I think effort really does count

Many of you who know our family are familiar with the blog that Julee maintains -

It chronicles our journey through the autism world with our fourth son Nathan. Now if you have spent any time reading that blog, you might have this thought going through you mind once in a while - "Why in the world are they doing all that?" Come on, I know you've thought that. How do I know? Because sometimes I think that. Take for example the latest entry in that blog. It talks about all kinds of crazy things like - biofilm, stir up - attack - clean up, it even talks about stool!

I read that entry and I'm tempted to0 think - "What in the world is this lady talking about! One too many kids in that home for clear thinking." And yet, when my mind starts to wonder down that path, I remind myself that one day I will stand before a certain Awesome one named Jesus and I will be judged for this life that I have lived and for the things and PEOPLE that He as entrusted too me. At the core of who I am I want to be able to say "By Your wonderful grace I did everything I could to honor you in every aspect of my life."

It is a strange concept I think - that effort really does matter to the Lord. Where statements like "I'm doing the best I can to get to heaven" has absolutely no merit at all in view of eternal judgment for heaven and hell, effort has tons of merit when it comes to the Christian life. We might call it perseverance, endurance, longsuffering, surrender - effort takes a bit of all those things. If there is ever a chance to share the gospel, I want to make the effort to do so. If there is ever an opportunity to shed the love of Christ on a person, I want to make the effort to do so. And if there is ever an opportunity to better the life of my child, I want to and I must make the effort to do so.

My greatest fear is to look back 30 years from now, or even worse, as I stand before the Lord, and ponder the question "Why didn't I try? What would it have hurt?"

~ Effort really does count!

BTW - Since our trip to Canada, this biomedical stuff makes a lot of sense to me and I'm all behind it. In fact, we are moving forward with doing some biomedical intervention for our oldest son Timothy.

I think Mo-Mo and this kid must be friends

I think I've seen this face in my house before! This article on food allergies totally reminds me of little Maury and his food allergies!

I think Jehoram is not a name you want for your son

Nothing against the name, but the life behind the name in 2 Chronicles is one of the worst ones recorded in the bible. Here's how his life ends.

2Ch 21:19 Then it happened in the course of time, after the end of two years, that his intestines came out because of his sickness; so he died in severe pain. And his people made no burning for him, like the burning for his fathers.

2Ch 21:20 He was thirty-two years old when he became king. He reigned in Jerusalem eight years and, to no one's sorrow, departed. However they buried him in the City of David, but not in the tombs of the kings.

Jehoram was the king of Judah, the son of Jehoshaphat. Where Jehoshaphat was godly and as a result, God blessed him with peace in his kingdom and many riches, Jehoram the son, only inherited the riches. He was wicked and God judged him. Harshly too. I would not want to die the way Jehoram died. No thanks.

I have many many thoughts, to many to share at this point, about the hardship of riches and the detrimental affect it has on children growing up in it. I find that so often the comforts we provide for our children become the greatest obstacles to the formation of their faith. I have this theory that the greater we understand our DESPERATE need for Jesus, the deeper the formation of our faith.

"I'm drowning. I'm blind. I'm a leper. I'm headed straight to hell." - those are the makings of great and deep faith.

"I'm OK, I'm missing something, I'm interested" - those are the makings of shaky faith.

It's difficult for a young man like Jehoram, and for countless others, to grow up inheriting the blessings of God and enjoying the materialistic fruits of His hands to see clearly their state of desperation. Wealth and "things" just have a way of tempering that.

I think when we find ourselves surrounded by materialistic blessings from God, there is simply a greater need to put ourselves in situations where we are desperate for the Lord. Go street witnessing. Go down to Mexico. Go on a mission trip. Go feed the homeless. Go serve the sick. Go pray for the elderly. Do things that money cannot cure. Let your faith cling to the power of Jesus. And in all this, by all means, take your children along with you, lest in the materialistic blessings of the Lord, we raise sons and daughters like Jehoram.

May it never be.

I think fixing things can be fun

Did you know that a laptop can be taken apart, put back together, have left over screws and still work? Indeed. I've done it twice now. All together, about 9 screws have relocated from it's originally intended place in our HP laptop to my desk drawer, and yet, the laptop works beautifully.

Then there's my thumbdrive. The USB side kept sliding into the drive. Whereas in the past I would just go buy one, I'm really into fixing things. My solution, take a really hot soldering tip and melt the plastic so the USB side won't slide anymore. Add to that some globs of solder and voila, I got my 4GB stick back!

I'm finding that I really enjoy fixing things. Broken things. I'm no pro mind you, but in the end, the broken thing inevitably works again.

I wonder - from a heaven's perspective, if my life that is fixed by the Master is like a notebook with a few screws missing or a USB stick, with globs of melted solder holding things together. This I'm sure of - as much fun as I have in fixing broken things, God must get a kick in fixing me!

Here's my next geek project - A Homemade Antenna. Can't wait to get those ABC so I can watch LOST on the day it actually comes out!

I think Rehoboam was a fool

He was a fool because he acted foolish, he was a fool because he spoke foolishly, but mainly, he played the fool because he looked to a bunch of fools for advice. In the defining moment of his reign, this was the path he choose:

2 Chronicles 10:8 - "But he rejected the advice which the elders had given him, and consulted the young men who had grown up with him, who stood before him."

I find that like Rehoboam, our society has so little value for the advice of "the elders". And to me, that's really a sad commentary about the independence and pride that we all nurture from childhood.

"I'll make my own path, I'll tread my own way." What I think we are really saying is "I'll make my own mistakes, I'll hurt my own people, I'll disgrace and defame the name of the Lord my own way. No one needs to tell me how to do it."

I work with some pretty amazing "elderly" (by age, not by vigor nor by zeal) gentlemen, and I try to eat up as many of their "back in my time ..." stories as I can. And when I do, I try to remember that the wonderful thing about "experience" is it's redeeming factor, because whether good or bad the first time through, each successive time it is relived and retold, that "experience" has almost all positives and very little negatives for me to glean from. I can learn from their victories and I can learn from defeats. It's a wonderful thing!

Therefore, I think those that would ignore the advice of "the elders" are fools!

(I wonder how many times I've been a fool like this. Far too many!)

I think it's time to join the blogging world

So I'm not much of a writer and maybe that's because I'm not much of a reader. In my simple understanding, those probably go hand and hand. On the other hand, Julee is an avid reader and hence, she is an amazing writer. Her Discovering Nathan blog is a wonderful chronology of our family and specifically of our journey will little Nate-Nate. So when it comes to writing, and therefore blogging, I leave it to Julee to compose the words.

However, I think this blog might change a little of that. For some time now, I've had the desire to start a blog, many blogs, all kinds of blogs, simply because there's all these thoughts that I think floating in my mind and out of necessity to clarify them, it would be good for me to try to organize them in coherent structure. Of course I don't need to start a blog to do that - I can start a journal, I can use Word, I can scribble on the shower door, but then, who would hear my thoughts? Isn't that what blogging is for? To think out loud for chance that some will hear it?

So this blog is just a place for me to share the things that I'm moved to think about. Most will be about the Lord Jesus Christ, some will be about the little people I find running around my house (including Julee), and some may even fall on the techie - nerd - way to much geek stuff for me side. Who knows, maybe I'll blog about G.I. Joes and Transformers and Spider-man because I think about those things a lot too!