Devotional Blog:

Christian ‘Culture’, Depravity and Salvation, 2/29/2012, Ephesians 2:8-9

I love meeting new people, hearing new points of view listening to life adventures, life realizations and commiserating on mutual experiences. So 2012 is a leap year and there was no entry in my devotional book for this day so this is my own devotional. Honestly I do have any number of pages in the book dog eared to write about as I am fantastically behind in my posting, but I find I enjoy writing more when I am writing about something that is currently bothering or inspiring me. Enter today’s topic.

I had the pleasure of meeting someone with a very similar upbringing to myself and we bantered back and forth about being children having grown up in the church. Children who grew up in the church, most likely said their ‘salvation’ prayer at a young age, went through the ‘Christian’ motions growing up, sunday school, youth camp, retreats, revivals, door to door evangelism, whatnot. We ‘shunned’ the people we were supposed to shun or hate, we accepted the people that fit into the Christian box and we were encouraged that the greatest calling in life is that of ministry. Christian culture surrounded us, we memorized verses, held our hands up in deference to God during worship, allowed people to pray for us, we prayed for people, we knew all the ins and outs of the culture and we really didn’t have an understanding of what true ‘salvation’ was…but of course we were saved…weren’t we?

Devotional Blog:

Topic: “Take Responsibility”, 01/25/2012, Romans 13:1-7, Galatians 6:5, 2 Corinthians 5:10

It’s her fault. It’s his fault. It’s their fault. The dog did it…

Kid’s Excuses:

1. One child to another: Whenever you tell a big fat lie to get away with breaking an ornament, vase etc.  Tell your mum, dad etc. that it threw itself off of the mantle piece, table etc and then add in that you always believed that there was something out there!
2. Mom:  Where’s your report card?  You:  Um, mommy I’m really sorry and everything.  But I didn’t do it or anything but you know how I walk to school?  Well, the bell rang and I went to my locker to put it in my backpack and some very mean kids took it and started playing monkey in the middle then someone yelled that there was a big fight so the kids dropped it and ran outside.  Then, I was walking & was looking at it and a dog chased me and got it and chewed it up!  Sorry!
3. I do what the cheerios tell me.
4. When I was little, I cut up my sheets, my excuse was, “Jesus did it!”****
5. The clowns made me do it…I sware!

Excuses given to police officers:

1. One night many years ago I was on patrol and observed a vehicle blow through a red light at a major intersection. There had been plenty of time to stop, yet the vehicle had not even slowed down. I stopped the car and asked the young female driver why she had done that. The girl told me she had just had her brakes repaired, it had been very expensive, and she DIDN’T WANT TO WEAR THEM DOWN! Usually I give people a pass if I haven’t heard their excuse before, but in this case she got the ticket. …………………………………. Submitted by… Dave Hoffman, Sergeant, Naperville IL PD

2. I stopped a car in a rural area of our county for going 80 MPH in a 55 MPH zone. The driver explained that he had a bee flying around his head so he sped up to 80, hoping that the bee couldn’t fly that fast and would not be able to fly out of the back seat area to get at him…..Submitted by…Gary Lenon, Mecosta County Sheriff Department, Michigan.

Amazing what we say to avoid blame not only as children but as adults as well.

Devotional Blog:

Topic: “Love and Riddles”, 12/6/2011, Song of Songs (Solomon) 2:1-17

So I’ll be jumping around a bit as I play catch up in my devotional blog ‘series’ out of this book. I’m combining two entries in this blog. So Song of Songs or Solomon as its called in some Bibles is quite the ‘lovers’ book. It’s very short, only 8 short chapters (about 4 Bible pages) and sits between Ecclesiastes and Isaiah. I kept missing it when I was flipping through my Bible trying to find it. And the book is all about love and how to treat your lover. And how can you not think this books is about desire with verses like:

1:2 Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth–for your love is more delightful than wine. 1:13 My lover is to me a sachet of myrrh resting between my breasts.  1:16 My love is mine and I am his… 7:9-12 May the wine go straight to my lover, flowing gently over lips and teeth. I belong to my lover and his desire is for me. Come, my lover, let us go to the countryside let us spend the night in the villages. Let us go early to the vineyards to see if the vines have budded, if their blossoms have opened,and if the pomegrantes are in bloom–there I will give you my love.

In spite of the lack of explicitly religious content, Song of Songs can also be interpreted as an allegorical representation of the relationship of God and Israel, or for Christians, Christ and the Church or Christ and the human soul (Cited from Wikipedia).

What struck me was the sincere passion these two characters within this book had for each other. Like all good internet junkies I googled “love”…

Devotional Blog:

Topic: Slippery Slopes, 9/22/11, John 15:1-11

So I realize the author only has a page to get these topics aired out given this is an ‘on the go’ devotional, but this one…

Excerpt: “In my twenty-plus years of ministry, I have seen the slippery slope in many a woman’s life. She didn’t ‘mean’ to have an affair. She didn’t think a few glasses of wine would lead to alcoholism…”

And then she spends the rest of the section on women who ‘unequally yoke’ themselves to unbeliever men and how that leads to a slippery slope of marrying a non-believer and how that’s not right…I could tell she was trying to find a way into this topic specifically so she could spend the majority of her time there. Now I have grown up staunchily ingrained with this belief system. Don’t unequally yoke, don’t date a non-believer, don’t associate with non-believer men…And Christianity isn’t the only faith to somewhat ‘demonize’ (ok that’s a strong word) relationships with the non-believer. Infidels to islamic extremists, it doesn’t even have to be religion–mixing of cultures historically was taboo as well. An Indian buddy of mine during my internship at Yale said that his family specifically told him in college to ‘have as much fun as he wanted’ but marry an Indian girl. During the 1940’s in Russia it was unthinkable for a Jew to marry a Christian…and many of these values/divides between religions and cultures remain today.

This whole manner of thinking rather religious or cultural –I really hate it.