Dinosaur Pee

I remember being in grade school and learning about the water cycle. We were taught the the earth has a closed system, and no new water is introduced. Therefore all rain is water that has evaporated, raised into the sky, cooled to form water vapour, condensed, and then falls back down to the ground.

However there is one in every class. You know the person I mean , the one who connects odd things together and asks strange questions. I won't lie I have often been that person, but not this time. Someone, I don't remember who asked the question; 'is the water we are drinking dinosaur pee?'

My teacher was somewhat taken back but after she thought about it for a moment she sheepishly agreed that yes the water we drink, cook with, and bath in, was at one time dinosaur pee. And as it turns out the American Water Resources Association agrees (sort of).

So it's true! We are in fact drinking dinosaur pee.

Fact Checker

Every now and then I find myself in a little debate about what pastors ought to know. The debate seems to center around should pastors be specialists or 'jacks of all trades'? Should pastor's zero in on the bible, or should they know a little something about everything?

It is a tough debate. On the one side you venture into dangerous territory when you say knowing the bible is not enough. If you take that stand sooner or later someone will cry out that you are neglecting the study of the word, for the wisdom of the world. On the other side if you neglect broader study you can be rightly criticized for not following the example of Paul at Mars Hill. He learned about the people and their beliefs so he could best communicate the gospel.

So how does one break this ideological dead lock? Should pastors know nothing except for Christ crucified or should we become all things to all people so we might save a few?

Holy Week- Tuesday- The Battle Of Words

After Jesus received a kings welcome to town, and created a prophets scene at the temple you can rest assured that the ruling religious leaders were unhappy. They were in charge of one of the greatest temples, in one of the greatest cities, during the most important celebration of the Jewish calendar. But who was getting all the attention; some back woods preacher who didn't seem to have enough sense to know whom he was messing with.

But Jesus wasn't in Galilee anymore he was in their play ground now, and the time had come for them to show Jesus who really ran the religious show in Israel.

Living With Confusion

While it pains me to admit it, some times the things we say don't make a lot of sense, sound very logical and may even defy reason. Now some brands of Christians love when they don't make sense. I don't mean that in a derogatory way, some Christians love being caught up in the mysteries of the Spirit. I just am not that kind of Christian. For the most part I want my universe to make sense and while perhaps it is asking a lot I prefer it when God does as well.

Show Your Work

Do you remember doing either long division, or algebra? One thing that seemed to be a rule in every math classroom I have ever been is 'show your work'. You know what I mean right, if you had a problem 2 +X = 4 in the earliest stages of math you were not allowed to simply say that X=2, you had to show it.

I think this is a rule we of the Christian faith need to re-familiarize ourselves with.

Season of Reason

Christmas is over. Well it's mostly over, we still have all the clean up to deal with. On a superficial level we let some chores slide over the past few days, so there is a bit of a back log of laundry and dishes to work through. But there is also the dreaded cleaning up of the Christmas decorations. Oh well they need to come down sooner or later.

But How Do We Know We Are Right?

Last year after a gurgling Fall giving devotions at youth group that amounted to little more than 'Jesus loves you, Be good' I decided we needed to go deeper. So we did. I started from square one asking the question 'Is there any reason to think there is any sort of god out there?' We took 10 weeks or so and went from there until we finally arrived to talking about who Jesus is, who he claimed to be, what he did to back up those claims and finally we talked about Jesus raising from the dead.

You Are What You Eat

There is a little piece of advice I remember getting from time to time as a child; 'you are what you eat'. The advice as far as I have come to understand it was a warning against eating really fatty food because you would become a fatty person. Given the national obesity rates I would suspect that this advice was never really taken seriously. After all the aim of the advice was to get to people eat their vegetables, and skimp on the junk food. From my vantage point I count 5 fast food restaurants on the street I work.