Month: October 2006

Thoughts for the day

From Sojourners:

Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.
– Jeremiah 17:7-8

Imagine a world where the representatives of the greatest military power on earth are humbled by an unarmed healer from the backwaters of Galilee. If you can imagine this kind of world, you possess…an imagination ready to discern the reign of heaven.
– Stanley Saunders

Mr Way too Liberal for Texas Guy

Chris Bell and me at a campaign stop in Waxahachie

As a follow up to the “Mr Way too Proud of Texas Guy” from Budweiser, the Rick Perry campaign is about to drop a new radio ad against Chris Bell. It goes to show you that the Republican campaign has a sense of humor too.

It is absolutely hilarious.

I may have to vote for Perry just for releasing this ad.

[audio:http://casadeblundell.com/jonathan/wp-content/uploads/MrWayTooLiberal.mp3|titles=MrWayTooLiberal]

According to “insiders” the radio ad drop this afternoon on the air.

Cancel your church service to do service

This is AWESOME! From CMS:

This is what church is supposed to be.
Gateway Community Church in South Riding, Va. had “The Big Event” on Sunday, October 15. Instead of a typical Sunday morning worship service, the congregation went out and did volunteer work for 61 area homes. One member even blogged about the experience.
The event included business sponsors, a web site and balloons and yard signs to mark the “winners”–the homes that received the free work. While all those extras help maximize the impact of the event, I just love the simple idea.

What should I blog about?

I hear people tell me all the time that they don’t know what they’d blog about.

Everyone has something interesting to say.

There are 1 million stories in the naked city every night – or so they say.

But the key is to write about what you’re passionate about.

I love doing a random check over at technorati or other sites to see what keywords pop up in my blog posts.

You can see right away what I write the most about and by reading my blog you can probably tell very easily what my passions are. I write about things I’m passionate about.

If you’re passionate about your pets, write about your pets. If you’re passionate about your job, write about your job. If you’re passionate about health care or politics or your church or your God, write about it.

ChurchCommunicationsPro has started a new series for pastors who need to be blogging.

It’s got some great pointers for “the rest of us” as well.

Some of the posts include:

  • How to Get Blogging in About Four Steps, Five Minutes [See below]
  • Why I Suggest Pastors Use Blogger.com
  • Blog Your Passsion, First and Foremost
  • 10 Topic Ideas for Blogging Pastors
  • Blogging as the Spiritual Discipline of Journaling
  • How to Read a Blog … for Pastors
  • Make a Blog Posting Schedule
  • How to Write a Blog Post … for Pastors: 6 Ideas
  • The Best Blog Posts … Are Often Lists
  • Writing Effective Headlines, or Post Titles

The site also has 5 questions with 44 different blogging pastors that are each great reads.
Check it out and pass it along to your pastor. It will be well worth it.

Re: Villagers take oil

From the BBC (the real story):

Attack on Nigeria oil facilities
A group of protesters have invaded three Shell oil stations in the Niger Delta, forcing the facilities to be shut down, the company said.
The demonstrators are accusing the oil giant of failing to fulfil an agreement to provide them with aid.
Shell refused to say how much oil had been cut off following the attack.
Militant groups have stepped up attacks on oil facilities in the region in recent months, demanding more local control of oil wealth for residents.
Shell said members of the Kula community living near the company’s Ekulama 1, Ekulama 2 and Belema oil pumping stations had invaded the facilities.
Chevron also shut down its platform in the same area as a precaution.
A Chevron spokesman in Nigeria, Femi Odumabo, said government officials in charge of the area were holding negotiations with the protesters to address their problems.
Nigeria is Africa’s biggest oil producer but militants have been demanding a greater share of the oil wealth for locals in the Niger Delta.
On Saturday seven oil workers – including four Britons – were freed after being held hostage in Nigeria.
The men were captured on 3 October when gunmen raided a residential compound housing expatriate oil workers in the Niger Delta.

God is faithful

From a good old friend:

I can’t think of an adequate title…

As I sit here at the computer, I am looking at my calculator. It says “59.34.” Yep, that’s what I was doing an hour or two ago…balancing our checkbook. And yes, that’s what the balance came up being.
Why am I even telling you this? My pride is telling me to shut up and not talk about what little money we have in the checking account because 1) People may think it’s pretty pathetic, 2) I might be pitied as a charity case or 3) people may think we have spent all of it frivolously. Well, Pride, you’re just gonna have to sit down and shut up for a minute because I have something to say.
For the past several months (since May) we have been having really big financial difficulties. It all started when I had to go to the chiropractor for my headaches. Our insurance deductible hadn’t been met, so every visit, test, therapy, etc. had to be fully paid for by us. That put us far enough in a hole where we had to put our regular bills on credit cards to be able to pay the medical stuff. So, since then it has been kind of like a snowball effect, with even more medical bills for my husband and then even more for my recent surgery. Needless to say, it was a bit frustrating, especially to my dear husband.
In most homes (Christian ones, too) the husband sees himself as the provider (even if he may not come out and say it), so when financial difficulties come, they tend to shoulder all of the burden and worry. Well, this past week at our church, we had revival. Our revival preacher brought out a good point one evening when he said that the husband is NOT the provider of the home–God is. So if there are financial problems, look to your Provider. I kinda nudged my hubby when he said that because I knew he was worried about it–he’s not the type to ever say anything, though. So, we just kept on praying like we always have that God would provide for us.
It hasn’t been easy, really, and I’m sure a lot of you understand what I mean. We NEVER go out to eat. I go to the grocery store once a week and get all we need for me to cook every night. I don’t mind cooking, but it gets a bit old sometimes :). We are the epitome of “penny-pinchers.” We have been very wise with our money (such as it is!).
Philip told me that he prayed yesterday morning that God would send us a check for $1500 to get us out from under the medical bill debt so we could start paying down the credit card debt. He looked in the mail yesterday and there was no check. He prayed again this morning that God would please put the check in the mail.
He had to go to Wal-Mart today to get diapers. Our oldest, Annika, has grown out of all of her Fall/Winter clothes and so while there he knew he had to get her some clothes to wear. So, he got her a few outfits and shirts and added up what we had left in the checking account and what he was about to spend. He got to the checkout and had to decide whether or not to put it on a credit card or trust God and just pay for it out of the checking account. He decided to trust God and just go ahead and pay it out of the checking account. He got into the car and realized that we only had about $50 in our checking account (which I had just punched in a few minutes before he went to Walmart) and the reality of that coupled with all the debt began to really bother him. The whole way home, he was almost in tears because of the financial strain, but he just kept thinking, “I am going to just trust the Lord.” All the way home, he was so hoping that check he had prayed for would be there. He pulled into the drive way and checked our mail box. No check.
He walked down to church’s mailbox and checked it. In it was two checks from Central Baptist in Dunn, NC–one for the church and one for our family! The check for our family covered all the debt we needed to pay. The really amazing thing that I told Philip later was that the mailman had delivered our mail to the house earlier because there was a package and she asked if me if I wanted the church mail too. I said yes, so she gave me all the mail. But yet, somehow that check was sitting there in the church’s mail box!
Philip came to where the girls and I were outside playing he was crying. I didn’t know what was going on, but then once he showed me, we just cried together–amazed at God’s faithfulness!
I just had to share this because I know there may be people struggling with things like this and God’s promises will come true if you trust Him. He definitely deserves the glory and I am so glad that I can write this so many people will see what and awesome and personal God He is!