Janel's Place

As usual, Thursday evening pulls me out of my "funks" (ha) and I talk to my dog for a while and then decide that I should write a blog. I don't know why I write blogs other than to go back and read them a year later and get a kick out of it.

It seems that a geek is someone who bites the heads off of chickens. I have to make it absolutely clear that I don't do that. I have been known to chew on their thighs from time to time, but NEVER their heads.

My predominant God thoughts this week boiled down to the usual "I don't know anything," along with the decision that the 10 commandments are not negotiable. Obviously they weren't 6000 years ago, and it seems like a good bet that they aren't today either. After that, I don't know what to do. If people insist on breaking them I guess I should care about them enough to tell them my opinion that they aren't negotiable. You know, like pie, we're all going to have to stand there in front of God and see how well we measure up to the ultimate pie standard, thus it seems imperative that we attempt to be good quality pies as well as share thoughts on how to be better pies. I guess you'd have to come to my church to figure out what that means. Well, even then you probably wouldn't get it. It's my blog, it only really needs to make sense to me.

A few things to fling into my wish-bin -- oh I hope I hope I get a chance to sit next to a nice orangutan someday. Like Steve Erwin. And oh I hope I hope a baby elephant kisses me someday. Like Steve Erwin. And oh I hope I hope I get to scratch camel lips someday. Like a lot of people. Steve Erwin's memorial service was on Tuesday night and it was just heartrending. Yes indeed, the crocodiles are crying and so was I.

I have to sleep, or attempt to. Tomorrow night will be Friday evening attempt #2 to figure out why in the world I am applying to vet school. There are a lot of reasons, not the least of which being that I am most certainly insane, but how to condense my twisted life journey into 1.5 pages? That is the question. Perhaps it is just because this is my current idea of the most realistic pathway to sitting next to an orangutan and kissing elephants.
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I've had so many opportunites to think about human development this week, I'm floored again at how beautiful humans are. Look at this little guy at 8 weeks old, just an inch long and about 2.5 grams. So cute and perfect.


www.chanceandchoice.com/.../chapter4.html

Then last night I saw the most awesome rainbow ever, and didn't have my camera of course. It looked something like this:


http://www.tvsmith.net.my/picturestory/00088_rainbow.html

It was kind of a double rainbow on the bottom, then another rainbow a ways up, and all of them were stretching all the way across the sky.

Then I had one of those sort of rare and random thought clashes, and realized that God was looking at that rainbow and remembering a promise He made about 10,000 years ago...

“And as for Me, behold, I establish My covenant with you and with your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you: the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you, of all that go out of the ark, every beast of the earth. Thus I establish My covenant with you: Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood; never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

And God said: “This is the sign of the covenant which I make between Me and you, and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I set My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the sign of the covenant between Me and the earth. It shall be, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the rainbow shall be seen in the cloud; and I will remember My covenant which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. The rainbow shall be in the cloud, and I will look on it to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”

Genesis 9

Thank God He keeps His word.

Did you know that we kill 126,000 babies a day in this world? 48% of those are done after the 9th week. Babies even larger than that perfect one up there. Roughly 2/3 of these "choices" are made by people who were unmarried, messing around and looking for an easy way to get rid of the problem.

God help the parents who made that choice! I hope they didn't really understand what they were doing. But those who knowingly push them to that decision had better darn well be sure that there is no God. The God I read about hates hands that shed innocent blood. These are not casualties of war, not bystanders to a conflict between nations. They're just babies, a little smaller than we're used to looking at.

In God's wisdom He's holding out on this world, but I think we can look at those rainbows as a life support system for those who have not found Him yet, those who know that He is there but have strayed away... basically anyone not quite ready to stand in front of Him yet, self included!

2 Peter 3:9
The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.
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I'm having a moment of great logic here as I am dreading Monday and not wanting it to come so I am staying up late so that I can be more miserable when it does come. I spent most of the afternoon trying to get my lecture put together and I fear that Chi is right and I am obcessing about armadillos. They cross rivers by walking along the bottom and they love to eat ants and they have clonal children but to be sidetracked by these phenomena is going to detract from the theme of choosing model systems. I hope that I can play with a baby armadillo before I die. Actually I'd like to play with them after I die as well. I will start asking God for that immediately. I realized this evening that I am in the habit of only asking God for things that I think He can handle. This is God who set the planets in orbit, knows where electrons are and designed armadillos. I think He can handle bringing a few people to our most awesome and brain-opening Bible study.

I have to go to bed. Waking up late and jogging in for a meeting is not going to be an option because I can't move. These days when I skate I accomplish less and hurt more. Age.
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Animals are so fascinating. Who knew that better than this guy? It's a sad day.
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95% of people reject the truth (as I call it) of God for emotional reasons, 5% intellectual. Aaron said so. Wonder if it's true? Or maybe 95% of the reasons are emotional, 5% intellectual. Same thing. Within category #1 go all of those who have been hurt by... I don't know... life experiences that shouldn't happen if there is a good God (worth serving), idiots wearing Christian costumes, maybe even non-idiot Christians that can't avoid that fact that this truth, if true, sort of hurts at a deep level. We're all control freaks, starting at about 1-yr-old.

It does seem a little dumb to put so much stock in this Book sometimes, but the problem with shelving it is that the words really are living and powerful. As a closed Book, meaningless, as a read Book, more sensible than anything else presented that I've come across so far. I don't even have to break the laws of Thermodynamics to explain my present state of existence. Too cool.
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