Thoughts From the Plane

This is my first Internet access of my trip (outside of a quick Sunday e-mail check) so I have five days' worth of thoughts to share with you. Alas, it is after midnight (Pacific time) and I will only share a few observations I had during my three-hour flight from DFW to Santa Ana airport on Friday morning.

• Clouds are amazing. We rose above the cloud line just west of Fort Worth and, for a while, it appeared the ground was a soft, comfy, cotton-y blanket. You know, the kind you like to jump on after a long, hard day and sink into that blissful place between awake and sleep? Yeah, THAT comfy.
  
• The earth's crust is amazing. I absolutely love to stare out the window on flights and watch the ground go by underneath me. I see rivers snake their way across plains and carve out canyons . I see mountains in the distance slowly get bigger until we are right above them and then they slowly pass away. I saw volcanoes in New Mexico (extinct ones, of course!) and sand dunes in Arizona. I saw the Colorado River give life to arid lands and the San Andreas Fault slice through the California desert. We have a wonderful world of many faces. God made them all and has given them to us. Amazing.
  
• That many parents have lost control of their children from a very early age. I was surrounded on this flight by two mothers and their combined four children. One little girl kicked my seat and played with her tray the whole flight. Her mom kept threatening her with this punishment and that but the little girl wouldn't stop. She eventually got some toy car or something taken away from her for three days. or so the mom promised. Another mom apologized to my row-mate and I after we landed for the behavior of her two kids -- who wouldn't stop fighting the entire flight. What is going wrong with parents these days? None of the kids looked older than seven. Parents apologizing for their kids?
• That time zone changes can really mess up a biological clock.
  
• How marvelous is the ability to fly like a metal bird in the sky. God didn't give us wings, but He DID give us the ability to discover His natural law and see that when air passes over a certain shape, it provides lift. And that rudders not only work on water but on air, too! Amazing.

Be God's!

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California Dreamin'

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It's the end of Day 5 of my California vacation and I count myself a blessed man to be in such a beautiful place. I left last Friday morning for Southern California to spend a few days with my sister and her boyfriend in Riverside, and some friends in Palm Springs. During the times I wasn't visiting or being kindly chaperoned around the area, I rented a car and played tourist, driving around Southern Cali and taking pictures -- still and video. So far, with one partial day to go, I have been to the beach, mountains, desert, and wine country (Temecula Valley). Today I visited a Spanish mission along the coast, Mission San Luis Rey, which is the largest of the California missions and certainly among the most beautiful. Yesterday (Monday) I drove a few hundred miles around the high desert north of Palm Springs and mountains south of it. It was amazing.

This trip has been a real Godsend for me for many reasons. Not only is it a chance to get away from the Texas heat and humidity (Palm Springs humidity was 5 percent yesterday!), it is a mental and emotional refresher. I haven't had a mental break, save for Christmas and Thanksgiving, since 2003, when I was a small town newspaper editor and working my way through seminary. The Newton family went to Nova Scotia, Canada, that May. Sadly, THIS newton's vacation ends tomorrow night when my plane touches down at Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport. I'm seriously considering taking off by car to go someplace else cool and scenic on Thursday but maybe my senses will take over by then!

Here are just a few of the 948 photos I have taken so far here in California. I also have about an hour and 45 minutes of video footage to edit down.

Be God's and pray for a safe flight!

Brother John

A forest brook I discovered off the side of the road in the San Jacinto Mountains, east of L.A.

The Mission Inn is the top tourist attraction in Riverside, CA, a hotel built in the late 1800s in the Spanish style. It is a beautiful place with photographic potential around every corner.

A "Joshua Tree" may look weird but it is one of very few things that will grow in the high desert. I liken it to a cross between a pine tree, saguarro cactus and yucca plant. It's a real tree, and Joshua Tree National Park is... as you might suspect... full of them.

I have been really impressed by the sunsets here in Southern California. My sister showed me this little park near her apartment where we can look over the San Bernardino valley and see the majesty every evening. The smog from L.A. doesn't hurt the beauty, either!

This is Mission San Luis Rey, the so-called "King of the Missions" in Oceanside, CA. It was my destination on Day 5 of my trip.

Finally......

The Pacific Ocean. Taken at Treasure Island Beach in the city of Laguna Beach on Day 2 of my trip. It was an amazing sight for me. Grapevine Lake is nice and all, but this one's way better. Dude.

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The Solution to Worry

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(Today I was rummaging through some old Bible study files from my time at Gainesville Bible Church. I was struck by the relevancy and truth of something I wrote back in 2005 during my study of the Sermon on the Mount. It comes from Matthew 6:19-34. I wanted to share it with you because this passage has come to the forefront of my mind and heart repeatedly over the past year. Its truth is essential in the lifelong process of "growing young.")

“For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, [as to] what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, [as to] what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and [yet] your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?" (Matt. 6:25-26)

The whole Christian life contains many sacrifices — sacrifice of family, friends, employment, security, comfort, and control. The goal is to lose ourselves so that we may find Christ living in and working through us. Paul said that whatever he had gained in his life — all the awards, all the acts of piety — he considered lost so that he may gain Christ and know Him and the power of His resurrection (Phil 3). Jesus told the crowd that if anyone was to be His disciple, they must be willing to deny themselves, take up their cross daily (not an easy task), and follow Him (Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23).

It is the sacrifice of control that Jesus addresses in Matthew 6. We all want to have control over our own destinies. We want to have control over our tomorrows. How unnerving it is to go into a night’s sleep not knowing what is going to happen the next day! Especially when that uncertainty revolves around something as basic and essential as bread. You see, God wants us to recognize that He and He alone is responsible for every thing that we have every day. And when we worry about things, we are assuming (even if we don’t recognize it) that there is a chance God will not take care of our worries and concerns. Just a speck of doubt can produce a mountain of worry.

The solution to worry is for us to keep seeking God and keep striving for His holiness (6:33). Let God take care of the “what ifs.” This is so much harder than it sounds! Yet it is very, very necessary for spiritual health.

Be God's.

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The Rags of the Rich & the Prize of the Poor

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One of the things I keep getting reminded of is how blessed we are here in America to have a lot of choices. I can go to the grocery store and scan through hundreds of brands of food or the clothing stores and pick and choose what looks good and what doesn't look good. I have my pick of just about anything I want and the only thing that keeps me from selecting whatever I want is usually money.

But every time I look at pictures from poorer countries, the abundance and excess of America hits me over the head like a lead pipe. This picture I posted above was taken during my trip to Haiti in 1995. Look at the kids. What do you notice? When I took this picture I noticed a lot. I noticed that the kids spoke no English. Their dialect is Creole, which is kinda a mix of French and Spanish. I also noticed their clothing. What do you see?

All four are wearing American t-shirts, three of which have distinctly American subjects on them. The boy on the far left is wearing a Will Clark t-shirt, first baseman of the San Francisco Giants back then. The boy in the middle-back is wearing an Emmitt Smith t-shirt, star running back for the Dallas Cowboys in 1995. The girl on the right is wearing Mickey Mouse and the girl in front appears to have some sort of manger or home scene on her shirt.

I doubt that these kids have any idea whose image or logo they are wearing. You see, in Chambellan, Haiti, where this photo was taken, there is no television. No newspaper. News of the time came via word of mouth, the military (Haiti has gone through many coups), or shortwave radio. No Giants or Cowboys games.

The rags of the rich are the prize of the poor.

What I notice about these kids I noticed in pictures taken in Kenya by two of our church mission teams last month. The Kenyans have a better government and economy than the Haitians but they also often dress in the cast-offs of American abundance. T-shirts that reflect American pop culture and not their own. It was still the same in Haiti, as pictures from our latest mission team there showed.

I know it wasn't the American government who handed out the discarded clothing to the poor, and I highly doubt it was the inept Haitian government. Most likely it was the humanitarian and mission organizations that gathered and distributed the clothing, or maybe also Haitian businessmen looking to make a quick buck. But there are very few bucks in Haiti. Do I like having ten choices of milk when I go to the store? Sure I do! But while we have great choice here in America, it's important to stay grounded in the reality that most other nations do not share such choice. There are poor people around the world who would gladly take our used clothing and unwanted items and treat them as the swag of the rich. Who will wear a Will Clark t-shirt because it's a good t-shirt that covers the body and protects from mosquitoes, and not because of his smooth left-handed swing or his killer smile.

Are you willing to part with your old garments in order to clothe another person's nakedness? Sometimes people need help around the corner. Christian Community Action (CCA) is a local ministry here in North Texas that will take your discarded items and give them to the poor locally. Do some Internet searching for mission or humanitarian relief organizations that accept clothing and other items.

Your rags could become someone else's prize.

Be God's!

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Signs We're All in Trouble

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Hot off the CNN news wire...

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/07/02/climate.change.sheep/index.html?iref=newssearch


Well, if the sheep are gonna start shrinking, what hope to any of us have???? Run for the hills! (just don't step on any sheep. they may be kinda hard to spot.)

Click the link above for the scaaarrry story.


(NOTE: The link has been changed due to a disturbing blog spamming issue that has warped several of my links. Blogspot has been contacted. I dearly hope the new link above will work, assuming the story stays on CNN.com for a while. -- editor)


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