Watch this. You’ll laugh.
And you’ll nod and sigh and know that it’s all true too. He’s got us pegged… well, maybe not “US” but for sure someone you know… who lives in your mirror.
PS: Giving credit… this was passed on to me by Blair, who stole it from Steve, who’s the big brother to my friend Tim, who used to be classmates with my wife, who comes home to me tonight.
Been meaning to post several things all weekend but it never happened so this will have to suffice for now.
Blaise Pascal…
“If man is not made for God, why is he only happy in God?
If man is made for God, why is he so opposed to God?”
I have no idea, Blaise.
But I’ve felt both of those feelings recently. In fact, life as I know it is pretty much a circle of cycling through those two places.
And all I’ve got at the moment is this…
Tonight I lay me down to sleep,
With confidence the Lord can keep,
All that is placed within His hands,
One small life given to His plans,
O Master, hold me close.
I just loaned out some money to a lady in Cameroon and some more to a guy in Cambodia.
Many of you are already aware of this site (www.kiva.org), but if you’re not, you’re officially overdue to get informed. Their little standard invitation email that you can send to friends goes like this…
I wanted to let you know about Kiva (www.kiva.org), a non-profit that allows you to lend as little as $25 to a specific low-income entrepreneur in the developing world.
You choose who to lend to – whether a baker in Afghanistan, a goat herder in Uganda, a farmer in Peru, a restaurateur in Cambodia, or a tailor in Iraq – and as they repay their loan, you get your money back. It�s a powerful and sustainable way to empower someone right now to lift themselves out of poverty.
So now you know.
A friend put me on to another site as well.
Two nights ago, with barely sleeping baby on my shoulder, I earned over 1000 grains of rice, 10 grains at a time, for people in developing nations by answering trivia questions about our world. So go forth, be smart, and feed people… www.freerice.com. And explore the site some too. On it is some intriguing information. For example, did you know that my very own Canadian government has thus far declined to follow the lead of several European nations to give at 0.7% of its annual wealth to the developing nations. Trust the Scandinavian countries to leave us in their nordic dust.
If you care to send a “spurring” letter to our own government, they are waiting to be found and sent right from the site.
That’s it. Over and out.
In my cynical moments, I like posters like that one. But not all my moments are cynical, gratefully.
Much of my inner “tradition discussion” has to do with faith and how it plays out in my life or in the life of my faith community. I struggle from day to day, bouncing from stances that would seem anti-traditional to others that would seem ultra-traditional. Call me bi-polar if you wish, but that’s where I am.
A reading today brought some valuable thoughts on the subject, from J.I. Packer…
“Nobody can claim to be detached from traditions. In fact, one sure way to be swallowed up by traditionalism is to think that one is immune to it…. The questions, then, is not whether we have traditions, but whether our traditions conflict with the only absolute standard in these matters: Holy Scripture.”
He continues…
“All Christians are at once beneficiaries and victims of tradition–beneficiaries, who receive nurturing truth and wisdom from God’s faithfulness in past generations; victims, who now take for granted things that need to be questioned, thus treating as divine absolutes patterns of belief and behavior that should be seen as human, provisional, and relative. We are all beneficiaries of good, wise, and sound tradition and victims of poor, unwise, and unsound traditions.”
And now to know the difference.
And now to act upon that knowledge wisely.
A friend of mine sent me this article today from Fortune Magazine. It appears that my home is a good place to call home these days.
http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/03/news/international/birger_saskatchewan.fortune/index.htm