Matthew 4:12 - 22

So you're hanging out at work. Doing nothing. Just the regular tasks of the family business. Some guy walking by on the street stops in the office and says "Come, follow me." What do you do? Can you imagine actually going with the guy? That's what the disciples did. Kind of shows you that people could tell that Jesus wasn't just an ordinary guy. He probably walked differently, talked differently, and acted differently. You could probably just tell that he was special. I know if I asked people to come follow me I'd probably be given a restraining order. Pretty incredible.
It's also cool to look at the relationship between John the Baptist and Jesus. Jesus ministry didn't start until John was in prison. I wonder why? Maybe he didn't want to steal any of John's ministry. Who knows. Once Jesus started his ministry he preached the same message that John did: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.
By the way, John the Baptist is my favorit Biblical figure. JM

Pajama Party

Noah had his first real sleepover friend the other night. Here are Noah and Millie getting ready to go to bed. Millie was transferred to her own bed shortly after the story finished to prevent any rumors floating around preschool. Well, and because they would have killed each other.

Later that night at like 4:00 am I found Millie downstairs crying for her daddy after she had changed back into her clothes and turned on all of the lights. Pretty funny. JM

Surplus

How much time do we spend fulfilling expectations that aren't there? We ordered Chinese tonight, and along with everything else we received a bag full of soy sauce, duck sauce, and sweet and sour sauce. We never open this bag. I wonder how many people do the exact same thing.

Perhaps we are a rarety and the average Chinese food consumer consumes the contents of the bag. We do not. If we are not the minority, how much does the bag and its contents cost the Chinese restaurant? If they discontinued providing these, how much money would they save?

In church work we spend a lot of time doing things that we don't want to do, or that aren't productive simply because we perceive that the expectation is there to continue those programs, even though nobody may even desire them.

How liberating is it when you only do the things you want to do that actually produce results? One day I may find out. JM

Battle

I love budgeting. Like I get way into it. I'm setting up my personal budget for 2007. I think I got it so it will work. It's like a game trying to get it so it will balance. Once I get my monthly budget to balance, then I go through and do my spending plans for each paycheck. That's fun, too. Trying to see when to pay the bills. Mostly, I just love having a plan. It makes life so much easier. JM

Pump It Up

So my 2.5 year old son went to a place called pump it up today. It's like a big indoor playground with loads of inflatable games. The problem was that when we told him where he was going, he kept saying the pumpkin patch. He loved the pumpkin patch, and I knew he would love pump it up as well. But I didn't want him to be confused. I get like this a lot. I think something is going to turn out differently than it does. I get all excited about my perceived result, but it doesn't come. So when the real result happens, I'm disappointed, even though it may even be a good thing. It all comes down to keeping your expectations real. JM

Matthew 4:1 - 11

Two things strike me as interesting about this passage.
First, verse 2 says "Jesus ate nothing for forty days and nights. After this, he was very hungry." What an understatement. Of course the guy was very hungry. Sure he was all God, but he was also all man. I wouldn't have made it past day one. I've never made a full day of fasting without a protein shake.
Second, in verse 3 Satan comes to tempt Jesus. He doesn't offer him food. Well, he does, but it's under the pretense of a dare. He challenges who Jesus is. Look at it: "The devil came to Jesus to tempt him, saying, 'If you are the Son of God, tell these rocks to become bread.'" I think Satan does this to us too. He waits until we're tired or distracted and then attacks our potential weakness. So he attacks our patience when we're tired. He attacks our pride when we're focusing on our patience. It's a smart tactic. It helped me to know how he works. After all, G.I. Joe says "Knowing is half the battle"! JM

The year of 500 Posts

One of my new year's resolutions for 2007 is to post at least 500 times to this blog. That's about 1.5 a day. One of my plans to accomplish this is to use this blog as an online journal of my quiet times. This will hopefully provide me with some accountability since the whole world will know if I miss a quiet time (the whole world = me and any random person that happens to stop by). We'll see how it goes. JM

Stage Awkwardness

One of the most uncomfortable feelings is when awkwardness is coming from a stage. I was just watching a giveaway during the halftime of the Fiesta bowl. A guy was throwing a football through a hole to win $100,000. After he did it, they told him he was getting a new house as well. Great stuff for him. The problem was that he was being paraded around like a puppet by the announcer. "Bring in your family", "Jump through the hole", do this, do that. Not a pretty moment. It becomes uncomfortable to watch when people don't have the right reactions, or people miss their cues.
My church is really bad about this, especially at the end of our worship hours. There are missed handoffs all over the place. As soon as the commitment song is over, someone is supposed to pray for the offering. But there is usually dead air. Then there is dead air afterwards as the host is unsure of what to do. The confusion makes everyone uncomfortable, right at the moment when you want to leave them feeling good.
The more you can communicate what is going to happen to people that will be on stage, the better things will go for you. It's always better to overcommunicate. JM

Beep! Beep!

My son was given a jeep by a family that lives nearby. It's not a real jeep, rather a power wheels kind. All the better as he struggles to drive this one, and would probably be much more dangerous behind the wheel of a larger vehicle. The problem is that the jeep doesn't fit in our garage. Rather, it doesn't fit in our garage along with our other two vehicles. So my car loses out and has to be parked outside.

Therefore, my most immediate desire is some nice storage shelving for the garage. If I can organize what we have, then we should be able to park all three of our vehicles in the garage. I wonder if we'll be able to advertise it as a 3-car garage for resale purposes. JM

Christmas Lights

I'm always sad when it's time to take down the Christmas lights. Well, not really. I'm always ready to get back to our normal living room setup. I just don't like the whole packing stuff away process. The reason why is because I would love to organize it all. Categorize it. Package it. Store it. But I don't have the time, or the proper storage materials. So what essentially ends up happening is that I just shove the stuff back into boxes. The ornaments will go back into their packaging and all of the other decorations will be boxed up. The one thing I do need to buy this year is a rubbermaid box for the Christmas tree because the old box no longer fits in our storage area thanks to us finishing off the bonus room.
So tomorrow night they'll come down and be put away for 11 months. Exciting times. JM