THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER

Once there lived an ant and a grasshopper in a grassy meadow.

All day long the ant would work hard, collecting grains of wheat from the farmer's field far away. She would hurry to the field every morning, as soon as it was light enough to see by, and toil back with a heavy grain of wheat balanced on her head. She would put the grain of wheat carefully away in her larder, and then hurry back to the field for another one. All day long she would work, without stop or rest, scurrying back and forth from the field, collecting the grains of wheat and storing them carefully in her larder.

The grasshopper would look at her and laugh. 'Why do you work so hard, dear ant?' he would say. 'Come, rest awhile, listen to my song. Summer is here, the days are long and bright. Why waste the sunshine in labor and toil?'

The ant would ignore him, and head bent, would just hurry to the field a little faster. This would make the grasshopper laugh even louder. 'What a silly little ant you are!' he would call after her. 'Come, come and dance with me! Forget about work! Enjoy the summer! Live a little!' And the grasshopper would hop away across the meadow, singing and dancing merrily.

Summer faded into autumn, and autumn turned into winter. The sun was hardly seen, and the days were short and gray, the nights long and dark. It became freezing cold, and snow began to fall.

The grasshopper didn't feel like singing any more. He was cold and hungry. He had nowhere to shelter from the snow, and nothing to eat. The meadow and the farmer's field were covered in snow, and there was no food to be had. 'Oh what shall I do? Where shall I go?' wailed the grasshopper. Suddenly he remembered the ant. 'Ah - I shall go to the ant and ask her for food and shelter!' declared the grasshopper, perking up. So off he went to the ant's house and knocked at her door. 'Hello ant!' he cried cheerfully. 'Here I am, to sing for you, as I warm myself by your fire, while you get me some food from that larder of yours!'

The ant looked at the grasshopper and said, 'All summer long I worked hard while you made fun of me, and sang and danced. You should have thought of winter then! Find somewhere else to sing, grasshopper! There is no warmth or food for you here!' And the ant shut the door in the grasshopper's face.

It is wise to worry about tomorrow today.

Except today the ant would be vilified for being a greedy capitalist and not giving back to the community.

WEEKENDS ARE FOR FUN

THE CALIFORNIA BIBLE   

Here At Last, Dude!

Aren't you tired of the old translations of the Bible that make reading God's Holy Word so tedious? Are you frustrated with racking your brain over the archaic wording of the Living Bible?

Well suffer no more! Relief is here Dude!

Developed by actual graduate language students, between wave sets, the CALIFORNIA BIBLE has removed the awkward syntax and medieval language of older, more structured paraphrases.

Check it out!

8  So the sailors asked Jonah, "Yo, Dude! whats bring'in  this bad karma down on us, y'know?   
9  He answered,  "Take a chill pill Bill!  I'm like a Hebrew an' these gnarley waves were made by the Big Dude upstairs, y'know?
10  this terrified them and they asked,  "Woah! are you mental dude? (They knew he was splittin' from the Big Dude upstairs because he had already clued them).
11  The sea was getting gnarlier and gnarlier.  So they asked him, "Dude, like what should we do now?"
12  "Surfs up! These waves are mine!"  He replied... Then they picked him up and threw him overboard.    Jonah 1:8-15
   

"Like, totally gnarly! y'know?"
Johnny McArthur III

INTEGRITY

As a sometime carpenter, I can’t help wondering how Jesus must have felt when he went into his shop and found that someone had “borrowed” a tool without asking. Oh sure, being God in the flesh he was probably above such petty annoyances. I wonder if his reaction would have been different had he known that a Priest or Rabbi had removed the implement in question? 
   
In seminary, I walked into class one day to hear sad news. Our professor informed us that a book reserved for our class had disappeared from the library. Afterward, He simply prayed and dismissed class saying that no grade was worth the price of our integrity. The next day the book "miraculously" appeared on the library front steps. Over coffee, several of us reflected on the necessity for absolute honesty in our personal lives, not to mention our ministries. Later that semester the book disappeared from the library for good.

How would you feel about preparing a message on the Sermon on the Mount or the Ten Commandments using a hot commentary? Someone is.

THE PRINCESS IS COMING

A Special Weekend begins today. Our granddaughter, grandpa's June Bug, is coming for the next four days. I'll pick her up this afternoon and take her to dance. Grandma will join us after she finishes at school. Then more dance. Then Girl Scouts. Whew! It's going to be a busy weekend. In-between engagements we get to spend time with our vivacious granddaughter. If I sound wrapped-around-her-finger giddy its because I am. I am the oldest of five sons. I have two sons. The family is chock-full of boys. We would have made a great line of kings.

Junie is my grandDAUGHTER. And for that I am blessed, thrilled and eternally bemused. Instead of G.I. Joes and Transformers I learn about cutsie girlie stuff. Not that I enjoy it or anything. No. Not a manly guy like me.

I am grateful for the blessing this little girl, my princess, has brought to our lives.

PRIDE AND INSIGNIFICANCE

The book of Genesis spends much of its coverage of Abraham on the promise of a son. Yet, when you get right down to it, we really don't know a lot about Isaac, son of the promise. He is eclipsed by his great father and sadly, his son Jacob.

Charles Hadden Spurgeon was perhaps the greatest Preacher of the 19th century. More than a hundred years later most evangelical Christians are at least familiar with the name. Did you know he had two sons who were preachers, too? Never heard of them? Yeah, they emigrated to Australia to get out from under the shadow of their father's reputation.

It's tough being the son of a great man. I should know, I am such a son. No, my dad is not a thundering preacher, nor the patriarch of a new nation. Though, with five sons, nine grandsons, one granddaughter, and uncountable great grandchildren He could be accused of being the founder of a mighty clan. His greatness lies in his family who love him. Annnnnd the fact that he is an automotive artist without parallel.

Self-taught--he never graduated from high school--he makes those custom car guys on television look pathetic. I always laugh when the people on those shows whine about how hard it is to build a car or motorcycle using only the Cincinatti Milacron machine tools used to manufacture nuclear weapons. My dad uses a welder, a hand grinder and his artist's eye. The cars he turns out makes those other guys look sick.

I will forever be in his shadow yet I feel nothing but pride. I am not an automotive artist but I am my father's son.

FRINGIES

I figured out the other day where I am. That is, I made a line graph. I put all the theological fringe types, as I see them, on the extreme Left and Right and boy howdy, if I didn’t end up smack in the middle. The criteria which demonstrated that I should be in the middle is the obvious fact that I don’t think I’m weird. No, really, I’m a great guy; ask my mom. The problem is there are very few of us who take relish in proclaiming that we are off-center. Perhaps you've seen a graph like the one described above. They are almost always self-serving devices used to label and demean those who do not possess the hallowed--read ‘arbitrary’--middle ground.

It is obvious that people are different. For convenience sake we tend to use the labels Left and Right. Because of this, if you just have to stand everyone on some sort of graduated line, some would be to the right and others to the left; those are your Fringies. I suppose there’s nothing demonically wrong with a graph like this. It’s the usage that distorts it’s usefulness. The unspoken argument from graphs like this seems to run this way; Left and Right are extreme. The Middle is the best. Christ is the best. Therefore, to be in the middle is to be closest to Christ.

Now I admit, measuring fringe types against ourselves is fun and easy. Too bad that’s not the way God does it. The divine standard is Jesus Christ. How can identifying with a political or theological label qualify us for that goal? Groups can’t measure up to the stature of Christ, that is a job for individuals. Perhaps a clearer way of graphing this is to put everyone on a baseline without reference to Left or Right; the operative direction is up. In this way individual Fundamentalists, Liberals, Conservatives, Moderates, Neo-Orthodox and Evangelicals must strive for the goal at the top; Jesus Christ. Sure, there are differences between us but the one that really counts is the difference between me and Christ.

ROCKIN' THE RANGE

I am a volunteer Chaplain with the LA County Sheriff's Department. Chaplain duties include counseling, patrolling in black & whites with the deputies, and simple presence. Today I will work one of my collateral duties. I am a Range Master for one of our mobile shooting ranges. I sought this out, went through training and love doing it. Okay, I do get some looks. A Chaplain in the shooting range?! Yeah. My Granddad was a deputy. I learned to shoot when I was a kid. and it is one sport where my normal terminal awkwardness is absent.

Amazing though it sounds, the range is a great fit for me as a Chaplain. I'm supposed to minister to the deputies, their families and department personnel. Traditionally, that's accomplished by ride-a-longs and station presence. I've done a lot of ride-a-longs. You spend eight hours in a car with a deputy, responding to calls and simply patrolling the streets. I enjoy it. It's an intense eight hour session. One deputy at a time. At first the deputies look at me like: why is this person in my car, is he reporting on me for the brass? I always start a first ride with a deputy saying, Good news and bad news. Good news; I'm not Internal Affairs. Bad news; I'm a preacher.

Thing is, I meet more deputies in a more comfortable setting when I work the range. The conversation is less formal. The deputies see me out of my high, priestly environment; Why, the Chaplain might actually be a human, like me.

I'm off. Looking forward to my day.

A REASON FOR THE FAITH WITHIN

"Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,"  1 Peter 3:15

When sharing your faith, the person listening to you does not have to agree with you or even receive your message. You are not validated by their response. You are simply sharing what you know. Frustration or anger at rejection is an indication that you might not be so sure about your faith yourself. Be clear about what you believe and why.

What IS mandatory is to make your position clear, logical and internally consistent. I might be wrong but at the very least I try to be consistent. This means you don't bother trying to build a detailed, academic argument if you are not academically trained. Be a witness. Tell what you know, not what some clever person told you.

Don't claim to be an authority, you are setting yourself up for a fall. Even if you ARE an authority it is a mistake. Show some humility. You are sharing your faith with another. It is not necessary to build an airtight legal case. In the "Scopes Monkey Trial" of 1925, William Jennings-Bryan claimed to be a Biblical authority. He was not, and lawyer Clarence Darrow made a monkey out of him over national radio.

Be honest about who you are, what you know and what you don't know. Hypocrisy is the unpardonable sin as far as unbelievers are concerned.

“Marx is to communism what Christianity was to the Rulers of the Holy Roman Empire; convenient as a banner, irrelevant as a guide.”
                    Richard M. Nixon--The Real War

WEEKENDS ARE FOR FUN

Beware, writers.

VETERANS DAY 11-11-11

Honoring those warriors who never made it home.
Welcoming back their comrades who did.

Day is done.
Gone the sun.
From the lakes,
From the hills,
From the sky.
All is well,
Safely rest.

God is nigh.