Author: Jonathan Blundell

It’s just like You to bring light into darkness
It’s just like You, Lord its just like You
It’s just like You to bring beauty to ashes
It’s just like You, Lord its just like You

I’ve been trying my whole life to be good without the cross
When all that I have gained is this emptiness and loss

It’s just like You to bring life to these dry bones
It’s just like You, Lord its just like You
It’s just like You to bring beauty to ashes
It’s just like You, Lord its just like You
It’s just like You to bring light into darkness
It’s just like You, Lord its just like You
—
I felt a bit like a goof today. I was listening to the radio and started thinking about Amy and how much I missed her and just started weaping as I drove into Harker Heights. Thank goodness for sunglasses. I was heading to the post office and had to sit and pull myself together before I walked in. Oh well. Let them see me cry — and if they laugh, I’ll punch em in the face. Ha. As of last Sunday (the 21st), it’s been five months since Amy’s homegoing. It seems a lot longer than that somedays and other days it feels like it was just yesterday we laid her to rest.
But God is good, faithful and will continue to bring light into darkness, beauty to ashes and life to dry bones.

As most of you probably know, my weekly newspaper columns come from my journal writings and blog writings, so after a bit of deliberation, here is the final column… I think all of it has shown up in a blog entry at some point this past week. This might give you the best example of how my column comes together each week.

In the third century, St. Cyprian wrote to a friend named Donatus: This seems a cheerful world, Donatus, when I view it from this fair garden… But if I climbed some great mountain and looked out… you know very well what I would see; brigands on the high road, pirates on the seas, in the amphitheaters men murdered to please the applauding crowds…
Yet in the midst of it, I have found a quiet and holy people… They are despised and persecuted, but they care not. They have overcome the world. These people, Donatus, are Christians…
What a compliment! A quiet and holy people. Quiet. Not obnoxious. Not boastful. Not demanding. Just quiet. Holy. Set apart. Pure. Decent. Honest. Wholesome.
On Monday, Pat Robertson, 75, and president of the Christiann Broadcasting Network told a Monday broadcast of “The 700 Club” that U.S. operatives should consider killing Venezuelian President Hugo Chavez by “taking him out,” saying it would be “cheaper than starting a war, and I don’t think any oil shipments will stop.’’
“We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability,’’ Robertson told the broadcast.
Robertson, a one-time candidate for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, also blasted U.S. authorities for failing to provide enough support for opposition leaders when Chavez was briefly overthrown in a failed coup in 2002.
In Caracas, Venezuelian legislator Desire Santos Amaral said Robertson’s comments outraged her, adding: “This man cannot be a true Christian.”
When did we move from our third-century mindset to our current mindset that we have to have everything the way we want it?
This may upset some people, but I wish James Dobson, Pat Robertson and others would quit using their pulpit to condemn and instead use it to show the world the love of God instead.
Maybe we could all take a lesson from third century Christians. Instead of standing up and demanding our ways be met, protesting every little thing we don’t like, maybe we should take a Christlike attitude towards politics and the like. What would that look like?
Instead of yelling at the lost, why don’t we calm down and show them how we were once lost as well and now found.

In the mid 50’s scientists looked at all the upcoming technology and did a study to see how it would impact our lives.
They predicted that by the year 2000 technology would be so great that people would be more effecient and would be working way less. By the year 2000, they predicted that the average American would only work 22 hours a week. They were so concerned that they began to wonder what in the world Americans would do with all their free time.
Boy – wish they were right. I think just the opposite has happened. More technology means we get things done more efficiently, but that just means were stuck doing more work.

Can someone tell me why I’m still here at 2:11 a.m.?
I think I’m so used to a noon deadline that I feel I have to have almost everything wrapped up before I leave Tuesday night.
When in actuality I have till 6 p.m. to get the paper to press. Geeze.
Maybe its a subconsious fear that I still have a sports tab to finish before Thursday night that is pushing me to get the paper done earlier.
Who knows. But I think I want to eat a sandwhich and then go home.

Why do we condemn Islamic fundamentalists for saying Americans should die – yet Pat Robertson can say whatever he wants without condemnation from the governement?

Robertson, a one-time candidate for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, also blasted U.S. authorities for failing to provide enough support for opposition leaders when Chavez was briefly overthrown in a failed coup in 2002.
Chavez has said he believes the United States is trying to assassinate him. The United States has denied such allegations.
In Caracas, legislator Desire Santos Amaral said Robertson’s comments outraged her, adding: “This man cannot be a true Christian.”
Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel said Venezuela would be watching how Washington responds to Robertson’s comments.
“The ball is in the U.S. court, after this criminal statement by a citizen of that country,” Rangel told reporters. “It’s huge hypocrisy to maintain this discourse against terrorism and at the same time, in the heart of that country, there are entirely terrorist statements like those.”
The State Department quickly distanced itself from Robertson’s comments.
“We do not share his view, and his comments are inappropriate,” spokesman Sean McCormack said.
“Our department doesn’t do that kind of thing. It’s against the law. He’s a private citizen,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said Tuesday of Robertson. “Private citizens say all kinds of things all the time.”

Oh yes, we are the United States of America – and his right to say whatever he feels is right, also gives me the right to say “Shut up Robertson and quit making us look like idiots.”