FRAUD!

Turn on the news or read the newspaper and you see the word, fraud. Vote fraud, to be specific. Yet one person's fraud is another's myth or suppression. If you ask me, whatever is at the root of it, it is hurting all of us. Whether the charge of fraud is false or the claims of myth and suppression are false, the root cause is the lack of truth. Where is our modern day Micah?

"Listen! The LORD is calling to the city — and to fear your name is wisdom— "Heed the rod and the One who appointed it. Am I still to forget, O wicked house, your ill-gotten treasures and the short ephah, which is accursed? Shall I acquit a man with dishonest scales, with a bag of false weights? Her rich men are violent; her people are liars and their tongues speak deceitfully. Therefore, I have begun to destroy you, to ruin you because of your sins. You will eat but not be satisfied; your stomach will still be empty. You will store up but save nothing, because what you save I will give to the sword. You will plant but not harvest; you will press olives but not use the oil on yourselves, you will crush grapes but not drink the wine. You have observed the statutes of Omri and all the practices of Ahab's house, and you have followed their traditions. Therefore I will give you over to ruin and your people to derision; you will bear the scorn of the nations. " Micah 6:9-16

I'm just not hearing enough about finding the truth. I do not hear a cry for finding out if the scales of one person one vote are getting a short ephah. I do not hear a cry for "hearings" and "indictments" of the rich and powerful who wreaked havoc and violence against our economic systems, leaving the scales tipped against those who can not afford to lose a fraction of an ephah.

Are we all complicit? Are we all chasing the statutes of Omri and all the practices of Ahab's house? Will we need to once again "Heed the rod and the One who appointed it"? I pray we do not. "Test me, O LORD, and try me, examine my heart and my mind; for your love is ever before me, and I walk continually in your truth." Psalm 26:2-3

One of "those" days.

I sleep in a little late. I dial in on the morning telecon at the last minute. I browse my schedule on the laptop as I listen, punch off some email and think "I can get some stuff done this morning!" I chew on breakfast while pushing on the ear piece for my cell phone. My dogs on the deck at the sliding door get impatient waiting for breakfast and start to share their impatience by doing “growling-tugging at collar play”. The morning telecon goes longer than usual with an unexpected issue taking center stage. I manage to dress with the cell phone attached to my ear. I pack up lunch and then search for the bottled water in the pantry. Because I’m a little behind, every move I make wandering around the kitchen is a traffic jam, as my wife is now getting breakfast ready for herself. (Why did I like that breakfast counter in the kitchen again?)

It was “team building” day and our work group decided to have “soup day”, which I found out about yeaterday. Crock pot full of soup in hand, lunch bag on top, a very large 10 lb “tech” laptop in the backpack with the water , I make it to the pickup and load the backseat. As I am opening the front door I hear “Take this to the garbage can, they have not picked it up yet”. Back in the house I go. I lug the latest garbage to the curb, and then I’m finally off, earpiece still planted in ear, as I hear the latest status discussed in telecon #2 that started just before I walked out the door the first time.

The "team building" creamy chicken and mushroom soup I prepared last night is now sloshing in the crock pot and I can smell the delicious odor. This is not good. I took considerable care with the plastic wrap that should prevent the soupy goodness from escaping the warm confines of the crock. I failed (telecon now over). I dutifully stop at the “strike” line as required, even though there are no pickets there today (arghh!).

I deliver the crock pot and arrive at my desk. I dock the laptop and find out the clean schedule was there before is now a full slate of meetings from 8:30 to noon. There goes free my hours on Saturday.

Noon plus ten minutes. The meetings are over. The team building soup lunch is over. I go back to my office. I shut the door and breathe a sigh in the silence. I pray for peace as I lean my back on the door.....

Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" (1 Kings 19:11-14)

Some days I feel like Elijah. As I say amen, the phone rings.

Artwork: "Whirlwind" by Michael Lightsey

Campfire

One of the things I like best about camping is the nightly campfire. Now since this is October I will say that a morning campfire is quite nice, also! Much time was spent collecting wood and getting and keeping the fire going in the morning, so I lost some of that time I usually have for reading, but I don’t mind a bit. The crackling fire, the occasional hooting owl, and coyote cries help to season the conversational tone among my family members. For me and my family, it has always been the closest bonding moments and makes for some of our finest memories. It’s amazing what you can share and relate together without the cell phones, television, politics, email, computers games, and (fill in your favorite here), etc. This time it was just my youngest son and I, but it changed little. “Look at all those stars”…”Look at that orange moon rising over the lake”…”Look at those birds taking off together, it looks like bubbles the way the sun reflects off of them”…”Can you hear that? The sound of a flock of birds “whooshing” silently overhead”

That orange moon rising over the lake was something (why did I forget the camera!). What was this very large orange ball rising over the horizon? Look how it sends a straight column of orange reflecting off the stillness in the surface of the lake. The column making a path directly to me! It was spectacular! I no longer wonder about the origins of the “gods” from the ancient civilizations. The God of creation was trying to touch their souls through His creation. As humanity always seems to do, the ancient civilizations just got it wrong.

Paul tried to set the record straight in Athens:
“For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, 'To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.” (Acts 17:23-26)

I shared these thoughts with my son by that campfire (telling Paul’s Athens experience in my own words). He said, in a matter-of-factly way…“Really? Hmm”.

Launch Day!

So on the day before I go away for a little extended weekend camping trip (Fall River Lake in the picture), I decide to launch a blog. Not that I am expecting anything huge to happen, but this is something new for me as I never really had been a journaling type of person, although I do frequent an online faith forum. Perhaps it is the Spirit at work, prompting me to move away from the short, couple of sentence interactions of a forum to the more introspective sport of blogging.

Anyway, while enjoying the quiet sounds of camping, I usually manage to catch up on some reading. I plan on reading “Organic Church: Growing Faith Where Life Happens”, by Neil Cole, but first I plan on finishing up a book I’ve already started called “Simple Church: Returning to God's Process for Making Disciples” by Thom S. Rainer & Eric Geiger. Considering that the UMC mission is to “make disciples of Jesus Christ” (and as recently added at last General Conference) “for the transformation of the world”, I wanted to see what these gentlemen had to say about the process of making disciples. After getting through part of the book, I was wondering if these gentlemen ever read Wesley’s thoughts about Christian Perfection and the early Methodist societies and class meetings, because their process thinking would seem to line up pretty good with Wesley’s Methodism! Maybe I’ll post more about it when I finish.

I pray that God is leading me into something new with this blog thing. Please join me as I find out what new thing will be revealed!