I'm Traveling....Still

I'll be back as soon as I can...

Hope And Change Is Within

My son is attending a baseball camp at Vanderbilt University. The camp began on Sunday and will end tomorrow. We get up early every morning to take him and he gets home late every night. Each day I travel down Wedgewood Avenue here in Nashville. It's a nice drive down treelined streets, past Belmont University and onto the Vanderbilt campus. On one corner of Wedgewood and I believe 12th Avenue, there is a small park with big trees throughout. Every morning I see a man under a certain tree when I take Brett to camp. When I return to the house a few minutes later, I see a couple of more men. I drive back and forth to the camp throughout the day, and each time, I see more men under this tree. They are able bodied men just gathered there, some sitting on coolers. They spend the entire day there. I have no idea what they could be doing. I wonder how a man can just sit there all day, everyday, without lifting a finger? What inside him, keeps him from doing so? Where is his pride?

This past year we have heard a lot about "hope and change." To me hope and change come from within, not from dependence on a president or government program. I understand that things are tough these days. I have family and friends that have lost jobs and are finding it hard to keep afloat. My husband and I went through some bad times ourselves during the baseball strike of the mid-1990's. It was the little man that suffered during this strike, which is what happens a lot of the time. Been there, done that and understand how depressed a person can get. However, I have faith in God and my faith only grew larger because of these hard times. I knew inside myself and my husband there was a raging resolve to get out of the situation we were in. I don't quite understand how a human being cannot have this resolve, especially an American citizen.

We are all given the same opportunities and rights in this country. Our Founding Fathers knew that it was a God given right to have a freedom of choice and opportunity to better ouselves. All of us are given 12 years of education, but many do not want to take advantage of that. They have no resolve. They don't see the hope and change that is inside themselves. They don't understand how great our freedoms are to have choice. How can they not know is a mystery to me. So, the cycle of finding hope and change in something beyond themselves, continues. There is no way one man or a government can change the makeup of a human being. The president and or the government will only make things worse. They are crutches. A person has to look inside themself to find the strength to hope, to find the strength to change, to find a way to change the cycle of their life.

I am afraid that today we have too many people not wanting to change that cycle. I am afraid that one day we will not see several men under a big oak in a park, but a forest of Americans who are no longer willing to seek hope and change for themselves, by themselves.

If you are able to help just one person with encouragement, a place to live, food or transportation. If your church can help, do so. I believe that is one of the main functions of a church. Let's get back to the way God wanted us to help people. It is our job, not the government's. If we can be a crutch for a time for someone, that's okay. Instead we have allowed the government, with it's never ending funds, to take over what we need to be doing and to make it harder for people to throw the government crutch away. Encourage the downtrodden that hope and change comes from within.

New Math

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The Golden Calf....Uh.... Casket

Charleton Heston as an angry Moses in The Ten Commandments

Sometimes a moment comes along that I call, The Golden Calf Moment. That's because there are moments or scenarios that occur which remind me of Moses coming down the mountain, tablets in hand, and seeing a bunch of idiots dancing around a golden calf. I think of Charlton Heston's portrayal of that scene in the movie The Ten Commandments. I think about what God must be thinking about his Creation.

Today we are no different than God's Chosen People whom He brought out of Egypt and who idolized that calf. Most people think we have become so civilized, but I think we are still pretty much the same. Today we idolize money, fame and fortune. Many get into a frenzy over such things and act pretty much like animals. I personally witness this on almost a daily basis. I see the way people treat professional baseball players. Last year, a couple of famous Atlanta Braves were here in Mississippi to re-hab their injuries. I have never seen such actions people would take to get close to one of these guys. If the fans didn't get what they wanted, they would become very angry. That was a Golden Calf Moment. They were worshipping another human being.

I turned on the TV this morning and decided it was going to be a Golden Calf DAY. The King Of Pop was going to be memoralized today as he lay in a golden casket. People were going to sing praises to him and treat him as a god. Sounds like a familiar scene from The Bible, right? The TV coverage on Michael Jackson's death has just about driven me crazy, so I turn the TV off. I tried to watch ESPN, but the guy was being praised on there too. When President Ronald Reagan passed away, I watched his funeral. He was an honorable man and for being President, he deserved that kind of memorial. The Jackson memorial however, is something quite different. This is just a flatout idolization of a man. God has looked down and I am sure, felt anger and saddness, as he once again had to watch idiots worshiping around a golden casket. I too shake my head. Yes, it's a Golden Calf Day and I'm sure, unfortunately, it won't be the last.

Give Us Independence!

I want to wish you all a Happy July 4th. We need to remember how great this country is and pray that we can stop the "Change" that is occuring.

Friday's Favorite Family Foto

How many guys can say their first job was to catch pro-baseball players in The Bullpen......

Brett

Brett and the pitchers waiting for a 16 inning game to end. Braves won.

This summer, Brett got his first job. His job is to help warmup pitchers in The Bullpen. I think he was a little nervous at first, but now his confidence has grown. Nothing to it. Lucky kid.