Time travel

I was packing today for our upcoming move. Every time I pack my stuff I waste inordinate amounts of time standing over a half packed box reading a book, or losing myself in a picture, time traveling to places I've already been. I have a posterboard with a map of my life that ends at age 27, when I made it. I always get lost in those pictures. Trying to remember who that gangly 9th grader is standing next to his equally gangly date to the dance. Wanting to talk to the muscular hairless 20 year old showing off his muscles. Its not about regret. Don't get me wrong, I've made mistakes, I'm just thru wishing I could change things. The road I have taken God used to make me into the person I am today, and I am happy to be me. But the person I am today is so much different than the "me's" in the pictures. I just wonder what were my priorities then? What drove me? What was I thinking about? Did I care for the people around me? I enjoy so much watching good movies time and time again to better understand the story. It just seems ironic that I only get one viewing of the most important story in my life. No second chance to pick up on foreshadowing or to listen to the master author give away where the story is going through the words of other characters. Only one chance to catch the significance.

OK on a different topic, just finished watching LOST. Its exciting to see where things are going. Toward the end of the episode John Locke started drawing the map of the hatch from memory and here is what we got. His map seemed to show the swan station at the bottom, but I'm not sure about the pine tree station. Does anyone out there remember what the name of the station was where they took Claire to steal her baby? Was it a snake?

Witnessing Jehovah

I want to witness Jehovah. God decided to accomplish that by sending me some Jehovah's Witnesses the other day. Now a few years ago before I realized that God loved people I sent a Jehovah's witness away with both of us yelling "BLASPHEMER!!!!" at each other. I vowed to do better next time. So God gave me a year or so to think about it and bling there they were.
Anyway my new approach was this, stop just seeing "a heretical Jehovah's Witness" standing in front of me and start seeing a fellow human being, who Jesus loves a lot, that is actually seeking God. I could love that person and so I didn't immediately start pointing out the errors in their thinking. It went much better. I think they felt heard and like someone cared for them. In truth none of us buys into all of any belief system so it isn't fair to label a person and then act as though we know them inside out because we understand their belief system to some extent.

Now the JWs gave me some booklets which I devoured over the next two days. I was struck by several things.
1. How JW's have departed from historic orthodox christian belief
Reject Trinity
A gospel of rules
Reject personality of the Holy Spirit
Reject eternality and co-equal divinity of Jesus
2. How similar the development & beliefs of the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society are to the development & beliefs of the fundamentalist movement
-Both started with end times bible conferences in the late 1800s
-Both focused on personal piety
-Both were very legalistic
-Both interpreted the Bible very literally
-Both wanted to distinguish themselves from "watered down" denominations
-Both picked some pretty peculiar issues to camp out on
-JWs:
Jesus died on a pole not a cross
Jesus received authority from God to rule in 1914
Only 144,000 people will go to heaven
Trinity is wrong, Jesus was created, Holy Spirit is not a person
No celebrating X-mas, Easter, or birthdays

Another thing that struck me is how the JW's are stuck on old methods, door to door evangelism namely, that no longer fit with the culture. That was developed in a culture where things were sold door to door, a front porch society, neither is now true.

Favorite quote:
"...some 6,000,000 persons today...feel that they properly refer to themselves as Jehovah's Witnesses"
HUH!?! What an odd way to word that.

Oh BTW we are closing on this house first of May and this weekend marks the end of my training at the Police Department.
Simon is almost walking too!

The seeds of the desire to punish

So what made me want to punish Lee Ann. By the way in case you haven't gathered so far I think the desire to punish is EVIL. I think it is sin. A sin that Jesus decried in the Pharisees and that is more important than any of the sins we normally think about, cursing, drinking, and so on. Some of the ingredients of the desire to punish are:
-Self-pity instead of the benefit of the doubt
-Self-centeredness instead of other centeredness
-enslavement ot the law rather than the grace of God
-self-justification over self-sacrifice
-trading redemption for "tit for tat"
Can you think of any ingredients of the desire to punish?

The desire to punish

The other afternoon as I was leaving for work I was overcome by the desire to "punish" my wife. Being on the night shift, I was sleeping during the day and I woke up to Emma screaming and a teenage girl babysitting the kids, which just felt weird waking up to some other woman being in your house while your asleep. So I carefully took a shower and then mistakenly overpaid the babysitter and sent her home. I realized Lee Ann was gone at a Musical she had taken both her parents to on our dime. So I took the kids outside and we played until Lee Ann got home at 5:10. I needed to be at work in 20 minutes. I changed quickly and didn't get any dinner before work. I wanted to punish her. I wouldn't look her in the eye. I gave her short answers. I avoided her. I was going to punish her by any means necessary. Part of me knew I shouldn't punish her, much of the frustration of the day was unavoidable, plans made far in advance.
I was wrong to even want to punish her. Where does this desire come from?