Pictures - Finally! And those Great OC quotes

Bring back the iPray bumper sticker: This was from a series a couple years ago and it's one of the coolest B stickers I've seen (the color of blue makes this one of the most visible stickers I've ever seen). I do hate bumper stickers (my one and only one is on my Volvo and it was so I could get a discount at Les S. tire store - it's my Volvo service shop)! I often rant a bit on how passive-aggressive religious types put bumper stickers on their car to make those behind them see "who" they are - then they drive like they got their license at K-Mart and tick people off - bumper stickers are not so cool in my book. I do like the iPray Living Hope one because it reaches across so many cultures and uses something a lot of people have in common. It's not "in your face" (turn or burn) and it piggybacks the iPod in a clever way - it's not bad . . . I might even be willing to put one on my car (I'm still working on letting Jesus give me input when I drive). Sometime I'll have to write about how the Hebrew words behind the commandment "Have no other gods before me" tie into the whole bumper sticker issue (Don't hold your breath).

Great memories from last week when a bunch of us went to the Beavers game after church - while there Katie sent me these pics of her and Kate (Katie has the "Big Brain").

Oswald Chambers is one of my favorite writers. After listening to Paul Young (The Shack) speak last weekend these two comments from O.C . hit home runs in my brain and heart.

ONE: "Jesus Christ did not come only to teach— He came to make me what He teaches I should be." Wow! I grew up in the Western mindset that INFORMATION was what you needed! Information removed from a heart-connection (friendship) is worth little. In fact, it made me more confused and afraid of God. Paul Young grew up with LOTS of religious facts, doctrine, and theology - but seeing a God who is smiling and waiting to swing you around and walk with you into your Shack is not the gospel that "information" gave him. O.C. back in 1917 saw this and invites us to the "more." I can BE in relationship! And with Jesus living IN me HE does work out love in a mysterious, marvelous way!

TWO: "As long as we have a self-righteous idea that we can carry out our Lord’s teaching, God will allow us to continue until we expose our own ignorance over some obstacle in our way. Only then are we willing to come to Him as paupers and receive from Him. 'Blessed are the paupers in spirit.' This is the first principle in the kingdom of God. The underlying foundation of Jesus Christ’s kingdom is poverty, not possession; not making decisions for Jesus Christ, but having such a sense of absolute futility - 'I cannot begin to do it.' Then Jesus says, 'Blessed are you . . .' ( Matthew 5:11 ). This is the doorway, and yet it takes us so long to believe that we are poor! The knowledge of our own poverty is what brings us to the moral frontier where Jesus Christ works."

I want to view all of life as a gift. I want to be a "learner" forever! Poverty strips away the illusion of "rights" and my supposed "justice." It lets me view everything as a "gift." I need to relax and let Jesus bring me into the Shack. God's there - smiling, and so loving all that He will do in us!