New Life'n

How do you know how much gas you need? Should you get it?

Some line up to top off half-full tanks.  That doesn't mean you're panicking -- it might mean you have a long ways to drive and need to make sure you can make it.

Some, of course, are in a bit of panic -- What if I can't get gas!  If I don't get it now, I may not get any later!  Everyone else is getting it!  Buy 5-gallon containers, fill them all and store them.

Some are just doing the normal thing the same way they always do -- cars need gas.

Some are running out on the side of the road -- I knew I should have filled up when I had the chance!  And others see them run out and learn their lesson.

Some have always only bought a few dollars of gas at a time.  That's all they've got.  They wish they had money to fill up.

So you have the need for a certain amount of gas, and you even have the right to get more.  But getting more than you need will contribute to the problem and definitely make someone else have less.  What do you do?

It's not referring to gas (actually something more important) so you might not want to apply it to gas -- but in thinking about doing something you have the right to do, there is an attitude you could take:

Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ -- 1 Corinthians 9

It was not because we did not have that right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate -- 2 Thessalonians 3

In humility consider others better than yourselves.  Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others -- Philippians 2

Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow

Shepard Smith just said if the bailout thing doesn't happen soon, "the economy is done."  Brenda asked me what that means.  I don't think Shep knows what it means either. 

The President says it's a "once-in-a-century crisis."  The Treasury Secretary says Americans, "should be scared."  I heard last week that 25% of Americans think we're in a depression -- now.

It all may change in a few days.  Or get worse.

What if it does get worse?

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In our families and neighborhoods and country are some Americans who aren't saying much right now.  They're in their 80's and 90's.  Most of them are too tired to talk strongly about it, but when they were kids and young adults, they lived thru a once-in-a-century crisis that lasted 15 years.

They saw 1,300 banks close (so far this year, it's 12).  They saw 1 out of 4 Americans earning NO income -- zero-nada-zip.  For those with jobs there was no minumum wage and no limits on how many hours your boss could make you work.  Large groups of homeless, unemployed men drifted around the country. 

A horrible drought and crop failures destroyed thousands of family farms in the middle of America -- 2.5 milion people left their homes and farms.  Giant dust storms blew dirt clouds from the Great Plains as far as Chicago (where dirt fell like snow) and even to New York City.

Then America fought TWO wars -- one in Europe and one against Japan.  At the same time.  One dictator's goal was to take over the world.  Millions of people were murdered, apart from war, just because of their religion.  Another dictator killed millions of his own people (and he was on our side). 

After Pearl Harbor, Americans cancelled their plans -- marriage, family, college, career -- everything was on hold.  Twelve million Americans (almost 1 in 11 of every man, woman, child) were in the military (there's about 150,000 soildiers in Iraq & Afghanistan right now).  35% of the workforce were women.

We've lost 4,000 soldiers in Iraq in over 5 years.  In 3 months on one island during WW2 (Okinawa), 12,000 Americans were killed.  On Iwo Jima 6,000 died -- in one month.

Our 80- and 90-year-old family members and neighbors might agree we should be nervous or scared.  But they know about confusion and uncertainty and fear and war and depression -- they lived it for fifteen straight years.  And they survived to thrive and raise families and own homes and businesses. 

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On the desk of a man I respect is a small plaque saying, "Jesus is the Answer."  Someone once asked him, "the answer to what?"  He said, "what's the question?"

The same little plaque is on my desk.  Nobody's ever asked me that question, but if they did, about all this, answers might start with...

No king is saved by the size of his army:
    no warrior escapes by his great strength.
A horse is a vain hope for deliverance;
    despite all its great strength it cannot save.
But the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him,
    on those whose hope is in his steadfast love. (Psalm 33)

And

We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose...

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8)

I wonder what I would've thought if I'd know all that?

I'm 19 and sitting in the front seat of my Corvair convertible with the top down beside Brenda, my not-yet-wife.  Looking up at the late-night sky, all the wisdom of my years converges into an epiphany and I realize why we're all here: for nothing.  It all just happened, and our little minds try to make sense of it by trying to put purpose and "god" into the picture. 

And that settles it for me...for about eighteen more years.

I wonder what my Genius-ness would have concluded if I'd known what I was actually seeing as I stared into that sky?  That the whole thing is so deep that if you launched out of my Corvair front seat at the speed of light, it would take 5 hours to get to Pluto (that was fast!) but then 100,000 more years just to leave our own Milky Way galaxy?  And that there's at least 100 billion more galaxies like ours, and that each galaxy is filled with millions, or billions (or more!) of stars?

Um, that's big... 

You can take that trip to the end of the universe HERE, and at the same time find out why we named a big telescope after Edwin, who spent eight years sitting in a wicker chair squinting thru an eyepiece.  Be sure to click the links when Jeff asks you to.

Mercy Me's new song

Not only right, but good for you

Jeremiah 7.  People are ignoring God, not listening, not trusting, making everything a priority but him.  It's showing up in their lives in the way they treat people.  And there's a lot of immorality.

They think they're getting away with something because they mix in some religious things.

And God basically says, it's like you're trying to provoke me to anger...

Then he throws their "getting away with something" attitude back at them:

But am I the one they are provoking?  Are they not rather harming themselves to their own shame?

I'm always remembering -- I need to be a person that pleases God, that he wants it, he deserves it...

But I'm always forgetting -- it's in my own best interest.

Everything you need to know about the banking crisis is in that big water bucket at Carowinds

So what's going on with the economy? 

It's the usual dilemma with complex things: If the answer takes too long, with too much detail, you won't wade thru it.  If it's short, you'll read it, but it may not answer your questions. 

I thought this was helpful and encouraging; 15 paragraphs, simple but thorough, 5 minutes to read -- Thinking Biblically about the Banking Crisis.

Basically, it sounds like the big bucket at Boomerang Bay at Carowinds.  The more things swing way over there (risky loans filling up the bucket for a long time), the more it swings back hard the other way (defaults and bank closures spilling all over everything) -- sooner or later, something's gotta give.

But after the spilling and soaking...?  Things smooth out...

A simple woman quietly did her best

Straight from this week's Monday Morning Memo:

Elizabeth was a young Quaker girl who fell happily in love and got married in 1929. “Morgan Vining, my husband, swept my little boat out of the shallows into the sunlit depths of life’s stream and we had almost five years together before, in a single moment, he was gone.”

Car wrecks happen quickly.

Elizabeth Vining was adrift. A line from the Breton Fisherman's Prayer said it best, "Oh Lord, your sea is so great and my boat is so small."

Elizabeth became a schoolteacher who in the evening wrote children’s books. Her most popular title was Adam on the Road (1942).

Then, at the end of World War Two, 43 year-old Elizabeth Vining got a call. General Douglas MacArthur had decided not to charge Japan’s Emperor Hirohito with war crimes. Instead, he asked that Elizabeth Vining become the tutor of Crown Prince Akihito, the emperor’s son.

Elizabeth accepted.

Upon her arrival in Japan, she encountered a lonely 12 year-old boy whose eyes sparkled with “a hidden sense of humor.” As crown prince, Akihito lived separately from his parents. He saw them only once a week, for a one-hour meal together.

The next 4 years were filled with English lessons, games of Hide and Seek, Monopoly and stories of Abraham Lincoln. The seeds of independent thinking were planted.

Risk orientation.
Individual effort and reward.
Breaking the rules.
Thinking outside the box.
These ideas were profoundly unJapanese.

In 1950, Elizabeth Vining returned quietly to the United States since Akihito’s mastery of English was nearly as good as her own. Akihito’s farewell gift to Mrs. Vining was a poem, written in his best calligraphy, about the birds returning to the Akasaka Palace Gardens after the war.

Soon after the departure of Mrs. Vining, young Akihito met beautiful Michiko on the tennis court. In 1959, he broke 2,600 years of Japanese tradition by marrying Michiko, a commoner.

And a Quaker woman from America was the only foreigner allowed to attend the wedding.

But Akihito wasn’t finished surprising the world. All Japan was stunned when he and Michiko announced they would raise their own children. Another 2,600 year-old tradition, shattered by the 125th emperor of Japan.

Akihito’s attitude gave freedom to other Japanese to begin thinking independently as well. Honda, Sony, Toyota, Mitsubishi and their amazing fruits of innovation sprouted from a single seed, planted by a Quaker widow.

Vining opened the door in 1946. Deming walked through it in 1950.

Elizabeth Vining lived to be 97 years old. And each year on her birthday, with all the precision and dependability we have come to expect from Japan, a limousine from the Japanese embassy would stop in front of her home as a tuxedoed ambassador delivered a giant bouquet of flowers.

A simple woman quietly did her best,
a young boy had a change of heart,
and a nation opened the doors of its mind.

It would appear that a small boat is able to cross a great sea.

Turn it up

Yeah, you're a scholar

A functional, not technical, scholar.  You do it all the time.

You ask questions at the landscape nursery and do research online before you choose a tree that's going to shade that dining room window from the blazing afternoon sun.  How big will it get?  How fast will it grow?  Will it work in your area's climate?  What color is it in the spring and fall?  How do you plant it?

You may not know it's etymology, or country of origin, or it's genera or subgenera -- you're not a botanist.  But you can learn enough to get the tree you need.  You study it.

Same with recipes and cooking.  Iron Chef may intimidate you, but you don't need to do that -- you just want to eat and feed your family well and maybe enjoy being in the kitchen.  And you can, without being Bobby Flay.

Before we went to New York I studied the subway system.  I don't know the kinds of cars they use or who builds them or how many miles they go before they fail.  I can't give a lecture on rotary converter technology.  But I knew what time I had to leave Yankee Stadium and what transfers to make to get to the Port Authority and then my hotel so we'd get to The Phantom of the Opera on time.  I studied it.

You study to learn what you need to know at the time (that's how Abraham Lincoln learned law!).  And when you study, you use scholarly people and sources -- the National Gardening Association, Rachael Ray, Paula Dean, the MTA maps.

That's the same thing you do (or can do) with the Bible.

You don't have to know Hebrew or Greek of Aramaic.  You don't have to be a seminary graduate.  Of course, you won't know all that seminary graduates know.

But you can be a functional Bible scholar.  You can learn enough to know how to think and what to do.  All it takes is the same interest, curiosity and diligence that you use all the time in other areas of life.  You have to want to -- need to -- know. 

And just like in landscaping or cooking or traveling, it helps to use sources from others who are technical scholars (for example THIS or THIS or THIS).

Then, incredibly, there's that extra-special, mind-blowing, supernatural bonus -- that makes this kind of study different from anything else you'll ever do:

"If you do not understand a book by a departed writer, you are unable to ask him his meaning, but the Spirit, who inspired Holy Scripture, lives forever, and He delights to open the Word to those who seek His instruction" -- Charles Spurgeon

Today

Now it seems forever ago, but remember when it first happened? -- you weren't sure what it was or what it meant.  Your fear and shock evolved over a few hours.  One family's home video from their window 500 yards away, as their fear and shock evolves...