You might live in North Carolina

My Dad sent me this forward since he lives in NC and I used to, and i didn't have anything better to blog about today :) so i deleted the ones that i hadn't really experienced (and the ones that are more appropriate to Michigan than NC), and am posting for you my summarized "You might live in North Carolina if" list.

Things I have learned living in North Carolina

• Possums sleep in the middle of the road with their feet in the air
• It is not a Shopping cart, it is a buggy.
• Fire ants consider your flesh as a picnic.
• People actually grow and eat okra.
• "Fixinto" is one word.
• Ice tea is appropriate for all meals and you start drinking it when you're two. We do like a little tea with our sugar!
• You don't PUSH buttons, you MASH them.
• You use "fix" as a verb. For example: "I'm fixing to go to the store "
• You find 100 degrees Fahrenheit "a little warm".
• Going to Wal-mart is a favorite past time known as "goin' Wal-martin" or off to "Wally World"
• Fried catfish is the other white meat. (And it is good too!)

The magic expanding sermon topic

So, once again the sermon idea that i thought i could never talk on for longer than five minutes has managed to grow to full size. Amazing.

Discipleship

Maybe a lot of you have noticed this too, but i'm becoming more and more convinced that too few people, even in our churches, understand what it means to be a real follower of Christ. I'm afraid that we've put so much emphasis on getting people "saved," that once they ask for forgiveness we breathe a sigh of relief and move on to other people.

This is hard to write because i don't want to just rail at people - the teachers or the hearers. But i keep running into Christians who don't seem to understand or accept that to follow Christ is to live to serve Him, not just to give Him our sins and then live a "good" life.

Samson's Song

Don't cry for me.
Don't cry for me.
Don't cry for me,
I am spent for the thing that I love.
I am spent for the thing that I love.

I have seen many a shame in my days,
I've seen broken instruments no one could play.
I've seen the widow, and I've seen the slave.
And I've seen the bodies that didn't have graves,

But don't cry for me.
Don't cry for me.
Don't cry for me,
For this reason is why I was made.
For this reason is why I was made.

Some will grow old and they'll teach all the young
The wisdom they've gathered while under the sun.
And some will be mothers, and some will be kings.
And some will be craftsmen of bracelets and rings,

But don't cry for me.
Don't cry for me.
Don't cry for me,
I am spent for the one that I love.
I am spent for the one that I love.
I am spent for the one that I love.

Arrgh! Yahoo Time Capsule!

Every time i get on my yahoo mail there is a link to this time capsule thing that they're doing. And when i click on it i just keep looking at the stuff. I just love people and life - its addictive - but i've got work to do!

Labels!

Hey, check out the new labels list. This is a really cool thing for me since i blog more about what i think than what i do, so i'm glad they can be categorized by topic and not just date. I had actually considered switching to typepad so i could get this feature - but Blogger saved me the trouble.

Veils and Religious freedom

My local Christian radio station has me riled up - again.

Yesterday morning they reported a story about a Muslim woman whose case was thrown out of court because she refused to remove her veil to testify. It was one of the veils that only shows the eyes, and the judge didn't think he could accurately judge whether she was telling the truth if he couldn't see her face.

They also mentioned another case where a woman wanted to have her driver's license photo taken with her veil on, and was refused. My morning co-hosts pointed out that this was a case of religious freedom versus our customary ways of preserving justice, but ultimately they seemed to think that maybe it was appropriate for these women to have been denied their requests.

I guess the thing that frustrated me most is that i've listened to these guys for a while, and as far as i can tell, if the tables were reversed, they'd be on the side of "religious freedom." If there was a Christian group who believed that Christians should wear veils, and they were having problems with the legal system, i really suspect that my co-hosts would have taken their side. But no, these are Muslims.

Of course i'm speculating. But here's another thing - if a Muslim woman has worn a veil in public for ten years of her life, and suddenly has to remove it to testify in court, don't you think she'll be so nervous and feel so awkward that the judge will have a hard time reading her facial expressions anyway? And i'm not sure, but is it allowable for a Muslim woman to unveil herself in a private setting with another woman? If so, could she give her testmiony to a female official and have it recorded?

It seems like there could also be a way for someone to officially register as a veil-wearing Muslim, and then if they're ever seen in public without their veil they could have their priveleges revoked. I just know that if i believed in wearing a veil, i wouldn't want the government to make me remove it.

I want to be nice to my co-hosts so i'll leave them anonymous, but here's a link to a news article about it: Myrtle Beach Online

too funny . . .

Diet Coke & Mentos evangelism

So on my trip recently to Indy the people i was travelling with were apparently obsessed with the trick where you put mentos in a 2-liter of diet coke and it fizzes out so fast that it shoots up like a fountain. We did it in the parking lots of several gas stations and our hotel. The funny thing i noticed is that a lot of times a few people will stand by to watch you do it. We never actually got to "witness" to anybody, but we were driving a church van and sometimes it would come out that we were youth pastors. It just seemed cool because usually you don't really interact with the people you run into at a convenience store - and just by shooting off a "diet coke bomb" we were able to at least talk to people a little bit.
P.S. nobody seemed to mind that we were doing it as long as we didn't get coke on anything and we picked up our trash afterward. Even the police at one place thought it was cool :)

Ok, so only a month of silence

I guess i'm finally back again. At the beginning of september i finally finished work on my capstone project for my master's, so life theoretically should have slowed down a bit as i am out of classes until the end of november. Ironically, even though i found time to blog during classes, once i was out it seemed to get prioritized out. I did manage to keep the house somewhat cleaner, though. But then this weekend on the way home from our denomination's youth worker's conference, i realized that i really do miss blogging. So maybe i'll be more regular now.
I'm still not really sure why i blog, though. The eg0-maniac who believes the world is hanging on her every word should be repressed. So should the ego-maniac who believes that if she keeps blogging, eventually the world will begin to hang on her every word. But i haven't found any serious fault yet with the part of me that just likes the thought of having interesting thoughts out on the web for people to see. Maybe something i say will start a thought process that will help someone else. And, perhaps most of all, i just like being part of the conversation on a bigger scale than just the people i see in person. So i guess that's a good enough reason to justify the time.
May God be with You.