MInTheGap

Life is Like a Bag of Skittles

For the summer of 1994, I attended the Csehy Summer School of Music, down in Muncy, Pennsylvania (it has since moved). Getting prepared for the two weeks I would be spending there, and actually having everything I needed were two different things. Upon arriving at Csehy, I realized that I was indeed missing something, and my parents volunteered to go over to the nearby mall to purchase the needed materials. They dropped them off while I was in a planned activity, and when I return, I noticed that they had also bought for me a bag of Skittles. I was amazed, and greedily tore open the bag, ripping it down the side, and causing Skittles to pour out of the bag, and onto my bed. I left them there until it was time for bed. I tried my best to get as many Skittles back into the bag as possible, and I stuffed them into the drawer with all my clothes.

The next day, all throughout the day, I was digging into the bag of Skittles, and each time I took some more out, some Skittles would fall into my drawer. I thought nothing of this, and continued to eat the Skittles, even the ones that had fallen into my drawer. Days passed, and with the heat and humidity of that week, the Skittles began to melt. I was beginning to figure out that, unlike those chocolate M&Ms which melt in your mouth and not in your hand, Skittles would melt in my drawer. Late in the week, I noticed that some of my clothes began to have new, colorful markings on them, in sort of circular patterns . . . Skittles! By this time, the Skittles had proceeded to melt onto a dress shirt, a sweat shirt, a sweater, a pair of jeans, and other articles of clothing. Instead of how many fruit flavor combinations, it was how many color combinations!

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Tax Relief for the Poor

In this election season we’ve heard a lot about taxes.  Though I am
gratified to hear that the discussion is now how much of a tax cut or
who should get tax cuts instead of whether there should be one at all,
it is still unnerving to hear our officials talk about our money as if
letting us keep it is costing them.

John Kerry proposes a tax hike on those making over $200,000 so as to
pay for his programs.  Whether or not this will cover it is not
relevant to my discussion, though I’m sure that it probably will not. 
Whether or not this is fair, because a middle class family in some high
income cities will be taxed more is also not germaine to my discussion.

My question is, when are we going to eliminate the tax on the poor? 
What tax you ask?  The state lotteries, powerballs, etc.  Generally,
who pays for lottery tickets.  I highly doubt Bill Gates is out there
doing it.  Though some people do it seldomly, most middle class people
aren’t buying tickets (correct me if I’m wrong here).

Who
most does the lottery appeal to?  Those who are financially in
trouble.  We take these vulnerable people, fill their head with mush
about how they can win millions like those they see on TV, and then
expect them to use the money they should be supporting their family
with to buy a ticket that they will most likely have no return on their
investment.

When Enron and Global Crossing collapsed and
people were cheated out of their investment dollars, that was a scandal
and people went to jail.  When a state takes people’s money under the
guise that you might make millions and you never do– it’s praised. 
“Look the at the money we’re raising for education!” 

Who’s
paying for it?  Not the wealthy or the middle class that have the sense
to stay away from the lottery, that is for sure.  We need to end the
tax on poor.

Personal Stuff

A lot of things going on in MInTheGap’s non-virtual world.

For those of you praying for my litle one, it seems as though we’re all
just about over a head cold, and he’s gone the longest time he has yet
without throwing up.  Prayerfully, after he’s off some antibiotics he
was perscribed and the cold goes all the way away, he’ll be back to
normal and we can all start to put this cruel memory away.

Things are not going well in my church front in regards to leadership,
looking for a new pastor and that stuff.  Being a member of the current
deacon board, it’s difficult to figure out what I should say/do all the
time.

Couple of prayer requests going on.  My wife mentioned
a lady that her mother knows that went in to have a callous removed,
got a staph infection, and has a clot near her heart.  They’ve alerted
the family.

A coworker brought up her neighbor that hit a
single mom and she died leaving a couple children.  She helped them on
the bus and was on her way to make a phone call at a pay phone when she
got distracted and got hit by this older gentleman who usually drives
below the speed limit.  The police are saying the woman was at fault,
though you can imagine what’s going on in everyone’s mind.

Lots of things happening that we don’t have control of, but we know Who does.

Reworking the system

The current voting system is broken.  No longer do we have responsible
people voting, but we grab each person, use peer pressure and
bandwagons, and pressure them into a given place to check a box for a
given man.  This dilutes responsible votes and makes the election into
a popularity contest more than a vote on issues.  How can we solve it? 
Here are some possible solutions:

• Get rid of the two party system– or the political parties at all.
• Make the House/Senate decide the election.
• Change
  the electoral vote system so that the popular vote dictates the 2
  “senate” votes, and then whoever wins each district gets the vote of
  that district.
• Have a test when entering a polling facility
  that required you to match a candidate’s position to the candidate’s
  person.  Anyone not scoring over half would be given a class or
  something before voting– or not allowed to vote.
• Compile some kind of list of votes from tax returns so that fraud could be minimized.

Anyone else got a suggestion?

Where is our Faith?

I have recently come to ponder the stuff upon which our Christianity today is built. Why is it that we don’t see the grand revivals? Where is the true power of the Word? When Adam and Eve in the garden chose to eat of the fruit of the tree, they started a trend that has snowballed into what it is today, and will end in the destruction and punishment of all mankind that remains in this sin.

What was this great sin? Trusting in one’s self and basically saying to God, “I am wiser at this than you are, and I can make my own decisions.” The individuality in us, that thing that makes self most important, is a divisive tool and stands greatly between God and man.

Why is this? Because the author of sin committed the very same act when he said that he would be greater and more important than God. Since then, he has been influential in organizing a revolt that he’s continued to grow since his removal from Heaven.

Non Believers are not the only ones effected, though. Have you ever stopped to marvel at the men of the Bible? These ones who have gone before, that witnessed so many miracles? Why aren’t people like that today? I mean, Jesus said that if we had faith the size of a mustard seed we could move mountains. Elijah is said to be a man of like passions as we are, and he caused it not to rain for three and a half years. What do these men have that we do not?

They had faith in God totally to provide. Elijah didn’t have a microwave oven and a pump to get water. He had to trust God. God led him to the right places, and he was able to minister. How often do you place trust in yourself in a day? Not just for decisions. How often do you trust the work of your hands? Be it your house, your chair, your car… anything!

We’re constantly placing ourselves in our place of trust. We trust in our backup plans, we trust in our creativity, our friends, our talent… We trust that if our car breaks down that we’ll be clever enough to get help or fix it.

Where is the spirit of prayer, like a Jehoshaphat who goes to God first when facing Ammon and Moab? Where is the Nehemiah who prays and waits on Him? They have been replaced with a world where prayer is a “good idea” and the “only thing that can help now.” Trusting God is that thing we do when we can’t provide by our own means. How many times do we pray to ask His blessing on our plans instead of asking that His plans be ours? How many times do we come up with our own ideas apart from Scriptural principles?

Our lives are too full of “I’s.” God wants us to be completely surrendered to Him. You wonder why things happen that we cannot control or do not have a plan for? It’s so that we stop trusting ourselves and trust in Him. For in Him we live and have our being, so why do we try to live outside of Him?

Bush vs. Kerry - Round 3

I had watched every debate, including the VP debate, in totallity live
up until this one.  Given the momentum in the debates, I figured Bush
would consistantly do better, and since part of the strategy during the
last campaign and this presidency was to co-opt democrat ideas so he
could claim he got things done, I thought that the conventional wisdom
regarding Kerry’s advantage would be proven wrong.

That all being said, I also figured more people would tune into the
ball game!  We’ve been all fighting a cold or something that we’ve been
passing around along with little sleep, so I opted to go to bed at 9:00
pm.  However, curiosity and the fact that I had skipped dinner got the
best of me, and I caught the last 30 minutes of the debate– so I’ll
give my impression of that.

I can’t remember the first
question I heard– it might have been the automatic rifles.  My
response to that question would be that, although it would be scary to
enter a house with someone with an automatic weapon as a law
enforcement officer, the bad guys are always going to have access to
these weapons.  Gun control seems to only prohibit those that will
follow the rules from getting their hands on tools of defense.  I
believe that there’s a European country– Switzerland?– that teaches
all homeowners to use semi-automatic weapons and they have a
tremendously low crime rate.

On the faith question, I believe
Bush did a better job because I believe he actually believes what he
says.  It was somewhat of a loaded question– no matter how many of the
pundits say this was a softball– because had he answered directly that
his faith directs his policies he would have played right into the
argument that the democrats want to make about legislating morality and
the whole “God told me to go into Iraq.”

My reaction to
some of the closing comments by the FOX guys and the ones they
interviewed, it’s hard to say my reaction to hearing Kerry mention Mary
Cheney.  I don’t think it was as much of a secret as the pundits are
making it out to be.  It’s also a common tactic to name a person
representative of a group to illustrate your point.  Usually, however,
it’s a person that you’ve met on the trail in relative obscurity
instead of someone that is semi well known.

I guess my
feeling is that it is one thing to be spoke about as someone who needs
a solution to a problem or to attack someone in public that has a
public voice, but no one outside of the campaign rallys or Mary
Cheney’s friends have ever talked to or heard from her.  I agree with
Rush Limbaugh that the tactic would have been much better if he had
used someone he knew in the public spotlight, like Barney Frank, to
make his point– a point which I disagree with, by the way.

I
wish Bush would have been clearer than what I heard was his response to
whether homosexuality was a choice or born with it.  He didn’t need to
alienate people– he could have said something like “Bob, in either
case we are given things in our lives– desires, physical ailments,
etc– and we have to make choices about what we will do with these
impulses and dilemmas…”  Here he could have even played up
Christopher Reeve’s amazing will to survive and honored his memory
instead of what Edwards did for another contrast, should he have
desired. “… and homosexuals have choices about what to do about their
desires and impulses, but should we as a country encourage choices that
harm these people and families?”

Other than that, I thought
Bush did so much better with humor and with his answers about the women
in his life.  It makes you connect when someone talks you through the
first time he saw his wife.  Bush totally avoided politics in this
question, whereas Kerry tried to play up his deceased mother for
points.  Time will tell how that worked.

Superman and Stem Cells

So, I was watching Inside Edition or something close to that name last
night with my wife and they were talking about Christopher Reeve and
his death yesterday.  Truly the man and his family proved resolve
stronger than anything seen on the screen.  Who we truly are is
reflected in what we are like when placed under pressure.

The part that bothered me was the linkage of him and stem cell
research.  Yes, he was an advocate of it.  Yes, I believe he supported
embryonic stem cell research, which I do not.  The part that bothered
me was Inside Edition’s poll question: “Do you support stem cell
research?”  The answer to that question, for me, is yes– just not
embryonic!  It’s a misleading question.

There have been some good discoveries using adult
stem cells, and that research should continue, but destroying human
life for research is as wrong as destroying human life to eat– ie. the
cannibals that have recently been in the news.  They don’t see anything
wrong in killing another human because they like the taste.  I’m sorry
for the grossness of this analogy, but we have become so desensitized
to what’s going on with the killing of babies in abortion, and we are
constantly asked to look at those in pain rather than the one being
killed, that we need to be awakened to what’s going on here in the name
of science!

Cheney vs. Edwards