Render Unto Caesar

Every once in a while, you go to church or you're reading your Bible and you run into something that makes you say "wow!" Today was one of those days.

Most people that have any sort of rudimentary Christian background have probably heard the phrase "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's." And lots of people know that Jesus was talking to some of the religious people about whether they should pay tribute, or taxes, to the government. There are some people out there that like to argue that you shouldn't pay taxes, but they tend to be on the fringe and a lot of them are in jail.

What reason does Jesus give for knowing that the coins belong to Caesar's? Whose image is on the coins? Caesar's. Because Caesar's image is on the coins, we are to render them unto Caesar.

But what if you put that into context Genesis 1:27?

So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

~ Genesis 1:27

Whose image are we in? God's. So doesn't that mean that we should listen to him... or render unto God's the things which are God's?

Just something interesting that I saw today.

Have Faith

I was doing some thinking today about recent events in my life. Since things are starting to look up, I can almost look back and think that it's funny. Really, so many bad things have happened recently that it's hard to believe it actually happened:

May
- Dh lost his job
- A few days after our health insurance ended, dd was in the hospital with a 105 degree temperature. Turned out to be an infection that we killed with antibiotics.
- We applied for state assisted health insurance (that we had lost when dh got the job that he just lost)
- Dh got a new job

June
- Haven't been approved for health insurance yet. Ds ends up in the hospital with dehydration and vomiting. He lost more than a pound in 1 day... the doctor had told us a couple of days before that she was worried about his weight and he was in less than the 3rd percentile.
- Get denied for health insurance because we didn't apply for food stamps and unemployment. Nobody in that system can keep up with our changing income, I guess. We reapply because we are still eligible with the new job.

July
- Dd apparently has a UTI. We ply her with cranberry juice as we are waiting for health insurance approval.
- Dd apparently has an ear infection. More cranberry juice.
- The transmission in our car goes out. We can still drive the car on the streets, but not on the freeway.
- The engine in our car goes out. We go get a new car.
- Dh loses new job.

August
- Dh gets new job.
- Dd apparently seems to still have UTI and ear infection. More cranberry juice.
- Dd seems to be suffering from temporary hearing loss due to ear infection. I google it on the internet and it seems that as soon as we can get the infection to go away, her hearing should come back.
- Health insurance approves us for our old income with old job (our rates will go down with new job). They approve dd, me and dh, but not ds. Coverage starts September first, but we can probably get eligibility backdated to pay for our stack of ER bills... at least for dd.

So most everything has been resolved. I'm sure if I bug them enough and call around enough, they will add my ds. I think why he's not covered right now is because he's under a year old so he needs coverage under a different program. I just need to squeak enough until they get him covered. I will be taking dd to urgent care on September 1st to get antibiotics for her ear infection.

This isn't a poor me story, but a story about how great God is. Throughout all of this, he has taken care of us. Not once did our cupboards even go remotely bare. I use The Grocery Game to make up my shopping lists, so we always have plenty of food in our house, even for the couple of weeks in this time period that we didn't have money to shop. We have made our mortgage payments on time, as well as the car payment. The electricity stayed on and so did the water and the sewer. He has been very good taking care of us. For the last few months, there have been some times when I've wondered how God was going to come through, and he always did.

We are all relatively healthy. We are alive and well. I am thankful for that. Of course, some people can not say that. Please continue to pray for Bingomama who lost 2 children and a husband or ex-husband last night in a fire.

God will take care of you if you put your trust in him. He has with us.

Living With Regret

I have a friend who lives with regret. I'll call him John (not his real name). Years ago, he was married to the love of his life and he didn't realize it. He was a little lazy, took things for granted, and she left him.

Fast forward nearly 10 years in time. They both remarried and moved on with their lives. John loves his wife... I think... but he's not extraordinarily happy. They really don't have too much in common... she doesn't get into his hobbies, and he goes along unwillingly to a lot of her activities just to keep her from nagging. If he had the opportunity, he'd probably have an affair.

He found his ex-wife on Classmates.com recently. The guy that she's married to is quite well off, and she still enjoys all the same things that they used to do together. I'm pretty sure that John still loves her. I know for a fact that he regrets not getting his act together back then and keeping her.

I'm worried that John might end up with another regret in his life. He's one of those people that is probably saved, but still wants to live like the world. He doesn't understand why people would spend every Sunday morning in church. He wants to look at the ladies at the mall and lust after them. He's an overall good guy, although a worldly one.

My husband has tried to talk to him, convince him that God wants more for his life than just living and partying. He tells John that if he doesn't change how he's living, he'll end up with a shack in Heaven, when he could have a much bigger house or mansion. John doesn't care. He has his fire insurance policy to keep him out of hell, and that's all he wants.

It's hard to think of this life as the temporary and ridiculously short span of time that it is. But if you think of the 100 (if you have a long life) years or so of life that you may end up with on this Earth, it is such insignificant in the grand scheme of things. In 1000 years, do I want to look back on this life and regret that I wasted so much time? I'm sure that I will to some degree, but I do try to put a little bit of effort to live a good life and do what Jesus wants. In 10,000 years, 100 years on earth is going to seem like a couple months do now. In 1,000,000 years, or 1,000,000,000,000 years, or even a google years from now (that's 1 with 100 zeros after it that I'm talking about, not the search engine)... we'll still be around. What we do today will seem so insignificant, but the time that we waste or live displeasing to God will make a difference in eternity.

I'm sure that Heaven will be great for anyone who ends up there, but will some of us have regrets there? There is no upward mobility in Heaven, and it is for all eternity. In this life you can't control what hand you are dealt. Probably everyone reading this blog is lucky enough to live in a country where many people have computers and almost everyone has electricity. Some people might be rich by their country's standards, some may be poorer. Maybe you were dealt a hand where you are ill all the time. Maybe your parents abused you. Maybe you were born with a brilliant mind and everything always seems to go your way. You can't control those things. That's the hand that God has assigned to you.

What you can control, however, is what hand you will be dealt in eternity. We can't all be missionaries to Uganda. Not every one of us can be a famous preacher. Not all of us can anonymously donate a building to a church. But we can all seek out God's will and do it. What we do today... whether we do what God asks us to do... will determine how we live for all eternity. I think that if God is a fire insurance policy and nothing more, we may have some regrets in the end. Just like my friend does in this life.

Sin Is Like...

A person who sins is like a baby in a dirty diaper. We all do it, but God still loves us anyway, even though sin makes us stink to God. When we cry out to Him for help, He changes us, and removes the filth from our lives. Then we do not stink any more. Until we sin again.

Been changing a lot of poopy diapers lately, and thought of that. Whenever my little boy has a messy diaper I still love him. I don't get rid of him because he stinks, I clean him up and give him a new diaper.

Bridge Collapse In Minneapolis

If you keep up with the news, you might have already heard of the bridge collapse in Minneapolis over the Mississippi river. At least six people died... ABC has some pictures and information here.

There was no earthquake. It just happened. Bridges usually don't just collapse for no reason, but apparently, it did today. Now engineers may find a reason as they investigate, but there is no reason that jumps right out to the casual observer.

It just shows you how fragile life is. One day, you can wake up, go to work, and on the way home something like this happens. Perfectly healthy people, even professional athletes, sometimes have heart attacks right out of the blue. Your home can be robbed and during the robbery you can lose your life, or you could be hit by a drunk driver coming home from dinner some night.

Our lives are so fragile. Earlier this week, we lost four people in a helicopter collision in Arizona. Nobody could have predicted that. And nobody could have predicted this bridge collapse.

One day, it could be any day... it could be before I finish writing this... Jesus will be coming back for his people. He will come back for those of us who have repented of our sins and trusted him as our savior. Which doesn't mean that we don't still sin... we don't want to sin, and when we do, we feel bad about it.

Those that do not trust Jesus as their savior will be left behind to face God's judgement and wrath. Similarly, if we live our lives as we wish, and never repent of our sins and trust in Jesus, sudden destruction and wrath will come upon us eventually. It could come in the form of a heart attack, a freak stingray accident, or a bridge collapse. We just don't know. None of us know how many breaths we have left. Every second we get upon this Earth is a gift from God, and none of us are guaranteed another.

I pray for the families of those who were left behind in this bridge accident. I pray for the emergency workers who may still be out there trying to help. I pray for the entire community in Minneapolis, as I'm sure that this will effect them greatly. I hope that those who lost their lives had trusted Jesus as their savior, but whatever the outcome, it is too late for them to change it now.

As an aside note, I know that the Way of the Master Radio is based in Minnesota. I pray especially for all those that work at WOTM, and hope that none of them were hurt in the accident.

You Go! Hindu Senate Prayer Disrupted

The Hindu prayer in the Senate has been news lately. It has been something that I haven't been thrilled about, but what are you going to do? I should have written my senators to complain... maybe I should have.

Well, today I heard the rest of the story. During this guy's "prayer", some Christians up in the gallery started praying. One asked God to forgive our country of their sins by having a heathen pray or something along those lines (I'm paraphrasing). A news story talks about it here. They removed him, and someone else started praying. I guess there's a video floating around of this, I just haven't had the chance to see it. I heard the audio of it on hour 2 of The Way of The Master Radio's podcast.

Well, you go guys! I don't know who they are, what happened to them, whether they were carted off to jail or not... but good job! I hadn't even thought about doing something like that... not that it would have been feasible for me to fly to Washington DC, but I hadn't even thought about it.

Fathers and God In America

Today is father's day. Well, it's almost done, and by the time you read this it will be over. If you're a father, I hope that you had a good one.

It was a good idea to reflect on the role that fathers play in this country, I suppose. Or at least, that's what I did... among helping the kids make their dad a t-shirt, picking up some steaks for him to BBQ, and trying to find a helium balloon for him.

A lot of fathers in the media today look like bumbling idiots. Homer Simpson, anyone? Tim Taylor on Tool Time was always hurting himself in one way or another. They did a really good job on Jericho portraying Johnston the mayor as a good father though. Dads in Jingle All The Way and Liar Liar are unreliable buffoons or liars. It's the mother in Home Alone that risks life and limb to return to her son early, not the dad. Don't even get started with television commercials, where dads and other slobs of men all sit in front of the football game stuffing themselves on pizza and beer, ogling over cheerleaders.

Bernard Goldberg made a good point in his book Crazies to the Left of Me, Wimps to the Right. After hurricane Katrina, poor moms standed at the Superdome were crying about how their infants were suffering because they had no access to diapers and milk... where were the fathers?

And where was the father of baby "John Vincent", the toddler who was left abandoned in a hospital with a note on his diaper saying "Please help my baby John Vincent I can no longer take care of him. Lost job, lost medical. God have mercy on me."

Fathers are increasingly seen as unnecessary. Once a baby is conceived, some people think that is all that is needed. Single mothers raise their babies all the time. Often it's not a choice. Things happen. People get divorced, widowed, etc. It's not really seen as a big deal any more.

My pastor said something today that made me think. The family is a picture of God's love. The husband is supposed to love his wife like Christ loved the church. Parents learn how much God loves us (and how helpless we are in comparison to him) when they bring home a new baby. Fathers are (or at least should be because they live up to it) seen in the eyes of their children as all-powerful, loving people in authority. A child learns to love their father, respect him, and obey him... and eventually, they hopefully will learn to love, respect, and obey God. The father is an earthly role that pictures God's relationship to us.

So if fathers are absent, irresponsible, unimportant, unreliable buffoons, what does that say about our society and our view on God?

Well...

~ God is absent from many of our lives... or at least many would like it to be so.
~ God is unimportant to many people.
~ Many people today believe that God doesn't exist, or is cruel, intolerant, and/or bigoted
~ Many people casually view him as "the big guy upstairs"... umm... is he laying around in front of football in his underwear drinking beer and eating pizza, by any chance?
~ He is seen by many as a God that has let them down in the past, because someone died when they prayed that they wouldn't, financial ruin happened, or some other tradgedy
~ And of course, people that believe that God's Bible is true are illiterate, unintelligent buffoons... especially if you believe all that "nonsense" about a literal 6 day creation 6000 or so years ago

We like to make a lot of decisions without the father nowadays. We can abort babies without even letting the father know they had a child to begin with. We pack up and take the kids down a messy road of divorce because we're "not happy". And while there are tons of nice balloons in the stores for mother's day, only a handful are available with "Happy Father's Day" written on them.

Maybe there's a correlation between how we as a society views fathers (and fatherhood) and how we view God.