Ah yes, the older one gets, the less one takes for granted things that used to come naturally. Like getting up without grunting. Anyway, here’s a video taken by my daughter Melinda when she and Joh were in Dallas – it’s little guy turning over. Ooooooohhh! One day I expect I’ll need help with that too!

Now he’s getting some help from his ma, aunt and granny – but isn’t it just fascinating that the human brain is hardwired to do things it can’t do you – to turn over so as to crawl, to crawl so as to walk, to walk so as to run, to run so as to run into the Wall, to run into the Wall so as to remember how baby-like and helpless we really are regardless of how fast we run…

Anyway, I’m too cheap to pay the upgrade to post videos directly to my blog, so here’s a link to my Facebook page with the video of (drumroll please) Drew Turns Over!

Does anyone remember the origin of Veterans’ Day? The purpose? Or is it just another excuse to shop?

World War I was known as the “War To End All Wars” – by far the bloodiest, destructive and most savage war the world had known. Maybe we’re not impressed with WWI anymore because it seems so technologically primitive to us now – in that war, we used carrier pigeons in the field to communicate. But it’s precisely that primitiveness that strikes me – poison gas warfare, freezing and rain soaked in trench warfare – I don’t think we could take it these days. Talk about post-traumatic stress syndrome!

When the war was finally over (for good, we thought at the time), the treaty that ended it (the Treaty of Versailles) was signed at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. Since then the name has changed (from Armistice Day to Veterans’ Day) and the date has changed (most recently it’s been returned to 11/11). And, I’m afraid, the purpose has changed.

I’d suggest that instead of going to the mall to catch all those wonderful Veterans’ Day Sales “values”, you spend an hour or two at the VA Hospital in South County.  Or spend some time getting to know folks of another nationality (yep, St. Louis has a big Bosnian population, and Vietnamese population, and Iraqi population). Or maybe spend an hour in some church sanctuary pondering how human beings are moved to make such sacrifices, and what it means to be a “nation under God”. Or you might spend an hour learning German, because that’s what we’d be speaking now if not for our participation in WWI. But hey, that would interfere with your selfishness now, wouldn’t it? It would interfere with your shopping.

We’ve largely forgotten “The War To End All Wars” now. In Freeburg there’s a statute of a WWI soldier calling his comrades into battle. It’s used by skateboarders these days. We’ve forgotten the nobility (yes, the idealistic, costly, naive nobility) of WWI and have settled, instead, for….shopping. We’re older and wiser now; we’re….shoppers. We’ve observe the sacrifices and suffering and ideals of our veterans by…shopping.

So, shop on brothers and sisters. Your consumerism has degraded you. And it’s leading you to another war, as our insatiable consumption of oil and all things cheap and Chinese are showing. Maybe one day, when our children and grandchildren are all speaking Chinese, they’ll institute another holiday: Shoppers’ Day, when they remember the incredible national selfishness that led to another war that finally woke us up…or not.

Rant over.

My lovely wife and daughter are in Dallas this weekend, getting caught up with baby Drew. He’s making noises now! Chewing on his finger! What delights! What thrills! Wish I were there…

Anyway, here’s Sam and Melinda – they make a papa proud!

And here’s Joh and The L’il Guy!

Who’s having more fun here, really??

After our new piano arrived, I went to the sanctuary one evening to take some pix. It’s a beautiful place at night! These don’t really do justice to it, and these pix are just a touch blurry, but they give you the idea. Anybody wanna come sit here a while one evening and pray?

You know if you’ve been reading this blog, I’ve been reading Tim Keller’s book The Reason For God and found it quite clear and helpful. Keller’s forte is discussing the Christian faith with “cultured despisers” of Manhattan. I just downloaded a recent radio program on White Horse Inn where Keller discusses his book with Michael Horton and the other program hosts – well worth listening to. You can go directly to the WHI site, or download the program here. Or, you can see a quick video of Keller discussing this book here.

Gene Kramer, our 7th Grade Confirmation teacher, has uploaded 3 new pix of his class – and a great bunch of kids they are! Here’s one, taken after the “Trapped In Sin” exercise. To see the other two, go to St. Paul’s website (www.stpaulsfreeburg.org), click on the “Pictures” tab on the left, and follow the links.

This Youtube video has been around for a while, but it still makes me laugh. Maybe it just gives me hope for my geezer years – still driving Red, though…

One of the books I’ve been reading is Tim Keller’s The Reason for God, which led me to poking around the internet for more about and by him. I found the website for his church (Redeemer Presbyterian – click here) and read one of his articles there entitled “The Importance Of Hell” (clickhere). Here’s a quote that caught my attention:

“Fairly often I meet people who say, ‘I have a personal relationship with a loving God, and yet I don’t believe in Jesus Christ at all.’ Why, I ask? ‘My God is too loving to pour out infinite suffering on anyone for sin.’ But this shows a deep misunderstanding of both God and the cross. On the cross, God HIMSELF, incarnated as Jesus, took the punishment. He didn’t visit it on a third party, however willing.

So the question becomes: what did it cost your kind of god to love us and embrace us? What did he endure in order to receive us? Where did this god agonize, cry out, and where were his nails and thorns? The only answer is: ‘I don’t think that was necessary.’ But then ironically, in our effort to make God more loving, we have made him less loving. His love, in the end, needed to take no action. It was sentimentality, not love at all.”

I hadn’t thought about it that way before. The “loving god” of people I meet who deny the reality of hell or the cross, is actually a squishy god, unable or unwilling to bear the cost of love. In my own experience with my wife and children, I know that love costs. And the deeper the love, the more the cost. But this ‘loving god’ who makes no demands, pays no cost, bears no cross, endures no hell, is more the figment of my self-absorbed and self-affirming ego than the God of the Scripture.

Funny how important hell is to my happiness.

You may have noticed that I have a new header on my blog. No big significance here, just wanted a change. Originally I had used a pic of the stained glass window above St. Paul’s altar – Jesus in Gethsemane. It’s a lovely window and a focal point of our worship. But one of my other passions is driving my delightful Miata – particularly at Deal’s Gap NC. Each year I go there just to drive and enjoy some solitude and creation. And I take pics, lot of pics! So my new header for my blog is now a shot of one of the roads at Deal’s Gap, taken over the shoulder of Red, my car. Here, BTW, is the entire photo:I enjoy the curviness of the road – it’s not high speed (maybe 45 mph) but it’s enough to be pleasant, calling for enough attention to focus on the road, but not so much attention that you can’t enjoy the scenery. The road ahead is often hidden, but does not come up on you so fast that you’ll be taken off guard.

Here’s another one that I took last July, from my modest motel (you can see more of the curves in the second pic):Oh man, it makes me ache for the road! The motel is out of the 50’s – it’s got yer basic a/c and indoor plumbing, and a shop to pick up some drinks or a snack. But the whole point is not the motel itself, but the road, the drive.

I can wax eloquent on this stuff – the road of life. I wrote a sermon once about how I often get so involved in cleaning my car, waxing my car, detailing my car, accessorizing my car, that I forget to DRIVE the car. Kinda like faith, I think. It’s meant to be trusted and driven, not tweaked and admired. Though tweaking and admiring are good, they’re not the main good.

So the new header is somewhat spiritual after all. Brothers and sisters, start your engines! None of us knows how much road we have left, or when the next curve will be the last. Don’t wait. Drive!

Check out our new website – the address is still www.stpaulsfreeburg.org – but newly designed. Lemme know your thoughts – and we could use pics for our “Pic of the Week” section.