White immigrants get a pass – brown ones do not

Ouch! Is Rev. Bob Edgar saying what I think he’s saying?

Let’s talk about immigration. But first, here’s a word from our sponsor, the God of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel and Leah.
“When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.” (Leviticus 19:33-34)
That seems pretty clear. Don’t you think?
There are a half dozen similar verses in the Hebrew scriptures. But Americans who are so riled up over this immigration situation seem to ignore these words.

Hmm… “Love your neighbor as yourself?” Yeah that’s an easy one to overlook. It’s only the second greatest commandment.
Edgar continues:

These are the same folks who trot out the very same Bible to damn gay marriage and justify anti-gay legislation in several of our states. But when it comes to more biblical evidence about how we should treat those non-citizens living among us, they are curiously silent about the several verses that seem fairly direct in how God wants us to act toward these human beings…
Most of the attention has been placed on our southern border and on building a fence. Little attention has been paid to our northern border. Yet a foiled terrorist attack of someone trying to cross into our country happened in December 1999, on the Canadian border. An alert Customs officer arrested a man trying to cross into Washington state on his way to bomb Los Angeles International Airport on New Year’s Day 2000.

How is your church choosing to tackle this issue? Or are we just ignoring the problem?

Thanks to the DMN Religion Blog for the article.

Passion Groove

passion.jpg
From Sunday morning:

What is it that causes people to do things in their life? What causes people to chose a certain career over others? What causes a person to work in a hospital, in the ER, where you’re going to face people in tragic situations – many life threatening – and to deal with that day in and day out. What an amazing thing to cause someone to do that. What is it that causes a person to do that?
What is it that causes someone with a lucrative job and to trade all of that in and walk away and chose something else that pays less?
What is it that causes a person to have a nice home, nice surroundings and to pack all of that up, sell all of that away and move to another part of the world to live in a different culture and a different place?
What is it that causes a person to maybe have their full-time job but on every waking moment after they work and on the weekends they’re giving themselves away for another cause – volunteering of their time?
What is it that causes a person to even give of their money so much so that they scale down to the best of their abilities in their own lives so they can give even more away? What is it that causes people to do those kind of things?
If you were to ask them you would find this in common with everyone of them — there is something deep in their soul – there is a sense of calling to what they were involved in.
They would say, “This is what I do. Money is not the issue. Power is not the issue. Fame is not the issue. I feel a sense of calling to this in my life. And when I am doing this thing it is what I believe I was made for. It is the place that God called me to be.”

Listen to the full message online

Huckabee takes second

So… Mike Huckabee took second in the Iowa Straw Poll… What does that mean?

Second place is the first looser? Or something bigger? I’m going to agree with ChristianConservative on this one….

Significance:

– Huckabee rented ZERO buses
– Huckabee could only afford to pay for about 1800 tickets
– Huckabee spent considerably less on Ames than other candidates – including the winner Romney

Huckabee will now turn to television appearances (Face the nation on 8/12 to discuss results of the poll), an inaugural MySpace debate, and also has fundraisers scheduled for every day in September.
In addition I think his name is going to be spoken a lot more in the upcoming weeks considering the top two national candidates only received 1-percent of the ballot after they chose not to spend any money in Iowa and free publicity (blogs like this one and stories about him in the MSM) can only help him gain ground and momentum.

Unofficial Iowa Straw Poll Results

11. John Cox with 41 votes.
10. John McCain with 101 votes.
9. Duncan Hunter with 174 votes.
8. Rudy Giuliani with 183 votes.
7. Fred Thomson with 231 votes.
6. Tommy Thompson, 1,009 votes, 7.3%
5. Ron Paul with 1305 votes, and 9.1%
4. Tom Tancredo with 1961 votes, 13.7%.
3. Sen. Sam Brownback with 2192 votes and 15.3%
2. Gov. Mike Huckabee with 2587 votes and 18.1%
1. Gov. Mitt Romney with 4516 votes and 31%

Iowa state auditor David Vaudt unofficially certified the results.

14,203 ballots were cast.