Is that the smell of desperation?

So, the 4th six weeks ended on Friday and my grades are due this afternoon. Because I am either a compassionate person or a glutton for punishment, I showed my students their grades and offered to let them come in after school today to make up work (despite my steadfast promise that I wasn't going to allow make up work). So, yeah, I am anchored to my desk for the forseeable future while kids work.

As most of you know, I am a fan of the way in which Joanna does this whole blog thing, especially her insistance on always having a picture. The problem is that I don't have many good pictures on my laptop, and the ones I do are either of you, my friends, or the cats. So, here is a cat picture. It is not only a cat picture, but a picture of the clean bed Jennifer and I wish we had. You see, we have the bed part down, but not so much the clean part.

How do we go from a nice clean bed to the vertical surface to stack clothes on that we have now? How do my students go from intelligent motivated learners to bleary-eyed little dears praying that they can find that one last assignment they were supposed to turn in three weeks ago? It has every thing to do with persistance and never growing tired of good work.

I and Bryan have just finished our class on confession and the principle is the same. I go along doing what I ought, and then just one night of being too tired to do what is right, one moment where it is easier to give in to sin then resist it, and it seems all is lost. I didn't decide to one day dump laundry on my nice clean bed. It started with one morning being in too much of a rush to make the bed, and then I thought as long as the bed isn't made it wouldn't be too wrong to throw my jacket on the bed, and before you know it, I'm sleeping on the couch for want of space.

Let's look after the little things before they become the big things.

Hobbies Cure Stress?!?

Well, this week is getting off to a great start! Last night, mere moments before the Wages' were set to show up to watch the Amazing Race, we had unexpected difficulties with our plumbing. I was doing laundry and when the rinse cycle started, dark blue water started draining into both of our toilets and bathtubs! It was not pretty. Anyway, Jennifer made plans for a plumber to visit us today while I was work, but this morning I woke up sick. I think it is mostly allergy related (head and body ache, scratchy throat, etc.), but I wasn't enjoying life.

It's a little ironic since my sermon yesterday was from Psalm 46 ("Be still and know that I am God"). My message was that we are built with the need to escape the business of our lives from time to time and just recharge our connection to God. So, apparently, I need to live what I preach and my body decided that it was time to do so.

As most of my sermons are, this one came from a personal place. I feel like I've been running 90 to nothing lately as I've been struggling to get kids ready for TAKS. Church is as busy as always if not busier as I have started to take over the coordination of worship. I am also coming to the realization that since Jennifer is the big time administrator, I am the one home early enough to wash clothes and dishes. Anyway, enough whining. My point is that life has been busy and I need to recharge.

There are a couple of ways to recharge, I guess. It suddenly occurs to me that I haven't used one of those ways since the summer. There has not been an addition to my custom Super Powers collection in six months. Altough the pictures are lousy, you can see that the collection is already large. Above are the heroes. Here are the villians. Those of you unaware, for the last few years I have been taking action figures from a childhood collection (The "Super Powers" line from Kenner), and reshaping them into new members of the DC universe. I'm not sure why, but this hobby keeps me sane, calming me and giving me a great sense of accomplishment when a new figure is born. Some of them are simple repaints, like taking a Flash, adding some yellow paint, and calling him Professor Zoom. Or I can add some red and blue to a Wonder Woman (and Jennifer's snazzy homemade skirt) and get Supergirl. See the picture below for those examples. Other times, I'm more like the creepy kid next door from Toy Story and take parts of different figures to make who is more than the sum of his parts. For example, the 70's era hero Black Lightning is made with Firestorm's arms, Martian Manhunter's body (including his bulky boots), and Hal Jordan's head. Alright, this was a pointless post, but I appreciate you reading. Have a great day!

A little paint makes Flash into Professor Zoom and Wonder Woman into Supergirl.

Firestorm, Martian Manhunter, and Green Lantern all contribute to making Black Lightning the "flyest" Super Hero in my collection.

Eating Sin

Last Friday I did what I normally do when Jennifer is out of town. I camped out at the AMC movie theatre at Grapevine Mills Mall and had a night of movies. I watched the Messengers, which was good although uneven in some respects, and the Good Shepherd, which was intriquing with a nice twist, but it didn't really know how to end. Sandwiched in between these two films was the latest offering from Fox Faith, a movie called The Last Sin-Eater. The movie was about a Celtic community living in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains (ah, home!) who carry their traditions with them from the old country. One of the most valued traditions is that of the Sin-Eater, who comes at your funeral and eats off of your dead body, symbolically swallowing your sin so that you may enter Heaven. The crux of the film is about a young girl who can not wait until death for someone to take her sins away, but needs relief from them while still alive. Of course, she learns about Jesus, the last real sin-eater, who took all of our sins upon himself in his death. This isn't intended to be a movie review or recommendation, but there are worse things to watch in the theaters today. Of course, there are also better things to watch as well.

What interested me was the clear dichotomy the movie showed. In essence, the movie said, "Jesus good; Sin-Eater bad." I'm not so sure that it is as clear cut as all of that. Now let me be clear here: I'm all about the "Jesus good" part. No one is arguing this. More than that, putting your faith in some random person to eat food off of you so that you can get in to heaven is the epitome of goofiness. But, I see a couple of symbolic lessons in the sin-eater story that we can learn from:

1. We must die before we can be forgiven- The heart of the protagonists dilemmia in the movie is that she doesn't want to die before her sins are forgiven. But the Bible says that we must die to ourselves and our sinful life before we can be born again. Now, it is certainly true that Jesus died for our sins while we were still lost, but for that sacrifice and this forgiveness to mean anything to us today, we must die to the world.
   


2. We eat one another's sin- Most of you know that I am teaching a class on confession. This is about as good a definition of confession as I've seen. We eat one another's sin. You confess to me, and I take that sin upon myself. If all I do when I receive confession is nod my head and act sympathetic, but then leave you to your struggles, what good is it? Instead, when we receive confession, we take that struggle up with one another so much so that if you fall into that sin again, it is I who have failed.
   
   Okay, enough preaching. I love you, guys.

It's still Raining . . .

Have you ever had one of those days where it doesn't matter how much you do, how hard you work, how noble your intentions, you are still a dismal failure and disappointment to those around you? Yeah, that's my week. I've been called everything from an incompetent teacher to a tool of Satan this week. I've made two students cry and one threaten to slash my tires. I'm drained, deep in my soul, and I need to refocus on those things that matter. Pray for me, and know that no matter how badly I mess up, I'm doing the best I can.

They're coming to get you, Barbara . . .

Different kind of post today. I'm really busy, but nothing of what I'm busy with is worth posting about, although I am very proud of the fact that I cleaned out our pantry this weekend. You know it's been too long when you find Christmas Candy from 2005!

Anyway, with nothing worth posting about, and in honor of the Scary Movie Night Eric, Alan, and I will have some time soon (I hope), I have a hypothetical horror related question:

When, as the picture describes above, all the cemeteries close and zombies walk amongst us, where will you hide out and why? Jennifer and I have this conversation alot on long trips (if by conversation you mean I talk while Jennifer messes with the radio and pretends to fall asleep.)