Encouragement from The Rock

Peter, an Apostle of Jesus Christ, to God’s elect, strangers in the world, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood: Grace and peace be yours in abundance. (I Peter 1.1, 2)

Dear Friends, 

My name is Peter; actually, it was Simon, but when I met Jesus, He gave me the nickname (kind of like Rocky), and it stuck.  I am an Apostle, which means I have a special message for all of you that I received directly from Jesus Christ Himself.  I remember sitting at His feet, hearing His words, and not understanding at first; but after he was crucified by the Jews and raised again by God, those words took on new meaning for me.

Anyway, I am sending this letter specifically to you Christians where this letter is read.  You are God's elect: that's a designation that Jesus gave to all of His followers.  I remember sitting with the others at the Mount of Olives, listening to Jesus talk about the end of the world, when God the Father would call us all to heaven.  He said, "And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other."  Brother, that's you!

You all are strangers in the world. Remember your Old Testament history? 1 Chronicles 29.15 says, "We are aliens and strangers in your sight, as were all our forefathers.  Our days on earth are like a shadow, without hope.”  I urge you all to live your lives before God only as a pilgrim passing through, just like the ancient Hebrews were--except the difference is that we do have hope in Christ.  Like it says in Psalm 39:12 “Hear my prayer, O Lord, listen to my cry for help; be not deaf to my weeping, for I dwell with you as an alien, a stranger, as all my fathers were.”

Not only are you strangers, but you are scattered to the four corners of the earth.  My brother in Christ and fellow Apostle James started his letter this way, too: "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes scattered among the nations: Greetings." (James 1.1)  Do not be discouraged--I know you would all like to be together in one place, like we were together at Pentecost when the Spirit of God came upon me and I could speak to you in your native languages.  But God wants you to go to your own towns, to your own people, and share His Gospel.  I remember just before Jesus was killed, the Pharisees were trying to trap Him, and He said, "You will look for me, but will not find me; and where I am, you cannot come."  Then they said, "Where does this man intend to go that we cannot find him?  Will he go where our people live scattered among the Greeks, and teach the Greeks?"  Little did they know how prophetic their words would be!  

You people from Pontus--you were there at Pentecost.  Give hugs to Priscilla and Aquila there for me; they were such a blessing to our brother Paul in his ministry.  My love to those of you in Galatia, where Paul established the church there.  And greetings also to my brothers in Bithynia--Paul was preaching the Word throughout Asia, and he wanted to go from Galatia to Bithynia, but the Holy Spirit prevented him from going (see Acts 16.7).  Thanks be to God who sent others to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with you, as well.

I wanted to write to all of you who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.  God knew before the creation of the world that you, my brothers, would commit your hearts to Him.  He knew that you would be made holy by His Spirit, which is in you.  He knew that you would obey the words of His Son, who sent me.  

You have been marked as ones belonging to Christ, as if His own blood has been sprinkled upon your hearts. Elsewhere it is written:

When Moses had proclaimed every commandment of the law to all the people, he took the blood of calves, together with water, scarlet wool and branches of hyssop, and sprinkled the scroll and all the people.  He said, ‘This is the blood of the covenant, which God has commanded you to keep.’  In the same way, he sprinkled with the blood both the tabernacle and everything used in its ceremonies.  In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.  (Hebrews 9:19-22)

I want you to just burst at the seams with God's grace and peace. May your lives overflow with love for Him. This is the message I have for you.  I am Peter; Greetings.
 

The Constitution vs. Obama and the Democratic Party

In the world of politics, there are often interest groups that have competing...well, interests.  Such is the case in the current fight between Catholic bishops and the Obama administration.  Prominent Democrats want their party to represent Women's rights, specifically something called "reproductive rights".  Now, in my high school civics class, we never studied any Constitutional rights called "reproductive rights."  I doubt that anyone other than the members of the 1972 Supreme Court that wrote the Roe v. Wade decision could even adequately define "reproductive rights."  It was something completely made up in order to justify abortion on demand.

On the other side of the issue are Catholic institutions, like colleges, hospitals, and charities.  Under the new Nationalized Health Care policy of the current administration, these institutions would be forced to include contraceptive devices and abortion services in their Group Health plans.  Never before has the federal government over-reached to this extent into the area of religious liberty.  Our Founding Fathers created a government based on freedom of religion.  In this case, the Catholic religion teaches and practices sexual purity, without the cop-out "safety net" of contraception or abortion. 

Some say that many Catholics favor using contraception.  Fewer favor abortions, but I'll bet you can find some who call themselves Catholics who support (and may have even had) abortions.  And that is the key: they call themselves Catholics, but do not practice their religion.  They are nominal Catholics, Catholics in name only.

I have also heard the argument that some states have mandated these women's services, and the Catholic colleges and universities in those states have complied without so much hoopla.  First, these are state governments, and not the federal government.  The U.S. Constitution gives states the right to make their own laws, where the federal government is constrained by the Constitution.  Second, many of these state laws grant exceptions to Catholic institutions.  Third, if the Catholics in the various states that have these mandates wanted to change the law, it is much easier to change a state law than it is to change a federal law.

When President Obama was still a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago, he was recorded as saying that the U.S. Constitution says to much what the government can't do; he thought then (and obviously thinks now) that the Constitution should be more about what the government should do.  It should offer universal healthcare (in his view).  It should offer abortion on demand and contraceptives to everyone, so that there are no consequences to having sex.  The "general welfare" clause of the Constitution would be expanded, in his perfect world, to make everyone dependent upon the central government, and the "safety net" should shield people from sin, from bad choices they have made, from willful choices they have made without regard to the consequences.  It is this way with the laws requiring banks to write off home loans made to people who signed the contract, signifying that they would make their payments timely; and when the payments were not made timely, the banks are now being forced to forgive the loans and still let people live in the houses they cannot afford.  Is this a chapter in Through The Looking Glass?  Is the White Rabbit in charge of things now?

If I could tell the President just one thing, and one thing only, it would be to respect the Constitution.  In the case where the interests of women's health advocates clashes with the interests of religious leaders, the Constititutional protection goes to freedom of religion, not to "reproductive rights."  If we lose sight of this truth, God help us.

God uses flawed people; He overlooks the flaws and sees potential

In the movie Rocky V, a punch-drunk Rocky Balboa gets into a brawl and is knocked down.  In his dazed and confused state, he sees an apparition of his old (since deceased) manager and mentor, Mickey.  The old man urges him to continue the fight: "Get up!  Get up you bum!! 'Cause Micky loves ya."  This vision encouraged Rocky to continue on with the fight, and ultimately overcome.

There is a spiritual lesson from this scene that we can all use when we get discouraged.  God knows we are all flawed, we are weak and frail and beaten down.  But He encourages us all to "Get up!  Get up you child of God!! 'Cause Jesus loves you."  What encouragement!

There is another spiritual lesson, I think, from the Rocky series.  The star, Rocky Balboa, is not the sharpest tool in the shed.  He doesn't make the best choices.  Yet the actor (and some say he type-cast himself) Sylvester Stallone is still receiving royalty checks from this very successful franchise.

When Jesus was starting His earthly ministry, He chose twelve disciples to follow him.  Three of them seemed to be in His inner circle--whenever something of importance happened, He took with Him Peter, James and John.  And even though John was the youngest disciple, his writings seem to show the most maturity.  James has written very little, so there is no real judgment to make on him.  But Peter--Peter was a knucklehead.  Like Rocky, he didn't always make the best decisions.

His given name was Simon, which means to hear, or to be heard.  But Jesus called him Peter, which means the Rock in the Greek.  (The Aramaic name is Cephas, meaning Rock.)  It was like calling him Rocky.  I don't think it was because he was the paragon of stability--in the Gospels, Peter was anything but a rock.; he was impulsive and unstable.  Later, in the book of Acts, Peter was seen as a  pillar of the church. We don't know if Jesus gave him this nickname because he was thick-headed, but He did say "You are Peter, and upon this Rock I will build my church."  Some denominations, like the Catholics, take that to mean that the Apostle Simon Peter was foundational to the church; they ascribe to him the title of the first Pope. (Catholics believe the Papacy should be celibate--but Peter was married; Jesus healed his mother-in-law.) But I think it only means that Jesus was going to use ordinary people, like Simon Peter, to grow his church.

Peter himself did not appear to believe himself anything special.  In his first letter to the churches, he says this:

You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood (1 Peter 2:5)

He took the words spoken by Jesus and made them analagous to all Christians.  That means all of us, not the most polished, or the strongest, or the least flawed. (The Catholic church ascribes sainthood to Peter, because he is credited with at least two miracles--walking on water (see Matthew 14:28-29) and healing of the lame man (see Acts 3:6-8).  But in this case"saint" does not mean "perfect".)  We are all building-blocks of the Church of God, with Jesus Himself as the Cornerstone.

Thank God that Jesus saw potential in Peter.  Peter is a good example of the adage, "what doesn't kill you can only make you stronger."  As a follower of Christ, Peter had been rebuked by Jesus (see John 18:11 for just one example); he had been called out by three different people present at the mock trial of Jesus (see John 18:17, 25-26); and by God Himself (during the Transfiguration, while Peter, James and John were witnessing one of the most holy sights ever seen on Earth, instead of silent reverence, Peter offers to build three shrines; God interrupts and says, "This is my Son--hear Him!"  It was as if God had said, just shut up and listen to my Son (see Luke 9:28-36).)  Peter may have even been rebuked by the Apostle Paul (see Galatians 2:11-14--I am not sure whether this was before or after Peter's vision of the sheet being lowered from heaven, containing all the animals and reptiles God had created, which he interpreted as meaning that the Gospel should be shared with the Gentiles as well (see Acts 10:9-23); or even if this was the same Peter that was the Apostle and disciple of Jesus).  Jesus told Peter that He was giving Peter the "keys to the Kingdom of Heaven". (see Matthew 16.19.  This started the myth that Peter is the one saint that is stationed outside the Golden Gate of Heaven, the first person you see when you die; like a spiritual bouncer, he would be the one (according to this myth) that either denies or allows entry into Heaven.)  Since Peter was instrumental in opening the Gospel to the Gentiles, I think that was where the prophecy was fulfilled.

One thing you can say about Peter--he was brutally honest.  After the Resurrection of Jesus, this conversation took place:

When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you truly love me (with an everlasting love capable of self-sacrifice for my good) more than these?"  "Yes, Lord," he said.  "You know that I love you (like a brother)".  Jesus said, "Feed my lambs."  Again, Jesus said, "Simon, son of John, do you truly love me (with an everlasting love capable of self-sacrifice for my good)?"  He answered, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you (like a brother)."  Jesus said, "take care of my sheep."  The third time He said to him, "Simon, sone of John, do you love me (like a brother)?"  Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, "Do you love me?" He said, "Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you (with a brotherly love)."  Jesus said, "Feed my sheep." (John 21:15-17)

Peter knew his limitations; Jesus knew his potential.  The good news is that Jesus sees potential in all of us.  It doesn't matter how many times we fail, as long as we keep trying in faith.  It doesn't matter how many times we fall, as long as we get up, dust ourselves off, and give Him our all.  Peter said these words to the Church:

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light. (1 Peter 2:9)

Charitable Giving: Funding vs. Faith

When I was in Seminary, I had a part time job at Target.  The parent company of Target, Dayton-Hudson Corp., had a relationship with The United Way.  All employees of Dayton-Hudson Corp. were encouraged to contribute to The United Way.  As with most corporations, there was a push to engage the employees with the company culture, and part of that push was to encourage 100% participation in the company charity.  Federal law and company policy prohibited mandatory participation in the charitable giving, but there were contests between the Company Divisions, and the Divisional Managers were pushing the Store Managers hard to solicit contributions.  At the time, the United Way was advertising on all NFL games.  Their spokespeople included (I believe) such NFL stars as John Elway.  Their commercials would show children with Spina Bifida or Down Syndrome; ostensibly, these children were helped by funds collected and distributed by The United Way.

My manager came to me and asked why I wasn't participating in the charity drive.  I beleive that my primary reason for not contributing was purely financial--I was a poor student, a part-time employee earning minimum wage, and I thought that even a one-dollar contribution would have a detrimental effect on my household budget.  But I didn't want to tell the store manager that I was cheap--the Bible encourages giving alms to the poor.  So what I told my manager was that I couldn't support The United Way, a charitable clearing-house, because one of the organizations that they supported was Planned Parenthood.  And one of the "health services" that Planned Parenthood provided was abortions.  As a seminary student, I announced piously, I could not contribute to any charity that funded abortions, no matter what other good things they did.

I was reminded of this experience this week when I heard the controversy about Susan G. Komen defunding Planned Parenthood clinics.  As you know, Susan G. Komen is a charitable foundation dedicated to treatment of and finding a cure for breast cancer.  Much of the money they receive from donors to their cause are channeled directly to clinics that do screenings for breast cancer.  Many of these clinics receive their primary funding from Planned Parenthood.  The clinics probably offer abortions as well as other services, like breast cancer screenings, well woman exams, inoculations and infant formula for babies, and much more.  You would think that the money they get from Susan G. Komen probably offsets the cost of x-ray machines, mammography machines, and lead aprons for the radiology techs to wear.  But you'd be wrong: 90% of the Planned Parenthood clinics do not have the capacity to do breast cancer screenings, because they don't have a mammography machine on site.  So Komen decided they didn't want to subsidize the rest of Planned Parenthood's services, including abortions.

Don't get me wrong.  I believe any non-governmental organization (NGO) is free to give whatever they want to whomever they want, just as the donors to these NGOs are free to contribute or not to contribute.  The problem I have is the government taking my tax dollars and giving grants and aid to countries, organizations, charities and directly to people that I do not  personally support.  And yes, that includes Planned Parenthood.  But as Paul Harvey used to say, here is the REST of the story.

A chain of bookstores called Lifeway Christian Stores (formerly known as Baptist Book Stores) used to sell Bibles with pink covers.  A portion of the sale of these pink Bibles was given to Susan G. Komen for breast cancer research.  When Lifeway Christian Stores found out that Susan G. Komen sent a portion of their funds to Planned Parenthood, they pulled all the copies of their pink Bibles and stopped sending proceeds to Komen.  That was their right.  As a religious retailer, they probably would have lost customers if they hadn't.  If their customers found out that they were indirectly supporting Planned Parenthood, Lifeway Christian Stores would have likely lost sales, not just in pink Bibles, but in other items that they sell, like music CDs, books by Christian authors, and church supplies and vestments (like offering plates and those little plastic communion cups).  As they say, follow the money.  So for their profits as well as their principles, they stopped supporting Komen.

In turn, the Susan G. Komen foundation looked at their internal audits, and decided to stop supporting Planned Parenthood clinics.  This was a more courageous act than the bookstore pulling pink Bibles.  This was acting more out of principle than profit.  Think about it.  The total annual Bible sales from Lifeway may be $1 million.  The portion of those sales specifically linked to Komen had to be less than 10%.  That's $100,000.  In retail, the profit margin on books is generally 40%; so now we're talking $40,000 profit.  And you know that not all the profits went to the charity; if the portion of the profits was 10% of sales, then that was only about $4,000 annually.  If Komen had lost the funding from Lifeway, they surely could have made it up in other areas.  They could have sold more pink wristbands at their Race For The Cure events.  They could have gone to Barnes & Noble and made a deal to sell pink covers of their best-selling books.  They could have done the "safe" thing and not made a big deal of the lost revenue from pink Bibles.

But they didn't.

As much as the World criticizes public officials and businesses and charities for "Follow the Money" policies that end up being unpopular, you would think this would not have made the news.  Other companies, like Green companies, are often lauded for holding on to principles over profits.  A national shoe company gets lots of media exposure, because for every pair of shoes they sell in America, they give away a pair of shoes in a third world country.  But, as it turns out, the World is fickle.  The media has accused Komen of being political, not principled.  Someone has found a link between the chairwoman of Susan G. Komen and George W. Bush.  Apparently they are friends, and any friend of the Bushes has to be an enemy of the media.

My hat is off to the Susan G. Komen Foundation.  They chose not to forego the few thousand bucks from Lifeway Christian Stores, and instead stopped funding an organization that funds an abominable practice. (By the way, a woman I work with told me, "I am not a proponent of abortion, but I think that women should have the choice in cases of rape and incest; just not as a means of birth control."  I asked her, out of the 3 million abortions performed last year, how many were a result of rape or incest? Why isn't there a law that says in order to have an abortion approved, a police report must be filed accusing some man of rape or incest?  If everyone who said "I support it only for rape and incest" really meant what they said, then there should be just such a law.  The woman I work with was not amused; she walked off without saying anything.)  If the media wants to paint this as political, that is their business.  It may sell newspapers and increase ratings for talking heads on CNN, but it has little to do with reality.

God Forgives, Sin is Long Gone

As far as the east is from the west, so far he has removed our transgressions from us.   (Psalm 103.12)

A favorite children's story I know is called "Seven In One Blow."  It starts out with a tailor who is working on a belt.  There are so many flies buzzing about his shop that the tailor gets frustrated and lashes his belt out onto the window sill.  When he picks up the belt, there are seven dead flies on the sill.  So the tailor inscribes the belt, "Seven In One Blow", signifying that he has killed seven flies at one time.  He closes up the shop, and sets out to seek his fortune.  He takes with him some cheese in his knapsack, and the belt around his waist.  As he meets other people on the road, they give him a wide berth, because they interpret the inscription on his belt to mean that he once killed seven men with a single blow of his fist.  As the story progresses, the tailor lies down on the grass and takes a nap.  A bird flies down and lights on the ground beside him.  The tailor wakes up and snags the bird, and puts it alive in his knapsack.  In time the tailor meets a giant.  The giant sees the boast on the tailor's belt, and challenges the tailor to feats of strength.  The tailor challenges the giant to pick up a rock and squeeze it until liquid comes out.  The stupid giant picks up the nearest large rock, and squeezes with all his might.  No matter how hard he squeezes, he cannot get liquid to come out of the rock.  He finally gives up, and the tailor reaches into his knapsack and pulls out the cheese.  He starts to squeeze the cheese, and soon the whey seeps out of the cheesecloth.  The giant is impressed, but wants a rematch.  The tailor doubles down on the bet, and challenges the giant to throw a rock as high in the air as he can.  The giant takes the rock and throws it straight up with all his might.  The tailor counts to 700 and the rock finally comes falling back to the earth.  Then the tailor reaches into his knapsack and pulls out the small, white bird.  He tosses the bird in the air and it flies away.  The giant counts to 700, then to 750, then to 800, and the "rock" never comes back to earth.

The moral of the story, besides to never take another man's bet, is that cleverness outperforms strength, or something like that.  There is more to the story, but that is not why I brought it up.  I was reminded of this story last week when I read Leviticus chapter 16, which in turn reminded me of a similar passage in Leviticus 14.

Let me explain.

The book of Leviticus documents the commands of God to the Levitical priests.  These words were given to Moses after he gave the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, but before He led them accross the Jordan River into the Promised Land.  The book outlines the expectations of God for sacrifices and other acts of worship.  With any given situation, there were sacrifices involved.  Chapter 14 deals with what to do if you discover an infectious skin disease.  Clearly, if a man had a skin infection, it may have been contagious.  Since there were no doctors in the camp that could tell whether it was contagious or not, the infected person was to show himself to the priests.  The priest would set  him outside the camp for seven days, and if the skin infection cleared up, then he could present himself to the priest again, and the priest would require a sacrifice from him before he could rejoin his family. 

In most cases, it was assumed that the infectious skin disease was a result of sin in the man's life.  So the man who was healed of the infection (and thus forgiven for his sins) was to present two birds to the priest for sacrifice.  One of the birds would be killed by the priest.  The other bird would be taken alive and dipped into the blood of the bird that had been sacrificed.  The priest would sprinkle the man that had been cleansed of the infection seven times, and then the bird that had been dipped into the blood would be released into the open field.

Think about that for a minute.  The Law says that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin (Hebrews 9.22).  But the picture that is painted with this sacrificial act is that the blood that was shed for this sin was taken up to heaven on the wings of the other bird.  The live bird, the one bearing the blood of the other, would not be seen again--he could not be recaptured, or snared.  He was to be set free--it makes sense that he would fly away. 

That's how far God takes our sin away from us.

Leviticus chapter 16 talks about The Day of Atonement.  On this day, Aaron and the priests would make specific sacrifices for the sins of all the people.  God commanded that there be a young bull for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering.  "From the Israelite community he is to take two male goats for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering. (verse 5)"  The bull would be killed for the sins of Aaron and the priests.  Then the goats would be presented to God, and God would choose one to die for the sins of the people.  Aaron and the priests would cast lots, "one goat for the Lord and the other for the scapegoat (verse 8)".

Aaron shall bring the goat whose lot falls to the Lord and sacrifice it for a sin offering.  But the goat chosen by lot as the scapegoat shall be presented alive before the Lord to be used for making atonement by sending it to the desert as a scapegoat." (Leviticus 16.9-10)

Again, the scapegoat is to be set free, but sent away into the desert, never to be seen again.  God is painting a picture here, a representation that our sin is to be sent away, into the dry and arid land, never to be seen or heard from again.  There is no lingering guilt.  There is no holding on to the past.  Our sins are to be sent to heaven and given to God.  Our transgressions are on the head of the scapegoat, who is sent away into the desert, outside the camp and out of sight.

When Aaron has finished making atonement for the Most Holy Place, the Tent of Meeting and the altar, he shall bring forward the live goat.  He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites--all their sins--and put them on the goat's head.  He shall send the goat away into the desert in the care of a man appointed for the task.  The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a solitary place; and the man shall release it into the desert. (Leviticus 16.20-22).

The next time you are reminded of your past sins, think of the bird that was dipped in the blood of sacrifice and released to fly away; think of the goat on whose head the sins of all the people was transferred, and released into the desert to wander forever.

Isaiah 53 foretells of Jesus, God's Son. 

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering.  Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised and we esteemed him not.  Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by Him and afflicted.  But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.  We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.  (Isaiah 53.3-6)

The disciple Peter saw the similarity in Isaiah to the man whose disciple he had been:

He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.  For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.

Do not let sin overwhelm you.  You are forgiven.  Do not let sin overcome you.  If Jesus Himself became our scapegoat, what power has sin over us?  Do not let sin overshadow you.  The shame as that of an infectious skin disease has been transferred to a bird, who has flown up to God.  "Though I walk through the valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil, for God is with me." (Psalm 23)

Are we there yet?

I often refer to essays I hear on the radio.  It is the medium from which I get most of my news, and to which I am exposed most often (during my long commute to and from work--45 minutes each way, and hour and a half a day, thirty hours a week, fifteen hundred hours each year for the last 12 years).

Anyway, there has been a series of essays from different families, each recounting their holiday traditions--a little Jewish boy excited about lighting the Menorah; a woman looking forward to watching made-for-TV movies all night on Christmas Eve; and today, a Hispanic grandmother talking about making bunuelos on New Year's Eve.

For those who don't know, bunuelos are golden, crispy-sweet, tortilla-like fritters sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar, or topped with syrup.  The tradition held by this Abuela (grandmother) was that the bunuelos could not be made or eaten before midnight.  She said her children and grandchildren would start asking about them as early as 8 or 9 p.m. on New Year's Eve.  "When do we start making the bunuelos?  Can we start making them now?"  About 11 o'clock, she would start rolling out the dough, letting her grandchildren playfully argue over whose turn it was to help roll the dough balls out flat, or sprinkle cinnamon-sugar over them when they came out of the fryer.  Then the family would enjoy the sweet fritters together as the new year arrives.

"Whatever the New Year brings," she said, "we can tackle it because we've done it together, we've seen the New Year come in as a family."

One of our family's holiday traditions is to go to the Christmas Eve service held by our church.  Although there are three services, starting at 6 pm, 10 pm, midnight, we enjoy going to the midnight service.  We sing carols, light candles, and listen to encouraging words from the pastor.  Some years, offerings are taken, not for the church, but for families in the community in need.

Being a part of that service is meaningful.  Like the Mexican grandmother in the radio story, we feel like whatever life throws at us, we can handle it because we are a part of something bigger--the family, the local church, and ultimately the community of God.  I use the word "community" on purpose, rather than Church or Family or even Heavenly Host.  It conveys that we commune with God; we take communion together; we communicate with each other.


The day is coming when we will see God face to face.  We will fall prostrate at His feet and worship Him personally.  Lord, haste the day!  This is what we live for.  If you do not have a personal relationship with God, I would like to introduce you to His Son, Jesus, who is called the Christ (or the Messiah).  This Jesus was born into this world to redeem us.  It is His birth that we celebrate--He is the Reason for the Season.  This redemption involved sacrifice--Jesus laid down His very life for you and me.  But God has raised Him from the dead, so that we, too, might live.  It is a mystery, and requires faith.  By faith we commune with Him and He with us.


We celebrate the fact that whatever comes our way, we can overcome it because we have access to God through His Son, and together, we experience each day as God's family.

Clicking Cows vs. Calling on the Creator

I heard a ridiculous essay on the radio this week.  Here is the transcript:

GUY RAZ, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Guy Raz.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And I'm Melissa Block.
Zynga is the company behind popular Facebook games like Farmville and Cityville. Over 200 million people play Zynga games each month. And before the end of the year, the company is expected to have its initial public offering. Industry analysts have valued it at $15 to $20 billion.
RAZ: Not every person is a fan, though. One videogame designer recently set out to parody Zynga's games by creating an absurd version of his own.
P.J. Vogt from WNYC's On The Media has the story of an attempt at satire that didn't exactly go to plan.
P.J. VOGT, BYLINE: Last summer, Cindy Barrett got hooked on this Facebook game. The way the game works, you get a point every time you click. Cindy was battling her brother, Eric, who was routinely beating her.
CINDY BARRETT: At that point I maybe had 10 clicks a week. My brother would always have 12 clicks and it would make me frustrated. So I befriended the top clickers. They taught me how to get more clicks. Literally, within a day, I had something like 200 clicks. And I was like, hey, Eric is there any way you can compete with me? 'Cause I think at that point he had six. And it just went downhill from there.
VOGT: The game is called Cow Clicker, it's the work of a game designer named Ian Bogost. Bogost's creations are usually more like art than entertainment, people don't typically get hooked on them. Take his most recent work, a game poem called "A Slow Year." The point of the game is to experience the seasons.
IAN BOGOST: The winter game, the sun is rising. It's dawn and you've got a cup of coffee which is slowly getting cold. And you want to kind of time your enjoyment of the cup of coffee with the amount of time that it's going to take the sun to rise. It's a first-person drinking game for the Atari.
VOGT: Bogost hates popular social networking video games – games like Farmville that clog your Facebook newsfeed with notifications about how your aunt just harvested her virtual crops or your dad put out a hit on mob boss. He decided the best way to criticize those games would be to make the dumbest one he could imagine. That was Cow Clicker, the game Cindy found. The reductio ad absurdum of Facebook games.
BOGOST: You know, a game in which all you do is click on a cow and that's it. Maybe you pay for the privilege to click on a cow.
VOGT: You click your cow. It moos. Wait six hours and you can click it again. Or, you can get virtual money, either through clicks or by spending real cash that you spend to reset the timer and immediately click again.
LEIGH ALEXANDER: People took notice. The media took notice.
VOGT: Leigh Alexander is a game journalist who's also friends with Bogost. She wrote about Cow Clicker for the website Kotaku.
ALEXANDER: He was in every gaming magazine and some non-gaming magazines regarding Cow Clicker. It was much more popular than I think he had ever predicted it would be.
VOGT: Game journalists liked Cow Clicker because they got the joke. And as more players poured in, Bogost was surprised to find himself feeling pretty proud.
BOGOST: Gleeful. I mean, when people play your game, you can't help but feel pleasure. That's what you want. And I did feel that way for some time, especially when, you know, there was a relatively even distribution of different kinds of reactions.
VOGT: The resulting buzz brought in more players. But most of them weren't in on the joke.
ALEXANDER: Somewhere along the line, his larger user base began to be people who, either they understood it was a joke and they still enjoyed it or they just didn't get it or they just didn't care. Like, people really loved their cows.
VOGT: Fifty thousand people. For many of them, Cow Clicker was just another mindless, addictive Facebook game, indistinguishable from the mindless, addictive games it was meant to parody.
BOGOST: The ironist players dropped off. What I was left with were real players who were making demands, you know, who wanted things that I wasn't giving them in the game. They wanted different cows. They wanted, like, Cowthulu.
VOGT: Wait, Cowthulu?
BOGOST: Yeah they wanted a, you know, Lovecraftian Cthulu cow - Cowthulu.
VOGT: That's the bovine equivalent of a tentacled creature named Cthulu, created by H.P. Lovecraft and beloved by geeks. Still psyched that people were into his game, Bogost gave them what they wanted.
BOGOST: You know, there was a pirate cow, a ninja cow and a cow that costs over $100. When you bought that cow, we sent a real cow to the Third World. You know, I was very eager to put more material into the game to see how people would react.
VOGT: But eventually, he got uneasy.
BOGOST: After a while I realized they're doing exactly what concerned me about these games. They're, you know, becoming compulsively attached to it. There was one point when I realized that I was now attached to in a compulsive way. I was worrying about what the cow clickers thought while I was away from the game. And that was the moment at which I both felt kind of empathy with the players. And also, I began to feel very disturbed by the product.
VOGT: He decided to sabotage the game, to tweak it, to make it more maddening, more dumb.
ALEXANDER: At one point, he just like, he took the default cow, switched it to face the other direction and charged 20 bucks for it. And people bought it.
VOGT: Bogost couldn't diminish people's love for Cow Clicker. The game generated its own fan culture.
BOGOST: Cow Clicker poetry, silkscreen printed T-shirts. There was this woman who did these sort of Cow Clicker portraits of all her Cow Clicker friends.
VOGT: Bogost decided that if he couldn't ruin Cow Clicker, he'd kill it. He got in touch with friends across the world, and had them hide clues in the real world for Cow Clicker diehards to find. Once assembled, the clues spelled out a chilling prophecy.
BOGOST: Cowpocalypse, and then there was this timer that started running. And with the timer ended, then the game would shut down. Or at least that was the implication. I never really said what would happen.
VOGT: In a final twist of perversity, Bogost designed his game-ending countdown clock to speed up whenever anyone played the game and to reset if people paid money.
BOGOST: I wanted the players to feel like they were accelerating their own demise by playing. And then be tempted to maybe purchase their way out of it. And several people, like, extended the clock at the very last minute a few times.
VOGT: When you create something, you don't get to decide how it will be received. Ian Bogost's game wasn't designed to be enjoyable, but it turned out to be possibly the most resonant game he's ever made. His take on what that might mean is actually pretty optimistic.
BOGOST: It shows us how weird and complicated simple things really are. And shows me not that like I'm some sort of brilliant designer who made this thing that was bigger than I thought it was but how resilient and creative people are. I did this thing that was Cow Clicker, and in spite of it, they rose above and sort of made it something more than it really was.
VOGT: That's one way to look at it. Here's another. You remember that countdown clock?
BOGOST: When the clock finally counted down to zero, there was a cow rapture.
VOGT: Here's how the Cowpocalypse actually transpired.
BOGOST: All the cows were whisked away. And all that was left were the little shadows where they had been standing. But the game continued to run. And, in fact, the game continues to run to this day. And there are still people clicking on the spot where a cow used to be.
VOGT: Bogost still gets messages from confused Cow Clickers. A typical complaint, which Leigh Alexander, the videogame journalist, published, read that after the rapture, Cow Clicker was quote, "not a very fun game" any longer. Bogost answered: It wasn't very fun before. For Bogost, Cow Clicker was never about fun. It was a joke. But as it turned out, the joke was on him.
I'm P.J. Vogt.
BLOCK: PJ Vogt reports for WNYC's On the Media.

Now, I'm wondering if people can't find something better to do with their time than to stare at a computer screen and click on shadows of raptured cows.  I'm wondering if people can't find something better to do than to play a computer game that is a parody of other computer games.  I'm wondering if people can't find something better to think about than ways to improve a computer game, and send messages to the creator of the game with suggestions.

Perhaps in the broader context of life, we can go about our real lives in the real world.  Perhaps we can, with our God-given imagination, think of ways to improve our world.  Perhaps we can message the Creator of the world with those suggestions.  It is called Prayer.  And the Creator is called God.  And God wants to partner with us to make this world a better place.

There are two ways you can make this world a better place.  One is to read the Earth's Owner's Manual.  This is called the Bible.  You can discipline yourself to study and growth in knowledge of God and His Word.  This is called discipleship.  The other way you can make this world a better place is to tell other people about God, and invite them to accept Him as their Lord and Savior.  This is called Evangelism. 

There are many study helps available to grow in discipleship and evangelism.  One place you can find material to help you grow spiritually, or to help your church start a discipleship program is at http://walkinhisword.co