DeSantis and the New Model for Education

 

A Model For Education: Start With Parents

Ron DeSantis is setting up a model for other Republican governors on how to protect kids and win over parents. In the process he is making it expensive for woke corporations to meddle in local affairs.

Fight the Woke Companies

Most people remember the national dust up over Florida’s bill to protect school children before 3^rd grade. In short, teachers can’t talk about sexual issues. Then Disney complained and the governor took away their sweet tax deal. He didn’t do it unilaterally of course. He got both houses to pass a bill to remove their self governing status. The governor (through parent groups) wanted references to sex and gender removed from their teaching instructions to young children. Disney and their allies protested. Ostensible because what, 1^st and 2^nd graders need to hear about sexual orientation? 

The whole thing was an own goal for the media company and I’m glad they paid an economic price.

Support the Parents

The long term problem for Disney isn’t the loss of tax advantages; it’s the idea in the minds of parents that the company that exists for kids, wants to push sexual issues down to the youngest possible levels. Does the stink from this go away anytime or do they keep rushing headlong into bankruptcy? When you lose the trust of the next generation you lose them for a long time. Governor DeSantis made this possible because he has guts and seems to understand where the country is on these issues. 

From CRT (Critical Race Theory) and masking to sexual identity for tots, parents are finally fighting back. The school board meetings across the country, Loudoun County, Virginia in particular showed parents railing against oppressive boards.

Will public schools be reformed through all of this or will parents opt for home schooling and alternatives? I’m curious what happens nationally. My optimistic take is that cities start electing common sense boards that aren’t antagonistic toward children. Curriculums move away from “woke” topics like race, gender and sexual orientation and get back to real school subjects like math and science. This will happen in some places while other districts go the other way and embrace left wing activism in all its forms. 

School districts will mirror the increasing urban/rural divide happening across the country.

Look for Alternatives

But some new ways of teaching and learning will replace the familiar classroom experience that most of probably grew up in. One option I really like is hiring one teacher for a small group of kids. Parents pool their money for a private teacher to homeschool small groups of kids. This took off during the pandemic as an alternative to teach through zoom that no one seemed to like. Private teachers for small groups is a cross between homeschool and small school. Called ‘pandemic pods’ they resembled one room school houses of last century. Obviously this isn’t an option for everyone. It’s expensive and not available everywhere.

I believe the idea of vouchers will take off as well. This is a great option for low income kids. Punish bad schools and reward good ones. Each parent gets a voucher and a choice of where to send their kids. I like the idea but I wouldn’t promise an end to all problems. But allowing parents (consumers) to treat schools like a marketplace should go a long ways toward killing off failing schools. Maybe it’s a pipe dream, but the current system is broken and needs serious reform.

Ignore the Critics

Critics of charter schools and vouchers like to say that it creates a system of haves and have-nots in education. But that’s exactly what we have now and keeping bad schools open is a guarantee that poor kids will go to poor schools and have less chance at success. I don’t have kids so a lot of this is purely academic, pun intended, to me. But I care about the future of the country the same as parents with a more direct stake. I heard a startling statistic about jail beds in Oklahoma prisons. The number of beds the state will need mirrors the number of drop outs in a given year.

Education is important but only if it insists on making kids learn practical subjects. The diversity and inclusion game is a racket and it’s ruining the minds of the next generation. We need a massive educational system that rewards learning and growth. Woke schools should die on the vine. They rob young kids of the ability to think for themselves and fill their heads up with resentment.

Conclusion

It’s impossible to predict the future of elementary and secondary education. The place to start is with the parents. When they get serious about what their kids are being taught states and districts begin to fall in line. Ron DeSantis is as responsive a governor as I’ve seen, from the Right, in a long time. He doesn’t patronize conservative parents over their concern for curriculum and he punishes institutions that step out of line. 

 Governors in red states should take note. Get serious about protecting kids, the parents will back you up.

 

Writing for Posterity

 

This is the first day back from my short vacation where I can sit here and actually write something. Last night I recapped the trip to Estes Park but I always do that after a trip. I always feel the need to document these get-togethers. I’m specifically talking about writing, not taking pictures.

Of course I did manage to get a few. The rest I lazily stole from more efficient picture takers, my brother Justin. He took this one on the second day up the snow covered trail. There is a beautiful lake behind me completely covered in a late April blizzard. It seemed silly to take a picture here. There really isn't anything to see. Other tourists were there snapping away as well. I kept thinking, what am I missing here? But I didn't want to be left out. So here is a picture of me in snowstorm looking a little confused.

Pictures aren't my thing. They get in the way of enjoying the occasion.

The search for the perfect picture becomes the point instead of the search for adventure. You spend your time finding the perfect setting and the right light. My picture taking is somewhere between zero and Japanese tourist. No doubt I’ll update Facebook and share some pics on my page, but snapping pictures is pretty much a mystery to me. Not that I can’t figure it out, it’s easier than ever now. Modern camera phones adjust the light and auto zoom for you. My issue is with taking great pictures. It feels like the space for that is already so crowded. So many people doing wedding pictures and taking time to really learn Photoshop. I just don’t care that much.

But writing is different. It comes easier to me sure, but what I enjoy is knowing that I’ve given a little story line to the photos.  Pictures and movies are certainly the popular way to record for posterity. But writing creates a fuller idea in the reader’s mind of the time in question. Ask yourself what comes to mind when scrolling through a social media feed where pictures are prominent? What do most of the people in the pictures share in common? Happiness, peace, good times and fun? We tend to share the best of ourselves online through happy photos. Facebook and Instagram are all smiles and a sense of the good life.

Oh sure you can find the dark and scary and sad too, but we like fun more. Advertisers use fun to sell everything from alcohol to precious medals. Their images are as reflective of real live as those cat filter settings we use to distort our faces. But it’s also not a great idea to vomit sadness and regret all over the screen. Pictures are limiting the same way video is. We are consciously aware of our behavior when in front of a camera, video or picture. Writing allows some distance where a fuller idea of the time period can grow and expand. Words give the reader a sense of time, place, culture, relationship and importance. I realize the writer has to draw this out through either fictional characters or a detailed retelling of a situation.

In the case of short family vacation a little journaling is enough. We aren’t preparing a witness for cross examination or anything.

A good photo can do more than express the subject’s emotion. 

When I was a teacher I used to show stark photos of tenement life in New York City before some housing and building codes became law. Labor laws helped to change a lot of this too as did Christian charities like the Salvation Army. The picture above of the street kids sleeping in the street gives us an idea that this kind of thing was common. We can imagine they hustle to get by and struggle to eat. We might even be able to guess something about where they live and work based on their clothing. They probably don't have family or shelter. It's tough to look at and not feel heartsick.

 Newspapers advocating for labor laws would certainly capture the squalor of inner city life for kids with no families. Pictures are used to distort reality too.

How many police arrests make cops look like aggressors? We tell them to keep the streets safe and blast pictures of them roughing up a suspect that tried to flee the scene, risking everyone’s life in return. It’s maddening. I hope we can all get a sense of how easy it is to give a distorted picture of what’s taking place.

Words allow the subject to reflect on the event. With the benefit of time, even a few hours, your attitude can change significantly. This happens to me a seemingly every day. White hot anger turns to shame and apologies after a few minutes and a fuller picture of the event. Just the other day I got a phone call about an issue with one of my orders. I thought it could wait until I was back in the office. I was stuck, unable to help and feeling worthless. The whole incident felt unfair. I was angry. I started running through scenarios where I angrily defended myself to coworkers. I even managed to mentally prepare for an altercation. Time passed and I began to breathe again. After a while I started to see it from the other side and even became sympathetic.

My whole attitude changed completely by the end of the day.

This is writing about history in a nutshell, or at least it should be. Even short term history like what happened at work today. Journaling (or reflecting) is a way of reasoning out a story and writing as honestly as possible.

Tell the truth and provide a story to the pictures everyone is going to see. Don’t do it for today, do it for tomorrow.

Cat's Cradle: Review

 

If I had to pick one word to summarize Cat’s Cradle, it would be “cynical”. But cynical can make for a funny read if done right. Kurt Vonnegut’s characters and situations are not just fictional but ridiculous in the extreme. Cat’s Cradle tells how the world ended through stupidity and accident, and how a lack of morality pervades all decision makers.

I think the problem with a highly cynical book is it lets evil off the hook. Good and evil aren't opposites but different shades. With all the horrors from the twentieth century, it’s as if these events are another bit of silliness we have to endure. It’s one thing to talk about the complex system of religious codes and government malfeasance, it’s quite another to make evil dictators part of the machinery of war instead of their cause. It’s true that conditions within a country can push citizens toward it, but atrocities are the result of greed and selfishness.

I get what he’s Vonnegut is doing. He’s making an absurd reality to show the contradictions in religion, belief and the future of civilization.

The basic premise is this: Jonah is a writer who intends to write a story about the effects of the atom bomb after World War II. Right off he tells us that he used to be a Christian but converted to Bokonism. We learn more about it as the story unfolds.

 He tries to find Dr. Hoenikker, the famous creator of the bomb and interview him. But since he is dead he talks to his youngest son (Newt) through letters. Jonah also goes to the lab where the Doctor worked to interview his colleagues. The book Jonah intended to write instead becomes about his interactions with Hoenikker’s kids. The oldest (Frank) is about to be married to the daughter of a dictator (Pappa) on a small island country.

Jonah’s travels to the island, San Lorenzo, to meet Frank constitute the bulk of the plot. Frank sold a dangerous chemical compound invented (Ice Nine) by his father to the dictator Papa. His younger sister Angela married a weapons manufacturer and Newt is a midget who once slept with a Russian spy. Papa is close to death and hopes to see his daughter married to Frank, who will become the new president once Papa dies. Frank doesn’t want the job and convinces Jonah to marry Mona and become the president instead. I won’t spoil the end but it’s not a happy one.

No one in the story has a conscience but that’s also the point. Vonnegut is saying that life is meaningless and so are the ways we try to make sense of it. That’s where Bokonism comes in. San Lorenzo is supposedly a Christian nation but no one actually believes it. It’s a convenient way to keep the natives in check and provide them with a common enemy, Bokonism. It’s a religion of ‘harmless lies’ that admits it’s a bunch of lies. Vonnegut uses the belief to tear apart religion and the systems built up around them.  

It’s clear almost right away that everyone is lying about who they are or what they want. They either lie or are too dumb to see how fake everything around them is. It’s an ugly view of humanity but done with a light touch. The absurdity of the island and the characters hides the cancerous rot at the heart of life itself. Obviously I don’t subscribe to any of it. But Kurt Vonnegut lived as a POW in Dresden when the allies bombed it into oblivion.

That’s not an excuse but I do think it probably colored his perception of humanity. Also his mother killed herself when he was very young and his father suffered from severe depression. I watched a documentary on him recently and realized I’ve never read any of his books. It struck me as interesting because I’m always looking out for writer inspirations. My motivations are less about type of books and more about how they got their start, what kept them going and so on.

The most useful thing about Cat’s Cradle is how technology can be insanely destructive. In part it’s so destructive because of the slavish devotion we associate with scientific achievement. Breakthroughs are automatically assumed to be beneficial despite the indifference of the scientists to the morality of the project. Dr. Hoenikker’s kids encapsulate this purely amoral look at research and development. Ice Nine is a stand in for nuclear fission. It wasn’t created to kill but became a weapon. The fact that Felix Hoenikker didn’t anticipate this shows indifference rather than carelessness.   

I wouldn’t recommend the book for anything other than a look into the life of its author. Kurt Vonnegut doesn’t draw a sharp distinction between good and evil. War is hell, goes the saying. He certainly believes that. But are there redeeming qualities to be found whether heroism or sacrifice or charity? The answer is not obvious.     

 

Did Christ Descend into Hell?

 

This being Easter weekend my thoughts are on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It’s not a coincidence that the Holy Spirit had me research the topic of what Jesus did in the time after he died and rose again. I’m becoming a little more scholarly in my reading of the Bible over the last year or so. No I’m not reading the New Testament in Greek, or the Old Testament in Hebrew. But I’m more curious than before; the curiosity leads me to do a little study to find out what’s in the Bible that I haven’t encountered before.

My question for today: Did Christ decent into the lower parts of the earth after death and free the imprisoned souls from Abraham’s bosom? I think the short answer is No. I ran across a few dissenting views that assumed Paul’s phrase in Ephesians 4:8 was a reference to the birth of Christ. “When He ascended on high, He took many captives and gave many gifts to His people.” It’s originally found in Psalm 68:18, Paul also adds “He ascended” –what does it mean but that He also first descended into the lower parts of the earth?’

I think the when it says ‘He descended’ it’s a reference to Christ going to Sheol (Old Testament Hades) to rescue the imprisoned captives. But the Zondervan opinion I read gave a convincing definition that Paul is talking about Christ coming to earth as an infant. That’s the “descended” part of it. It’s based on the definition of the phrase from Psalm. Instead of “lower parts of the earth” it should, according to this opinion, say “lower parts which are the earth. I didn’t check on the Greek to verify so I’ll have to take his word for it.

Of course that changes it significantly from something below the earth, like Sheol, to just another word for earth.

The second verse scholars point to is from I Peter 3:18-20.

 “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. ¹⁹ After being made alive, he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits— ²⁰ to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water.”

Who are the imprisoned spirits? According to Zondervan the best explanation is that Christ in Spirit, was preaching to the hostile people during Noah’s time. This is a paraphrase of what Augustine said, according to the Zondervan passage. It’s not convincing to me though because God the Father used prophets to preach to the unbelievers. I’m unaware of another passage that describes Christ preaching in spirit before His time. God had other means of sharing with people.

But if I take this passage to mean that Christ went to hell to preach to the imprisoned spirits, are they the spirits of men or of demons? They can’t be angels because angels can’t sin. Demons fell with Lucifer so I don’t think this is about them. It’s unclear what he is preaching to them though. He does make a proclamation. That sounds to me like a new statement of principles. From this day forward and so on.

I remember my Dad telling me that Jesus went to hell and took to the keys of Hades and death from Satan. You might read that in Revelation 1:18 where Jesus tells John “I have the keys of Hades and Death.” It was the first time I’d thought about it. I just assumed He died and rose again, with nothing happening in those days between His death and resurrection. But even if Jesus met with the Father, To be absent from the body is to present with the Lord, it doesn’t really make a difference. It doesn’t change what He did.

But this added element of Jesus telling the thief, “Today you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43) doesn’t sound like Heaven necessarily. Is Paradise not Abraham’s Bosom, the place near Hades that souls of the righteous departed await the resurrection? In Luke 16:19-31 the story of the rich man who spots Abraham and asks him to send Lazarus to dip his fingers in water, is suffering in Hades. Abraham refuses because of the life the rich man led, but also because of the gulf that resides between both dimensions. “…between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.” Here was a resource I used that supported the claim Christ descended into hell. 

This section of Luke provides the scriptural basis for a holding realm. At least some people think it does. They also believe that Jesus was saying to the thief, I’ll see you there with the others who are awaiting My victory. After reading some of the supposed passages that support Christ’s descent into hell, I’m less convinced that it went down this way. But like always, I’ll wait for other revelations or interpretations of scripture.

Most of this is esoteric stuff but it interests me just the same. I own a book called Bible Doctrine by Wayne Grudem. It’s a rich source of Christian beliefs with a scriptural grounding. I won’t say I subscribe to all of it but it gives me a foundation place to start.

About Time for Leisure Time

 

Leisure's Great Deception

We all spend our free time doing what's most important to us. It changes with age, money and family station every few years. The recognition that time is short forces us to jettison stuff for relationships. 

I had dinner with some friends at church. It was one of those volunteer meals where the church rewards its helpers by putting on a spread. The feast was a Tex Mex buffet, tortilla shells, beef, shrimp and chicken. Not to mention Tres Leches cake. Most of us ate too much. When you offer free food in mass quantities folks take notice.

I’m new to this crew but dinner makes it easier to make friends. One man I talked to has a freelance photography side hustle. Business has been slow with Covid but starting to recover. I told him how I wish someone would help me with my pictures. I always regret taking the ones I do. I don’t’ realize it until I’m ready to put them in a frame. By then it’s too late.

If I just had more time I’d like to learn to take pictures, I’d be great.

I told him that but I’m sure he was like, ‘yeah I get that a lot’. Everyone wants good photos but few of us want to put in the time. It’s easier than it used to be with the digital cameras.  I never had a camera that needed film but I remember watching my parents struggle to load the roll properly and lock down the lid.

Never Enough

Wanting to get better at taking pictures made me think about how many other things I’d like to be good at if time were no option. I never learned Chinese enough to tell anyone I can speak it. I’d settle for an elementary level vocabulary and understanding. That’s quite a lot actually. Any foreigner with an elementary level of Mandarin will go far in China. I like tennis too. But my skill level is somewhere between aggressive toddler and “You might be better suited for Rugby, Sir”. Remember Melos from Seinfeld? He would destroy me. I’d like to spend a couple of hours every week improving my game.

Throw in Golf too. I want to improve my game. Anytime I hear a sermon from an unfamiliar Bible verse it reminds me that I haven’t studied the scriptures enough. An extra hour every day would go a long way toward helping my grasp of the Old Testament at least. Two hours extra should help for the Now. I would need a few extra weeks each year strictly for travel. There are so many places I’ve never been in the US. It’s not fair. Two weeks per year would be enough I think, throw in another week for international travel.

Level Field

Time is the great equalizer. Someone said that. I could look it up I suppose, but would the quote be rightly attributed anyway? It’s a safe bet that no one under the age of 40 said it. At a certain point in life you realize what everyone realizes, you only have so much time. A wealthy landowner lives as long as a high school teachers. Your hobbies and interests will follow your priorities. If you consistently put your golf game ahead of attending your kids’ track meet you’ve established priorities. Same for going to the track meet, it’s in the priorities. They’re different for every person.

In our modern society we have cheat codes that allow us to focus on certain events at the expense of others. A whole range of service industries exist to take care of life’s chores. Lawn mowers and carpenters, auto mechanics, accountants, dog washers, dog walkers, all allow a sort of cheat. The service economy keeps expanding and providing us with options, if not more time. Of course we can’t pay for all of them so we prioritize some more. The ones who order food deliver might never pay for a dog walker. Others will pay a nanny but never a house cleaner.

We could say that priorities make the difference but really it’s time. Cheat codes allow us to move things around but not live longer.

No Workarounds

One of my favorite episodes of the Twilight Zone is of a book lover (Henry Bemis) who never has time to read. It’s off limits and work and even at home. His wife won’t even let him read the paper. One day he sneaks off into a bank vault to read and hears an explosion. He emerges to find the city destroyed in a nuclear blast. He stumbles upon a collapsed public library with books strewn across the ground. After making plans to read and arranging stacks according to a schedule the eager book worm drops his glasses and shatters the lenses.

 It’s a brilliant inversion of the time paradox, Bemis actually does have the time but lacks the resources. Humans aren’t meant to have all of our needs met. Lack makes us go, and work and make choices about life. How much time can I spend reading or mowing the lawn or learning a new language? How do I weight that against family stuff, sports, events, school? Whether time or resources we’ll always want more of whatever is missing.

 Be Grateful

Most of human history before the mid-1800s was, in the words of Thomas Hobbes nasty, brutish and short. Scientific understanding of disease, and how to treat it, increased life expectancy. Much of death was from disease and kids suffered the most, pushing the averages downward. Free time for intellectual pursuits was the prerogative of royalty and their connected patrons. That we have time for leisure at all is a small miracle.

The best thing we can do is make a choice and deal with the consequences. Recognizing the finite nature of time helps us to simplify our wants. Suddenly those skills, classes, sports and TV shows will matter a lot less. 

Time is gift. Choose wisely.  Have more conversations. Eat Tex Mex and sponge cake until you can’t move. Go on long walks with friends and help others whenever possible. It doesn’t sound exciting but it really is. For me it's people over things and let the choices fall into place.

 

 

Fasting for Easter: Aligning the Will

 

Is Fasting Still an Important Discipline for Christians?

I’m fasting for the Easter season. It’s just a partial fast for breakfast and lunch but I can’t remember a time I’ve done this for more than a day or two.

Meals break up the day for me so missing a meal makes me aware of my hunger, not to mention the time. With discipline though it get easier and you begin to understand why it’s important on occasion for spiritual health. Fasting aligns our priorities with God's by forcing us to set aside our needs in response to His invitation to go deeper in prayer.

Breakdown

The simplest thing anyone can say about a fast is that the Bible recommends it. Fasting demands we answer two questions before jumping into willful hunger pangs. First, what is the purpose of the fast and what are the examples of it in scripture. Not everything in scripture has a direct correlation to our current Christian culture. We don’t sacrifice animals on an alter to cover our sins. Nor do we demand farmers give 10% of their increase to the storehouse. Tithing is a principle many people still practice but it’s not obligatory.  

Examples

Jesus fasted for 40 days and 40 days nights. Moses and Elijah both fasted just before big breakthroughs, the Ten Commandments and the anointing of Elisha respectively. Nehemiah fasted for his people, as did Esther and Daniel. Paul fasted for 3 days immediately after his road to Damascus conversion. In every case the Lord brings us to a place of deeper understanding of His plan or will. Often the fast produces an answer or a breakthrough or new phase. It might help to say it like this, we submit to God’s will by denying ours. A lack of food quickens the senses.

Rationale

Think of how you feel after a full meal, content? Sleepy? Relaxed? It’s tough for God to compete with a full stomach because our natural needs are met. But denying those needs, for a time, produces focus and determination. Fasting isn’t just a discipline we grudgingly agree to at certain times of year. It builds our faith by demanding we go a little deeper in prayer. Not only do we submit our will to God’s, we seek answers, ask for repentance and gain understanding.

Doesn’t God meet our needs whether we fast or not? Yes but fasting removes the distractions of life and makes us go to God with laser focus.

We Fast for Answers

We seek answers from God when we’re troubled. Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, called for a nation wide fast to seek the Lord. They were facing extinction from 3 separate armies, the situation was grim. But God sent Jahaziel to proclaim victory to them by singing and praising the Lord. God confused the enemy and they killed each other instead. Judah’s fasting was born of desperation and their deliverance was found in humility (2 Chronicles 20).

I’m mostly familiar with this kind of fasting. A few years ago I had a similar experience. I fasted lunch for close to a week and prayed during the day as often as I could. I needed an answer from God on a relationship I wanted to pursue. I read the scriptures more intently than I had in years. My whole being was focused on hearing from God. God spoke to me in a dream one night during my fast. I didn’t like the answer at first but I moved on, confident in the value that fasting provides.

We Fast for Repentance

Repentance provides us with another opportunity to fast. Ezra had such a moment when returning to Jerusalem to rebuild the city. Many of the Jewish rulers had taken foreign wives (pagans) and had children with them. It was a serious offense to God and Ezra was hurt by it. If you’ve ever gotten a job and found out it on the first day it was so much worse than advertised, you’ll sympathize with Ezra.

Jerusalem was destroyed precisely because of intermarrying and human sacrifice as worship to Baal. Here is Ezra’s lament “O my God, I am too ashamed and humiliated to lift up my face to You, my God; for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt has grown up to the heavens.” (Ezra 9:6) He goes on in a heart of repentance for continued disobedience. This is for the people already there, not him. This level of forgiveness through sackcloth and ashes is an Old Covenant practice that went away with the cross. But the fasting remains as a means of aligning our heart with the Father.

We Fast for Understanding

Spiritual battles often demand a fast. Daniel’s vision of the Glorious Man came after a time of fasting and mourning. A messenger of God told Daniel that the Prince of Persia halted the progress of Daniel’s prayer. “Then he said to me, ‘Do not fear Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand, and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard; and I have come because of your words”. (Daniel 10:12)

The messenger was preceded by Daniels vision that caused him to go into mourning for 3 weeks. During this time he sees the glorious man that is likely a vision of Jesus. “His body was like beryl, his face like the appearance of lightning, his eyes like torches of fire, his arms and feet like burnished bronze in color, and the sound of his words like the voice of a multitude.” (Daniel 10:6)

Because Daniel set his heart to understand and humbled himself his prayer was answered. What was the evidence of his humble heart? The fast. In verse 2 Daniel tells the reader “I ate no pleasant food, no meat or wine came into my mouth…” His focus was on knowing and he cut out all distractions.

The Image of Fasting

From the outside looking in fasting appears to be a duty for acceptance into the club. Many religions have required sacraments and boxes to check for the faithful. Islam famously has Ramadan which involves fasting from sunup to sundown for nearly a month. The goal, prove yourself a worthy Muslim. There are practical benefits to fasting that run adjacent to any religious obligation as well. But if Christians see it as just another duty to an exclusive club, or a crucible of suffering to achieve holiness—they should stop.

We don’t fast for approval, recognition or promotion. God’s kingdom doesn’t operate on favors.

A Perfect Picture

A friend of mine went to a local baseball game with a large group. He noticed how little the fans actually watched the game they paid to see. Most were ordering food and chatting about TV shows, some were on their phones texting friends. As a lifelong baseball fan he was disappointed. It made him realize how constantly distracted we are with everything but what is in front of us. That weekend he issued a blackout for his family, no phones, TV or internet. They spend the entire week together, as a family, no distractions.

That’s a pretty good picture of the kind of heart that fasting can produce.

Understand that fasting is a way of aligning your heart with the Heavenly Father to understand His will. It’s a temporary break from the regularity of food. The emptiness in our stomachs reminds us that God is our source.

If you extend your soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul, then your light shall dawn in the darkness, and your darkness shall be as the noonday. (Isaiah 58:10)

Waymaker: Track and Field Season

 

It looks like I’ve got a possible Saturday job for at least a few months.

 It’s yet another example of excellent timing from the Heavenly Father. On Friday a coworker informed me that one of our salesmen needed help at a track meet. He said he thought the job paid $100 for the day but wasn’t exactly sure. With the economy the way it is I need a little extra money during the week to ease the pain of the very obvious inflation crunch. I didn’t care how many hours it was. Nor was I going to be too picky about the kind of work it involved.

I called the salesman and he gave the basic details. You sit in front of a laptop and record the race in front of you. To be more accurate, you record the race as the kids cross the finish line. We have a camera on a tripod focused in on the finish. The recording makes it possible to enter each runner’s time by scrolling to the exact moment their torso intersects with the finish line. The race timer starts as the coordinator fires the starter pistol. It contains a sensor that trips off with the sound of the gun. That sensor starts the timer.

The timer and the camera both rely information to my computer as I watch the match and stop the video when the race is finished. Then I save each race under the description of the event, ‘7^th grade Boys 400 meter heat 2’ and so on. The only difficult thing I’ve discovered was making sure I remembered which event I recorded. I saved the wrong race under the wrong title for the first couple of heats. It turns out that my mistake was not recognizing how the software automatically loads the next heat once the current one is finished. I was making it more complex than I needed to. Thankfully my partner knew what he was doing. We backtracked a little but settled into a groove after a while.

I'm being descriptive here for people who aren't familiar. I didn't know how any of this worked either but I found it fascinating.

I’m unfamiliar with track and field. My high school didn’t offer it. I would’ve loved to participate in some running event though. Of course this is the older me talking. What’s difficult to know for sure is how much of my current interest in jogging would translate to my high school self. Watching those kids on the track running their hearts out gave me just a twinge of sadness. I played basketball and soccer. I was a decent athlete who struggled with self-confidence on the court. Always deferential, I was happy to pass when I should’ve have taken a shot or drove to the hoop.

Might some level of passiveness have taken over in a team relay or sprint? Probably so. It’s still fun to think that in another life I could’ve been great. Everyone is a champion in some alternate universe.

The guys that set up the recording system at the meet get paid well. At least that’s what Aaron, my counterpart, told me. My portion of the job is the easy part with one exception, you really need to pay attention. It sounds easy but it’s not. On a couple of occasions I found myself too focused on the screen and not the next race. I heard Mike, the coordinator, shouting green light and looking at me from across the track questioningly. The timer runs off a red light, green light system. If I’m ready for the next heat to start I’m supposed to push the green light and let him know he can set the kids in place and fire the pistol.

I left him sitting there a few times waiting. Mike does not like to wait. He runs a very quick event. He told me as much when I shook his hand at beginning of the race. He was cordial but clear “Stay on that green light”. And I meant too but you know…

I’m hoping this leads to more events and more money. Track and field season is short but should consume about 6 to 8 weekends I figured. Maybe by then I’ll have another gig. God always takes care of us when we have a need. My need was a job that I could do on Saturday to ease the strain. All the basic consumer goods are up right now, not to mention gas and food. Inflation is like a pay cut. But it doesn’t matter. Our Heavenly Father always creates a way.

“And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus”. Philippians 4:19