Do I really need Facebook?

If you've read this before, please smile tolerantly at those of us who feel the following describes us:

I’ve enjoyed a pretty good life without a cell phone that plays music, takes videos, pictures and communicates with Facebook and Twitter. I signed up under duress for Twitter and Facebook, so my seven kids, their spouses, 13 grand kids and 2 great grand kids could communicate with me in the modern way. I figured I could handle something as simple as Twitter with only 140 characters of space.

That was before one of my grandkids hooked me up for Tweeter, Tweetree, Twhirl, Twitterfon, Tweetie and Twittererific Tweetdeck, Twitpix and something that sends every message to my cell phone and every other program within the texting world.

My phone was beeping every three minutes with the details of everything except the bowel movements of the entire next generation. I am not ready to live like this. I keep my cell phone in the garage in my golf bag.

The kids bought me a GPS for my last birthday because they say I get lost every now and then going over to the grocery store or library. I keep that in a box under my tool bench with the Blue tooth [it's red] phone I am supposed to use when I drive. I wore it once and was standing in line at Barnes and Noble talking to my wife and everyone in the nearest 50 yards was glaring at me. I had to take my hearing aid out to use it, and I got a little loud.

I mean the GPS looked pretty smart on my dash board, but the lady inside that gadget was the most annoying, rudest person I had run into in a long time. Every 10 minutes, she would sarcastically say, "Re-calc-U-lating." You would think that she could be nicer. It was like she could barely tolerate me. She would let go with a deep sigh and then tell me to make a U-turn at the next light. Then if I made a right turn instead... well, it was not a good relationship.

When I get really lost now, I call my wife and tell her the name of the cross streets and while she is starting to develop the same tone as Gypsy, the GPS lady, at least she loves me.

To be perfectly frank, I am still trying to learn how to use the cordless phones in our house. We have had them for 4 years, but I still haven't figured out how I can lose three phones all at once and have to run around digging under chair cushions and checking bathrooms and the dirty laundry baskets when the phone rings.

The world is just getting too complex for me. They even mess me up every time I go to the grocery store. You would think they could settle on something themselves but this sudden "Paper or Plastic?" every time I check out just knocks me for a loop. I bought some of those cloth reusable bags to avoid looking confused, but I never remember to take them in with me.

Now I toss it back to them. When they ask me, "Paper or Plastic?" I just say, "Doesn't matter to me. I am bi-sacksual." Then it's their turn to stare at me with a blank look. 

We senior citizens don't need any more gadgets. The TV remote and the garage door remote are about all we can handle.

       [P. S. from LW: Even these last two are a bit much for some of us.]

While you watch The Game . . .

Pastor Jacky Newton in Kentucky is an avid sports fan.  He played varsity ball.

Even so, Jacky recently tried to put things in perspective in one of his daily e-mail devotions.  I quote the following excerpt with Jacky's permission:

Our nation has become obsessed with sports.  Who will win the Super Bowl?  Will the Big Blue of Kentucky win another NCAA basketball title?  Will this recruit or that recruit choose our school?  How is my NFL fantasy team doing?  I’m a huge sports fan, just ask anyone who knows me, but may I remind you of a few things:

While you’re consumed with a game, someone will lose a child;

Another murder will take place;

Some people will learn that they have cancer;

 A wife with children will stand by a flag-draped casket and tell their soldier goodbye;

 A young person will be molested;

Babies will be aborted;

A person will die of starvation or freeze to death; and

Another lost person will die without Christ and spend eternity apart from Christ.

Sports have their place in our society, but many things are far more important.  If you and I spent as much time building a relationship with our family or God, this world may change.  We are consumed by our own desires, never thinking of others or heavenly things.

Many of us are way too concerned with things that don’t matter and not concerned about the things that DO matter.  “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things” (Colossians 3:2).

Thank you, Jacky.  You've given us food for thought.

What is the worst word in the English language?

“The one word more detestable than any other in the English language is the word ‘exclusive.’” 

So said Carl Sandburg, who spent the final twenty-two years of his life at Flat Rock, North Carolina, a suburb of Hendersonville.  This was his answer to a question from the noted CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow.

The poet went on to say, “When you’re exclusive you shut out a more or less large range of humanity, from your mind and heart, from your understanding of them.

Sandburg was born to immigrants from Sweden.  His parents spoke broken English as his father worked long, long hours as a railroad hand. So there’s personal experience in that assessment of “exclusive.”

I saw an example of exclusion or selfishness among some birds in our backyard:

I threw out some scraps, figuring some of God’s critters would come along and eat them.  The leftovers were mostly some stale tortillas. You know how thin tortillas are.  I crumbled the tortillas into little bits and threw them out.  

As I sat at our kitchen table working with my laptop, I glanced up and saw several birds flying around the area where I had tossed the scraps.  I walked to the window to get a better view and was amazed at what I saw:  

       This black bird got one tortilla scrap in his beak, and I thought he would eat it on the spot or maybe fly off to eat it in privacy.  But, no.  He pecked at another scrap and got it in his beak.  I thought surely he would eat them on the spot or maybe fly off to share with his mate.  But no.  This pattern continued until that bird had six or seven pieces balanced in his beak, the ends sticking out either side of his mouth.   

       A bigger bird was right behind him, and this bird wanted to get all the scraps and not leave any for the other.   So the bird with all the stuff in his beak flew off and left the other one to stuff his beak as well.  This second bird flew just a short distance and put his treasure down to eat.  But then a third bird came along and tried his best to get some of the second bird’s feast. There was no willingness to share.  Each bird was out to have exclusive access to the tortilla scraps.

We’re like those birds.  

It’s easy to slide into excluding people who don’t look or talk or act like us:

If we’re white, it’s us against people whose skin is darker.

If we speak English, it’s us on one side and all those others who should learn English.

If we’re Christians, it’s us on one side and Muslims on the other.

If we have enough money to feel comfortable, it’s us on one side and those other folks who ought to go to work.

If we don’t have much money, it’s us on one side and the folks with money on the other.

And the beat goes on.

In the view of the ancient Jews, the world contained only two races of people, Jews on one hand and then everyone else.

St. Paul, a first-century Jew, said,  For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and bestows his riches upon all who call upon him.  For, "every one who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved"  (Romans 10:12-13).

Jesus had concern, even for the birds:  He said God is mindful of every little sparrow, none excluded.  

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father's will. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows (Matthew 10:29-31).

On the Eleventh Day of Christmas . . .

When someone mentions the Twelve Days of Christmas, most of us think of the song that has nothing to do with Jesus. But here on the Eleventh Day of Christmas, I offer a paragraph from Brett Younger, who tries to teach student preachers (at Mercer University's divinity school) how to preach:

"We cannot make Christmas meaningful, because we are not in charge. The best we can do is take the spotlight off the distractions and look for the star. We stay open to the possibility that God is present. Waiting for a surprise sounds contradictory, but that is how Christmas happens. We give up the lesser expectations of the kind of Christmas we can create and open our hearts to God’s joy.
. . . We join the chorus singing the carols not because everyone expects us to, but because something stirs within us. We give and receive gifts not because it is required, but for the joy of it. We look carefully at the manger and feel what the shepherds felt as earth rose to heaven and heaven stooped to earth."

This is from Dr. Younger's blog at http://peculiarpreacher.com/?p=329