JOPLIN

Gotta love an imaginative, entrepreneurial spirit.  For 5K, you can get some guys to come dig out below your garage slab and insert a fraidy hole.  The car is parked above it, but there is still room to slide the lid open and get in.  I'll bet those companies pick up the business now!

Well, if you lived down South this spring, you would be considering a fraidy hole, too.  Arkansans are used to tornadic activity and STILL we have been frightened.  Why?  The tornados came after months of out-of-a-boot rain and flooding, which came after ice storms, 24" of snow, and a minus 20 degree temp.  We are scratching our heads here.  Since I don't have enough faith to believe a global warming theory, does that mean the world is coming to an end?

We're certainly closer to that than we were yesterday.  Jesus called the days He lived in "the last days" and that was 2,000 years ago.  It MUST be the last of the last days.  Disasters are coming more frequently and with greater fierceness.

The people of Joplin had a twenty-minute warning on May 22nd, but where would you go if you didn't have a concrete hole?

Where would there be protection from a wind that sucks paint off a house and implants a brick into the side of a red Chevrolet?

Yesterday a dozen from our church went to Joplin.  One team worked with the Salvation Army to assimilate supplies.  The second team went out to homes with four chainsaws and assorted log bearers.

The home where we served was missing the hospitalized grandmother, who was making her way into the bathroom to be safe when the tornado hit.  The wind blew out the bath window and the grandmother was picked up and slammed against the hall wall, breaking her hip.

You might wonder why the lady was late getting to her safe place if the alarm had been sounding for twenty minutes.  Perhaps the 76-year-old was having difficulty getting there.  But sometimes when I hear the tornado warnings, I don't want to be interrupted until I really need to be.  So I keep one eye on the sky and proceed with my agenda.

As we later drove through the swath-leveled neighborhoods, you only saw matchsticks.  There are piles and piles of matchsticks as far as the eye can see.

I know that Solomon was the wisest man on earth and he said all of life was vanity.  But I'm thinking if he had seen Joplin, he might also want to add "matchsticks" to his assessment.  All their dwellings, Barcaloungers, and toys are all bulldozed out by the curb and worthless.



What endures?  Only God's people and God's Word go into eternity.  No one gets out alive from this world...but then, this world is not our home.  This is just the dress rehearsal.  According to Colossians 1.17, the One who spoke all this world into existence also holds it all together.  And if the Lord is slightly removing His protective hand, men will begin to realize how much protection we've taken for granted.


I like what Dr. James Denison said:  "God redeems what He allows, in ways we see and ways we do not see".  If this weather is a warning, and if this weather causes people to look up...then it is a good thing.  Souls are important and eternity is a long time.  I wouldn't go sit on the porch in Joplin or Tuscaloosa with sirens blasting, and I wouldn't fail to sandbag my home along the Mississippi River.  By the same token, I wouldn't ignore God's words about what is coming.

God is a gentleman.  There are lots of black books laying around that spell out His plan and there are churches on lots of corners.  They are like sirens going off to deaf ears.  Still, the Lord is a Grand Auctioneer, calling out "fair warning!".  Dr. Denison pointed out that God warned people before the destruction in Noah's day.  He also sent Moses to warn Pharaoh, and He sent prophets to Assyria and Babylon.  The Lord said in Revelation that those with ears to hear should listen.

Perhaps people intrinsically know that God is speaking through all this freaky weather.  It IS causing some to look up!  But we can't just keep one eye on the sky and proceed with our agenda.  Scripture says the Lord is a high tower; the righteous run in and are saved.

That means they give up their agenda, and ask God what His agenda is.

They tell the Lord that they are sorry for "going their own way".

They ask Him to make Jesus' sacrifice count for their sin...and they start living for Him.

And reading His book.  And getting together with His people.

And praying and growing.

Remember that fraidy hole at the beginning of this blog?  Make Jesus your place of safety.

VALUING INTEGRITY

In these divisive days, there might be one thing that everyone could agree is profitable.  Integrity.  That's a word that we recognize when we see it, but wrapping words around it might be tricky.

How would you describe integrity?

Could it be that a person has integrity when all of their lifehats mesh?

I am a wife, mother, Mimi, citizen, church member, Christ lover, retired teacher, friend, and blogger.  All my life areas have hats, and all the hats should mesh like the teeth of a gear.

On the political stage, there have been

some recent obvious illustrations for the lack of integrity.

The Governor of California threw in an outside woman hat that didn't mesh with his husband hat.  Proverbs says "the one who conducts himself in integrity will live securely, but the one who behaves perversely will be found out."  

In Governor Schwarzenegger's case, it took 14 years to be found out.  But think of the terrible stripping sound when the gears clashed in their home.  Pray for the pain and shame of that betrayal as it falls on the innocent. 

Newt Gingrich's private life is complicated.  He has promised three women he would be there "till death do us part".  Some folks may set that aside because they feel it is more important for the country to have a political professor who gets our need for historical context in the national debate.  But there are more troubling details.

When Callista Gingrich released financial disclosure records in 2006/2007 as part of her government job, there was a considerable revolving charge account debt.  Some might argue about the validity of challenging their spending habits, but I find two compelling things.  The debt was very large (a quarter to a half mil), and it was "trinket debt" (@Tiffany's).  Doesn't such a case define the country's number one problem...as it relates to debt?

Americans go for flashy candidates, but then we can't figure out why they disappoint.  Presidential hair does not make a leader with a core.  Can it be enough for a candidate to SAY they have a God hat, or shouldn't we reach for men/women who have a demonstrable life of integrity?  Only One was perfect, but doesn't a credible life-resume MATTER? 

When President Clinton was our leader, we were told that his compartmentalization didn't matter because the economy was good.  Really?  Now we have a generation of young people for whom oral sex is humdrum.

Unmeshed lifehats DO matter.  Intelligence is not more important than fidelity.  Prosperity is not more important than godliness.  Character qualities come together in a package or the package comes apart.

When our lifehats are all submitted to God's authority, the intersection is integrity.  So let's find a leader who shows in their resume that they have ALREADY lived such a life.  Let's reach for a person with common sense and dignity...a person who can seamlessly wear multiple hats without stripping any gears.

Let's value integrity.

ENMITY (noun: feeling of hostility)

This bluebird fam hatched babies @our friend LeAnne's house in the country.  She LOVED watching their whole process until yesterday when a black snake helped himself to a breakfast buffet of the baby birds.  LeAnne totally hit the warpath.  It's an old enmity thing; there is eternal enmity between the snake and the woman.


Running down the hill to the bluebird house, LeAnne found the snake still curled around the box.  You may know that snakes are stupefied after gorging and sit still to digest.  So much the better for LeAnne's fury.  She shot him, then hacked him into pieces.  Later that day, she had another enmity surge as she saw another black snake (albeit an innocent one) and killed him for good measure.


The snake in the garden of Eden was a troublemaker, too.  When he tempted Eve and she and Adam tasted the knowledge of evil...innocence went wanting.  So began enmity between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan.  Because the deceiver is a murderer, he killed our first parents' relationship with God.  But our omnipotent and loving Father had a plan to get us back.  The promise is in Genesis 3.15.

"And I will put enmity between you (Satan) and the woman, and between your seed (Satan's children) and her seed (Jesus); 


He (Jesus) shall bruise you (Satan) on the head (@resurrection) and you (Satan) shall bruise him (Jesus) on the heel(@cross)."


Matthew Henry describes the battle:  "the fruit of enmity is a continual conflict between grace and the corruption in the hearts of God's people.  Satan corrupts, assaults, buffets, sifts, and seeks to devour them.  They (by the exercise of their graces) resist him, wrestle with him, quench his fiery darts, and force him to flee.  Heaven and hell can never be reconciled, nor light and darkness.  Neither can Satan and a sanctified soul be reconciled, for these are contrary the one to the other."


The Genesis verse shows that from the beginning, the fight has been settled.  A child (Jesus) is promised and that Rescuer will win the battle.  Still, Satan doesn't seem to have gotten the memo.  He persists in his fight to be Numero Uno - against the One who IS the First and the Last.  Their fight requires that the rest of us pick sides, and we have since 4000BC.


There were times when Satan thought he had gotten rid of the coming Messiah.  The devil figured if he got rid of the Jews, he could destroy the Messianic line.  Satan knows that at the end of time, Jesus consigns him to the Lake of Fire.  No WONDER Satan has repeatedly tried to knock off Israel.


The Jews know that putrid smell of Satan's sulphur breath.  Pharaoh and Herod both killed innocent baby boys and quenched generations.  But Satan's two largest murderous lunges came in 473BC (@ Esther's story) and in our lifetime (@the Holocaust).  Here are some interesting similarities between these two events:


ESTHER
Did you happen to see the movie "One Night with the King"?  That is Esther's story, and it's on Hulu @ http://www.imdb.com/video/hulu/vi729745177/

The guy in Esther's story who wears the black hat was her enemy Haman.  He was an Amalekite (Agagite), a people who plagued Israel for years during the time of Joshua and Gideon and even David.  They were a people in Ishmael's line, born to a concubine of one of Essau's sons.  They were known for not fighting a frontal assault, but for conducting raids from behind.  They were particularly cruel and killed the young, the sick, and the helpless.  Their king was King Agag and God had commanded King Saul to take out Agag and all the Amalekites.  God has good reason to order the death sentence, but Saul didn't obey.  That disobedience was costly.  1Chronicles 4.43 speaks of a time 300 years forward when 500 leftover Amalekites were finally put to death.  Those Amalekites were Haman's family tree.


When Esther's story is told, Haman finds out she is a Jew and hatches a plot to destroy her race.  Esther trusts that the Lord is with her for a time such as was before her.  She prayed and fasted and then proceeded into the king's presence to plead for her people.


How could Haman's plan have affected Jews around the world?  The Persian empire WAS most of the known world in that time.  So when the edict gave permission to kill the Jews, that meant the Jews worldwide.  Esther's courage was the difference in life and death.  Since that day, Jews celebrate Purim (meaning casting lots or fate); Haman cast lots to decide which day to attack the Jews.  Purim celebrates the woman who saved her people from extinction.


THE HOLOCAUST
Everyone knows about the genocide that removed 6 million Jews from the face of the earth.  That number represented 75% of the 9 million Jews who lived in Europe at that time.  Satan must have smiled to think how close he was to destroying God's chosen.

Here are some similarities between Esther's story and the Holocaust:


A. Haman and Hitler both led an effort to eradicate Jews and both came to a just end.


B.  Haman had ten sons who all were hanged on the gallows.


During the Nuremberg trials, there were twelve associates of Hitler who received a death sentence.  Martin Bormann was already dead and was being tried in absentia.  Hermann Goring committed suicide the night before his execution.  That left ten men to die by hanging.


C.  Haman died, then ten men were hanged.  The Jews survived.  Hitler died, then ten men were hanged.  The Jews survived.


D.  One of the condemned Nazis (Julius Streicher) screamed "Purim Fest 1946!" before the noose was put around his neck.


E.  The Talmud describes Haman's daughter as also having committed suicide.  She would be the eleventh death in Haman's plot.  Hermann Goring was said to be a transvestite.  His suicide was the eleventh Nazi officer's death.


The Bible says that 75,000 Persians perished as a result of Haman's treachery.  We know that perhaps as many as 17 million died at Hitler's hand (without even counting the Allied deaths).  What sickening numbers.  Satan does come to kill and destroy.


Esther was an orphan born into a conquered people who lived in a foreign land.  Who could have guessed she would have ANY influence, let alone become the queen of the known world?  Would she be flabbergasted to find that after 3,000 years, a movie was made of her life?  There is no telling how many people have been emboldened over the years after reading of Esther's courage.


Satan has a history of interference, but the God we serve is a big God with a plan that will be accomplished.  And at the end of the story, Satan goes to a fiery pit and all the world will celebrate the lack of enmity in the world.


Meanwhile, we remain alert for the hissing.

DITHER DIMENSIONS

How long is a "dither"?

A dither was measured in months... when the Iraq surge was waiting.

A dither was measured in days...when the captain was bouncing in the Arabian Sea with Somali pirates.  That is, they bounced until the SEAL team marksmen took the pirates out.

But a dither was only 16 hours when the CIA thought they had OBL and waited for the President to pull the trigger.

Credit for pulling the trigger?  Yes.  But probably by that time, too many people already knew Osama was in the crosshairs and no other decision could have been reached.  Still, let's give the President credit for going for that plan over the bomb option.

What?  No need to give him credit because President Obama has already taken the credit?  In his speech about getting Osama, Obama ran the personal pronouns into the ground.  And then there was the media hype about all the pressure the President was under.  Surely that caused a sweat ring in his golf shirt from that morning's golf game.

The raid had a small glitch with the helicopter, but the White House was Glitch City.  There was much adoo about that situation room picture.  Later the WH had to admit they weren't watching the take-down because the raid wasn't filmed inside the compound house.  National Security Advisor John Brennan, the administration's first voice, said there was a 40 minute firefight and five died.  Later that version had to be pulled back.  Brennan bristled and said "well, I wasn't there".  The narrative was that Bin Laden was armed, then that he was going for his gun.  OBL had a wife-shield, then he didn't.  Press Secretary Jay Carney took over and said Bin Laden was unarmed and was shot twice.  But Carney couldn't bring himself to credit the waterboarding intel.  CIA Director Leon Panetta said there would be a picture; the WH said there might be a picture and then said there wouldn't be a picture.

This bunch is the gang who couldn't shoot straight.  Their only part was to say yes and then report it.

President Obama's large credit-grab didn't fly with the public because the polls say he only got a small bump.  People can sniff a poser like a cheap toupee.  Everyone knows that the President stood for NONE of the things that made that capture work.  Although OBL went down on this administration's watch, this President has worked tirelessly to change the perception of the terror war.

REDEFINITION

The war on terror became a more mellow "Overseas Contingency Operation".

Terrorism became "Man-Caused Disaster" and terrorists are "foreign fighters".

JUSTICE TOOK AIM AT HER OWN COUNTRY

A former SEAL team was prosecuted for giving 

a foreign fighter a fat lip during his capture.

There was much talk of prosecuting the former administration 

for protecting the country.  That put a chill on CIA recruitment/morale.

Attorney General Holder spent two years trying to bring the "foreign fighters"

to our country, give them citizen rights, and put them on trial in NYC.

The administration said "no" to military tribunals 

and "yes" to a mosque near Ground Zero.

PATRIOT ACT

The President is trying to dismantle the tools that served us well in the Patriot Act.

Previously the NYTimes had squalled about "domestic wiretapping"

and the SEAL team was called "Cheney's Assasination Team".

The outcry against "torture" and "black sites" in Europe was deafening.

But waterboarding is not torture and the black sites delivered OBL.

Perhaps people who have REALLY been tortured would be able to explain

the difference in losing a body part and flooding the nose.

The NYTImes and others refuse to accept  
that waterboarding gave us the couriers.
But here is a video of Leon Panetta in his own words...

http://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/cia-director-leon-panetta-confirms-that-waterboarding-led-to-osama-bin-laden/

GITMO

With bravado, the President orders Gitmo closed...then cannot find a way to do it.

Some Gitmo prisoners are released, only to return to the battlefield.

DEFENSE SPENDING

The President is cutting back on military spending.

The SEAL team gave America swift justice.  Now the mass murderer will not have a Miranda warning or be lawyered up.  There was no checking with the UN or other governments.  The operation that brought the ladies of The View to euphoria...was planned and executed by THE GOOD OLE USA, using the prior administration's guidelines that BHO had to adopt.  Pure irony.

And American's "get it".  All along the President has led from behind.  Then at the last minute Sunday, he conquered his dither and basked in the sunshine.  

JUSTICE SERVED

"Let destruction come upon him unawares, and let the net which he hid catch himself; into that very destruction let him fall."  Psalm 35.8


In this case, Osama bin Laden was caught in a net that took years to perfect, but then came together like a well-oiled machine.


Team Six, a special Navy Seal counter-terrorism unit working with the CIA and FOLLOWING A THREAD FROM GUANTANAMO INTEL...ended the search for the alQaeda mastermind with a bullet.  


The unemployed brother-couriers who built the million dollar compound (8x larger than anything around it, and 100 yards away from a Pakistani military academy) were traced back to the interrogation of the hairy KSM.  Thank you, President George W. Bush for acting to protect our country through the tools in the Patriot Act.  And thank you, President Obama, for giving Team Six the green light.  If bombing had been the chosen plan, there would not have been that moment for OBL to realize he was called to account.


We often hear the phrase "justice was served".  What exactly does that mean?  Why does bin Laden's death cause people together to cheer and chant and sing our national anthem?  Initially, those expressions released ten years of pent-up frustration.  But another death won't bring back the innocents of 9/11.  So what is the value of this swell of emotion?


Our internal thirst for "right" is disturbed when "wrong" goes unanswered.  That's why when the little blonde Elizabeth Smart is taken from her bedroom, we are outraged until her case comes full circle and the person responsible is punished.  God gave us that thirst for things being put right.  That causes us to desire THE righteous Judge who will ultimately settle accounts and bring about perfect justice.


But since all accounts aren't settled on this side of eternity, we were totally grateful for last night's resolution in the hunt for bin Laden.  George W. Bush was right when he said "whether we bring justice to our enemies or our enemies to justice, justice will be done".  Last night, Team Six and the CIA joined many members of the Armed Services who have worked hard for ten years and have brought justice to our enemy.  They have every reason to celebrate.


I don't know what lesson you may have taken away from this event.  Over and over as I watched the familiar pictures of OBL, I curiously searched his face.  I see a calm countenance and nice eyes.  I don't see the monster that his monstrous acts would belie.  As he crawled over the rocks and knelt down to shoot an AK-47, he looked more like a shepherd than a fighter.  In fact, he looked out of place with the automatic weapon.  So my take-away?  "Seein' isn't always believin'."  I remember that my enemy was the most beautiful of the angels and he takes some of his best shots at Christ by using a pretty face.


Another thing that struck me was that this man was sincere to the end.  And in the end, he was sincerely up Salt Creek.  How can I be such an arrogant smartypants?

Think with me about what this man believed...

OBL believed that God gave him the right to kill anyone 

who did not adhere to his worldview; God calls that intimidation MURDER.   

OBL believed women had very limited rights and should be fully draped; 

God gives women an equal part in His story. 

 (How ironic was it that some of them reportedly 

hid behind a woman at the end?)

OBL sees a god who is a master permitting servants; 

God adopts us into His family.  

OBL thought his hope's result was carnality (virgins); 

God offers true hope...eternity in a place with Him forever.  

OBL's belief system deals brutally with men's disobedience (hack off an arm); 

the Bible says men's sin grieves God's heart.  

OBL's religious language does not have an understanding of the term "forgiveness"; 

God saw sin inside of man and offered a Solution (Christ) 

and a Power Source (The Holy Spirit).

OBL knew conditional acceptance that depended on his continuous acts for god;  

God unconditionally sent Jesus to take even OBL's sin on Himself at the cross.  

But that was not what OBL chose to believe...and what you believe matters.

Bin Laden had an account in heaven that never was activated.

Here's what all of us can take away from last night's execution...we can PRAY for those who do not know the Savior.  Know anyone stuck in draining relationships with gods who demand and do not offer assurance?  

God is full of justice and mercy.  The time is NOW to fall on mercy because I sure wouldn't want the justice that I would have coming to me.  That's why the hymn lyrics say "let me hide myself in Thee".  I have a mercy Covering that will cause God to passover my sin.

I guarantee today OBL wishes he had the same cover.  If he could tell you, he would say it wasn't virgins he has now encountered...but the wrath of a holy God.

WHO DOES HE THINK HE IS?

The President of the United States serves all of our citizens, regardless of the initial (R) or (D).  Cheesy bullying is beneath the dignity of the office.

Who is this partisan politician who plays hardball with those who dare to disagree?  Why would the POTUS ever say words like...

"they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun"

to Latinos:  "punish our enemies"

"I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors.

I want you talk to them whether they are independent
or whether they are Republican.

I want you to argue with them and get in their face."

The great unifier has spoken these punitive words in the past.  But here are some good questions about the current things he is doing...

1.  Why would the President's appointee to head the National Labor Relations Board (a union attorney) file a complaint against Boeing for wanting to put in a new plant that had already hired 1,000 workers in South Carolina?  Don't we want more jobs?  Was the problem that the plant was non-union?  Is "non-union" still a free choice?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/business/21boeing.html

2.  Why would the President be involved in trying to push out the CEO of a private drug company?  Didn't that already happen with a car company?  Why would the executive branch be intimidating private enterprise?  Doesn't that send a chilling message to drug companies with Obamacare coming up?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704123204576283283851626952.html 

3.  Why has Texas not been granted federal disaster relief?

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/570406/201104271854/Messing-With-Texas-Chicago-Way.htm?

These actions are petty and heavy-handed.  They smack of a third-world despot who would cower political enemies.  Troubling.

The same man scolded the Supreme Court justices last year @ the State of the Union...as they sat captive in front of him.  And just recently, the President called in Paul Ryan and other Congressmen for a deficit speech.  Then he belittled/mischaracterized Ryan's plan as the Congressman sat before him, unable to respond.

Who is this small man with the big stick?  Is he not the LEADER of the free world?  Why has he exchanged that considerable power and influence...for this sleezy imitation?  Does President Obama have any concept of liberty and justice for all?  Didn't he teach Constitutional law?

Who does he think he is?