Look, I've said it before and I'll say it again. I have some issues with the Pastors at the church we go to. Jacob and I go back and forth about where we should go to church here, but we just can't really find a place that seems to have what we're looking for. In all fairness, we've only been to 2 churches....Anyways, the last several weeks, we've been going to the Bible church in town, mostly because I've been pushing for it. The Pastor is doing a sermon series I really like, and I've really enjoyed most of what he has to say. He's been going through the book of Genesis for a couple months now probably, and we're only on chapter 10, but it's really interesting. I'm totally fascinated by the flood and Noah's faithfulness. I'm pretty sure if I were in the same situation and I was building a boat for that long, I would totally let my neighbor's mocking get to me. After about 3 weeks of that, I probably would've been embarrassed and been like "Ohhh, tricked ya! I'm just makin a shed for my backyard. Ark? Come on, guys! What am I, some sort of nut? LOL!" So I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have had the faith to spend 100+ years building the ark and endure continual mocking and harassment from everyone around me. Also, people give me weird looks now when I pull my car off the road when I see a stray dog, so I'm pretty sure if I went around corralling all the animals that exist, people would be like "this lady
AGAIN?! She needs to spend some time with
people." So anyway, I've really enjoyed hearing the Pastor go verse by verse and breaking down what certain things mean--things I've never given a second thought about. Unfortunately, every week the Pastor seems to throw one little comment into the sermon that just really irritates me. He'll say something, and then I'll look over at Jacob who's giving me a face that says "I know, I know. We can discuss it in the car." and then I find myself furiously scratching notes down on the bulletin, so I remember to "discuss" (criticize) the Pastor all the way home. Is that wrong? Of course. Should I be getting that frustrated at the Pastor's message? No, because I'm genuinely intrigued by 90% of what he has to say. So here's what irritated me today. We were discussing Genesis 9, God's covenant with Noah, and he was talking about God telling Noah about the importance of human life, and the need to protect it. Verses 5-6 say "And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will
demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I
will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.
Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind." After reading this, the Pastor started talking about capital punishment. Now, I will say, it wasn't like this immediately offended me. I had a feeling he was going to go there with that verse. I'm not super set on my views on capital punishment anyways. I used to be a huge proponent of it, but now, not so much. It's not something I have a super amount of passion about, but I certainly have my reservations with the whole idea of capital punishment. So here's why it bothered me. The Pastor read this verse a couple times and said "I believe this is God instituting government, and giving us the basis for capital punishment." He went on awhile about this, which...again, I have my reservations, but okay, I'll listen. I'll suspend my judgment for now. So then he goes on to talk about how no one ever wants to read Exodus, Leviticus, or Deuteronomy because they're bunch of rules. His example of how antiquated and silly these rules were was that according to one of these books, children who disobeyed their parents were to be stoned. I can't even tell you how irritated that made me. You can't discuss the importance of a law God laid out in the Old Testament and use it for your argument for such a controversial topic and then IMMEDIATELY discredit your theory by bringing up laws that follow it that no one uses or finds applicable anymore. It's just so inconsistent, and if an atheist was listening they'd just be like "well, you just proved that those books aren't relevant anymore, so why should this capital punishment verse mean anything?" I'm a Christian, and I don't understand his logic there. So according to Genesis, the government should hold people responsible for murder by killing anyone who takes a life, but any laws laid out in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy probably don't apply to us? That doesn't even make sense. At this point I was already irritated so it wasn't going to take much more for any of his comments to get my eyes rolling. SURE ENOUGH, a few minutes later, he reads Genesis 9:7, "As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it.” He talked about how it's projected that years from now, all of Europe will be Muslim because Muslim families are having like 8 children. Then he criticizes Christian families because most people these days are limiting their number of children to 2. He went off a little bit about how God wanted good Christian people to multiply and fill the Earth, and that it's crazy that people today are limiting the number of kids they have for selfish reasons. Here's the thing, Pastor. The Earth is pretty well good and full. It's actually sort of overpopulated, so I wouldn't worry so much about the Earth getting filled up. It seems like that's taken care of. And I'm pretty sure that God's got it planned out for how many kids people should have, so that's probably not YOUR judgement call, but thanks, guy. I mean, I know some people decide they only want a certain number of children because it costs so much financially to have a family, and I guess I could see his argument if he was saying that's not trusting that God will provide. BUT, isn't it better that people try to be responsible and ensure they can protect and provide for the children they DO have? And if you're telling everyone they just need to keep popping out babies till they are too old, you'd have a world full of Octo-Moms and Duggars. I'm PRETTY sure we've got plenty of those, but thanks. Don't get me wrong, I come from a big family and I LOVE it. I love having a lot of siblings and I think my parents did a great job of making us all feel special and getting individual attention, but that's just not going to happen when people have 15 children. I don't know, I was just really irritated at how critical he was of people not having a bazillion babies. Sometimes, that's just not what's best for people. And this Pastor only has 2 kids!! Gimme a break, dude.
Okay, now that I've spent an hour criticizing a Pastor, I'm pretty sure God's just like "oh, no, keep it coming, sister
. You're perfect, after all."
Besides my frustration today in church, we had a pretty good weekend. We were dog-sitting Oscar's girlfriend, Bell, a yellow lab who is a beautiful, destructive lady. I spent about an hour tonight sewing all of Andy's toys back up, since I found Bell biting holes in all of his toys all weekend. Several times I spotted her walking around with a suspicious amount of stuffing stuck to her lips....It was pretty great though. The dogs had a good time with a lady in the house, but she also completely wore them out. Jacob and I had just finished bathing all three dogs (she didn't know to move out of the way when Oscar lifted his leg and she got peed on a few times) when her owner showed up to take her home. I was sad to see her go, but I think the boys were relieved to be done with hosting duties. They've been sleeping ever since. That was 1pm.
Today I was on a bit of a baking rampage. Well, that's kind of inaccurate since I only baked 2 things, but it felt like I was in the kitchen for about seven hours. Jacob asked for chocolate chip cookies today, so we went to the store so I could get the stuff I needed. I made those first (and ate about a dozen by myself), then got to work making Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins. I haven't tried them yet, but they smell incredible. Jacob ate one with dinner and really liked it. I'll let you know if they turn out to be terrible, but otherwise I think I would recommend them. Go
here for the recipe.
Well I'm off to bed. Tomorrow is the day my car (SHOULD) be ready from the repair shop, and I'm so ready to have her back. No offense to the Ford Focus I've been driving around, but I really miss the Camry. We're just so in sync.
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