The Pursuit

Well, Kati brought Woody to the Vet this morning. He did another x-ray and found that the object had moved and was almost passed. He was able to get it out and found that it was not a piece of metal at all. It was a small rock. So that’s kinda good news… but the bad news is that it looks like Woody has a neurological issue.

We’ll have to take him to a neurologist to see what they can do. Luckily for me I work for UGA which has one of the best Vetrinary facilities and their own Pet Hospital section with three Neurologists on staff. Hopefully we can get to the bottom of this soon and get Woody some help.

One of our Beagles, Woody, is a little special. I always thought he was a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Ever since he was a wee one he just acted a little weirder than our other beagle, Gus. He’s always ran kinda weird… kinda like a horse galloping, but add a little “fairy” to it. Lately he’s even been having a hard time just standing up. It seems like he keeps losing his balance with his back legs. So, being the bad parents that we are, we waited until this past Friday to bring him to the vet. They said that there is nothing wrong with this legs or hips, which is good. However, they did an x-ray and found a piece of metal in his stomach. The doctor thought it might be a hunk of lead and that he might be suffering from lead poisoning. We brought him back on Saturday morning for another x-ray, to see if the metal object had moved - it hadn’t. So, tomorrow, Woody is going in for surgery to have the metal removed. We are also waiting for blood test results to see what his lead-levels are (if it is in fact lead poisoning). So they’ll do another x-ray tomorrow and if the metal hasn’t passed then they will proceed with surgery.

In a way, we are hoping that it is lead poisoning, if not, then it is a neurological issue. I’m not sure what we could/would do if it was neurological. He’s going to be 2 years old this December, so he’s still a pretty young dog and otherwise healthy.

Our pets mean alot to us, so if you’d pray, we’d appreciate it.

Gosh, I want to write about the crappy words we use every frickin’ day. But I’m not really sure if you darn people will appreciate the friggin point. I mean, gee whiz, there are so many Christians who are so loose with the words they use. Shucks, some of y’all even use words straight from h-e-double-hockey-sticks. Before I was saved I cursed like a dang sailor. But after being saved I felt like curse-words didn’t glorify God, so I stopped using them. Heck, it was an outright witnessing tool - all of my friends knew that I stopped swearing, and thus Jesus had obviously changed my heart.

Golly, I hope I don’t step on any of y’alls toes, but it’s just been on my blasted heart lately.

1 Timothy 3:2-7 contains a list that people usually consider to be qualifications for a leadership role within the Church. The normal practice (at least in Baptist circles) has little to do with determining if their leaders actually meet the requirements of this list, but they often use it if they want to kick their leaders out. I believe this list is there for a question, because they are items that mark true discipline and discipleship for Christ. However, I do not necessarily believe that a Christ-Follower must meet all these requirements to be considered someones leader/pastor/elder (whatever you may call them). The Bible gives us a number of examples of people who were leaders, people chosen by God. In this post I am going to pull out a few key characters and compare their life to this list. Hopefully, it will shed some light on this subject.

*Disclaimer: These strikes are not exhaustive, they are based purely on my and another’s memory. Therefore, there may be more strikes given the lack of historical detail on some of these characters .

I wrote about this over a year ago, here. Woot.com has a unique business model - they sell 1 item every day. Actually it’s more like 4 items now, they have www.woot.com (the normal site), shirt.woot.com (a new t-shirt everyday), wine.woot.com (for all you wine-o’s), and sellout.woot.com (a partnership with shopping.yahoo.com). Anyways, last year, in July, Woot had their Birthday. On their birthday they sold the ever so covetted “Random Crap” aka “Bag of Crap”. You can buy up to 3 for 1$ and you can expect to get crap. The fun comes in trying to order, waiting, hoping, waiting some more, and finally receiving it. Anyways, I missed out on the Birthday Crap last year, but I added Woot’s birthday to my google calendar and set it to remind me. So this year I was fully prepared to stay up until 1AM. I wasn’t really sure if it would be a BOC, but it was worth the wait, and as it turned out, the rest of the world (slight exaggeration) was waiting as well. At approximately 1:08AM the new woot showed up and BINGO a Bag of Crap! I was able to get my order in (8$ - 3$ for three craps and 5$ for shipping).

Well I received my shipment yesterday and this is what I got:

1x Kodak EasyShare 5300 All-in-One Printer (I’m selling it on ebay since I already own two printers).
1x Verizon Bluetooth (I think - I’m a bluetooth virgin)
1x Loose Screw (looks like one you use on a hard drive mount)
1x Targus Digital Memory Card Case
1x Birthday Card
Overall I’m very please with my crap. They printer retails for 100-150$, so I hope to get at least 50$ on ebay. The memory card case is currently holding my four thumb drives (I know, I know, they’re not “memory cards”).

I’ve never purchased a card for a 4 year old, but the writing on the inside of the card kinda weirds me out. Maybe in 70 years I’ll bring it to the Antique Road Show and they’ll tell me how it’s worth millions of dollars because it was a Woot Crap :).

We have many of poems/songs/psalms in the books of the Psalms written by David. In these writings, David was often brutal in his language, asking God to destroy his enemies. I do not know them all by heart, so I could be wrong, but I believe at the end of these requests he basically tells God, “But not my will, yours.”

Recently I was having a conversation with some blogging-buddies. I posed a question about why we pray for the safety of American Soldiers, but do not pray for the safety of Muslim Terrorists. Someone responded saying that David prayed that God would smash the teeth of his enemies, and so he will pray that God will smash the teeth of terrorists.

This led to a chain of questions that I am asking now: Should we pray that God smash the teeth of our enemies? Are Muslims Terrorist our enemies? Was David wrong for asking God to destroy his enemies? Did David know this and thus redeem himself by telling God “not my will, yours”?

Depending on how you answer these questions could lead you into some muddy waters. For instance, if David was wrong to ask God to do such a thing, then we have to ask. Are those parts of the Bible examples we should follow? Are those parts inspired by the Holy Spirit? Is David an example of someone we should follow? And the list could probably go on.

So, what are you immediate thoughts on these issues?

(by the way, I have already answered these questions in my own mind, but I want to hear what others have to say about it)

We Christians are not transformed simply by hearing sermons week after week. We are transformed by regular encounters with the Lord Jesus Christ. - Page 100

My wife is a big fan of the show How I Met Your Mother on CBS. I usually watch it with her because I generally find it entertaining as well. About a month (maybe more) ago they had their season finale. One of the major themes of this episode was miracles. One of the main characters, Ted, had been in a car wreck and his friend, Marshall, was trying to convince another friend, Robin, that it was a miracle. Robin claimed to not believe in miracles, so Marshall kept telling her different stories that he claimed was miracles.

This video clip is one of the miracles that he told Robin about. It literally had me laughing/crying for about 10 minutes. Whenever I think about it I usually started laughing pretty hard. And now I found it on YouTube! I hope y’all enjoy it as much as I did.

Every Sunday you attend the service to be bandaged and recharged, like all other wounded soldiers. Far too often, however, the bandaging and the recharging never takes place. The reason is quite simple. The New Testament never links sitting through an ossified ritual that we mislabel “church” as having anything to do with spiritual transformation. We grow by functioning, not by passively watching and listening. - Page 77