Tonight is the 7th of the 8 Crazy Nights series. As I write this the early arrivals are enjoying xbox, NES, and PS2 all throughout the building.

8 Crazy Nights has been a success, but I am tired. I long for some days off at grad school where I can be alone and not have to worry about endless details. I also look forward to the relative silence as I drive to Huntington and back.

Next year? Too soon to make a decision. I think it has been great in a lot of ways, but I would need to hand off parts of it if I were to do it again.

Every time we have a youth event or even church I am getting a massive headache.

Why am I getting headaches? Well, it has to do with how I am being treated by the people of the church. I love them, they seem to love me, but I am just getting overwhelmed by their constant talking to me.

Here is the scene that practically kills me each week. Light Force will end at 8:30 PM. About half of the students and their parents will leave within a few minutes, but about half of them will all want to hang out in the room. Great right? Yes it is great. But then 2-3 students at a time will ask me questions, tell me about their weeks, ect. Of course, I love this interaction and would relish in it if it were done in a quiet and organized way… But all of them are talking to me at the same time.

One student will tell me about their weeks events. A parent will interrupt to ask me about an event. Another student will chime in about something random. Another student will want to tell me about a picture… And the original student still wants to talk about their week. It leaves me absolutely spinning when they finally do leave.

It is normal over the last 2-3 months that I get home utterly overwhelmed by this. I don’t want to talk to the kids. (Who desperately need their daddy!) I don’t want to talk to Kristen. (Who desperately needs her husband!) All I want to do is vegetate and watch TV or escape to the basement to browse the internet aimlessly.

Dear God, please help me find a way to solve this problem. I love these people, but the headaches are a headache. Help me to find a way to minister to Your people and still want to go home and be with my family.

I can’t figure this out completely but my new gmail account is getting loads and loads of SPAM. Thankfully, it is pretty much just harmless advertising and doesn’t seem to be anything damaging, it’s just annoying to look at.

As of right now, since Sunday I’ve received 1052 SPAMs. If I needed a loan or movie rentals or a dating service or vitamins or stolen video games… I now know exactly where to go.

I contacted the gmail team to see if there was anything I could do to block this or figure out where it was coming from so I could stop it… Their only suggestion was to set up filters. I’ve learned from experience that this doesn’t work. The long and short of it is that the spam account I created to catch all of this seems to be working. It’s annoying, but working.

I’m not sure if refelting is a word, but the Light Force pool table got refelted today. One of the deacons who had seen it done once really made it happen. I just kept him company and looked pretty.

Now I just have to get around to sanding, filling some holes, and painting it. But at this stage in the game, it is at least playable. (Though I might be closing it off until a grand opening or something like that.

I suspect this may be 100,000-150,000 by the time it’s all said and done.

The eerie sight of dead bodies being buried in mass graves littered TV screens yesterday. Is there any amount of relief that can relieve this terrible suffering?

A couple of things worth noting:

1. My mutual funds are kicking ass: It feels good to see that our retirement account is going up like crazy. Finally, a little relief after a couple of down years. We even started diversifying a little and I picked a really undervalued one. I hope 2005 is a good year for the tech industry because we are starting to invest there now.
2. Books are here. Today I was greeted home from work by a new book. I have until next Thursday to read about 500 pages for my class and write a couple of quick papers. Here’s the book: The History of Christian Education.
3. Violet’s stitches are out. I think I posted here that we got our cat fixed a couple of weeks ago. Well, she’s good go now. No problems and as soon as it warms up she’ll be going outside a lot more.
4. Paul took a spill. As soon as I left for work this morning Paul decided to try to go down the stairs “like a big boy.” Unfortunately, he stinks at that and he fell down about 12 stairs. He is all boy… Despite a bump on his head, he is fine.
5. Loads of Christmas letters! There have been too many to count. But hello to the families who returned a Christmas letter. It’s so nice to keep up with people on the auxiliary of our lives. Every time we open one we say, “look how big the kids are!” I’m sure they are saying the same thing about Megan and Paul.
6. 8 Crazy Nights going well. We’ve had a good turnout at all of the events. Praise the Lord we can be used in this way. Only 3 left!

Two wonderful saints just dropped by the church. I don’t think I’ve ever met either of them before, but it was a pleasure to meet them.

Both of the ladies names were Elizabeth. (A name I am partial too, the two women in my life share that as their middle name!) This mother/daughter combo is full of energy and joy, they were a great encouragement to me. Though there stay was brief and they only wanted a bulletin, I pray that will darken my door again.

Praise God for allowing small things to happen that encourage me.

Apparently not.

Life is full of tough decisions. The longer I am in ministry the more I respect the will of people. If they decide within themselves that they will sin, not even God can stop them. It is a mystery to me that God can create individual DNA stamps for every living thing, can build a mountain and arrange the universe, but He cannot [rather chooses not] to prevent a person from making the wrong decision.

Last summer, when looking at a vision for Light Force for 2004-2005 it became clear that we were not being intentional enough with what we wanted our students to know. We want them to chose Christ but we also want to help them chose a path that is honoring to God. From my own perspective, I am not satisfied in having a bunch of students who know Christ as Savior but live each day like complete heathens.

So we set out this fall to be more intentional. The thought was, we don’t want to instruct our students how to live accidentally so let’s do it intentionally. We soon discovered that it was very hard to be intentional intentionally. It takes a lot of forethought and anticipation. In order to lead these emerging leaders, we have to be a step ahead of them.

As I enter into the Winter portion of the calendar I am aware that we need to turn the heat up a bit on being intentional. Our best students are making some poor decision for their lives. They are chasing skirts. They want what the world wants. Popularity, fame, and to be liked.

I aim to help them see for themselves that those things are pure vanity. They can still be liked, but they don’t need to pay that price to be “liked.” They can be popular, but unwilling to pay the price of admission to the elite.

This will be an unpopular study. It is tough meat to digest. But it is my desire and deep hope that these lessons on Christian virtues called, “Salty Students” are received and implemented.

With all the news reports coming out of Southwest Asia and Africa it has got me thinking about Noah’s flood. Perhaps this is the biggest single instance of drowning since the flood waters rose in Genesis 7? The reports now are saying something like 40,000 dead and rising. Over a million people displaced.

17 For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. 18 The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. 19 They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. 20 The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than twenty feet. [b] , [c] 21 Every living thing that moved on the earth perished-birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. 22 Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. 23 Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; men and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds of the air were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.

24 The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.

As I thought about this passage, I also thought about those who cose to believe that the world is very old. Each time I teach Genesis and the creation account I am reminded that arguers for the old earth keep making the earth older and older as time goes on. They say, there is simply no way that the earth is younger, because look at what we know about weather patterns and erosion. In order for “this” [pointing to something like the Grand Canyon] you would need billions of years of erosion. On and on they provide examples of today’s limited study to prove that the earth is older and older.

Unfortunately, they cannot account in their calculations for cataclysmic events in history. The erosion model falls apart when their own study shows that younger objects , carbon dating wise, lay below older artifacts. Explain that one with an old earth erosion model!

The events of December 26th were terrificly terrible. They are now saying that a 600 mile long fault line moved smuttiness. The magnitude 9.0 earth quake actually shook the earth from it’s orbit. Let me write that again… an earthquake [something using potential energy stored up in the earth’s crust] actually rocked the entire planets orbit.

Who sustains the earth? Who calculates gravity? Who stops a suddenly rocked planet from wobbling out of it’s orbit altogether? Who holds the earth at precisely the right angle so our seasons are sustained? Who tells the plates to move?

This earthquake, as severe as it was, only registered a 9.0 on a scale of 10. This small movement of 600 miles of sea killed 40,000 people in an instant. How many more could have been killed when God judged the earth during Noah’s time?

Some will blame God for this destruction. Certainly, in God’s infinite wisdom and power, He did allow this to happen. Yes you could say that He even authored for this to happen. And lots of people lost their lives. Disease is sure to set in and many more thousands will die of exposure, typhoid, malaria, dysentery, and the like. God will be blamed for the lose of life.

But will God be praised for the salvation of many of those men? I pray that He will be praised all the more as the day of the Lord approaches. I don’t think this is an event of Revelation proportion, but it is a foreshadow of what is to come.

We’ve been supporters and friends and prayer buddies and cheerleaders for Erik and Michelle Stapleton for about 7 years now, it was very nice to get a short note from them this morning. They are serving the Lord in Vanuatu in the South Pacific.

As the whole world knows, there was a massive tsunami that has caused massive loss of life, personal injury, loss of industry, and certainly much worse to come . When we found out about this Kristen and I were instantly worried about Erik and Michelle. Most of the year they live in a small village on a little island not to far from the seashore. A tsunami would be devastating to them. For some unknown reason, this tsunami struck where it did and the wave went west towards African and not towards them. Praise God.

Here are some exerts from their note:

Hi guys. Happy New Year. I’m sweating as I write this but you are probably dressed in sweats with the heat at full blast! 🙂

We received the first of 2 packages you sent us, this one containing food items, not the book items. Thanks a bunch. What a nice treat! We’ll make the popcorn tonight and watch a DVD while eating it (the popcorn that is, not the DVD!).

Thanks again for all the time and effort you put into the package. It looks great! Sierra has already tried on the dress and put on the headbands (ALL of them) and the boys have their cars out and are racing them. 🙂

Kristen and I are just humbled to be friends with these guys. We continually pray for them and are so excited of the incredible reports we hear about their ministry translating God’s Word in Vanuatu.