Dreams Fulfilled

As a child, I used to imagine what my future would hold. I think that's common to all youngsters. I remember wanting a nice wife, a house, an unspecified number of kids, and a white fence. I don't know why the white fence. We had a chain link fence on the sides of our house, and a red wooden one in the back. My grandparents' neighbours had a little white picket fence. It couldn't have been more than three tall, and you could see through it. It was in their front yard. I think I always wanted that.
Skip ahead to the present, and I'm knee deep in renovations on our very first house. It's a nice little fifty-something year old bungalow. It has a white fence in the back (although it needs some TLC). I have a nice wife, better by far than nice. I have three awesome kids, and now I have a white fence.
Another dream I've had for a few years is to one day play catch with my son; where he is actually catching the ball, and then actually throwing it back to me. Today, that dream became reality. My son wants to play baseball all of a sudden. I don't know why, but I'm not complaining. It was so much fun to just play catch with him for a while today. I look forward to many more times hanging out with him throwing the ball around.
It's the little things in life that make me the most content. Apparently, white fences and playing catch are among those simple things.

Lenten Musings - 42

Matthew 5
Man, I think I could blog for at least a whole month about this chapter. Instead, I think I'll just not comment at all. If you are instead in some of my ideas, I'll direct you to one of my old sermons called "Murder, Adultery and Divorce". You can find it at http://reliabletoasters.com/sermons.htm

Lenten Musings - 41

I finished the puppet theatre today. I think it looks good, if I do say so myself. There's a few little things that I may need to do yet, but it's good for now. Oh, and my mother-in-law is making the curtains for it. I'll post a picture after it's done.

Matthew 4

I look at Satan's temptations of Jesus and it makes me wonder a couple of things. The temptations were real, otherwise this whole story is a farce. Why? How did Jesus know who He was? Did He always just know? He is very confident of who He is. I wonder if at some point Satan's tempting was, uh, tempting. Or perhaps did the fact that Satan was tempting Him only reinforce His identity? Jesus was fully human, so did He have a jumble of doubts and fears rumbling around in his head, too? Maybe that's not necessarily a necessary human trait, it just seems like it.
The thing I like about Jesus here is that He stands firm in what He believes. If I can relate to what's happening to Him, I can stand firm in what I know to be true. I have lots if fears and doubts, but I've also been given what I nee to overcome them, the truth.

Well, in the immortal words of Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie: As God has shown us by turning stones to bread/ so we all must lend a helping hand (yeah, yeah, yeeaahh). ;)

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Lenten Musings - 40

Hey wait a minute. Lent doesn't just have 40 days! Apparently, you're not supposed to count Sundays, which I did. So I'm a little ahead of the game perhaps.

Matthew 3

There's an interesting difference between Mark's account of what John the Baptist was doing, and what Matthew records here. In Matthew, John is preaching a baptism of repentance (Matthew 3:11), but Mark adds for the forgiveness of sins (Mark 1:4). I wonder why. Perhaps for Matthew "repentance" is assumed to be equated with forgiveness. If I remember correctly from what I read in Mark, he seemed to be much more interested in sin and forgiveness than Matthew is at this point. Matthew is giving details related to his Jewish audience. He mentions the Pharisees and Sadducees, and the "we are Abrahams' children" bit. I think both Matthew and Mark are using this story to try to relate to their audience. Different people can relate to what Matthew is talking about compared to what Mark has to say. They aren't just reporting what happened, but they are trying to make it relevant to the reader. It's kinda nice that there are different angles presented of these stories, because we're not all the same and I think different people will be touched in different ways by these accounts. I think I relate more to Mark's version, which would make sense since I'm not Jewish.