's property or loot a store in Ivory Coast? You better pray the police get their fast. Sometimes the police take their sweet time and sit back and watch, only intervening right before the owners beat the vandal or thief to the point of death. The whole scenario in Baltimore both disgusts me and breaks my heart.

But it also makes me appreciate my parents. Had these kids been taught the following simple lessons and seen it modeled out growing up, there's no way they'd be participating in such selfish vandalism and greedy and self-serving acts of anarchy.

• Respect authority.
• Treat others the way you want to be treated.
• Rights are earned, not granted. 
• Your freedoms end where another's nose begins.
• Don't covet.
• Don't steal.
• Help those in need.
• Do what's right, no matter what anyone around you is doing.
• Be honest.

No faith is perfect. Growing up in the church and in a pastor's home, I know that way too well. But I also know that people of no faith have no guidelines to govern their lives. All but one of those above life lessons are from my Christian faith. The older I become, the more certain I am that people who have no guidelines other than "It's all about me" will continue to act and react in these ways.  This type of violence and destruction will only get worse as America becomes more of a secular society. When police and other authority figures do dishonest and dishonorable things, everyone suffers. When people have not been taught the difference between right and wrong, innocents suffer. Calling the national guard may be bring temporary stability, but it won't heal the moral decay of our nation. 

animosity

I totally understand the desire to hang out with people that are similar to you. There's a comfort and calmness there that makes life much easier.

What I don't understand is the animosity exhibited toward people who are different. One thing I didn't expect to learn from Facebook was how much arrogance all of us humans possess. I've been baffled at how much animosity people display toward others who don't share their viewpoint. I've been disappointed and sometimes downright disgusted.

Comments like these:
Why should I pray for them? My parents live in Atlanta and I've visited there. Southerners are stupid and if they can't figure out a way to build houses to survive floods and tornadoes then they don't deserve my prayers.

I want to help Muslims meet Jesus. (with a picture of a gun)

Tell me I don't treat my kid right? It's a wonder they didn't call the cops and have me on the nightly news!

Anyone who supports Hobby Lobby would also support an employer refusing to pay for statins or anti-depressants.

and I'm not even going to post all the ones, pro and con, that have dealt with homosexuality.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the love of Christ and how that was one characteristic that caught people's attention during the early church years. Sometimes I fear that is greatly missing from my life, that I don't exhibit God's love often enough. I want people to read my Facebook posts (which I almost never post) and see a heart of love, not condemnation, scorn, or hatred.  Yes, we have to take a stand for what is right, but pointing toward Christ is not a defensive position, nor does it have to be hateful.

The past few Wednesday nights we've been studying the attributes of God. It's been amazing how studying how awesome God is automatically brings praise to the tongue.  It's also been convicting. The more I see how incredible God is, the more I realize how much I need to change and work on to become more of a reflection of him.

If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth:  

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.  

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. 

~ I John 1: 6-10 

 

flies in the ointment

Ecclesiastes 10:1 (ESV)

Dead flies make the perfumer's ointment give off a stench;
so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor.

Side Note: The KJV translates perfumer as "apothecary", which can also mean pharmacist. Growing up I thought this passage was referring to bugs in your medicine. 

Yesterday toward the end of my work day I received a phone call that made my heart drop to the pits of my stomach. One of my precincts (I oversee 8 polling places) had an irate voter that was refusing to leave the premises and I needed to get to that place as quickly as possible. Thankfully the phone call came (as I was pulling in the parking lot) that the voter had finally left. I headed back to finish the assessments I was doing when the call came, but my heart was hurting for my workers. No one likes to deal with an irate person, especially at the end of a very long day. And when that person is irate over something errant and irrational, it only makes it worse.

So imagine my surprise when I received a call back from that precinct saying the voter had returned, after closing, and apologized to all the workers. He had gone home and re-read the newspaper article where he had gotten his "facts" and realized He had misread the paper!

Despite the absurdity of it all and the fear/horror as well as frustration those poll workers faced, I was a little bit impressed the guy came back to apologize. That is not something we see very often. Actually, in eight years of working elections, I don't think that's ever happened. While this the first situation I've ever had escalate to the point we were one step away from calling the police, there are countless situations where we've listened to people fuss or rant over things that are incorrect or that we have no control over. I wouldn't wish yesterday's scenario on any poll worker. But it was quite pleasant after hearing "the voter came back as we were closing the polls" to hear the soothing words "he went home and read the paper, realized he was wrong, and was coming back to apologize."

While that dude's choice of cologne still stinks, at least now there's a whiff of pleasantness about him.

when people make me crazy

It's not hard to make my blood boil. It's really not even that difficult to aggravate me. And unfortunately for me, we've officially entered the crazy season.  It starts small - people I don't know stopping and asking if they can hunt/fish and continuously badgering when I say no, but then it begins to escalate. Like this:

• You don't have church one Wed/Sun night (or stay home sick) and find people parking in your driveway or traipsing through your yard to the pond because they think you're away at church.
• People hide their cars behind houses up for sale and walk through the weeds in the nearby field, then cut across the dam, so they're not "on" your property.
• They're not going to fish at your pond, but are hiking to the other one. 
• And when you tell them they don't have permission to be at the other pond, they respond "The man who lives there gave us permission." (Um, news flash, Bobby's mom, who is a widow, doesn't grant permission, either; and even if she did, she'd tell them to drive through HER yard, not ours which is a mile walk at least from that pond).
• You see me, or my husband, come outside to talk with you, and you take off running.
• You give my husband the finger when you leave.
• You scratch off in your car, slinging gravel from the dirt road everywhere.
• And the ultimate kicker (from the teenage couple swinging on my swing): we didn't know this was anyone's property.

And people wonder why I'm not always thrilled to have a pond behind my house.

returning to our "roots"

Aggression...it's been in the media quite a bit lately. Bob Etheridge reacting aggressively to aggressive "kids" on the street; a NC Republican chairman pushing a critical Democrat and receiving a nose punch in return, and a police officer on the news this morning for slugging a young woman after she shoved him.
I know we like to think of ourselves as a civilized society, but the reality is we're actually quite tame in comparison with historical Americans and other countries. It's not unheard of for Japanese and Korean governments to have out and out brawls during governmental meetings, and the US Congress in its earlier years actually had one Congressman cane another.
But the real clincher was the Confederate States of America Congress, where members accosted each other so much that it prompted then Vice-President Stephens to say it was a good thing their meetings were closed to the public and kept private "some of the most disgraceful scenes ever enacted by a legislative body." Among some of the assaults: Benjamin Hill of GA bloodied William Yancey of AL with his inkstand. During an argument, the Journal Clerk of House shot and killed the House Chief Clerk, and Henry Foot of TN attacked colleagues various times with the following objects: his fists, a bowie knife, a revolver, and his umbrella.
So comparing our past with today's "assault and atrocities", we're actually quite tame. I mean, what's a little punch in the nose or grabbing a person by the scruff a neck compared to being beaten with a cane, umbrella, or inkstand? I'll leave it to each individual reader to decide whether or not our society has actually become more civilized or wimpier. :)