A Good, A God, Day
Today has been a good day. Woke up at 8:15 this morning to get ready for church. The kids were good and got ready with out much fuss. Got to Church a few minutes late but that was fine since things start a bit late anyways. We had a wonderful discussion in Sunday School that was about renewing your mind which is part of a larger lesson on Spiritual Warfare. Seriously a fantastic life changing class.
Our youth Pastor Dayton delivered a good message. Afterward we went out to eat at Golden Coral which was really good and we had a server that was Johnny on the spot. A nice change from the norm. The kids ate a good meal with no complaints at all. We took them home and then went shopping for baby stuff. No luck with finding a crib today since they was pretty low on stock. Picked up a few needed things and headed home.
Kids played games and I played some on the computer that I finally got setup in it's new location. Right here where I'm typing this out now. I didn't notice the time till I walked up stairs and my wife told me that I was going to be late for the Sunday night service at the assisted living housing. I first didn't want to go but God was putting it on me to go. You know, if feel like you're a dirt bag if you don't do it, it's probably God telling you to do it. Not that God plays like that but if you don't listen to the first sentence the next sentence is probably conviction. Sort of look at it like this: Dory will you take out the trash please. .... Dory this trash is really starting to get in the way and I can't talk to you clearly through the mess won't you please take it out.
So I ran out the door and jumped in my truck and headed up to the old folks home arriving with about 2 minutes to spare. They sang a bunch of the songs I grew up with in Church. These were songs my parents and grandparents loved. Songs I heard them sing with reverent passion and they will always be with me. Everyone there even though many years older than most people I know were more alive than everyone I do know. It was a good time and I didn't want to leave but it was time to go.
On my way home I was listening to my HAM radio giving amateur radio broadcast news when I noticed a truck on the side of the road with it's hazards on. As I drove past I looked over and noticed a guy trying to change a tire with a tiny flash light. Changing a tire no big deal right? I felt I should turn around though and see if he needed help. I was low on gas, hungry, and had to pee pretty bad and I debated it for a second but just figured I'd be best to obey God's push once again so I made a quick U turn and headed back.
I pulled my truck into the ditch and added some extra light for him to work. Ended up that his jack was messed up but I forgot my keys at home to unlock my hi-lift jack. Good thing was his dad was about 3 miles away because he was going back home about 150 miles away. Anyways I could tell the guy was frustrated with this piece of junk factory jack that broke so I just made friendly conversation with him and his wife while we waited. Really kept the situation cool and calm. I didn't want to leave with out making sure they was going to be OK. His dad arrived about 20 minutes later with a floor jack and they managed to get the tire changed. They all thanked me for stopping to give them some light to work with. I felt good about stopping and next time I know to be better prepared for myself and hopefully help someone else.
Anyways I felt today was a good God day for me. God told me to go to the Sunday night service so I could be there to give a helping hand to that couple on the side of the road. Who knows what might have happened if I didn't stop. I left them and prayed that they would have a safe a comfortable trip home.
I know that don't seem like a fantastic post but to me it was a reward that I am great full for.
Christmas Truce of 1914
Yesterday I was watching BYU TV and they had a program called Music and the Spoken Word. This is a long run TV/Radio program that's been produced since 1929 by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Last nights program was a a rebroadcast of called "One Silent Night" hosted by Walter Cronkite. The program was amazingly well done and very moving to watch. The subject was based on the Christmas Truce of 1914.
I would highly encourage everyone to look into the history of this event.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce
Even in times of war God's solace presence in so evident here. Enemies laid down their arms, climbed out of the trenches, and took time to greet and share the Christmas spirit. Gifts were given, games were played, traditional music of warring nations sung.
I've read the accounts of this truce on several websites giving different accounts and everyone seem to show the same miracle happening that Christmas day. So take a moment and understand that even in our darkest times God is there.
Bank fee’s and God’s Gift
I'm sure this blog is going to take me decades to write. Miracles large and small can affect a persons life in wonderful ways. Sometimes we recognize the miracle and we give glory to God. Sometimes we attribute it to shear luck, random chance, or winning the odds.
We had a miracle in our home today. My wife had setup herself a bank account some time back. It's purpose was to be her bank account once we got divorced. Once we worked though the marriage problems with God's guiding hand we kept it open as a splurge fund. You know going out on dates and getting extra things we don't really need. Well this account had recently caused us some hardship on top of our already stressed finances. There was a check that never cleared the account and my wife forgot about it. Later on it try to clear the account but bounced, at that same time my wife made 4 other tiny charges, (mcDonalds, starbucks) and on her debit card. The bank didn't refuse the charges but allowed them to clear and on top of that showed them as overdrafts. She never setup overdraft protection because it was her understanding that debit charges just would be refused.
This ended up costing us a extra $210. Money we didn't have.
This was going to be impossible for us to pay. Yes things are that tight right now. My wife talked to 4 different people and the bank manager over the phone. They wasn't going to retract the (IMO) dishonest fees. She finally met one of the other managers and they did take off $50. But they forced her to apply for their bank credit card. Then on top of that if we didn't pay it they was going to start charging $5 a day on top of this and send the collection angencies after us.
Well I started calling my parents and my brothers to start praying for us and I prayed for us. This was last week.
Now get this...Then yesterday my wife calls me at home and tells me that even though the car dealership she works is doing the lowest recorded sales since she worked there they still managed to push out Christmas bonus checks. They was going to be significantly smaller than last years checks. So anyone care to guess how much the check was for?
$200
Now tell me that isn't a miracle.
Existence
How people can deny that God is alive is beyond me. How can you not look at a sunset, the trees sway in the wind, the fearsomeness of a thunderstorm, the birth of a child and say there is no God? How everything in the world is so perfectly balanced. How the universe is so magnificently and finely tuned. How a tree's companionship to animals and man change our breath from poison back to fresh air. Thanks to sin though, the world isn't perfect as it was created. But you can see God's glorious works in every single thing this universe holds.
I have been a hobby astronomer since I was old enough to hold my grandfathers binoculars in my hand. I love to look at the uncountable points of light that pierce the dark blanket of night sky. To me as a child this was undeniable proof of a Great and Mighty Creator. I wasn't taught this I knew it at the very center of my own soul.
The cloud mass that crosses through the sky on the clear nights is called the Milky Way. Which is really our backyard view we have looking from Earth, through stellar plane of our galaxy, and into the further regions of outer space.
If we took a trip in a space ship and looked back on our galaxy we would see something that looks like this.
Our Milky Way Galaxy is estimated to be 100,00 light years in diameter. (A light year is a measure of distance that light travels in the vacuum of space in one Earth year) In the galactic picture we are actually located in what is know as the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy . If you look at the illustration to the left you can see pointed out at small square in the Orion Arm that represents our Solar System.
In all actuality this is a perfect location for survival of the human species.
There is fantastic Book by Investigative Journalist Lee Strobel of the Chicago Tribune called "The Case for a Creator"
Here he interviews many astronomers, biologist, mathematicians, professors, evolutionary scientist, and all other areas of study that effects the creation and evolution theories.
He provides extremely compelling evidence that this world had to have a Creator. The entire universe is like a finely built Swiss watch. If any single component wasn't built to exact specifications the human race could never exist.
Cosmologist Carl Sagan who I greatly admire for his extensive work made a comment on this photo taken by the deep space satillite Voyager I in 1990. I quote:
We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every 
hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
Although I really enjoyed Carls Sagan's Cosmos TV series I have to disagree just based on his research alone. "there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves" Of course there is no hint, God isn't quite to those who are willing to listen. He sent his Son Jesus Christ who suffered a horrible and unforgetable punishment for my sins. He carried the weight of the entire world on his back and defeated death so we might have eternal life. Hint are just tiny clues. Jesus is the wide open eyed truth.
Please everyone go to your local libabry or book store and look for Lee Strobel's book. I know Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron debate on abc wasn't overwhelming proof you needed. (see youtube). I understand the compelexity of the human eye and its perfect design. I understand the odds of everything working together on the human body which deems evoltion as highly impossible. Don't listen to the atheisit activist that just give you point blank around the edge facts. That's 99% truth and 1% lie tactics. They don't want or even try to realize they do this.
The evidence is there.