Rather Lengthy Ramblings on All Sorts of Things

Family: Rebekah is due in late December. She hasn't been feelilng great, but her health report has been excellent so far. It still seems surreal to me that we will have a new addition to the family later this year. Exciting, yet strange! Tori is taking group tennis lessons on Saturdays. She really turned a corner this past week and started consistently hitting her forehands over the net. Fun to watch her learn a sport. Lucas is playing t-ball. He always asks to bat first. I used to be embarrassed by his selfishness, but I'm starting to believe he might make a good lead-off hitter some day! He steps right up, hits the ball, and runs aggressively to first.


Sports: The Cubs have the best record in MLB on June 1 for the first time since 1908. That's also the last time they won the world series. 100 years on the money for a repeat? I like the sound of it. They also just won all seven games on their recent homestand. They haven't done that since 1970, which is the year I was born. Coincidence? I don't think so.

Church: We have been meeting with a house church that is tied in with Common Ground Christian Church in Broad Ripple. I went to college with Jeff Krajewski, who was the founding pastor of Common Ground.

We were just barely starting to form some bonds there, when the house church (for a vareity of reasons) decided to not meet over the summer. That frustrated me deeply, mainly because it makes me suspect that the group may not have completely embraced the same understanding of what simple church is that I have embraced. I think they are more in small group mode. But I really don't know them that well yet, and I certainly am not here to be a critic.

God seems to have shut several doors for us to quickly jump into something structured church-wise here (assuming that God works that way). So, I keep suspecting that we really are in a season when the four of us (soon to be five) are supposed to be church primarily with each other, and to keep waiting, watching, and preparing for what is next. I have had several interesting confirmations of that suspicion. It is both incredibly freeing, and incredibly weird at the same time. My current job, with my office so close to home, and our lack of serious church time commitments right now, are giving us as a family more time to really be together than we have ever had. Even though I feel weird about it, I think it may be a gift in disguise.

I really, really miss teaching, though. It is a gift laying dormant.

Political Soapboxing: I read through Obama and McCain's website statements on the issues. They both are pretty much what you would expect considering their respective party affiliations. Obama has lots of interesting and innovative ideas on how to attack some problems. Of course, they all look very expensive. McCain has less ideas, but that makes sense since he is more for less government intervention and the accompanying lower taxes. Obama says get out of Iraq. McCain says finish the job. McCain is pro-life and phrases his feelings on life issues in language that will endear conservative evangelicals. He is not in favor of much government intervention on environmental issues, but prefers to give businesses incentives to clean up their messes. Obama, just the opposite. He sees the woman as the oppressed person in the abortion debate, more so than the unborn fetus (just the opposite of the McCain position). Yet Obama is for a more aggressive governmental approach to cleaning up the environment. (My two cents on that: cleaning up the environment is every bit as much of a "life" issue as abortion. Both issues kill tons of people annually and must be addressed by those of us who claim to value life. Why do we think so many people are dying of horrible diseases, people of all ages? I'm sure environmental issues/corporate greed are at last a major part of the reason. I've said it before in this forum: we must be bold enough to say that both of those issues are important if we really are driven by a Kingdom politic, not a bipartisan one. And while I'm on my soap box, the Bible says an awful lot about the oppression of the poor. If we don't think that is an important political issue, one that deserves a ton of attention by us Kingdom-minded people, then we are just not being honest. Abortion is a huge issue. But it's not the only Kingdom issue. We must start using our brains. Maybe we need to get upset that neither major political party is really proposing a Kingdom agenda. Am I the only person who feels this way?)

McCain is as old as dirt. He would be 80 by the end of a second term.

Obama, on the other hand, is pretty raw and unproven in many ways.

I'm honestly surprised that the stances of both candidates are so similar to the stances of previous democrat and republican candidates. I'm shocked that we don't see more courage from candidates to say "I'm with my party's traditional position on this issue, but I'm on the other extreme on that issue." Very strange to me.

Don't know who I'll vote for. Not too worried about it yet. I predict, though, that Obama will win. Not sure that is really a very bold prediction. Seems pretty obvious.