Open My Eyes

There's this awesome story in 2 Kings 6. The King of Aram is at war with Israel. Only Israel has pretty great intel - God keeps telling Elisha when they plan to attack. Aram can't catch Israel by surprise.

When the King of Aram finds out who is providing the intelligence, he's understandably mad at Elisha. So he comes to hunt him down. God doesn't warn Elisha this time. Elisha and his servant wake up and the servant sees all these enemy troops surrounding them. The servant is freaked out. And Elisha says this: “Don’t be afraid! For there are more on our side than on theirs!” Then Elisha prays, “O Lord, open his eyes and let him see!"

All of a sudden, the servant sees that the hillside around them is filled with horses and chariots of fire - straight from God. Then Elisha prays for the enemies to be blinded, and they are. Elisha leads them right into Samaria, then has the King of Israel feed them before sending them on their way.

I absolutely love Elisha's prayer in this passage. When all seems lost, when we feel surrounded by enemies or bad circumstances, when hope is gone, this prayer is for you. "O Lord, open my eyes and let me see. Let me see your power. Let me see your plan. Let me see that I can yet hope in you."

Misunderstood

Dan and I took the puppies for a nice trip to Walgreens tonight. The Walgreens by us allows dogs inside and even gives them treats at the pharmacy, so they love coming along.

When we pulled into a parking space, there was a fancy car a few spots down, parked right in the middle of two spots, the way drivers of nice cars do when they want to avoid being knicked by a neighboring car door. Dan had recently learned, though, that some people key cars that do that just to get back at them for taking up two spaces.

When we got out of our car, Dan commented to the owner of the sports car that some people key cars for parking like that. That really set the guy off. He heard it as a threat, not the friendly warning Dan intended. And from then on, he was determined that Dan had threatened to key his car out of jealousy. He was cursing at Dan, threatening to beat him up (which I think he would have attempted if Dan wasn't so big), and just generally being angry. Dan tried to explain to him that he didn't care that the guy had parked that way, he was just warning him that some people do. But the man was beyond the point of reason. He'd made up his mind that Dan was a jerk who was jealous and threatening, and that was that.

I went in with the dogs and made Dan stay outside to make sure the man didn't retaliate by keying my car. And when I came back out, the guy was still having words with Dan and told me to keep him on a leash, then flipped us off in a final farewell as I got into our car.

I'm thankful that no one was hurt, and saddened that this angry man had his young daughter in the back of his car. And it was a definite wake-up call to listen before reacting and assuming you know what someone is trying to tell you.

Vacation

Dan and I returned today from a 5-day trip to a gorgeous cabin in the Pikes Peak area. It was the perfect length - long enough to feel like it was a good solid vacation, but not so long that we got bored. Plus I hate being away from my puppies!

I think we struck the perfect balance of resting and doing fun stuff. I'm not the kind of person who likes to cram vacations so full of outings that you feel more tired after the vacation than you started out. But I also wanted to get out and see more of this beautiful state. So I think we got in just the right amount of everything.

We arrived Saturday around dinner time and got settled into the cabin. It was a secluded cabin with a great view. And by cabin I mean a lodge type house, not a rustic log cabin. Fully equipped with plumbing and electricity. Very comfortable and beautiful. Then we enjoyed the hot tub and watched some CSI: NY. (We're going through Seasons 1-5 and we're on 5 now.)

On Sunday we went to Garden of the Gods, which I have to say was a little disappointing. Don't get me wrong, it was beautiful! Great rock formations and awesome views...I guess I was just expecting more based on what I've heard about it. Maybe it was just overhyped so my expectations were too high. It was free, so definitely worth the trip, but I think if we'd had to pay I would have felt like we'd gotten ripped off a little bit.

After Garden of the Gods we went to Royal Gorge which was NOT free ($25/person) but vastly exceeded my expectations. It was well worth the drive (it was an hour and a half from where we were staying) and the cost. I thought it would just be the bridge over the gorge, which sounded really cool but overpriced at $25. But we decided to do it anyway. Turned out that cost included not just the bridge (which we walked across and drove across), but a tram ride over the gorge (which was so amazing - highlight of the trip for me!), an incline railway ride that took you down to the bottom of the gorge, some animals, and a very cheesy train ride. It also included other things but we were getting hungry so we left. The Royal Gorge was the coolest place we went all week, I think.

On the way back from Royal Gorge it started raining REALLY HARD, and there was a car slightly in front of us in the lane next to us pulling a trailer with no mud flaps or fenders. The trailer went through a puddle and splashed up a huge wall of water on our windshield. We couldn't see a THING...and we were on a winding road. Dan luckily remembered to pulse the brakes, not slam them or we would have hydroplaned, but we were still going for about 10 seconds with absolutely NO visibility. We were so scared, and so thankful that God kept us safe and that this happened on a rare straight part of the road.

On Monday it was kind of raining off and on and we weren't so sure about doing anything outdoors. Plus my rib had popped back out of my spine and I could barely turn my head or torso. So we hung out in the cabin a bit, enjoying the hot tub some more when it wasn't raining, doing some reading (oops...it was a book for work...), and watching some movies. Then in the afternoon we went on a scenic drive which was pretty cool (but we were glad we were in a car because it started raining again).

On Tuesday we slept in later (I got up at 10:30) and were planning to have a leisurely breakfast and then go out. But as I was toasting my bagel in less than decent attire (like I said, the cabin was secluded so privacy wasn't an issue), all of a sudden I saw a workman out the window. I ducked down quickly, but not before he saw me. The workmen proceded to dig a huge ditch in the driveway to lay down a pipe, and we got blocked in. So we watched some more CSI while they worked but were very annoyed that we'd lost half a day unable to get out, without the privacy and peacefulness of our cabin. (They were really loud. But the cabin rental place is going to send us a check to compensate us for the inconvenience. Apparently - and I don't think this would have made a huge difference but whatever - the guys were supposed to tell us what they were doing and how long they'd take, and they didn't do that at all - but told the owner of the cabin that they did! Liars!) Finally at 2 they left and we went to Seven Falls.

Seven Falls is a tiered waterfall with - you guessed it - 7 tiers. And something like 221 steps next to it to climb to the top. That was quite a workout! Then we went on a hike at the top of it which I think was only 1 mile - but it was pretty steep at some parts, especially after those steps had worn us out! So that was definitely a good workout. The Falls were beautiful but the whole place was SOO touristy and packed it was hard to enjoy the view. Royal Gorge was touristy too but it was unique enough to be worth it. Seven Falls was nice but I thought we could have found a less touristy place to hike where there was a waterfall. Still...the workout of going up (and later back down) all those stairs couldn't be matched. AND I was very proud of myself because there was a sign on the trail about snakes living there but I bravely hiked it anyway. And from the end of the trail, you could see downtown Colorado Springs - which was pretty neat!

We came back and enjoyed our last evening relaxing in the cabin. On both Monday and Tuesday night (but especially Monday), we had an absolutely breathtaking view of the stars from the hot tub. We wished we knew more about the constellations! It's amazing how many more stars you can see when you get away from all the lights.

We also saw some wildlife in our yard. There was a buck the very first night while we ate dinner on the deck, and later two does walked by. Dan saw a skunk Sunday morning but I missed it. But this morning was the best - a doe and a fawn were in the yard and I went out on the deck with our camera. They got closer and closer until the doe was right up next to the deck, looking at me almost as if posing for the camera. And then she gave me those same eyes Buttercup gives me when she wants kibbles, and the same double tail wag Buttercup does. (Just two quick wags.) So I'm pretty sure other guests have fed her before and she expected the same from us - but sadly we had nothing to offer her.

So that was our trip! I'll be posting a photo album with some highlights, maybe this weekend.

In the mean time, it's good to be back with my puppies and I'm looking forward to work tomorrow. I do love my job! And I'm glad to be going back feeling well rested and like I had a great vacation.

FYI - The cabin we stayed in is privately owned but rented out through Colorado Mountain Cabins. They have about 30 cabins in the Pikes Peak area, so if you want a neat place to stay in a scenic area, google them! (Just make sure there aren't any plans to lay pipes while you're there...)

Group Prayer

At our monthly all-staff meetings at Group, we usually open with prayer. It's awesome to work at a place that values prayer. I should be thankful for it. And I am...but...

I have to confess that sometimes I find it very boring. And that's not just at Group...it's group prayer in general. Sometimes at our all-staffs we pray silently but with direction - and that I like. I'm engaged in it. It's personal. I'm not a mere observer.

But other times, we take prayer requests and then someone up front prays for them all. And I get really bored. I shouldn't. It feels wrong to be bored. But I doubt I'm the only one that gets bored with this method of prayer. For one, it's redundant...we just heard all the prayer requests, now we're praying for them. Why didn't we just have people say their prayers instead of saying what they needed prayer for? I guess it's nice to have someone else pray for your needs, even if they are essentially just reading off a checklist.

But moreover, I find group prayer requests very shallow. It's very rare that someone will ask for prayer for themselves in a group setting. More often, it's "Pray for my cousin's cousin, who has cancer." And to be quite honest (albeit harsh), even though cancer is a sad, sad thing, I don't really care about your cousin's cousin. I may not even know you that well (though I'd probably like to), but I don't even have a frame of reference for your cousin's cousin.

It's hard to ask for personal things, though. I don't do it very often. Because it's vulnerable. It's easier to think of the closest person to you who has cancer and ask for prayer about that than to ask for God to change your heart on something that you've been struggling with.

I know this blog probably sounds very mean...but it's honest. It's personal. And I think we need more personal sharing. Maybe in a meeting with your whole company isn't the place for that. But at least in our small groups...it's time to get personal.

Jury Duty

Today I was talking with some people about how one can avoid being selected for a jury if it falls during a busy week. Some possible methods were:

- Rave on and on about your beliefs on capital punishment

- Show up drunk (this may result in arrest for public intoxication, though)

- Bring some green army men and play with them loudly during the selection process, making gun noises as they shoot each other

What other ideas do you have? They can't entail lying or deceit, just good excuses that are real or ways to make yourself look like you'd make a bad juror.

Gay Marriage

I usually avoid political blogs because I don't want to spark controversy, but I was just thinking about gay marriage and wanted to write about it. So here goes.

If Colorado had a vote to legalize gay marriage, I would vote against it. HOWEVER: if it passed, I wouldn't consider it the end of the world.

I would vote against it because the Bible teaches homosexuality is wrong.

I wouldn't consider it the end of the world if it passed for the following reasons:

1) I don't believe it's the government's job to enforce Christian morals, unless lack of government regulation brings a person into harm's way. All that does is create forced morality, not any kind of loyalty to Christ. And whether or not they can legally marry, gay people will continue to live as married couples do.

2) It's not like abstaining from gay marriage will send anyone to heaven, nor will entering into gay marriage send anyone to hell. We are not saved by works, but by grace through faith in Jesus. The lifestyle changes need to be a result of a love for Jesus, NOT forced by law.

3) (And this is the main thing...) I think Christians are far too concerned with opposing gay marriage and not concerned enough with loving everyone as Jesus did. Jesus never condoned adultery, prostitution, or thievery, but he loved the adulterers, the prostitutes, and the crooked tax collectors. He didn't try to bring about legislation that would illegalize such actions. He didn't point the finger at them and call them evil. He showed his love to them and asked them to sin no more based on their relationship with him. When homosexuals see Christians, I don't think they see Jesus' heart at all. I think they see self-appointed judges.

I think it's time we start showing Jesus love and praying for HIM to change people's hearts - not the government to change merely their actions.

Me Likey

Lately I've noticed a proliferation of external sites on which to "like" things on Facebook. And they annoy me greatly. But unlike application notifications, you can't block the "so-and-so likes something stupid" notifications (my cynical term...) without blocking the people.

And so I am left to sort through all of these ridiculous notifications with obscenely poor grammar and no meaning (in my estimation).

But tonight I got to thinking, as Facebook informed me that a friend likes "I use my Phone or iPod to see in the dark! ^.^ on See more.." Why do people "like" such things? I find it annoying (as I mentioned), a waste of time, shallow, and a way to give a third party more of your personal information. But obviously people disagree with me or they wouldn't use these websites.

And I think it ties in to the desire we all have to belong. We want to know we're not alone in the world. And so, if people see that other people use their phones and iPods to see in the dark (not that people think they're really the only ones to do so), it affirms in them that there's someone else out there like them. And if there's someone like them in that regard, maybe they belong. Maybe they can connect with people. Maybe they're not all alone in this world.

I'm not going to start liking things on "Me Likey." But I can resonate with the desire to belong, connect, and feel like I'm not alone.

Bible

I was reading the Bible the other day, and I was thinking about how the Bible can get so familiar that you glaze over it. And there are some really cool stories in 1 & 2 Kings that I know I've read, because I've read the whole Bible, but I have absolutely no recollection of. But the problem is when you start in Genesis, it takes a long time to get to those passages!

So I got to thinking about some different ways to organize the Bible, like different types of study Bibles that would bring new life to some of the things we're so used to glazing over.

One Bible I'd love to see is one that's organized by person. You've got some of the same kings talked about in the Kings & Chronicles, and it would be interesting to see them next to each other. So you'd have a chapter on Saul, a chapter on David, a chapter on Hezekiah, etc. Anyone who has more than a verse about them. There'd be some repeats, some of the David passages would also be in Saul...so that would have to be worked out...but I love the idea of seeing the Bible as a collection of real people rather than just distant stories. I'd love to really immerse myself in the people and get to know them.

The other idea is to just fill the Bible with contextual facts. Not just your typical footnotes or stuff, but historical contexts, scientific facts, stuff like that...for basically every passage. So like, scientific stuff about the flood like I wrote about last night. Or one time in college, Rob Bell shared these really neat contextual details about some of the things Jesus said. He said that when Jesus talked about counting the cost, the examples he used were actual things the king had just done...and he was kind of being snarky. That was really interesting, and that's not the kind of thing you read in normal Bible footnotes or commentaries. I'd love to see those kinds of interesting details all throughout the Bible.

What do you think would bring the Bible to new life for you? What would captivate you?

Flood

The account of Noah and the flood is so familiar that we tend to take it for granted. I often still read it with the same eyes I had as a child.

But the other day I saw this picture, and it got me thinking about the flood. Which was kind of a random connection. But as I saw how high Mount Everest is and the pressure at the bottom of the deepest part we know of the ocean, it amazed me. And I remembered something about the flood. The Bible says that the water came until it rose 20 feet over the tallest mountains, and then stopped. (Which in and of itself is pretty amazing. I'd always kinda thought God just covered up all the places people lived. But he had a clear plan to cover the whole earth, and then stop. 20 feet relative to 30,000 is pretty close.)

Now, we don't know that Everest was the tallest mountain at that point, or that it was the elevation it is now. Same goes for the ocean floor. The earth's topography would have been drastically altered by the flood waters. But for imagination's sake, let's say that Everest was then as it is now.

That means that the deepest part of the ocean (as far as we've measured), was about 70,000 feet under the surface of the water. That's almost double the depth of the ocean now. And when you think about the fact that the atmospheric pressure down there now is 1,100, and how dark it is...think how much pressure it would have been down there with twice as much water on top.

Which also means that the pressure of what we know as sea level would have been the same as the pressure of our ocean floor. And the same darkness. People didn't just drown, their bodies were crushed by the pressure. And think of what that pressure must have done to the earth's form! Fossils of trees have been found vertically buried in the ground, probably pushed down by the pressures of the flood.

The Bible says that water burst out of the earth in addition to the rain. It didn't rain 30,000 feet of water in 40 days. (That would be some heavy rain!) And I once heard a speaker talk about how there's clear evidence of a place (I forget where) where it appears as if water burst forth in massive amounts. And that force is what caused Pangea (the united mass of continents) to split into our 7 continents. And imagine how much the ark would have been rocking on the surface of the water with those kinds of major plate shifts going on! It would have been much worse than the greatest tsunami we know of! That's some scary stuff!

Then it took another 110 days until the waters receded enough for the ark to land on Ararat at an estimated elevation of 15,500. Which means that in 110 days, nearly 15,000 feet of water receded. That's 136 feet a day!

I could go on, but I try not to make my blogs too long. Suffice it to say, when you think beyond the pairs of animals and the quaint picture of giraffes peeking out a porthole, there was some pretty amazing stuff going on below the surface of the water. And that just captivates me. I love seeing the Bible come to life as I see things in a totally different way.

Omnipotent

I just read a story in 1 Kings 20 that I wasn't familiar with. And I thought it was pretty cool.

This king named Ben-Hadad says he's going to attack King Ahab and the kingdom of Samaria in Israel. Ahab says he'll give him his wives and gold, but Ben-Hadad wants Ahab to give him everything of value that he owns. Ahab refuses.

So Ben-Hadad says he's going to attack, and there won't even be dust left. To which Ahab replies (and I love this line!), “A warrior putting on his sword for battle should not boast like a warrior who has already won.” (I HATE it when people smack talk about what WILL happen when they have no idea.)

Sure enough, God says he'll win the battle for Samaria, and Ahab will know that he is God. The battle takes place in the hills, and the Samaritans kick booty.

And then Ben-Hadad says this, which really struck me: “The Israelite gods are gods of the hills; that is why they won. But we can beat them easily on the plains." See, in Ben-Hadad's mind, there was no one sovereign God. There were gods of certain things. So they go to war on the plains, and God helps the Samaritans kick booty again. (The only problem is that Ahab makes a treaty and lets Ben-Hadad live, which he wasn't supposed to do.)

In a world full of trouble, where problems can occur anywhere when you least expect them, I'm glad I serve a God who's not just the god of the hills, not just the god of the plains, but the all-powerful God of everything.