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Worship Set – March 24, 2013

Everlasting God

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Hosanna

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As the Deer

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Heart of Worship

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Worship Set – March 17, 2013

We Will Dance

The Solid Rock

We Are So Blessed

Shout to the Lord

Healer – March 10, 2013

Healer

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Worship Set – March 3, 2013

Tell It To Jesus

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Open the Eyes of My Heart

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As It Is In Heaven

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Majesty

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All I Want to Do

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He Knows My Name

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Worship set: Feb 10, 2013

Ancient of Days

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Reign in Me

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Mighty To Save

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His Eye Is On the Sparrow

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I Give You My Heart

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Family of God

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EOON – Oscar Mayer

Again note the only reasonable person in the commercial is female. Dad is a blithering idiot.

The Emasculation of our Nation (Henceforth EOON)

I’m going to try out a project for 2013. Each time I see a commercial which portrays the father or prominent male figure as a buffoon or idiot I’m going to post it here with a limit of one per day.

I believe there is a purposeful agenda on the part of Hollywood to emasculate our culture. I doing so they elevate the “alternatives.” I’ll let you figure out what that means. Here’s a rather innocuous (in the face of others) offering from Snickers. I encourage you to avoid rewarding these advertisers with your patronage although I suspect by the end of this project that would pretty much exclude everything we do and see in life.

Note the son is so stupid as to be driven by something as simple as his stomach, and that dad joins in. The only reasonable character in the ad is female.

Empathy and Soccer

Have you seen Tim Howard’s 90-foot goal? If you’re a fan of soccer you probably have, but just in case you haven’t you can see it here. Howard is an American goalie playing in England for Everton. What started out as a clearing shot flew the length of the field, took a fortuitous bounce and went into the goal of their opponent, Bolton.

But what’s interesting to me is Howard’s reaction. So many times in professional sports we see over-the-top reactions to the most routine plays (like sacking the quarterback or just making a decent tackle) but Howard approached the goal with something rarely seen in sports: empathy. Look at his reaction on the video and then read this quote from NPR:

Howard, an American, expressed some sympathy for his competitor.

“I really feel for Adam Bogadan but those things happen and you have to move on from it,” said Howard, according to the BBC . “I’m disappointed from a goalkeeper’s standpoint and you never want to see that happen. … It’s ugly, not very nice and can be embarrassing.”

As a goalie Howard knew what it felt like to be embarrassed by an unexpected (or even expected) goal. There was no celebration. He truly “acted like he’d been there before” even though he probably hasn’t. He felt the pain of the Bolton goalie and you can literally see that pain on his face.

Knowing what someone else is feeling is not necessary to sympathy but it is to empathy. That is the value of trials in our life. Once was have properly resolved (and I cannot over-stress the importance of that point) the bad things that happen to us we can use that experience to help others. Then the trial becomes a blessing, both to us and to the person we are helping.

Who knew you could learn a lesson in empathy from soccer? I like the sport even more now!

In Tune

I’ve made a decision to try and use more hymns this year at church. That may sound like backward thinking but it’s more a response to what I feel from the congregation. My job is to minister to them and so the music has to touch them at some level. For the majority of my people that resonance comes from hymns.

So, this Sunday we’ll be singing one of my favorites: Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. The first verse says, “Come Thou Fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing Thy praise…” That phrase, tune my heart, is thought provoking to me. Tuning is an art of absolutes. It begins with a standard: A440. All tones have a rating of Hz as it applies to how they move the air and create sound. A440 (440 Hz) is the standard for beginning the tuning process, with all other pitches being relative to it.

For us to be “in tune” with God we must subscribe to His standard. Everything in our lives, all of our tones must be relative to His absolute. Of course any guitar player will tell you that there are “alternative” tunings for their instrument but in using those alternatives they remove themselves from unity with the absolute. Look around you today and you will find many “alternative lifestyles” which may seem at the surface to be in tune but are in reality far removed from our Creator’s wavelength.

So, are you in tune? And if so, what are you in tune with? Is it your own version or is it a unity with the absolute?