Janel's Place

Isaiah 11:8
The nursing child will crawl over rattlesnake dens, the toddler stick his hand down the hole of a serpent.
The Message (Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson)

I've hunted through several versions of the Bible and it appears that there is no way around this piece of heaven involving snakes. That was not the point of church today, but it was something that stuck in my head. Perhaps in heaven the snakes will have fur and legs.

Isaiah 11:9-10 (KJV)
They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea. And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious.

I'm looking forward to meeting God. His presence will be so satifying, and a great place to rest after an annoying trip through earth. There are many days when I don't want to praise Him, but if a rock and a tree can praise Him I suppose I could go ahead and praise Him when I don't feel like it. Why? Well that was the point of church today. If I can't think of enough reasons to praise Him every single day then I'm definitely not understanding the gospel. Week #2 of brain surgery.
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What is life anyway? A succession of days wherein a person can get up and thank God for giving it to them. Self-not-exempt. My brother boy is coming home, hallelujah. Sleep.
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I'd rather be watching cats get castrated. That is the honest truth. This is a Saturday in the lab and I am just hating every minute of it because there are just some days when I wake up and I do not care about actin and today is one of those days. Sometimes the coffee shop can bring new life to a lifeless paper, hence I gave it a shot, but over the top of my laptop I could see the happy families of old town on the other side of the window, laughing and pushing strollers, reminding me that life was going on out there while I sit on the sidelines, in graduate school purgatory, wondering if I'll ever be allowed to join them.

ACTIN spelled backwards is NITCA. I wonder if that means anything. Hmm.

http://www.nitca.com/
Fundacion NITCA

What is NITCA:

It is a grass roots community based program born in July 1999, to improve the condition of children who work the streets to help the economy of their families.Located in El Barrio Los Laureles Sur, Managua, Nicaragua. The population was conformed of families displaced by war and natural disaster.In 1999, 70% of the population was unemployed and 65% illiterate. Malnutrition was rampant and children grew riddle with sickness, the worst of them: HUNGER. Other impediments were housing, hygiene and transportation.

NITCA's Mission:

To face the problem of poverty through education, nutrition, hygiene and health care. The program is based on community development and the empowerment of the families through training and work opportunities.NITCA's Vision: A community that recognizes the Child and Adolescent as subjects of "Rights"; by that meaning the right to study and to be prepared to become a participant citizen of his/her country. An empowered community self-sufficient to have a dignified economy.

No ray of sunshine is ever lost, but the green which it awakens into existence needs time to sprout, and it is not always granted for the sower to see the harvest. All work that is worth anything is done in faith.

Albert Schweitzer

Well that's kind of inspiring.

There is also Nitca river in Kazakhstan. Probably full of snakes.

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Well, I'm not a genious and I can't even be a European genious because such a thing really does not exist. That's okay, the great lows of this week make an imaginary genious seem rather unimportant. I completely forgot the farrier was coming yesterday. It is truly terrible to see your farrier on your called I.D. at 9:30 in the morning and almost instantaneously know the ONLY reason he would be calling you. It is also truly terrible to discover you have been using a buffer recipe with a mistake in it for 3.5 years. So I'm repeating some experiments this week. It's also interesting to hear the word "ca-ca" for the first time at 27 years old. The lab is now convinced that I actually did grow up in a secluded underground cave.

Whatever. I guess with wars going on and people having pizza ovens fall on them for no good reason it is absurd to be concerned about being an absented-minded waster of time who grew up in a cave and cannot spell.

I'm going to have to sleep now because I'm sort of behind in everything as usual and it is more likely that I will not have dreams incorporating the radio-alarm if I go to bed at an earlier time. Sometimes I wish I was a cat. Maybe I will get some cats on Monday.
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Barbaro is fighting a pretty serious infection. He needs some angels with antibacterial talents!
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O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming!
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there:
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines on the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner! O long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the Heaven-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Francis Scott Key

Thank you to our brave service men and women (thank you for this slideshow Christy!) who won our freedom and who fight daily to preserve it! Thank you God for blessing our nation with these selfless people.
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Well somebody caught me in the lab while I was googling Mormon undergarments. Google them yourself if you think I've suddenly become hopelessly evil. They are really sacred things that I had to find out about. But anyway, today's topic is "Christian reality checks," etc.

Is it slightly hypocritical for Christians to build themselves multi-million dollar church buildings while the homeless remain in the streets and people starve? Yes, I think it is. Is it possible that aliens created the universe? Yes it is. Is it also possible that despite the sureness I have that the Bible is absolutely true, I can defend it so pathetically that any sensible person goes away from the conversation feeling sorry for me and my sad delusions? Yes, that is possible. Is it fair that 500 people saw Jesus and were thus easily able to believe in Him while we must believe without seeing? No. Wouldn't the best demonstration of God's care for a person be to show up personally next to that person in a chair and thus prove His own existance? Maybe.

But here come my buts.

Whether or not all Christians are hypocrites does not have any impact on the real issue: is God real and does the Bible contain His Words of truth about the past, present and future of every human being? It's soooooo easy to judge other people, I do it myself, but the place to stick your mind is at the judgement seat of Christ where they answer for their hypocritical actions and you answer for your disbelief. You will probably have a chance to say "it's their fault that I did not seek You," but what happens after that, I don't know. In the Bible the examples given are ones of men who were beaten, stoned and nearly all killed defending their belief in Christ, why not take them as your example instead of the wayward human beings you despise?

Aliens could have created the universe. Really smart ones that wrote the Bible or invented (or maybe even WERE) Jesus and maybe even staged a lot of miracles and they are now up on planet Serpo enjoying the show. This takes a lot of faith in the unseen to truly believe in, in fact far more faith than I have. A bit of that openmindedness is really good though, because in fact God is an alien Being stretching beyond any human's ability to understand fully. He is a Spirit, and nobody really knows what that is. He created time, and we don't know how to think outside of time. There is a force of evil and we don't know where it came from or why we have been allowed to be caught in the middle of it. We don't know why blood atones for sin. Anyone who claims to know everything about God is definitely selling something. But the evidences we have in this world point us to Him, and there is no theory, no religion, no naturalistic explanation that more clearly ties ALL available evidence than that presented in the 66 books of the Bible. Jesus was a lunatic, or Jesus told the truth. That's it. As Digory said in the Chronicles of Narnia, "you have only to see her and to look at her to know she is not lying, therefore we must conclude that she is telling the truth!" ... you have only to read His words and the words of his followers to know that they are not lying.

My defense of the Bible is indeed still pathetic, I think. My own testimony of my faith is still weak. Although Jesus died in my place I still cringe to stand for Him sometimes when so many in this era consider it foolishness and weakness. I still argue with God's methods and want Him appear at my side to make me right and them wrong! So shortsighted, and so backward from His instruction to me. Rather than pray for them I would argue with them to justify myself, relying on my words rather than the power of God to break through barriers and reach their souls with understanding of His love for them.

500 people saw Jesus and their lives changed forever. Fishermen left their homes and travelled for decades sharing what they had seen, dying in the end as no person could force them to renounce their belief. They died rejoicing that they had been chosen as worthy to die for Him! One, who thought himself righteous for killing an imposter claiming to be the Son of God and then pursuing and killing all those who spread the lie that He had risen from the dead, saw Jesus himself and spent the remainder of his life proclaiming the truth to the highest ranks of the Roman Empire. He also was killed for his belief. Peter deserted Jesus the night He was taken away, fearful that Jesus was in fact not the Son of God. He denied even knowing Him, and went into hiding after Jesus was killed. Three days later this man was preaching in the streets before thousands, proclaiming Jesus to be the Saviour of the world. He preached continuously for decades until he also was killed.
These people were priveledged to see Jesus in their lifetime, but with their testimonials we know that we will see Jesus. It's not completely satisfying, but it's not supposed to be. There's work to do on this earth for as long as God tarries. Blessed are those who have not seen, yet have believed.

So wouldn't it be the best demonstration of God's love if He showed up in person and proved His existence to you? Well, He did. It was 2000 years ago, but He did prove His existence. Why He chooses not to do it again for your benefit today I don't know. He did promise that He would be found by those who seek Him. Have you sought Him? He loves you enough that you are alive right now and a step away from finding Him. You know what's hard? Really hard for the human mind? Letting Him be the God He is, not the God we think He should be. We can't change Him because we were created by Him, and He is the same yesterday, today and forever. Yet He wants us to know Him and the world keeps turning as more and more turn to Him. He doesn't have to let another day go by with our cursing and ignorance of Him, but He does. That is grace.
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And I set my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all that is done under heaven; this burdensome task God has given to the sons of man, by which they may be exercised. (Ecclesiastes 1:13)

Solomon said this before anyone had even imagined trying to figure out how maggot neurons work. But I guess seeking the meaning of life is not a big enough job for human beings. Sigh.

This is cool...

I am the LORD, and there is no other;
There is no God besides Me.
I will gird you, though you have not known Me,
That they may know from the rising of the sun to its setting
That there is none besides Me.
I am the LORD, and there is no other;
I form the light and create darkness,
I make peace and create calamity;
I, the LORD, do all these things.

“Rain down, you heavens, from above,
And let the skies pour down righteousness;
Let the earth open, let them bring forth salvation,
And let righteousness spring up together.
I, the LORD, have created it.
“Woe to him who strives with his Maker!
Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth!
Shall the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’
Or shall your handiwork say, ‘He has no hands’?
Woe to him who says to his father, ‘What are you begetting?’
Or to the woman, ‘What have you brought forth?’”
(Isaiah 45:5-10)

...And this makes me think again that people who insist that God used "goo-to-you" evolution to get us to where we're at (this doesn't make any sense the more I think about it) are probably wrong:

All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another of fish, and another of birds. (I Corinthians 15:39)

...And this is just fun to read after a few reminders this week that God has not broken a single promise he made in the 12,000 + years we have known Him.

Therefore it was necessary that the copies of the things in the heavens should be purified with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; not that He should offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood of another— He then would have had to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now, once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment, so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation. (Hebrews 9:23-28)

And I say to you that many will come from east and west, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 8:11)

Lately I've been thinking about how time as we know it is going to be obliterated at the end of this age. That means that people who died 10000 years ago and people not even on earth yet are all going to be reset into people that I can meet. Dude! I can't talk to Abraham! I can't even remember all his kid's names. Jacob... I have a lot of questions for Jacob. It took him a long time to figure out he had the wrong wife. Paul... I want to know what he thinks of 89.7 FM. They need to broaden their selection.

I need to go home. I washed all of my rats today. Last night I learned about the transatlantic cable. It is VERY awesome. http://www.history-magazine.com/cable.html We actually were going to buy a horse named "Heart's Content" once. Those serious old horsie days... long long ago in a galaxy far far away.

Our neighbor had a mountain lion in his tree this morning. Maybe it's a really good thing I gave my cats away. The mountain lion might have eaten Mr. Zulu. Cannibals.
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