We are now in the great Wolf Lodge Hotel, which is actually a little strange. Rather than room keys everyone has been given wristbands with computer chips. This will open our room door and get us into the water park, but if one is lost it will cost forty bucks… We made good time yesterday and arrived early. Riverside Church opened there doors to us, with a great meal (not Sam’s Club thin burgers) and we divided up into houses. This morning the students were the choir and did an excellent job! Below are a picture slide show and the day’s bible study.

[rockyou id=138446054&w=500&h=374]

If you want to save one of these pics click on the tab “View Show”. It will take you to a page with the slideshow and the invididual pictures laid across the top. Click on the one you would like to see (or you can scroll through the large size pics).

Isaiah 56:9-12 (click here for scripture)

Baby I got my facts learned real good right now
Poor man wanna be rich, rich man wanna be king
And a king ain’t satisfied, till he rules everything…
                                                                      ~ “Badlands” [Springsteen]

“… Of course I guess it could be worse,” Grandma said. “We could have our view blocked by one of those vans that carries aliens around. I was listening to the news on the radio, and they said a bunch of aliens were found dead from heatstroke in one of them vans yesterday. Imagine that. Here these poor creatures travel through space to get to us, all those light years and galaxies away, and then they die from heat stroke in a van.”

   “What a shame,” Esther said.

   “I’m just glad it wasn’t in front of my house,” Grandma said. “I’d feel terrible if I had to find E.T. dead in a van.”                        [Ten Big Ones by Janet Evanovich]

 

In college I took a lot of Greek (hard to imagine, I know!). The professor was an intense old-school sort of gentleman. While today aspiring teachers are taught to grade in blue or green (soothing colors), my professor would always grade in angry red. He would often say, “I will bleed all over your paper.” Which is laughable until you hold a paper awash in blood red.

  Anyhow, I was studying for the final in his class. Watching the clock I knew I needed to be there by one, when the phone rang. “Hello, this is Dr. Dutile’s secretary, you are late for his test.” It seems it began at noon…

  We like to pretend that we have everything figured out, that we have everything together. Sometimes we get everything wrong, and we miss the point entirely. As Christians, as the church, we think Jesus is ours. While in reality we are the watchmen, created to go out and report to the world…

 

  Why begin here? We got the theme verse from the song, You Shall Go Out With Joy. But when I went to look up the passage they had misprinted the song sheet. Rather than 55:12, it read 56:12…

                                                                                  

Dogs ~ When reading the scripture we can live in a contemporary bubble. We read “dog” and picture faithful Bolt, who traveled the country to return to “his person”. But in Israel, dogs were not human’s best friend. While some helped with work (like a sheep dog) they were just as often roaming strays . Dogs that would make you afraid for your children and livestock!

                                                                                  

IMAGINE: A pack of stray dogs running around your neighborhood—how would you perceive dogs then?

“They seek their own gain” ~ Why do we miss the point when we think only of ourselves?