Merry, Merry

Hey all,

Here is a wacky Christmas 'card' from Quinn and Lyla.
Sorry about the colour or lack thereof.

Consider this your Christmas card...(you know it's better!!)

Have fun, celebrate, reflect and rejoice - its Christmas!

CHRISTMAS!!

Stay tuned...

"Christmas"

presented by

Quinn and Lyla

Coming soon!!

Headlines

News Headlines for Thursday, December 13th, 2007

At my work, I take a few minutes to read the paper or the online version of it. If anyone knows me-bit of a news junkie, more so the international news. I know there may be more to the stories than simply going by what the headline suggests...however, I was shaking my head over a few of these...

Some headlines that got me this morning were:

Avoid sharing a crack pipe, university warns

Sharing??? It's OK to do crack, just don't share the pipe? What?

My ex is spreading lies about our breakup

Why is this even making the news, I'd be embarrassed if I was the editor of the Globe and Mail and this was taking up space in my paper.

Top of the holiday wish list: divorce

Again, why is this taking up space on the home page? I guess it is a statistic, a sad reality. Holidays, pressure, strain on marriages. This morning I was listening to the radio and they were talking about finding 'the perfect gift' and if you don't find the perfect gift, you found a crappy gift and your recipient may have to put on a 'This is great, Thank You', when they don't really mean it. The announcers were serious about this, I felt like phoning in and ranting about this 'perfect gift' phrase everyone throws around at Christmas. If you can't find the 'perfect' gift, don't buy a gift and don't stress about buying a gift. That's my logic. Last year I didn't do gifts for my siblings because I didn't know what to get anyone, I was at a loss. Instead I bought some chickens for some kids in another country. This year is a little different, ideas are just popping into my head and I'm going with it (might still buy some chickens too).

Adopted Korean girl given up by Dutch diplomat after 7 years

I actually read this story yesterday, but it's still on the website. This dutch diplomat who lives in Hong Kong, he and his wife adopt this girl b/c they could not have kids of their own. Well, they find out later they could and had 2 of their own. So now they told the agency this girl just isn't working for their family so they hand her back and now they (social services) need to find a new family for this girl. She can't go back to Korea, because she doesn't know Korean, only Mandarin and English. 7 years old and your family gets pulled out from under you. Probably for the best then, I'm sure Someone has other, grander plans for her life...

Canada plans to keep a base in Kandahar until 2015

I love how the government, defence dept. or the UN can put time lines on support. Even if they keep the base 'til 2015, they've talked about the troops pulling out before then. It might be good to have a 2 year plan going in, gives them guidelines for budgets, planning projects, etc. But there is no real way to know what could happen between now and 2015, they don't know what the Taliban has up their sleeve. Whether or not I'm for war, I feel that Afghanistan is one place Canada should be. I prefer the peacekeeping roles over 'war', but feel that Bin Laden needs to be caught and prosecuted, therefore some necessary measures have to be taken. Although I take comfort in this quote from the same story...

"Mr. Bernier emphasized that the Conservatives don't believe that Canada "should simply abandon the Afghans in 2009.""

Sounds great...Now they're talking sense as long as they stick with it and don't change their mind when it comes to election time.

Fighting

Everything outside my physical life is designed to cause my death. - Oswald Chambers

This morning I read a devotional from My Utmost for His Highest and it talked about fighting. How we fight to stay alive (physical), how we fight spiritually, how we fight morally and how we fight mentally.
I was thinking of the physical and how the elements of this world could take you out, but they don't because we fight them. i.e. snowstorm/cold - if we are in the midst of the cold, we will not live, so we fight to stay warm. the roads, we fight to stay on them. We fight to see in blinding white snow. Hunger can kill you - for most of us it is not a fight to stay fed, for a lot in this world it is. It is a fight to stay healthy and strong. We fight to stay warm and fed.

Morally - now here's a big one. Fighting to be moral. I think Moral and Spiritual fight can be intertwined. Don't a lot of my morals come from spiritual standards? (I think Oswald Chambers would agree, however he did list them seperately.) Moral strength = virtue. If I want to be virtuous, the morals that I believe need to be kept. If my morals go against another's lack of moral (or we differ in morals), I fight to reinforce the moral law rather than letting it go. As O. Chambers said, "moral law does not happen by accident, moral virtue is acquired."

Spiritual - Seems obvious...Eph. 6:12...fighting principalities, not people. In my mind I look at some very evil wars that have gone on and are going on. Situations like Cambodia's genocide, Rwanda and others. For the mind to be in such a state where killing another or killing thousands carries no guilt - how is this merely the human mind? Is that not evil, pure evil spiritual warfare? Principalities of the darkness winning the battle in one's mind. So we fight - that the Spirit - God's spirit, would win and rule in us over the spiritual darkness.

Mental - to be strong and active mentally...I'm thinking this means to engage your mind continuously, renew it, think. Read the paper, read a book, read the Word, think, don't waste the capacity that has been given to you - to think.

Sometimes Christianity is thought to be boring, dull, la de da life. Lately I've been thinking that it isn't and if it is portrayed that way, we are portraying it incorrectly. Jesus life wasn't a walk in the Christian park. He had to fight: physically (for his life), mentally (challenged continuously by naysayers), spiritually (battles with Satan), morally (what he stood for and exemplified). His life was not to be seen by us as a mere example of how to live, examples can be seen in you and me, Jesus wasn't an example, He was IT, He is God in human form who sacrificed his life so that we might live.
Sacrificed, sacrificed, sacrificed - not a passive word.
Then shouldn't we: think, meet the opposition, keep the morals and live strong?
Not being passive
Not letting go of our beliefs
Not being complacent

Then more is required of me.