Something to make your brain hurt

NLT Proverbs 11:15 Guaranteeing a loan for a stranger is dangerous; it is better to refuse than to suffer later.

NLT Matthew 5:42 Give to those who ask, and don't turn away from those who want to borrow.

Can you synthesize these two ideas? PLEASE COMMENT!

Psalm 23

God is like my own personal Sherpa. Since he designed the mountains and schedules their movements, I don't think I'll ever find a better guide than him.
He always finds these grassy openings along the narrow trail for me to nap on.
He's really good at finding little streams where we can fill our canteens too, which btw is way better than trying to carry all your water with you up the mountain. Water is way refreshing, but also way HEAVY! Better to rely on my sherpa than try to carry the load myself.
He takes me on ancient trails that are so infrequently traveled that he has to point the trail out to me, but they are always the best, best views, most challenging, and most rewarding. That's why anyone who has heard of him knows he is the best there is.
Even though we occasionally find ourselves walking on a narrow mountain ridge trail with 5,000 foot drops on both sides, I'm not afraid because I know I'm with the BEST! I just enjoy sharing the view of a place only he and I may ever see and appreciate the sweat on my brow and the pulsing blood in my thighs as proof the climb really wasn't more than I could handle like I thought at the beginning of the trail.
I'm really kind of a wimp when it comes to climbing. I whine and complain a lot when he points at trails that head straight up a seemingly horizontal trail. I psyche myself out and try to give up long before my body is actually exhausted. I fake injuries sometimes so I can rest when I could probably keep going. But get this, when we meet other climbers on the path he spends our entire time with them bragging about how awesome I am at climbing. He never mentions once my weak performance.
He is the kind of guy that makes you feel like "hey once this trip is over I want to quit my job and come back and be his baggage handler" just so I can be near this person who's life seems to make so much sense.

A Psalm of Kurt

Thank God!
I forget all the time, but he is always watchin' out for me. Sometimes I start thinking about him like he is just some guy like me, but he's not. I'm made of mud and when you squeeze me $#!+ comes out both ends. NOT God, no he is like clean white silk sheets. Cool beautiful light and blue clean refreshing water would come from him if you squeezed him.
A couple months back I was in deep despair. I had been so certain that I was to leave the situation I was in. I had plenty. I had purpose. I had friends. I was a celebrity. Then I found that I had nothing. No plenty. No purpose. No friends. No celebrity. I couldn't find work. Without a job I felt useless, my life-meaningless, my time-of no worth. I felt like a coal miner buried alive, my life ebbing away and there was nothing I could do. I had expended all the effort I had and I couldn't dig my way out. Slowly I was dying with no hope.
But then God...a job from no where. Not just any job but one seemingly made especially for me. Supervisors who appreciated the strange mix of gifts God has assembled in me. Pay that could sustain us. I could make my own schedule up.
He had to wait until it was obvious beyond the shadow of a doubt that I hadn't and couldn't and didn't achieve this by my effort. He had to hang me out there because I had started to think that I was the cause of my own success...that I had done it myself. We do nothing ourselves. And we achieve only with God's help. I write this to help myself remeber in days to come that at my best days I should be in no less reliance on God than on my worse. He sustains me. Remember THAT!

DARE Officer Training

I just had one of the best weekends with my family. I spent the last week in South Dakota at DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) Training. Its hotter than blazes up there. You know they say absence makes the heart grow fonder. When I came back this weekend we really had all missed each other and had a great time together. In fact, it was the kind of great time that I hope I would have with my family right before I were to die unexpectedly, not that I plan on dying anytime soon.
DARE school has been intense. ALOT of homework the first week, hopefully there will be less this week. I definetly had a bad attitude midweek last week about it, but was able to recover by the end of the week. You know Jesus said that if someone slaps us on the one cheek we are to offer him the other to slap and that if someone makes us carry their load a mile we should choose to carry it another mile for them (I wonder if that is where the expression going the extra mile came from?). Anyway, the instructors here are on our side just trying to make us the best we can be, and I still have trouble having a good attitude. The "pressure" their putting on me isn't even malicious like in the situations Jesus is talking about and I still have a really hard time having a good attitude and just accepting my rightful place as an obedient and grateful student!
AUDIOBOOK Reviews
I listened to the Davinci Code on the way up here. It was a decent detective novel, but definetly not the scholarly attack on the deity of Jesus Christ I had been led to believe. Its a novel about people who believe the church has erased female divinity out of christianity. It was kind of an extremist feminist bent on what Christianity, and all religions should be. That seemed particularly funny to me since the main character of the book was of course a guy. He had a female sidekick, but she was the type cast sidekick type character. The book ends up being a search for the holy grail redefined. Do not read this next sentence if you don't want the story ruined****. Drag your cursor over the blank spot below to see the spoiler!!



The side kick ends up being the holygrail and the the lost female divine all wrapped in one and she doesn't even know it.



Safe to start reading again
I think the book was probably so popular because it is a good detective novel and because the church is starting to feel antiquaited to many people. Maybe they were hoping for a new vision of the future of faith. Plus the book is all about knowing about the skeletons in Jesus' closet. If there is anything our society likes its knowing the dirt on our celebrities.

I'm also about halfway thru The secret message of Jesus by Brian McLaren. It has been really good so far. McLaren does such a good job of capturing the disconnect between what Jesus and Paul say in the New Testament and what the present day church does.

Well I better get back to work. I have homework due tomorrow.