A TOMB IN JERUSALEM

 

Okay, so this “documentary” came on THE DISCOVERY CHANNEL last Sunday night and everybody’s talking about it.  Atheists and pagans alike claim that it proves that Jesus wasn’t the Son of God.  Here are my two cents worth:

 

1. In those times, people were buried in their home towns.  Jesus’s family lived in Nazareth, not Jerusalem.
2. Jesus, Mary and Joseph were among some of the most common names of that time.  Maybe this is why Mary Magdalene and Jesus’s earthly mother shared the same first name.
3. Joseph was a carpenter, for crying out loud!  He wouldn’t have been able to afford a family tomb!

 

This is one of those types of documentaries that does nothing more than bolster one side, while the other side picks out holes that are large enough to pilot a 747 through . . . kind of like a Michael Moore documentary.

 

Until next time, God Bless.

THE COST OF OUR MEMORIES

 

I stopped by the grocery store this morning and discovered that they were selling blackberries . . . at almost four bucks a pint.  I couldn’t believe the price of a fruit that used to be so readily available to me in the summer.  I remember spending the warm, summer days of my childhood carrying a paper bag and gathering the wildly-growing fruit.  Of course, the fruit would have filled the bag more quickly if I hadn’t eaten two for every one that I collected.

 

My grandmother would take the berries that we had picked and make cobbler out of them.  I loved blackberry cobbler.  Just thinking about it makes me long for all of the things that I remember so fondly from my childhood-homemade pickles, wild strawberries, my maternal grandmother’s chocolate roll (she’s in her late eighties and bed-ridden now)-so many things that the children of the current generation won’t have.

 

It kind of makes me wonder what my daughter is going to long for when she’s my age.

TODAY’S UPDATE

 

Not much has been happening around here lately.  I got a couple of manuscripts back from my editor and we’re going to meet next week, during my vacation from work, to discuss her views on some of the red marks.  As usual, she has pointed out things in the story that need further clarification.  I’m looking forward to the meeting.

 

My PS2 is on the fritz.  Since I, as a man with a family to help support, don’t have any intention of slapping down $500+ for a PS3, I’m going to try to drop my current system off at a local used game store to see if it is fixable.

 

Until next time, God Bless.

ANXIETY

 

Over the course of the past six months, I’ve lost four relatives.  First, my father died in September.  Then my Uncle Bill from California died.  After that, my Uncle Howard (“Junior”) died.  Most recently, my Uncle Patrick died.  I mourn them all, as I was, at one time or another, close to each of them.  But I still mourn my Dad daily.  I think about how he could do such amazing things with cars and I can barely check my own oil.  I remember that he could fix anything—like for example, a clogged sink.  I can at least read the directions on the bottle of Liquid Plumber.  I think about how he worked hard because he considered his family more important than anything else.

 

I have felt my heart filled with an unexplainable anxiety as of late.  My heart was beating with a fear that I just could not understand.  In Philippians 4:6-7, Paul tells us, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (NIV)

 

God has revealed to me that, in my attempts to forget about this fear, I have been ignoring my family.  And I have been.  I’ve been away from home at least two nights a week.  One of those days has been on Sundays, which had always been our family day.  So I am going to be making some important changes from this point forward.  After church, Sundays will belong to only my family.  No exceptions or excuses.  I am not going to be away from home gaming on Wednesday nights anymore.  I am scrapping the RPG that did not involve my wife in it.  I am going to do everything to make sure that my wife and daughter are at the top of my life, right under Jesus.

 

LABOR

 

My friend, Bobby, is currently at the hospital with his wife, who is in labor.  We know that they are having a little girl and my prayers are with them.  When my wife and daughter get home this evening, we will be going up there to see them.

 

Until next time, God Bless.

LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW

We got about an inch of snow over the course of yesterday. Unlike our recent ice storm, this didn’t effect our electricity, phone or internet. My wife is sick and stayed home from school. I’m off on Thursdays. My daughter is watching a videotaped episode of Kim Possible. We’ve “no particular place to go.” So let it snow!

On another note, I listened to the MP3 file of Darryl Sloan’s new book, Chion. The book is about a devilish snow fall. It kind of creeped me out when I took the dog for a walk this morning. Check out the MP3 on his site. Better yet, buy the book.

Until next time, God Bless.

THE LAST FOUR OF YOUR SSN

 

I’ve talked to some pretty paranoid people through my job, but one just a couple of weeks ago really takes the cake.  When we verify a card member, we usually verify their mother’s maiden name or password.  When we can’t do that, either because we don’t have it on file or the moron gave us a password that they can’t remember, then we go to the last four digits of their Social Security Number.  I had a gentleman who called in who did not have his mother’s maiden name or a password listed.  When I asked him for the last four of his SSN, his response floored me.

 

“I don’t give that out by phone.”

 

According to the World Factbook at www.cia.gov, the population of the United States, as of July of 2006, was 298,444,215.  That means, given the fact that the SSN is nine digits long, each person can have a unique number.  Of the 999,999,999 different combinations that are possible, the sheer number of people who have the same last four numbers would make it highly improbable that I could steal some individual person’s SSN just by having the last numbers.  If a person is that paranoid about identity theft, then maybe he shouldn’t have a credit card at all.  I mean, after all, he did have to send in an application through the mail that had the entire number on it, leaving a chance for someone between Point A and Point B to intercept it.  Or he might have called in the application and the person on the other end might have written it down for personal use.  Or he might have done it online (hackers).  And forget getting a job.  We have to give the whole number to our employers, too.

 

If you call a place that asks you to verify the last four digits of your SSN, just give it to them.  There’s nothing that they or anyone else can do with those four numbers.

 

Until next time, God Bless

GOD’S PROVISION

 

A major ice storm passed through Springfield this past weekend.  Though the roads didn’t get all that bad, the ice accumulated on the trees and power lines.  The former were severely damaged.  In front of our townhouses, there is a tree that was literally torn apart by the weight of the ice.

 

The power lines’ ice buildup caused over sixty thousand people to lose their electricity.  We lost ours on Saturday and went to nearby Ozark to stay with our dear friends, Brooke and Mike Burlison.  With the trauma of so many people being out of power and, thus, heat, many churches in the area scrambled to be what God has asked for us to be-beacons of light and hope.  They opened their doors to people with nowhere else to go.  They gave them warm places to wait out the power outages, along with warm meals and companionship.  This help crossed denominational lines.  Baptist, Assembly of God, Methodist and Lutheran, just to name a few, became examples of Christ through this disaster.

 

My wife and I returned to our home on Sunday to discover that the electricity was back on.  We didn’t have a phone or (gasp!) internet service, but we had heat and the ability to cook.  And we praise God for that.  We thank Him for Brooke and Mike, who didn’t lose their power at all through this mess.  We thank Him for helping us to keep power through the last waive of the storm that hit on Sunday evening.  We thank Him for the warmth that His church provided for those in need.

 

MY EXPERIENCE WITH SCHOOL

 

Also due to the ice storm, the electricity to our church is still out.  This has canceled the daycare for the remainder of this week.  I’ve noticed that my daughter seems to miss preschool.  This is a feeling that I hope she keeps throughout her childhood and teenage years.  I sure didn’t.

 

I can look back and see several points in my childhood that really made me hate school, but I attribute most of them to two particular elementary teachers.  I remember “Mrs. N,” my first grade teacher.  The woman never smiled.  She seemed to have none of the talent for dealing with children that her position required.  There was no sense of humor-or patience-at all.  Our daily writing assignments were to copy down a board-full of sentences that she put up.  Of course, I could do this now in five minutes, but it was an abominable task to a six-year-old.  The funny thing was that the other first-grade-teacher only had her class write ONE SENTENCE!!!  And-wouldn’t you know?-the majority of the children who grew up to be in our graduating class’s Top Ten were in her class.

 

When my parents and I moved to Campbell in January of 1984, where we lived until returning to Van Buren in 1989, I was placed in the classroom of “Mrs. H.”  The thing that I didn’t like about her was that she, too, had no sense of humor.  Her punishment style was horrible.  In Van Buren, corporal punishment was carried out by the principal in his office so that the other students didn’t hear it.  Mrs. H took the student out into the hall, right outside of the door, and paddled them there.  I can still remember jumping in my chair every time I heard the BAM!

 

And the homework?  Everyday, I would get home from school and work on my assignments until bedtime (sometimes later), taking only a break for supper.  Now, I’ve heard that sociologists suggest that more than an hour’s homework per night is counterproductive.  I would agree with them and I truly wish that they would have figured this out twenty-two years ago.

 

The next year, Mrs. H moved up to being a fourth grade teacher and (wouldn’t you know?) I got her again.  I remember actually asking my mother to talk to the principal about switching classes.  She never did, though.  She didn’t think that they’d let me.  This was the year that a boy who had ADHD (we didn’t know what that was then) was punished for acting out.  The teacher instructed us to pretend that he didn’t exist.  Of course, we plunged into our parts in this with gusto.  By the time the day was over, I remember feeling horrible about the way that we had treated him.  The poor boy, having been robbed of all human companionship for the afternoon, had been reduced to a blubbering mess.  His eyes were red and swollen from constant crying.  His nose was running and he could barely talk.  Today, a teacher who instituted such cruel punishment would be fired on the spot.

 

I had other teachers that I really liked.  I remember my fifth grade homeroom teacher, Mr. Felker, who told jokes regularly and gave us a grade on a history project that we could completely make up on our own.  I remember our sixth grade science teacher, who had the courage to tell us that he did not believe in evolution.  I remember my high school science teacher, Mr. Freeman, who made science fun.  I remember Mr. Hager, my high school Speech and Debate teacher, who argued intelligently with me about why my (at the time) liberal beliefs were wrong.  Unfortunately, having bad teachers so early in life can really destroy the school experience.

CAN YOU SAY, “DUH?”

 

I had an interesting call this week from a customer who had a relatively high interest rate on his credit card. He asked if it could be lowered and I told him truthfully that it could not. Of course, he wanted to know why and I checked and discovered that he had been late seven times in the last twelve months. His response, when I told him this, was, “So?”

 

Do the bank and yourselves a favor if you get a credit card. Take the time to actually read your cardmember agreement. If this person had done so, he might have taken better care to make timely payments, as it only takes one late payment to raise your interest rate. But seven in a year? Or, as the manager-who the cardmember ended up asking for-pointed out to me, nineteen times over the course of five years (literally a third of the life of the account)? That makes you a credit risk that no bank would want. I was actually surprised that his account hadn’t been closed by now.

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PUMPKIN SEED!!!

 Today is my daughter, Kaitlyn Hosanna Davis’s, birthday.  Three years ago today, she was born a month premature at Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Peters, MO.  Through all of the tribulations that we have seen over the past three years, my healthy daughter, with her contagious smile and spirited personality, is always a reminder of God’s love for us.

Hello world!

MY FIRST POST

I decided to go ahead and delete the generic first post that WordPress had put up and goi ahead and put something up myself. I don’t have much here right now, although I intend to port over the posts from my former blog at blogspot soon.

Until next time,

God Bless

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FRUSTRATION WITH BLOGGER

For those of you who have attempted to post comments to my blog and may have wondered why they were never posted, the answer is that Blogger loses them. Every time I’ve tried to approve a comment, I get a response that they cannot find it. I’ve sent two e-mails to the support desk to try to fix the problem, the last message to them having been sent nearly two weeks ago. So far, I’ve gotten only a generic response that did nothing to fix the problem. I’m currently searching for another site to host my blog.

God Bless.