Good New / Bad News

The good news is that I had my smelly, inconvenient, oh-so-fashionable cast removed today. Interesting side note: with the advent of fiberglass casts instead of plaster, they can’t use those vibrating safe cast cutters any more. They used this wicked looking reciprocating saw and had to put a plastic shield under the cast to make sure I didn’t lose anything except the cast. I realize that I was in zero danger and the saws are perfectly safe, I had just never thought about the fact that those hard rubber vibrating things that they used to use wouldn’t work on fiberglass.

The bad news is that my thumb isn’t any better. After some xrays and more poking and prodding, the revised diagnosis is that I have some joint damage and early arthritis in the ball of my thumb. It’s likely caused by all of the stress I’ve put on it in my life, from playing bass in the band for so long (I’m a pretty aggressive player and I plant my thumb solidly on the middle pickup) to using a thumb trackball at work.

So now instead of weeks for the ligament to heal (the initial diagnosis) it’s looking like months of waiting and babying in order to heal some damage, but it will likely never be 100%.

And no guitar or bass for that multiple-month period.

Arg.

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We spend far too much time angsting. We often need a little bit help like this:

Advisory: YouTube is not a particularly safe place for children or adults. If you click through to the site, do so with caution, and please consider protecting your little ones and yourself with K9 Web Protection. It’s free and it works.

Have you ever wondered about where your “stuff” comes from? Why you buy it? Where it goes when you’re done with it?

Then The Story of Stuff is for you.

This little film will give you a very biased look at the “materials economy” and how it’s destroying our lives. The cartoons are adorable, the message important and the ideas disturbing.

MrPages was most disturbed by the “externalized costs” of merchandise - the fact that we pay low prices because others are paying the actual prices; others being people in third world countries who are paying with their homes, their children and their lives. He’s seen it first hand.

I myself suddenly realized that information junkie though I am, sometimes I don’t pay enough attention to the whole process. Where exactly did my new bed sheets come from? Where was the cotton grown? Did a small child have to pick it? What kind of factory processed it? Did they pour lots of chemicals into the ditch? Do I know? Do I care?

For the scripture says, “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain,” and, “The worker deserves his pay.” (1 Timothy 5:18) I hope I’m not proof-texting here, but we don’t even know who the workers are. Worse yet, we don’t seem to care.

So over the next while, the WonderfulPages family will be trying to be more deliberate in our consumer choices. We’re going to try to pay more attention to “our stuff.” We’re going to try to buy less of it (although we already do this), we’re going to try to make better choices on what we do buy, and we’re going to try to pay more attention to who exactly our choices impact. Nothing like a gargantuan challenge!

Our Living Nativity

Getting Ready “Back Stage”

The Story Begins

No Room at the Inn

Mary with Baby Jesus

The Shepherds and Their Sheep

Praises to the Lord

Time for Bed

Note to Self:

When you get home from picking up a few extra items from Walmart, the Saturday before Christmas, check the bags to make sure that you put the Christmas ham into the fridge, not into the closet with the rest of the Christmas stuff.

Merry Christmas!

When we were married I invited a few friends to our wedding reception that I hadn’t seen in a while, friends from high school that I no longer hung out with, but had been close to during my teen years. At one point, MrsPages and her father got up to do a slow dance together to “Daddy’s Little Girl”. Everyone gathered around to watch and give them the entire dance floor.

One of my “friends” apparently thought this was too cheesy. He rolled his eyes, said “Oh Geez!”, put his arms around those next to him, and began singing along in a loud mocking voice while doing a Can-Can dance in time to the song. I quickly moved around, grabbed him by one arm, leaned in very close and stared him in the eyes as I gave him the voice. “This is very important to my new wife. She is very important to me. Do you have a problem?”

He got very quiet. He decided that it was a good time to go sit at his table and have a snack.

Back to today. As we move farther and farther along this journey away from the well-travelled path of traditional church, there comes a certain tendency to become a zealot. As the old saying goes, “Beware the convert!”. It seems easier to define myself by what I am not or what I don’t believe rather than who I am and what I believe. There is a temptation to take potshots at the things we are leaving behind as we become more convinced in our new direction.

Neil Cole has some great words of wisdom on this topic, words he tells “young idealists” in the simple church movement.

I love this:

[Speaking of the Church as the Bride of Christ] Don’t bash the bride no matter how ugly she looks to you. If you start attacking the bride, sooner or later you’re going to have to take on the Groom, and I don’t think you want that!

I remember the defensiveness I felt when that twit started his song. I remember that I was ready to do anything to prevent him from hurting MrsPages. I’m not a jealous God who is returning with a sword. The Groom that Cole mentions is.

Sometimes we walk the fine line between honest constructive criticism or disagreement or discussion on the one side and outright opponent-bashing for the sake of our own egos on the other. We need to make sure we stay as far on the first side as we can.

Today we made our annual gingerbread houses.

We have the quaint little cottage of the LittlestPage nestled beside Page2’s ocean lighthouse.

And Page1’s peaceful Swiss chalet sitting neutrally between the rival castles of Page 3 and 4.

Tomorrow the wholesale massacre begins!

I got an email regarding some current issue in which someone wrote (in bold letters with colored lines on either side):

“WE AS CHRISTIANS MUST PROTEST AND OPPOSE THIS!”

Oh, really? Must we? I think the world has quite enough protest and opposition, thank you. Perhaps we need to look again at who is supposed to be doing what with regards to “God’s enemies”.

IMPORTANT, OFTEN FORGOTTEN POINT #1: Who destroys God’s enemies? God.

IMPORTANT, OFTEN FORGOTTEN POINT #2: Who loves God’s enemies? Us.

1 Corinthians 15 speaks of Christ putting His enemies under His feet. Not us putting them there.

Luke 20:41 (quoting Psalm 110) says that “I will put your enemies under your feet.” The “I” is God. The “your” is Christ. God will put His enemies under the feet of Christ. We won’t do it.

“…their end is their destruction.” says Philippians 3:19 of God’s enemies. Their destruction is when judgment comes, not when we destroy them.

Those are pretty definite statements of what happens to God’s enemies when God gets finished with them but where does that leave us?

Now, even though people often talk about the Bible being “hard to understand” or “unclear”, this is one of those blessed subjects on which there is absolutely no doubt. No quibbling over the meaning of a Greek verb tense. No arguing “Well, this other manuscript has a ‘Φ’ instead of a ‘Θ’ which makes the meaning unclear.”.

Nope. It doesn’t get much clearer than this:

But I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. To the person who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other as well, and from the person who takes away your coat, do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who asks you, and do not ask for your possessions back from the person who takes them away. Treat others in the same way that you would want them to treat you.

If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you hope to be repaid, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, so that they may be repaid in full. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to ungrateful and evil people. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. [Luke 6:27-36 NET, emphasis mine]

All those folks who are cursing Christians right now? Bless them. Authors whose books have some sort of anti-Christian message? Love them. People who loudly decry what you believe? Pray for them.

We as Christians have collectively forgotten to do this. Forgotten how to do this. When I forget and I start ranting and being un-graceful to someone, remind me. Let’s all remind each other. Maybe we can have people see Christ in Christians rather than the angry, reactionary hypocrites that they see now.

It’s apparently not bad enough that Britney’s 16 year old sister’s pregnancy is pretty much all that’s on the news right now.

The serious question of our age, a parenting dilemma that I’m sure you have been wrestling with these past agonizing days, a story worthy of CNN’s front page, has been announced:

How do you talk to kids about Britney’s sister?

Parents are struggling with what to tell their children after finding out that Britney Spears’ younger sister, Jamie Lynn Spears, is pregnant.

*Headdesk*

Library Day

Inspired by Swivels the Stickler.