Ever since the dawn of man [or at least indoor plumbing], a great war has raged.  Man vs. woman, brawn vs. brain, strength vs. beauty, peni….. never mind.

Anyway, there used to be a constant debate in my house regarding the toilet bowl seat.  As men, we know that it’s just about impossible when you wake up to actually remember to lower the seat after we do our business at the toilet.  After all, we probably deserve some sort of medal, prize, or cookie for remembering to lift the seat in the first place.  On that note, if we can remember to lift it, why can’t the ladies remember to lower it?

Anyway, in the midst of this great battle, I assumed a different tactic upon reports of a strategic victory by a friend of mine.  Up to this point, I had always remained on the defensive when my wife proclaimed the indignity of a woman having to lower the seat.  I just retreated to the old line of “If I can raise it, you can lower it.”  Somehow my great logic was failing to get through to her and I proclaimed my puzzlement to my good friend Mr. Charles Trammel.

Chuck laughed at my misfortune and shared with me a great and wonderful man secret.  He confessed that his wife too had owned the bathroom until he went on the offensive with his love for his wife.  He proclaimed that just like in the great game of football, one must be agressive on the offense in order to win.  By the way, the Patriots choked big time in the Super Bowl, Orlando.  That was a great day.  It has nothing to do with this but it was still awesome.  Nice almost perfect season.

Anyway, Chuck said that he had a stroke of brilliance.  Upon the commencement of his wife’s nagg…. gentle complaining, he informed her that it would no longer be a problem.  Instead of instigating the issue by lifting the seat to pee in the bowl, Chuck would die to self out of his love for his wife and just pee on the wall to avoid the problem all together.  It was solved!  The genius was undeniable!  Brandy looked deep into Chuck’s soul and realized that he loved her so much he would solve the problem for her in this manner.  She gave in.

When I told my wife that I loved her so much I would pee on the wall for her so she wouldn’t have to lower the seat, she strangely gave in also.  For some reason, she was then willing to lower the toilet seat herself.  See guys, love conquers all…

Moral of the story: the world is our bathroom.

2nd Moral of the Story: Tom Brady sucks and the Patriots are losers.

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Isaiah 29:13-16 Then the Lord said, “Because this people draw near with their words And honor Me with their lip service, but they remove their hearts far from Me, And their reverence for Me consists of tradition learned by rote. Therefore behold, I will once again deal marvelously with this people, wondrously marvelous; and the wisdom of their wise men will perish, and the discernment of their discerning men will be concealed.” Woe to those who deeply hide their plans from the LORD, and whose deeds are {done} in a dark place, and they say, “Who sees us?” or “Who knows us?” You turn {things} around! Shall the potter be considered as equal with the clay, that what is made would say to its maker, “He did not make me”; or what is formed say to him who formed it, “He has no understanding”?

Eze 8:12 Then He said to me, “Son of man, do you see what the elders of the house of Israel are committing in the dark, each man in the room of his carved images? For they say, ‘The LORD does not see us; the LORD has forsaken the land.’ “

Yesterday was phenomenal. We saw people get right with God and young girls and boys make a public declaration of their faith and trust in Jesus Christ. We stood by and cheered each one as they gave their testimony and reason for baptism. We shouted and clapped for joy as each rose out of the water, symbolic of their washing in the blood of the Lamb and new birth as a son or daughter of the Holy One.

As I went home last night, I thought about what we did and how the crowd applauded each child. It made me think on how God and His angels stood in applause as Heaven sang the praises of the One for whom these children were baptized. I began to reflect on how if the declarations these children made pleased God, how does He feel about some of the other things we do?

If God inhabits the praises of His people, where is He when we curse and profane His Holy name? Where is He when we complain, are bitter, hateful, prideful, and when we gossip? What does God think when we steal in private, when we cheat our clock-in time at work, when we speak poorly of our coworker, and disrespect our spouse? If we are so quick to proclaim that He is among us, why don’t we act like it more?

These verses address the tendency of a fallen race to pretend that God has hidden His face from us and won’t see that which we do. We act as though He cannot judge the intentions of our hearts when we look upon a woman with lust. We cry out for His presence in church and then shake off the Holy Ghost like a wet jacket when we walk through the doors of our work.

We are lying hypocrites, sinners in need of a Holy God to come and redeem us. We call out for the Audience of One on Sunday night yet reject His presence when we live like Hell on Tuesday morning.

We should humble ourselves, repent of our dead religious works, and cry out for the marvelous things that the Lord has promised us. Let us cast off the wisdom of men and pursue our Maker.

God sees us and cheers at some of our actions, just like we did yesterday. When we lift up the brokenhearted, reach out to the lost, and minister to the hurting, His heart fills with pride at His children. He does inhabit our praise and He is among us as we gather together. However, we should not forget that He loves us and follows us. The same Spirit that fills our sanctuary on Sunday nights is the same Spirit that whispers gently in our ears on Tuesday morning.

Friend, let us chase with abandon the Audience of One at all times. As Brother Lawrence put it, let us practice the presence of God. We cannot forget that He is not a house guest to be entertained twice a week but rather a close companion, a Holy Father desiring constant companionship with His people every moment of every day.

I say this to challenge myself. It is easy to walk with Christ on Sunday night. Let us see how I do at work Tuesday morning…

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Dear Tech Support,
Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a distinct slow down in overall system performance - particularly in the flower and jewelry applications, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0. In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5 and then installed undesirable programs such as NFL 5.0, NBA 3.0, and Golf Clubs 4.1. Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and Housecleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system. I’ve tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail. What can I do?
Signed, Desperate
———————————————————————–
Dear Desperate,
First keep in mind, Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while Husband 1.0 is an Operating System. Please enter the command: ‘I Thought You Loved Me.exe’, try to download Tears 6.2 and don’t forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update. If that application works as designed, Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewelry 2.0 and Flowers 3.5. But remember, overuse of the above application can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0, or Beer 6.1. Beer 6.1 is a very bad program that will download the Snoring Loudly Beta. Whatever you do, DO NOT install Mother-in-law 1.0. It runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources. Also, do not attempt to reinstall the Boyfriend 5.0 program. These are unsupported applications and will crash Husband 1.0. In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend Hot Food 3.0 and Lingerie 7.7.
Good Luck, Tech Support

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Genesis 3:21: The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.

This verse caught me this week and would not let me go. I’ve read Genesis many times yet never really had this verse stand out to me. It is such a picture of grace and mercy. Think about it for a second. Don’t read over it quickly; take the time to picture what happened in your mind’s eye. Let’s walk through the events that led up to this verse.

First, YHWH, the Sovereign Lord, decided to create the universe as we know it. He spun out the stars and formed the earth from nothing. He brought light into the darkness and imposed order in the midst of chaos. He created everything on the earth and populated it with plants and animals. He then reached the pinnacle of His creation and created mankind.

YHWH, the literal Master of the Universe, needed nothing yet chose to create a race of beings, part spirit and part flesh and blood, that would commune with Him and know things even the angels were not privilege to, as Peter teaches us. So there we are, at the dawn of the world, when God brings Adam and then Eve into existence. He desired to have fellowship with a group of people that would love Him in return of their own free will.

Scripture is not conclusive but is very suggestive that Adam and Eve were tempted by Satan very quickly after being created. http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/130

So here we are, in the midst of the second greatest tragedy of all time, that the race God had created for relationship should spurn Him and rebel against Him within a very short time period of being created. Adam and Eve knew that what Satan offered them was wrong yet they did it anyway. They cast away all the intimacy one could desire with God for a piece of fruit and the presumption that God did not know or want what was best for them. They thought they knew better than God and fell from perfection as a result of their pride.

In their sin and shame, they recognized their own nakedness. Already their minds were corrupted and perverse to see something that God had created for beauty and grace, the human form, and be ashamed of it. Then, in the midst of this tragedy of epic proportions, a grieving and heartbroken God immediately reaches out with redemption in mind. Adam and Eve had just deliberately rebelled against Him, hid from Him, and blamed someone else for their mistakes. God, in His justice, delivered the verdict of their transgressions and yet then turned to them and reached out to them.

God took living animals and slaughtered them to create clothing for the very nakedness that was never intended to be shameful. God saw their weakness and felt compassion, even though He was just betrayed. God covered them in the flesh of innocent animals to hide the penalty of their rebellion from them. Even though they had just turned away from Him, He did not ever leave them. In the midst of Hi s grief, He reached out with compassion and care.

The sheer weight of this verse strikes me as an excellent picture of God’s mercy and love. Though we sin and run away from Him, He pursues us and offers to take our shame away. Though we grieve Him with our actions and desires, He still reaches out to us to show us His grace and mercy again and again.

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*Note* I did not write this story but I wish I had!

I never quite figured out why the sexual urge of men and women differ so much and I never have figured out the whole Venus and Mars thing. I have never figured out why men think with their head and women with their heart.

For Example:

One evening last week, my wife and I were getting into bed. Well, the passion starts to heat up and she eventually says, ‘I don’t feel like it, I just want you to hold me.’

I said, ‘WHAT??!! What was that?!’

So she says the words that every husband on the planet dreads to hear . . .

‘You’re just not in touch with my emotional needs as a woman enough for me to satisfy your physical needs as a man.’

She responded to my puzzled look by saying, ‘Can’t you just love me for who I am and not what I do for you in the bedroom?’

Realizing that nothing was going to happen that night, I went to sleep.

The very next day I opted to take the day off of work to spend time with her. We went out to a nice lunch and then went shopping at a big, big unnamed department store. I walked around with her while she tried on several different very expensive outfits. She couldn’t decide which one to take, so I told her we’d just buy them all. She wanted new shoes to compliment her new clothes, so I said, ‘Let’s get a pair for each outfit.’

We went on to the jewelry department where she picked out a pair of diamond earrings. Let me tell you . . . she was so excited. She must have thought I was one wave short of a shipwreck. I started to think she was testing me because she asked for a tennis bracelet when she doesn’t even know how to play tennis.

I think I threw her for a loop when I said, ‘That’s fine, honey.’ She was almost nearing sexual satisfaction from all of the excitement. Smiling with excited anticipation, she finally said, ‘I think this is all dear, let’s go to the cashier.’

I could hardly contain myself when I blurted out, ‘No honey, I don’t feel like it.’

Her face just went completely blank as her jaw dropped with a baffled, ‘WHAT?’

I then said, ‘Honey! I just want you to HOLD this stuff for a while. You’re just not in touch with my financial needs as a man enough for me to satisfy your shopping needs as a woman.’

Just when she had this look like she was going to kill me, I added, ‘Why can’t you just love me for who I am and not for the things I buy you?’

Apparently I’m not having sex tonight either . . . but at least she knows I’m smarter than her.

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Judges 16:28-31: Then Samson called to the LORD and said, “O Lord GOD, please remember me and please strengthen me just this time, O God, that I may at once be avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.” Samson grasped the two middle pillars on which the house rested, and braced himself against them, the one with his right hand and the other with his left. And Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines!” And he bent with all his might so that the house fell on the lords and all the people who were in it. So the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he killed in his life. Then his brothers and all his father’s household came down, took him, brought him up and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of Manoah his father. Thus he had judged Israel twenty years.

Samson was a man much like many of us. God had called him to a purpose which he only occasionally walked in. Samson often went his own way and suffered loss and heartache from it. God called Samson to a life of purity yet Samson defiled himself again and again. Then, at the end of Samson’s life, when he was battered, broken, and could no longer pretend that the things God had used him for had come from his own strength, at the moment he bent his knees and cried out to the Almighty, God met him.

God loved Samson and used him to do mighty things. Yet Samson often walked his own way and eventually met his downfall in the lust for an immoral woman. God wanted Samson to pursue Him yet Samson’s heart turned towards the pagan woman would eventually cause his death.

I can see the scene of Samson at the end of his life: a slave, a man stripped of his power, a man made to be a mockery and a fool for those he once terrified, a man in whom the strength of God once flowed, a man now broken and scorned. Samson was nothing in the eyes of the world. He was nothing in his own eyes. He could not see and could not defend himself against his captors. Even worse, all of this had come because of his own foolishness and disobedience from God’s commandments.

How many times do we as men feel that we have squandered the talents that God has given us? I cringe internally when I think of the opportunities wasted, the promises broken, the purity defiled, and the personal holiness pushed away. I see myself in Samson’s shoes. I have wasted so much. I know many men struggle with the thought that God can’t use them anymore. They have done too little for too long. They have wandered too far and can’t come back now. They have been unfaithful men, adulterers and unholy.

I think we forget that God can change a lifetime of bad decisions in one instant. God doesn’t always remove the consequences of our actions but He can allow us to have victory over our past and success in our future. Samson had lost everything and cried out to God for one moment of redemption. God, in His sovereign grace and love, returned to Samson once more and used him in a mighty way. I find it a perfect picture of God’s grace that in the one moment of Samson’s humility and cry of help, God did more for his people than in a lifetime of Samson’s own strength and effort.

Friend, you are still capable of more than you know. You may have squandered and wasted a life of potential. You may be beat down and broken. Those around you may scorn you and mock your God. You may have lost that which God entrusted to you from a lifetime of bad decisions. All of that may be true but our God is sovereign and mighty to save! Our God can and will meet us in our time of need. He can do great things in you, regardless of your circumstances. Just do what Samson did. Cry out to God for help in humility and brokenness. Bend your knees and allow the power of God to move through you and change your life. Our God is a God of grace and redemption. He takes the unfaithful and transforms him into a hero of the faith. Hebrews 11:32 does not remember the Samson that lived a life of disobedience but instead recounts the faith of a man that God used to do great works. Samson completely trusted God in his final moments and is now described as a man of whom this world is not worthy. Truly our God is a Redeemer!

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In the case of DC v Heller, the SC could issue a seminal ruling tomorrow which may affect the manner in which the 2nd Amendment controls state and local laws on gun ownership. Unlike most of the Bill of Rights, the 2nd Amendment does not technically govern and control local or state laws. Tomorrow could change that.

Here’s a brief quote which gives some history and context to this case.

Pre-Argument Preview
Nearly seven decades ago, the Supreme Court analyzed the meaning of these words: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Those are the words of the Second Amendment, written into the Constitution on Dec.15, 1791. The Court has not examined the meaning of those words since the ruling in U.S. v. Miller, on May 15, 1939. The debate over what the Court meant — and over what those words mean — has continued with growing intensity. Until now, the Court had refused repeatedly to resolve the constitutional debate. The case of District of Columbia v. Heller (07-290) is a pure, and outwardly simple, test of the Second Amendment — although there are complications that might limit the scope of any final decision.

Background
“Guns” - a single word, but one that is powerfully packed with controversy, and with social and political meaning. In America’s culture wars, that word is as capable of stirring up emotions as is the word “abortion” or the simple phrase “gay rights.” Americans have been arguing about access to guns since before they had a national government and a federal Constitution. And their English forebears were at odds over that issue even before the reign of Charles II in the middle 1600s. It is part of the American heritage, and of the American national psyche, to be agitated over guns.

Harvard law professor Mark Tushnet has written that “the fights over the Second Amendment are really about something else…about how we understand ourselves as Americans.” The Supreme Court will not even attempt in District of Columbia v. Heller to supply such an understanding. At most, it will provide only a legal - a constitutional - definition. It has the option of ruling on a grand scale, or on a quite modest one. Whatever it may be able to do — and however divided a final decision might be — that review could shape in a significant way what it means to talk of, or legislate about, “gun rights.”

The 1939 case of U.S. v. Miller was about a double-barrel, 12-gauge shotgun. carried from Claremore, Okla., to Siloam Springs, Ark., by Jack Miller and Frank Layton, apparently in violation of a federal gun registration law. Miller and Layton defended themselves by claiming a Second Amendment right to have the gun. They lost their case in a unanimous Supreme Court decision. The exact meaning of that ruling is still very much in dispute. The new case of District of Columbia v. Heller is about a handgun, a pistol, that Dick Anthony Heller would like to keep in his home in Washington, D.C. He tried to register it with the city, but was turned down — the city has banned the registration, and thus the possession, of all privately owned handguns. Heller, like Jack Miller and Frank Layton, argues that he has a Second Amendment right to have the gun in his home for self-defense; he says he lives in a high-crime neighborhood. Heller, so far, is winning.

The D.C. Circuit Court, dividing 2-1, ruled last March 9 that Dick Heller has a Second Amendment right — an individual, personal right — to have that gun, and to keep it at home, loaded and unlocked. “Once it is determined that handguns are ‘Arms’ referred to in the Second Amendment, it is not open to the District to ban them,” the Circuit Court ruled — the first time that any federal appeals court has relied upon the Second Amendment and an “individual right” theory to strike down any law that seeks to control guns. “We conclude,” the Circuit Court majority said, “that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms.”

The Court ruled that only Heller, among the six local residents who challenged the handgun ban, had a sufficiently strong interest in the case that he had “standing” to sue.

Washington’s Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and the city government have told the Supreme Court that the city has been regulating handguns “and other dangerous weapons” since 1858. Eighteen months after the nation’s capital city was freed in 1975 to make its own laws (rather than have Congress legislate for it), the City Council passed the gun law that is now before the Supreme Court. That 1976 law, forbidding registration of any gun “originally designed to be fired by use of a single hand,” was the result of what city officials now call “a targeted effort to prevent needless death and injury from that class of weapons.” Handguns, city officials believed then and now, “pose a particularly serious threat to public safety” — both because of the potential for accidents, especially involving children, and the potential for rampant use by criminals.

Here’s an especially interesting tidbit on this Amendment in the Bill of Rights.

The federal appeals courts are split on what the Second Amendment means. Moreover, in an unusual twist, the District of Columbia’s own highest court, the local Court of Appeals, disagrees with the D.C. Circuit on the question, so the conflict is vivid in Washington..One other federal appeals court, the Fifth Circuit Court, has read the Second Amendment to embrace a private, individual right, but it did not go ahead and use that theory to strike down a federal gun control law at issue there. All other federal appeals courts have taken a turn at analyzing the Amendment, and all but one (which did not take a conclusive position) have said that the Amendment only protects the right to have a gun when serving in a state militia or a modern equivalent — such as the National Guard.It is a somewhat curious fact of the history of the Second Amendment that, unlike most of the other parts of the Bill of Rights, it simply does not apply to state or local laws. Thus, the numerically much greater array of state laws on gun control — such as laws against carrying a concealed gun — are not immediately affected by the Amendment, however it is interpreted.

In a process that began in the late 19th Century, the Court has “incorporated” almost all of the other guaranteed constitutional rights into the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment, thus applying them as limits on state and local government activity. But the Supreme Court has never reconsidered an 1886 decision, in Presser v. Illinois, saying that the Amendment is not binding on the states.

Here’s the link that gives some good context and analysis [plus it’s the source of the quotes above].

http://www.scotuswiki.com/index.php?title=DC_v._Heller

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I awoke this morning missing my father. I was one of those lucky people, for I did not have a bad relationship with my father, probably due to the fact that he died when I was only ten years old. He was my hero, and well into my adulthood held the status of God.

In his youth he swept out aircraft hangars to get free rides, and in the late 60’s during the Vietnam War he flew fighters, training the pilots in combat maneuvers before they were sent overseas. He attended Drake University in Iowa, and my uncle tells the story that after my father graduated, my father called my uncle on the phone at Drake (he was still in school) telling him to be outside at exactly 3PM- he wanted my uncle to see him do something that he’d always wanted to do. At 2:59 my uncle and his friends stood outside and saw four F-84 thunderbolt jets approach each other head-on from opposite directions, and before meeting over the bell tower on campus pull sharply upwards in formation, hitting there engines full throttle. The bell on campus thudded a resounding ring in response to the shock waves- my dad had always wanted to do that! What he had not planned was the subsequent shattering of many windows on Campus.

My father would take me out of school on his days off to go flying, or to the museum, we would launch 3 stage rockets with 8 engines in the park, only to watch them veer sideways chasing dogs, children and geese. He put me on the gas tank of a dirt bike and when we crashed, rolled up around me so that when we stopped rolling down the road, I was covered in his blood, not mine.

I am working in the Rocky Mountains right now. Maybe its why I started crying when I awoke this morning. I am 3 ranges, just about 200 miles, from where he and his crew flew their plane up a valley and into the side of a mountain in a blinding snowstorm just before Christmas 30 years ago- 50 feet from the peak. Funny how grief is always there, that fond memory of what was, and how quickly it all can change.

As the sun rose over the peaks near my cabin, it also rose over his death site and I thought to myself, is life really more valuable than living, what bells haven’t I rung, what and whom haven’t I risked? I understand what Hamlet said, “To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation devoutly to be wish’d.”

A poem, written by a Spitfire pilot in England during WWII was read at my father’s funeral and summed up his life. This Spitfire pilot was also killed in his aircraft 2 weeks after sending the poem to his mother and father. I read it this morning and wondered at my father. He risked much and lost much in the end, but OUR lives were full because of it and I am glad he lived the way he did, despite the pain his death caused my family. Am I living fully, slipping the surly bonds of earth, dancing on laughter silvered wings?

High Flight
Major John Gillespie Magee, Jr

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, –and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of –Wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air…
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark or even eagle flew –
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

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If you’re choking on an ice cube, simply pour a cup of boiling water down your throat. Presto! The blockage will instantly remove itself.

Avoid cutting yourself when slicing vegetables by getting someone else to hold the vegetables while you chop.

Avoid arguments with the females about lifting the toilet seat by using the sink.

For high blood pressure sufferers ~ simply cut yourself and bleed for a few minutes, thus reducing the pressure on your veins. Remember to use a timer.

A mouse trap placed on top of your alarm clock will prevent you from rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button.

If you have a bad cough, take a large dose of laxatives. Then you’ll be afraid to cough.

You only need two tools in life - WD-40 and Duct Tape. If it doesn’t move and should, use the WD-40. If it shouldn’t move and does, use the Duct Tape.

Remember - everyone seems normal until you get to know them.

If you can’t fix it with a hammer, you’ve got an electrical problem.

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