Random Thoughts 10/13/05

• Several men from the church are going to a men's retreat at church camp this weekend. I'm looking forward to it but not real eager to be away from home overnight. I'll miss prayer time with the boys and evenings with my bride. I'll especially miss Elijah going to bed. He tottles over to me and gives me a big wet kiss and then stubles upstairs and attempts to climb into his crib. Words don't do justice to express how cute it is.
• I saw a few t-shirts online with pictures of communist revolutionary Che Guevara. They had captions that read, "Communism killed 100 million people and all I got was this lousy t-shirt." "This t-shirt brought to you by capitalism." and "Commies aren't cool." Made me giggle.
• 3500 posts! I've got friends (really, I do!) and family reading this in mulitple states (countries?). Thanks for reading my blog.
  
• One of the funnier things I've seen lately has been the "Cpt Wedley: Bn Diciplinator" video from last year (that's "Captain Wedley: Battalion Disciplinator" for the uninformed). Pretty funny stuff. You can find it at this site but only if you have Windows Media Player installed, which didn't work very well for me even on a cable connection. Go figure, it's windows; good luck with that. Still, it's worth the effort if you need a good laugh.
• The chain has been broken! The associate minister here at our church has been telling everyone the good news: they're expecting a girl! Among the three ministers that have been at Wyandotte, we've had seven boys and no girls, so this is welcome news. Shannon and I still have to wait a few more weeks to find out about Altic baby 4.0.
• Speaking of babies, I listened to a radio interview this morning with the proud parents of 16 children. And get this, they're planning number 17… [squints and rubs temples] …uh, yeah… that's reasonable. But with people like that, the rest of can have four or five without anyone batting an eye, right? Realistically, we're going to use our God-given, Spirit-led DISCERNMENT to determine if we ever go beyond the four we have now. And no, letting nature take it's course with zero application of wisdom is NOT necessarily "letting God decide." Using that logic, you could let God decide the length of your hair and see what happens. God must be anti-short-hair and every haircut must be a sinful defiance of God's Will for your follicles. Don't get me wrong, I'm for big families, but 17?! Let's be responsible stewards here. I'd bet that very few couples are truly called to go that far.
  
• And one more thing: look at what actually happened in the largest families of the Bible – almost nothing but bad news. So don't bite off more than you can chew! If there are so many children that Mom and Dad can't do the training they're called by God to do and instead you have siblings doing the parenting, then you ought to reconsider the wisdom of what's going on. </soapbox>
  
• Elijah is into scolding. He's can't really talk, but he'll wag his finger and give the cat a stern talking to in baby talk. Today he got onto another little kid whose mother lightly rebuked him for hitting her. Well, Eli goes over and sticks his fat little finger in this kid's face and begins dressing him down in gibberish. And he won't stop either; he's determined to talk you to death. I wonder where he gets that?
• I had a door-to-door Bible salesman visit me tonight at home. I told him he was preaching to the choir and sent him packing. Go bother the pagans next door. God bless!