Nathan’s pitch last night to the South Bay California Republican Assembly was fantastic.  I join with my wife in applauding him sincerely and saying that his wife would be proud of him.  I was so moved that I woke up early this morning with this dream.

–

The “Dream.”

These two good friends of mine came up with a great idea for cheap organic Cat Food.  They did a study, had a large manufacturer make some marketing samples for them, and found suitable production facilities available cheap right here in Southern California (like $0.10 on the $dollar cheap!).  They even hired a firm to help them pitch their idea to a group of Venture Capital investors.

This is all pretty standard stuff.  But, it came to the day of the pitch and they didn’t want me there.  They even hired someone to keep me out of there.  Here’s why:  I showed up, in my typical jeans & T-shirt, and for whatever reason I had my back pack filled with my camping gear (remember this was a dream, I didn’t say it would all make sense!).  So I listened to the pitch and then I kept trying to ask them a question after the pitch, but they wouldn’t let me, and they had the guy they hired throw me out.

I kept trying to get back in there and finally when they were about to break and end it I ran back in another door and shouted until they recognized me so I could ask my question.  Now remember these were supposed to be friends of mine, so I started by saying that their idea was good and sound and they even get the production facilities cheap like they said.  But, they would wind up broke in 12-18 months because in California’s runaway government bureaucracy they would wind up throwing good money after bad and the regulators would just keep nickel and diming them to death for fee after fee and environmental impact studies or variances and they would never even start production here.

I told them they ought to pack up and move to Texas and they’d be in production in 6 months, and in spite of higher initial costs for acquiring and setting up their production facility, they’d be profitable within that same 12-18 month period.  Labor would cost less in Texas overall too I told them because of less government regulation and taxation.  I ended by comparing their slick packaging for their product to my backpack and camping gear and then asked that they mail my $50k consulting fee to me at my new address in Texas in the mountains.

–

Hey – I said it was a dream didn’t I?

The bottom line is this:  The dream is right on from the standpoint that California is strangling business.  Nathan made a great impassioned plea for some “Fix it” type solutions up there in Sacramento, but the unavoidable nagging feeling that woke me up last night was that it was still like taking pruning shears after a Gorilla.  You might clip some hair off to begin with, but eventually the Gorilla gets annoyed and you wind up being the one in the cage.  What we need in Sacramento is not a gardener (or a barber), but a Gorilla Killer!  We need Craig Huey!

With Craig’s background in business, his expertise in marketing and bringing truth to bear on elections and processes, we can rely on him to get up there and give us the inside scoop on what’s going on in Sacramento.  Craig will bring to light their lies, the corruption, the deceit and the outright mis-management that this state is suffering under.  Craig’s ideas are not to get some stop-gap measures in place, but to rebuild our State Government from the ground up!  We need reform!  We need real positive change, and most of all we need people up there who won’t try to get along with the system but will try to rebuild the broken system.

I say again, we need a “Gorilla Killa!”

That man is Craig Huey.

I’m going to make today’s blog like a personal letter to all of you.  I want to talk about (of course) real hope.  I tell folks all the time that Jesus is the hope of the world, but being saved in eternity may not necessarily impact somebody’s life today.  There are many who are suffering on a daily basis, and we who have so much in these United States don’t always think about those in other countries who have it far worse than we do.  The poorest in our society cannot even relate to starving people in Africa, and other places.  Today, I read the latest email blast from International ChildCare Ministries (ICCM), an organization we support, and they put the spotlight on Haiti.

I was in Haiti almost two years ago, and the team I was with helped rebuild a church that was badly damaged in the earthquake (Jan. 12, 2010).  Haiti’s problems are many, but the hardest thing of all is figuring where to start in restoring a people who have lost hope.  The island is plagued with disease, hunger, poor water, deforestation, drought alternating with seasonal floods, the list could go on.  Haiti was once “The Jewel of the Caribbean” and was quite prosperous.  Being one of the earliest colonies to fight for and win their independence from France, they were left to “Die on the vine” as they suffered under one corrupt government after another.

Gradually Haiti slipped into a morass of human suffering, refusing to deal with the problems they faced in a forthright manner.  They received little, if any, outside help in the period leading up to the 1970′s when it was already too late to save much of the island’s trees.  With the trees went the soil, then the agriculture, then the runoff killed the fish in the waters surrounding the island.  The combination of all those factors led people to be desperate for jobs (and food!), thus an influx of population into the only major city where manufacturing jobs were to be found (Port Au Prince).

But overcrowding soon gave way to gangs, violence, drugs, the usual.  Following that, other countries finally stepped in to deal with the humanitarian crisis by offering food (and other) aid.  Factories were created where cheap labor abounded and a variation on the Maquiladora Industry became the salvation of a few.  Jobs were still scarce, but more and more came to the city in hopes of even $2/day jobs.

Then, in 2010, as you are well aware, the earthquake struck.  Fully three quarters of the buildings in downtown were toppled.  In the outlying areas of the city, and even 10 miles away, buildings fell, and many were killed.  Exact numbers will never be known.  I was there with a team from the Free Methodist Mission’s Organization (Friends Of Haiti Organization) in Mar/April and the devastation was still overwhelming.  Hundreds of bodies were still buried in the rubble in and around the church where we worshiped.  The church we helped rebuild was right across the way from a UN refugee camp that was being built to house about 5,000 people.  The rainy seasons came and diseases came, and still the people suffered.

Where is the hope?  Where are real practical solutions for these people?

I have found some, people like Singing Rooster who work with the coffee industry in Haiti, others who go back and help rebuild, some from the team I was with have been back several times.  I was intrigued while there to find that the Eden Reforestation Project (ERP) was trying to help out in Haiti as well.  To date, the ERP has planted nearly 30 million trees world-wide!  That’s in just less than 10 years!  That organization came about as a result of a Pastor from Ethiopia coming to the US and pleading for help with his country where deforestation had caused much the same type of devastation as has taken place in Haiti.

But, the results of replanting trees – and a forest – are amazing!  You can see those results online at:

http://www.edenprojects.org

You can even donate there.  We do, I’m going to try to give $10 / month, because we don’t have much to give right now.  But, according to the web site, $10 supports a worker for one day, and helps them plant 100 trees!  This will eventually be the solution for Haiti as well, since it has worked so well in Ethiopia and Madagascar.  We can expand this model as well to other places that are ravaged by deforestation and the ensuing devastation.  Together we can make it happen.  We cannot sit around waiting for governments or corporations – or the UN – to come up with these solutions to the world’s problems – we know what we should so and we must do it now!  This is the most tangible hope we have – to be the hands and feet of the church helping each other out even though we may live on opposite sides of the globe.

You can read about ICCM in their “Tuesday’s Child” weekly update through the following link:

ICCM Tuesday’s Child Email Link

I pray you will all consider this and think about helping.  Consider getting a child to sponsor as well.  It’s only $25/month.  Our child was in Nigeria, but unfortunately, she and her family moved on, they were apparently nomadic.  They were Fulani (Muslim) too, and those people desperately need our help and our love.  I pray you will consider helping planting trees, or help a child get food, water and education, or both!  Or if you’re a coffee drinker as I am, and you love GREAT coffee, then visit Singing Rooster and buy some of their excellent “Haitian Bleu” coffee, that will support the coffee industry in Haiti directly.  You can visit them:

http://singingrooster.org

This is real hope.

May the Lord bless you this day.

-Scotty

What’s my point you ask?  Well, I thought here’s a great example.  We could probably find a correlation between obesity and government spending.  So, I looked up a couple quick charts for you:

That chart shows that government spending really took off about 1932 (blame FDR and the “New Deal” for that!).  Next, we have obesity which we apparently only have figures going back to the 1970′s:

So, now you see that obesity rates are increasing in all these years during which government spending has been increasing.  Therefore, increased government spending causes obesity.  How’s that for a “Scientific” conclusion?

Please, realize that I’m being quite “Tongue-in-cheek” here and that I really don’t think there’s any kind of correlation between government spending and obesity.  But who knows?  I did this exercise merely to prove how silly some of our modern science sounds.  What I really want to prove is how ridiculous it sounds when we talk about a mere 300 years of history influencing global climate which we already know to be variable.  Climate changes are real and easily seen in geologic records.  There are records of disasters all over the place including many places I’ve been to.  I’ve related in previous posts how I’ve seen evidence of sea-level on rocks near the top of the Grand Canyon, I’ve seen Mt. St. Helens where enough land mass was displaced in 48hrs to fill the Grand Canyon, I’ve seen sea-shells in mountain streams way up high in the mountains.

And yet, on this planet that is over 70% water, “Scientists” tell us there is no possible way there could have ever been a world-wide “Global” flood.  These same scientists mind you tell us that Mars, which is less than 1% water, was definitely at one time covered in water.  It’s just sad isn’t it?  They are supposed to be able to think these “Scientists” and yet they are blinded by their own preconceptions and prejudices and they look for answers to prove those ideas rather than seeking out facts.  Once I started reading the Bible, at least after the Lord opened my eyes and made me able to understand the Bible, I realized what a fool I’d been all my life.  I was “Saved” at the age of 35 you see.  I spent all those years prior to that time believing in useless theories and fallacious arguments.  Now I know better.  Now I can think clearly.  Now, I have truth.

Not that any of that makes me a better person, it just gives me a better understanding of the world around me.  Christians are not better than those others who are out there in the world.  But, the Lord does call us to be culture changers.  He tells us to get out there and live our values.  It’s tough in this world, with so much sin around us.  We are drawn in all the time and Christians inevitably sin also.  Like me, my wife tells me she thinks I was born with my foot in my mouth.  I say stupid things all the time.  My mouth is probably my number one problem, but it grows from pride and arrogance deep inside me, and that comes from my heritage of being raised a Californian, in the most liberal place on earth practically, and with liberal parents.  It’s not their fault either though, I’m not blaming them for my problems, I’m just saying we are all products of our up-bringing, our environment, and our genes.

Sin is in our genes as the Bible tells us.  How it plays out in our lives is determined by the environment as much as that tendency for us to want to be “Like God.”  The only cure is to repent, daily for us Christians, turn to the Lord, apologize and ask forgiveness for our sin, and ask Him to help us this day with our daily needs and our sin problem.  We go on.  We simply admit our failures and go on trying to learn from them.  I hope this helps somebody today.  I pray the Lord helps open your heart to your issues and that you can admit to Him that you need Him.

We got some beautiful pictures, I’ll post a few here.  Let me get them off my phone….

This was our view of the parade, standing in a little area behind the Red Cross First Aid tent, with a wrecker / tow truck sitting there the entire time (waiting in case he was needed).

I got Cheryl and Lucy to turn around so I could catch them watching the parade.  James is just in front of them, he could see some of it.

Trader Joe’s “Fearless Flyer” float won some kind of award.  It was spectacular, the wheels on it were really on the ground and those were what it was rolling on (at least it looked that way).  You can’t even figure out what all the things are on this float, but you can tell it’s a giant Red Flyer wagon, with a broom for a mast, and a Teddy Bear, and lots of other fun stuff.

We liked this eagle the best (sorry, don’t remember whose float it was).  It appears to be touching the AAMCO sign, like an advertisement, sorry, just our vantage point is all.

The eagle was our favorite float until Cheryl saw this one from some Lutheran organization.  She loved the butterflies and doves.  It was very special for sure!  Talk about Jesus being the reason for the season, add John 3:16 and you’ve got a winner!

But, then I saw this float from Paramount – 100 years of making movies and I got so excited!  It’s the Starship Enterprise!  Made my whole day.

It was just tremendous, I hope everyone gets to go someday, we estimated the crowd to be at least a million folks yesterday, it was such a gorgeous day for a parade.  There were a few who dehydrated it was so warm unfortunately.  We couldn’t believe quite how many people there were along Colorado Blvd.  Not everyone gets there and camps overnight or like that either.  Some did, and they were looking quite bleary – eyed.  We got there about 7a and enjoyed it tremendously.  We could have easily had seats along the boulevard if we had wanted, you didn’t need to camp out overnight.  I hope you all get to be there some time!

We had made the decision not to cash out our IRA’s and retirement monies in order to try and pay for repairs and such, we figured in the long run it wasn’t worth sacrificing our future just to try and hang onto some place that obviously had rotten plumbing.  I can’t tell you all exactly how much money we “lost” trying to keep that condo, it just goes up as an object lesson for all of us at this point, but somewhere between $15k – $20k is what I estimate we lost.  It’s a more or less number simply because of the fact that we had writeoff all those years we had that place, and you get some of it back since the write off offsets your income so your tax burden is less with the government.  But, that only winds up being off the top, and it’s a percentage, so it really yielded little over the years we had that place.  We started going into debt as early as 2002 when I was laid off from JonesKnowledge.com and we used credit cards to live off for those 18 months I was unemployed back then (we had little to no savings going into that layoff).

So, more object lessons for us in that too.  The bottom line is, first we lost the condo which in reality was our boat anchor, but then in turn, after a 4 month interview process with an organization in mid-2010 following which I did not get the job, we finally threw in the towel.  The straw that broke the Camel’s back was really when Cheryl lost her job last fall as well.  That became for us the watershed moment when we realized that the Lord had closed the doors for us in Denver and we were supposed to move to California, move in with my mother and help take care of her.  It became the point in time where we no longer tried to frantically come up with the money each month to pay our mortgage.  Rather, we decided (unlike so many Americans) to keep our IRA’s and retirement monies intact, and abandon the house and let the bank have it back.

We had so much credit card and consumer debt from trying to hang onto both properties that we were just drowning at the time, and had become for all intents and purposes – insolvent.  We had few assets left, and what we had we mostly sold in order to get through the next few difficult months.

It really is something how these things come about, how the decisions get made.  We had started praying back in 2007 after my mother had 2 surgeries and radiation for Breast Cancer.  We saw her that fall when we went on a cruise together to celebrate her 80th birthday.  She took us on that cruise in the Eastern Mediterranean to visit Rome, Greece, Turkey and parts of the former Yugoslavia (Dubrovnik).  It was a great trip, but it was easy for us to see that mom’s health had been severely compromised by the surgeries and the radiation.  She was so far knocked down by it that we thought we’d lose her that year.  But, she bounced back, and even regained some of her short term memory faculties.  The neurological damage from the anesthesia was probably the worst blow of all for mom to have to deal with.  It was hard for us too seeing her suddenly with symptoms that can only be described or diagnosed as Alzheimer’s.  She had no memory difficulties prior to the surgeries and radiation.

So, all those things became part of the decision making process for us, ultimately leading to our moving out here the first part of 2011.  We sold what we could, one of our cars, one of my motorcycles, mom gave us some money to help us move, so we bought a trailer and loaded it up and drove out here to California with our bedroom furniture, a few other items as well as our 1950 Chevy, and my other motorcycle.  Certain things were not negotiable in the move!  I wasn’t leaving our old Chevy behind, and my motorcycle became my number one means of transportation now.  We still have our Tahoe as well, that’s how we pulled our trailer out here, but given the rotten gas mileage and the lack of any E-85 (Ethanol) stations out here in California, we let it sit in the driveway most of the time.  We burned just one tank of gas in it this entire past year.  Instead, we drive mom’s Toyota Camry most of the time.  She had it for 6 years and it had 21k miles on it when we got here.

After getting our stuff moved in, we started looking around for how to fit our things in this old house.  The house, you may recall, is the house I grew up in.  Mom has been here over 50 years now, and not much has really changed.  Many things were not working well, the electrical had never been upgraded and so on.  It does have a breaker panel, which is good since the house was built in the 1950′s and they were still using fuse panels back then.  But, I found that everything had 2-wire outlets, and in researching that I found that none of our expensive electronic gear would be protected – at all – unless I converted all those wall plugs to 3-wire (grounded) outlets.  So, I did my research, conducted some tests and set about upgrading them one-by-one.  It worked great because they did at least use conduit on each outlet from the outlet all the way back to the breaker box which was grounded, so in effect the entire system was able to be converted without rewiring anything but the outlet boxes themselves!  Some I even converted to have GFI type outlets for safety, so that was kind of a very cheap upgrade for the house that totally modernized it and made things safer for all of us.  There still are not enough of them to go around, there’s not even one outlet on every wall if you can believe that, but we’re getting by.

Next, we started trying to convert some of the watering system on the grounds around the house.  The house itself is modest size (2,000sf) but the lot is huge – especially by Manhattan Beach standards.  So, there is a lot of grounds to water, which mom has always spent inordinate amounts of time watering.  She had this routine where she would start early in the a.m. and get around to all the planters on the sides of the house and the two lawns (front and back) after about 3 – 3.5 hours of continuous watering.  While it’s not all exactly a waste of effort, it’s an amazing amount of effort for an old lady to need to exert in order to keep her plants green.  So, we creatively started trying to come up with solutions, but we really didn’t get very far there.  We are going to have to convert more sprinklers to automatic and invest in some PVC pipe and new sprinklers to cover much of the rest of it.  Some of it can be converted to drip irrigation, and some can be converted to sprinklers with PVC pipe, we won’t waste time digging and burying pipe, because this house will not survive long after my mother is gone.

I feel I should explain why the house won’t survive my mother by long.  This neighborhood, in Manhattan Beach is filled with what are comically referred to as “McMansions.”  The lots are not large like in Beverly Hills, but still the people insist on putting in 6,000sf – 10,000sf palatial estates that fill these little beach lots nearly from corner to corner.  Let me do a rough computation for you, the average lot here is about 110×40 so you have only roughly 4,000sf to work with.  Considering you can only use about 85-88% of it (I think the city allows that much to be covered, and then you probably have to have an easement for sidewalks) you wind up with about 3700sf usable.  Then, you go 2 stories and a basement and you wind up with 7,000sf or more depending.  It’s kind of insane.  Then folks will put all kinds of fancy decoration on them (columns, porches, patios, decks, etc…) so they look French, like something off the Riviera or something.  It’s pretty amazing actually.  Many of them look like gaudy palaces that don’t belong in Southern California, but they are here all the same.  Then, naturally after all that work, architecture and such, they demand excessive prices for these places.

It’s sad enough that we don’t like to think about it or contemplate how quickly this place will be bull-dozed as soon as my mother is gone.  But, she’s still here today, so there’s nothing to worry about, right?

As things turned out, we arrived here in January, just after Christmas 2010 actually.  I dropped Cheryl and our furniture off and then went back to Denver to clean out the rest of our house, and get our Chevy and my motorcycle into the trailer.  The old Chevy didn’t even have all the suspension on it when we decided to move.  I only had some of the parts to finish the suspension so I had to quickly order the rest of the parts and get started getting it put back together.  It had been in a thousand pieces for years, I had started tearing it apart in about 2003 because of rust and hadn’t gotten around to finishing it.  Now it rolls again and it has all 4 wheels converted to disc brakes, and the front suspension has been converted to a Mustang II double A-arm with rack-and-pinion steering.  I even got the steering hooked up prior to getting the car into the trailer to move to California!

It was a pretty amazing amount of work to get done in such a short period actually.  I got the brake master cylinder and pedal installed as well, and it’s fully ready to have brake lines manufactured and installed.  I have some homework to do on that first, I need to identify all the fittings I will need as well as get the correct brake line to work with my tube bending and flaring tools.  I got the tools, that was the first step.  Unfortunately, I haven’t had much time to work on the old Chevy since we got here.  It’s sat for those 11 months so far since we rolled it out of the trailer into the garage.  It got a flat too, and I just two weeks ago finally bought a new floor jack (and another set of jack stands) so I can lift it up, get that wheel off and get the tire repaired, or get a couple new tires (much better idea!).  I bought some used tires to get it rolling again so it could get here.  I need new tires for it, trouble is, it sat for so many years the old tires were rotten, and I had to get something cheap just to get it here.  Having run out of money at the time, used tires were the only option.  They worked good enough to get it here, and they only cost installation.

We were here just a couple months when mom fell and broke her hip in March.  We praised the Lord and still do for His mercy in getting us here just when we needed to be here!  Our God is a God of “Just in time!”  He is always there just when you need Him, and He arranged things so we would be here right when we needed to be here for mom.  When she would need us the most that is.  Her break was not terribly bad, she didn’t break the pelvis fortunately, just the femur, and only the head of the femur (the acetabulum) was broken from the femur itself.  The break was not totally evident on X-rays either, since there was no dislocation, it only showed up on a Cat-Scan.  The doctors recommended surgery which was very difficult for us to contemplate.  My sister and I had already agreed mom would have no more surgeries as those had been the cause of her mental troubles, her “Neurological” difficulties mentioned earlier.  But, the doctor in the ER told me that without the surgery her chances of survival were minimal as she would have to spend nearly 6 weeks flat on her back in a hospital bed.  And everyone knows the one place you don’t want to be when you’re sick is a hospital!  Especially when you’re older, you can pick up so many secondary infections from staying in a hospital that was even more awful to think about.  So we agreed to the surgery.

The Orthopedic surgeon turned out to be a real gem.  This guy said he’d get it done in 45 minutes, and we believe it was actually that quick.  He made a small incision, shot four pins into the femur to stabilize and immobilize the acetabulum and he was done: Bing bang boom!  It was healed too (essentially), from the moment he put those pins in it.  Mom actually walked on it that night at the hospital.  I stayed with her each of the 4 nights she was in the hospital as I knew it would be better for her if she woke up and I was there with her.  The last time she had been in hospital, she woke and had no idea where she was or why she was there, and she hit a nurse, so this time at least I figured I could help with that by staying with her through each night.  It worked, except for that first night, but following that episode they put a bed alarm on her that would go off to let us all know when she climbed out of bed.

The good news is, it healed (the bones knit and all), after a few weeks stay in a nursing home for rest and rehabilitation.  She walks on it today just fine.  Maybe she has a limp, maybe a slight lean to her walk that wasn’t there before, but she can walk on it.  She is not as strong as she was before so for Christmas we got her a “Hugo” or rolling walker.  The Hugo is not like the ordinary walkers that just have wheels on the front.  The Hugo has wheels all around, and brakes, locking brakes and a seat.  The Hugo can be used for permanent help for the aged in order to help them be mobile.  As long as the person is strong enough to stand and walk a few steps, the Hugo is useful.

So mom is set we hope for going on into 2012 in style.

Now, as for Cheryl and I, this is how we’ve been doing.  As I said, we got here in January.  We started pretty much right away trying to figure out our new church.  We let a couple weeks go by where we didn’t make it to church, but by about the last week of February, we were ready to try out the local Free Methodist church in Long Beach.  I really like the Pastor down there, his name is Larry Walkemeyer and I had met him some years back when he came and spoke to our Men’s Retreat at Horn Creek in Colorado.  He’s a very down to earth Pastor, and I like his style.  But, Cheryl felt it was too far to drive, and after coming back to the church that first afternoon for their “Society” meeting (a meeting of the body of the church to vote on important issues) and seeing how poorly attended it was (a sign that there’s not a whole lot of involvement) we decided to try another church.  We drove by Hope Chapel in Hermosa Beach several times before Cheryl finally said to me “What about that church?”  I told her it had been around since the 1970′s and the building was an old bowling alley.  Other than that, I really knew little about the place.

Today, we call Hope Chapel home.  It’s become our new home and it is filled with all kinds of wonderful folks.  We met people in the Vietnam ministry right away, and I thought to get involved so I started helping with the Church’s web site.  Cheryl tried a few things and eventually wound up helping with the teen ( Jr. High) girls.  She’s enjoying it and is having some success getting the girls to open up and be “real” with her.  She tried getting on with a local tutoring agency, but the volume of tutoring in this area with the younger kids is very minimal, and her skill set is not geared towards tutoring older kids (Jr. and Sr. High School age).  I went to Men’s Retreat in June or July  (don’t remember which exactly) and met John Kindt.  John helped get me a contract to build an iPhone application for the company where he was working at the time.  That application is now finished and the company wants me to come to work for them full time after the first of the year.  Praise the Lord!

So things are definitely looking better than they were last year at this time, in terms of we have a new home church, that gives us stability in our lives which we need most.  Then, we both have things to keep us busy doing the Lord’s work, and I have a new income to keep providing for us.  It’s an amazing thing to find a job, any job in this down economy.  So, we continue to count our blessings and praise God for His goodness and provision.  He truly has been with us every step of the way these past couple years.  He makes it so that decisions like we were faced with are not made on our own.  We lost a condo and a house, but those are little things compared to the goodness of knowing Jesus.

Today we have hope.  We never lost it through all this, but we were sorely tested at many points.  We have made plenty of mistakes, and I have lost my cool many times myself, and so has Cheryl.  The point is that it’s easier to go with what The Lord has chosen as the path for your life than it is to continue to fight against Him and His will.  We can “Kick against the goads” as Paul found, but it only leads to heartache and disappointment.  We are more hopeful now we think than we were last year at this time.  Life is not really better, but it’s always better to know you are square in God’s will for your lives and are where He wants you to be.

With that, we look forward to a new and better 2012.  Although it would be difficult to beat 2011 for some of the things that happened, some of the new friendships we’ve made, finding a new church home and so on.  If I haven’t said it enough, we are very blessed, and glad to be here serving mom and helping her to live out the rest of her life in the home she’s known and loved for these past 50 years.  She doesn’t want to go anywhere else, and it’s our blessing to her to be able to keep her here as long as we possibly can.  Thank you Lord for your provision and your care in our lives.  We bless your holy and righteous name Jesus!

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Nobody disputes the fact that the wealthy have … wealth!  *DUH!*  What is disputable is whether or not those at the top stay at the top (they don’t).  There are a few, of course, who do.  But just as many of those are life-long Democrats as there are Republicans.  I think you could easily make the case that wealth distribution is fairly “Normal” across party lines.  I don’t know of any research that shows one way or the other, so it’s purely speculation.  What is it we are really talking about here?  Is it money?  Is it “Standard of living” or some mythical notion of “Success?”

As our Pastor pointed out the other day, there are no trailers behind the hearses.  So what conclusions can we draw from the inequity of wealth distribution in this country and in the world?  Is it a bad thing?  Jesus said we would always have the poor.  What does that imply?  Does it mean that there will always be those who “Hoard” resources and take food out of the mouths of poor people?  Or does it mean there will always be those who are too lazy, or too sick, or too somehow incapacitated to work?  I think it’s an “And / both” answer on all counts.

There are definitely those who are deemed “Wealthy” and yet they give, of their time, their resources, often everything they have is devoted to trying to make a difference.  Bill & Melinda Gates are a good example.  They took much of their wealth, formed an organization and now they run that institution trying to make an impact on disease, on hunger and on educating folks in the “Third world.”  Then, there are those who give nothing, you could argue that the wealthy run the spectrum from those who are loving and give, to those who are selfish and take.

At the same time the poor, some have no choice and are barely existing, and some choose that life-style by being lazy or slothful.  Homelessness in America is a problem and has been for some years.  But there will always be those who choose that life-style for the simplicity of it.  They like having no attachments, being rootless and wandering from place to place living on next to nothing.  Maybe it’s because they can, maybe it’s because they like begging.  Maybe it’s simply an ego trip, maybe it’s because they are mentally unstable.  Who knows?  But, far and away, if you add up all the poor people in the world, most of them are poor because of regional economic conditions in the Third world for the most part.

We must face facts, there are in reality very few people in the world who have a steady income.  There are even less who have money in the bank.  The first statistic I ever saw on this actually came from Patch Adams at the Gesundheit Institute:  “The world’s richest 360 people have the same amount of money as the poorest 2.4 billion people.”  That’s absolutely astounding!  The most amazing thing about it was where I found it though.  I was amazed that at the time I first read that I had been a Christian for some years, and I didn’t hear that in the church!

Wouldn’t that seem to become the imperative to go on mission’s trips and “Save the world?”  Isn’t that exactly what Jesus was talking about?  In my opinion it is!  How can we then not act when confronted by these things?  Well, attacking the 1% is definitely action, but is it misplaced?  Those in the Occupy Wall Street movement may be trying to change the world, but it seems a bit to me like trying to move a locomotive by pushing on it with all your might.  It might be done eventually if you get enough of your friends, but why not just build a locomotive factory and learn how they work and start moving them down the tracks yourself by telling them to move?

There’s tons of talent in those folks who are part of the OWS movement.  There’s tons of talent in the Tea Party too.  There are those in both groups who care, many care a lot.  What is it we’re fighting for, or against?  In general, you don’t get very far when you fight against things.  What you have to do is to have a new idea, or an old idea with a new implementation strategy.  Well, we have Jesus.  Jesus is our King!  We look to Him for guidance and answers to life’s problems.

What did Jesus say to do?  Live peaceably in our society legally doing things that we can do.  We can assemble, we can argue, we can protest, but in reality, in a capitalist society, we ought to be trying to make businesses that work.  We ought to be looking for ways to provide services that folks need.  We can make money that way and use money to feed and clothe the poor, so instead of stealing the money from the rich, we get them to legally pay for it instead.  The 1% know they can’t take it with them.  They know that they can change the world, but many don’t know how.  It’s up to us to help them figure that part out.

I would urge everyone reading this to find some way to get involved, then to find ways of getting those who have money to contribute to it.  Give of your time and let those who have the resources give of those.  This is my new strategy for 2012.  I’m going to commit to raising money this way for things like rebuilding Haiti, fighting abortion, spreading the Gospel.  I’d love to see hatred and disease and hunger stamped out too, but we gotta start small with these ideas and build on them.

That said, who wants to start a Non-profit?  Jesus said “Store up for yourselves treasures in Heaven where moths and rust do not destroy.”  It’s a much more worthwhile investment to put your efforts into the Kingdom of God instead of the Kingdom of man.  This earth is passing away.  All we see here, all there is here will be gone in an instant.  Invest wisely.  I think those who have “Material” wealth are deceived by it.  Proverbs tells us it can “Grow wings” and be gone in an instant.   Chasing after it is clearly “Vanity” as Solomon said.

Building the Kingdom of God is investing in the spiritual well-being of those around you, whoever you come in contact with on a daily basis.  Help them learn and grow to become Christ followers is better than getting “Rich” any day.  That’s why I think chasing after the 1% is a silly thing.  The Tea Party, on the other hand, wants a fiscally responsible government that will respond to the will of the people, rather than answer to “Special interests.”  It starts with us.  We must all be responsible for our own behaviors.  If we want others to follow us because we’re following Jesus, then we must be responsible too.

What does this mean for those who have faith and believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and for those who do not believe?  It means simply that you cannot understand the Bible without faith in Jesus.  The only way to have faith is to believe, and the only way to believe is to have faith.  Is it really a “Catch 22?”  No, certainly not.  It’s a question of being “Called” most of us believe.  Most who believe in an all powerful all knowing God would agree that He lives outside time and can therefore see the beginning and the end of all things in our universe.

Many have worried about that because the Bible says specifically that those He foreknew He called.  This gives us the doctrine of election and predestination.  Some think that all individuals who are called will “Hear His voice” and listen automatically (somehow).  Then, obviously, there are other humans who will not ever believe because they are not called.  Does this mean there’s no free will?  Well, sort of.  But, many of us argue that we have choice.  Choice is a form of free will, but in a limited sense.  Up until the time we become believers we basically only have two choices in this life:  Believe in God and go to Heaven, or disbelieve in Him and no matter what happens here in our earthly existence, suffer eternal punishment in a place Jesus called “Hell.”

Why would God do that?  If He’s all knowing and all powerful why doesn’t He simply reveal Himself to us and force us to believe?  Well, He did reveal Himself, that’s what the Bible tells us.  He did argue with us until we got so upset with Him that we nailed Him to a cross and killed Him!  Yes, that was us, all of us who did that.  He died for my sin (and yours).  But if He came to bring “Peace on Earth” then why did He do it like He did?  Why did He have to suffer like that?  Why are there still wars?  Why doesn’t everyone recognize who He is and follow Him?

Well, it’s as the Bible tells us that we are all still sinners, with that capacity to choose which side we will serve.  We are either for Him, or against Him.  As Sarah Palin pointed out in her Christmas message:

http://sarahpalininformation.wordpress.com/2011/12/22/merry-christmas/

Many of us go around like Grinches, thinking that we should abolish Christmas because it’s a made up story about a person who doesn’t matter.  Better think twice about that!  God is only going to be patient so long.  He has already told us this world will end, the only question remaining is when.  In the absence of the answer to that, I think we all better act as if it could be today.  Really.

So, we can read the “Peace on earth” part a bit differently if we are believers.  We read that it is a “conditional” promise in that it says “on whom His favor rests.”  Ah, that’s the key.  Does it still really mean that those who He “Called” are the only ones on whom His favor rests?  My thinking is a bit different on that too actually.  I think it’s rather pointless to go around thinking “I’m saved, He chose me, why care about others since I’ve already got my ticket to Heaven?”  Do you catch my drift?  The point is that nobody really knows who is saved and who isn’t – only God knows.

So, in reality, we are called to be obedient to Jesus’ commandment to “Spread the Gospel to the whole world.”  Those of us who believe do it because He told us to, not because we believe we can convert or “Save” anybody.  Of course we can’t.  Whether we believe that God predestined certain folks for Heaven and certain for Hell, or if we believe that what He really means is that salvation is like a ship heading towards Heaven and those are the ones who are “Predestined” and therefore we must “Choose” to get on board that ship (or not), our beliefs on that point actually make little difference.  He still called us to share the good news, so we do.

The important thing is for each one who hears the good news to search, to ask God to “Open the doors of Heaven” for them.  It’s kind of selfish to ask God to reveal Himself and speak to us, whether we are already a believer or not.  He did speak, it’s already recorded for us.  He didn’t speak to Muhammed, He didn’t speak to Buddha, He didn’t speak to Confucious, He spoke to Moses, and then He came to the Jewish nation – in the flesh.  The reason the Bible exists is to tell us about Him!  That’s so obvious to a Christian as to be one of those *DUH!* things.  To non-believers, it makes no sense at all!  That still blows me away.  But, because the Bible confirms that to be the case, it gives me even more faith that Jesus is who He said He is.

So, do I have peace on earth?  Do all believers?  Do any?  Well, some.  We would definitely have to argue that is one of the things we have more of than those who do not have faith.  We celebrate His birth regardless of when He was actually born, and we try to imagine what it was like for Him to leave Heaven and come here as a baby boy, born in a stable, with a feeding trough as His first cradle.

Jesus, what You did for me and for all mankind is simply too amazing to grasp.  I ask that You use this message of mine to reach someone tonight.  Someone who’s hurting, someone who may be wondering about You, whether You are real or not.  I ask that You open their heart to understand and their mind to cast off doubts.  I ask all this in Your mighty name Jesus!

Amen.

I can’t even believe that we’re dealing with the same plumbing problem we had 3 months ago.  We thought we had it all fixed and that the sewage would never back up again into an apartment building owned by my mother.  This place has just been one problem after another for years, and it’s always the same thing.  I’m finally realizing we got sold a bill of goods on this thing, and that the plumbing is rotten because the plumber is rotten.

If it backs up once, you clear it.  Twice, you clear it and scope it and find out the problem.  Three times and you fire your plumber, that’s my new rule.  We just fired our plumber.  He called me back and reported that he didn’t get the cleanout installed like he said he was going to do, so bye bye!  Old friend or no, been with my mother for years and years, too bad.  This problem should not have been happening this long.  My sister authorized him she says to install the cleanout, and he said he was going to go put it on.

It’s all very technical in plumbing terms, but it’s all very … “Practical” when you’re wading in poop trying to keep your brand new kitchen clean, and you’re having to use a shop-vac to suck up sewage.  *YECH!*

This is not good, and my anger is such that I just had to write down what I was feeling about this.  Cotton-picking mad – that’s what!

There are many still today, perhaps the number is growing, perhaps not (on a percentage basis), who doubt the existence of God.  God they say, if He exists couldn’t be the God of the Hebrew Bible.  The Greeks and Romans had gods who were just like them:  Filled with human emotions, lusts and passions, and a capricious and vengeful lot they were!  Other cultures have had pantheisms of Gods.  The Hindus have somewhere around 700M gods – and counting.  Taoism, Shinto, Buddhism don’t even really talk about God, rather attainment of “Enlightenment.”  Native Americans worshiped all kinds of natural creatures and endowed them with god like powers to explain their world.

The problem of course with all these approaches – and these are just a few – is that they are all “Religion” or what we Christians call “Man’s attempt to get to God.”  We are rational creatures, that we all agree on.  It seems quite natural therefore, in the absence of revealed knowledge, for man to try to explain the world around himself.  So, how does this relate to the Hebrews and their claims of being the one tribe to whom God revealed Himself?  Well, believe it or not, most of the explanation is right there in the Bible.  If you’ve ever taken the time to read it, the account is quite fascinating.

God, the creator of the universe that we know as “Space-Time,” reached out and talked to these folks, the Hebrews, He revealed Himself and told them how they should live.  He taught that they should separate themselves and live by a set of standards that in fact, nobody could attain!  No human person that is.  What I don’t get, is why so many folks categorically deny that God could exist outside of Space-Time?  Why do we lead such “Sensual” lives, i.e., only depending on our senses to guide us?  Why can’t we believe that there is indeed – something more?  Why is that so difficult a stretch for some folks?

I’m going to help you out today.  In preparation for the message of the Miracle of Christmas, I’ll tell you a little story.  In essence, I’m going to quote you a story out of a book I read a long time ago.  The book is called Flatland (Edwin Abbott, 1880).  The book is nominally categorized as Science Fiction, but I’m here to tell you today that it has application across a wide variety of fields, including Philosophy and what we’ll use here today:  Metaphysics.

The word Metaphysics is of course Greek in origin, and it breaks down thus:  Meta means above, and physics refers to the physical world around us, so it means “Above the physical” in the narrow sense, and I would say it means even “Beyond our physical realm” in the broader sense.  Merriam-Webster defines it:  “abstract philosophical studies : a study of what is outside objective experience.”  Thus, metaphysics seeks to understand that which is beyond our “Sensual” existence.  Got that so far?

In the book Flatland, Mr. Abbott takes the reader through a place that is a two dimensional (2-d) world (think of a table top or a piece of paper), complete with 2-d characters, who are shaped roughly conforming to the normal shapes we associate with a 2-d realm:  Triangles, squares, and various polygons and so on and so forth.  Now, they have a “world” and civilization characterized with the same types of things we see going on in our society.  They have institutions, governments, and even army’s and wars.

Their entire lives though are sensual, meaning they have no concept of anything that exists outside of their “Plane” of existence, the 2-d world they live in.  Suddenly one day, a being of a third dimensional realm (3-d) contacts them in their “world.”  This being is perceived as only vaguely a part of their realm as it “passes through” their 2-d realm.  Only part of the 3-d being can be perceived at any one time in the 2-d realm in other words.  If the 3-d being is situated such that it is completely outside of the 2-d realm, then it cannot be perceived at all at that particular time.

So, you get the point?  The book also goes on to describe a one-dimensional realm (a line) where there are again, other beings that live there and who in turn, have no concept of a 2-d or 3-d realm.  The whole concept of “higher” realms of existence is lost on those who exist in any particular dimensional reality.  Hang with me now, hang with me!  I told you this was going to relate to the Christmas story, right?  So, let’s see what implications this has for us.  We used to think we lived in a purely 3-d realm, until Mr. Einstein came along and pointed out that time in essence is a 4th dimension for us.  So, this reality called “Space-time” defines for us our “realm of existence.”  But, we can clearly see now that both the study of Metaphysics, and basic principles of dimensional analysis can be used to postulate the existence of “higher realms” of existence.

Have you “Got it” yet?  You’re thinking, I can tell you are thinking now!  You see, if those realms exist, there is absolutely no way we could ever possibly perceive them – unless – someone from those realms “passed through” our realm and made themselves known to us.  *DING!*  Did the light just go on for you?  That’s what Jesus did for us – that’s who Jesus is!  In essence, He is “God” from a realm of existence outside our “Space-time” and He tells us, through His book (The Bible) that He (God the Father, Jesus, and The Holy Spirit) created our entire realm, and now we know that He came to earth as “One of us” too.  How could He possibly have done that?  Well, that’s the mysterious part, but since He created our realm, He knows exactly how it works, and easily could have made it so that He could become one of us.

Many folks still ask today, what does God look like?  Well, I’m here to tell you that when He came into our “Realm” of existence, He looked like just like one of us, like Jesus.  The profound mystery is not that He can do all that because He knows how our entire realm of existence works, but that He gave it all up (His existence in a higher realm) and actually BECAME HUMAN – just like we are – completely!  How on earth did He do that?  Again, that’s a mystery to us at this point, but you’ll get to ask Him that question if you repent (turn from your sin) and put your faith in Him today.  In fact, someday you’ll get to live with Him – forever – in His realm that we call Heaven.

That, my friends, is the real miracle of Christmas.

Now, I don’t want you to go away and think that this is the actual explanation of how it works.  I’ve only taken you through a “Theoretical” tour of higher realms of existence.  I’m definitely not saying this is how it happened, only that this is one plausible explanation for how higher realms might exist and how our God, the God of the Bible, might exist in one of those (or many of them) and how He might be characterized to have “passed through” our plane of existence and how He became like one of us.  The Bible says He did all those things, I’m just trying to clue you in on how that might have happened.  In reality, it’s a mystery that can never be fully explained as long as we have what I always like to call “Meat brains.”  We’ll know when we get to Heaven though!

My wife and I attended a talk last night given by Shannon Grove, assemblywoman here in our sadly declining state of California.  The event was a hosted event for Craig Huey, who is also running for State Assembly.  Between them, they represent the last of the social and fiscal conservatives who are willing to go to Sacramento and combat the corruption, cronyism, and the domination of the three awful principles that seem to govern life out here in CA.  Those would be the GLBTQ agenda, the unions, and the environment characterized by stuff like “Agenda21″ coming out of the political liberals in WA and their allegiance to some treaty and placing that above the Constitution.  That doesn’t even consider the $500B gorilla in the room that nobody will mention or even bring up to talk about (in Sacramento):  The State Pension Fund time bomb.

We’re in trouble here, no doubt.  But, look what Shannon Grove just did:  She filed a suit demanding that the state legislature be returned to a part-time body, hopefully to reign them in and restore some sanity to this state!

Could you please do some research for one of your excellent articles, or interview this woman and write up your findings?  We all were so disgusted by the outright illegal activities going on in Sacramento that most of us were just sick to our stomachs.  A few had to leave because I think their blood pressure was getting up too high.  Really!  Seriously!  We were just flabbergasted by the level of fantasy going on there in Sacramento!  Like a $92B train  to nowhere!  Like their budgeting process this year!  Like the early felon release program that they got the Sheriff’s departments of all CA counties to vote for – by giving them money to fund their pensions!

It’s just unbelievable.  Too unbelievable.  We need help.  If we’re going to tackle the liberals, we better start by trying to combat them in their strongest bastion.  We better.  Reagan said that we are only a generation away from losing our spiritual heritage.  Last night Shannon Grove told us we’re only an election away (2 seats in the State Assembly are all that are keeping the liberals from having their “supermajority”).

Won’t you please help us?  We need help!  Please.

Thanks so much for your efforts, I appreciate most of what you write.  I’m being honest.  My wife and I are simple fiscal and social conservatives, staunch Jesus freaks if you must know.  And we’re also economic refugees.  We lost most of what we had these past 2 years.  House, condo, stuff that we left behind in Denver when we moved to CA to move in with my 84 year old mother.  But, we are blessed.  We have all we need, we found a great church and we’re getting involved in this mess, because enough is enough!

God bless you.

-Scott deBeaubien
Los Angeles