Peter -n- Melodye

I preached a sermon a few weeks ago in which I destroyed 2 pieces of electronic equipment: a computer keyboard and a cellular telephone. Destroyed?   Yes, literally destroyed. I took a big ol' hammer and just went to town on both of them. Someone held a clear shield to keep the audience from getting plastic splinters in their eyes, but there were pieces all over the front of the church!  And I'll admit it - it was fun. I had a blast! I just got this silly grin on my face and kept slamming that hammer down - what JOY!! Why?! Do you have something against electronic equipment?! No, I destroyed them IN PROTEST! I was protesting all the many unnecessary conflicts they have caused. All the divisions that have occurred between brothers and sisters as a result of these 2 pieces of equipment. You see, computer keyboards are used to compose EMAILS and FACEBOOK MESSAGES and cellular telephones are used to compose SMS MESSAGES . And I am convinced (by experience both as a ...

What is Christmas really about? Christmas Trees? Decorative Lights? Cheerful Music? -or-  Betrayal! The Self-Sacrificing Love of a Father! A Ransom Paid! This last week I read several articles about families whose children ran away to join ISIS.  Knowing the atrocities and the violence and the brainwashing and the trauma most of us find the idea of joining ISIS completely repugnant.  And obviously the families in these articles that I read were similarly shocked that their own children would have chosen to go and join such a group.  They were repulsed and could not believe that their child would do such a thing.  Many of them were under age but had gotten hold of their passports by deceptive means and in many cases they had stolen money from their family in order to finance their travel to Syria or Iraq. One article told of two young girls who had left their home in the United States and were caught by the police in Germany before they wer...

When I write I tend to do it in the same way I talk ... without end. My wife, fortunately, understands that few people have the patience to read through to the end (if I ever did get to the end) on something I write.  So she effectively edits.  And edits.  And cuts.  And edits. In the largely misdirected idea that perhaps someone might be interested in more detail than can fit on the front/back of a newsletter along with lots of other pictures ... I'm putting the uncut version of all the articles here. No, I don't really expect you to read all of it.  But if you want to you would make my heart glad... :-) GENERATIONS "Everybody get up, move your chairs around.  I want you sitting in a single row of chairs in order according to your age -- the youngest person over here and the oldest over here."  That was the politically incorrect way that Peter opened up a discussion on GENERATIONS during our recent field conference.  Once we were all ...

I've just recently started using Prof Horner's Reading Plan to read through the Bible.  If you're not familiar with his method, you read a chapter from each of 10 different lists (i.e., 10 chapters a day) every day, just keeping a bookmark in each of those 10 places in your Bible.  You get a much broader exposure to different genres while getting simply a lot of Scripture flowing through your mind. I've always been a got-to-read-the-Bible-in-hardcopy kind of person.  But as I've been doing this system I've been playing around with doing it on my wife's tablet using OliveTree.  It works and I'm happy with it.  (There's a scrolling bug that's annoying, but I'm sure they'll fix that soon enough).  I just read until OliveTree presents me with a big gray button that I click and it takes me to the next place I'm supposed to read. The difficulty is that the tablet is Melodye's, not mine.  She's very generous and hasn't compl...

I am not a political being.  In fact, politics bores me more than just about anything.  But I try to do my duty by keeping up on the news periodically and recently some of this stuff has gotten under my skin.  I'm annoyed ... by both sides.  Moreso by the Left, but the Right is doing their best recently... So here's my mini-soapbox for the Republicans to read (and get mad at me about) and then afterwards you will have my idea for a proposal for a commercial that the Democrats can read (and get mad at me about).  Hopefully by the end of the day everybody will be mad at me and I can go back to living in my cave... :-) REPUBLICANS: The right to own firearms is guaranteed in our constitution.  But we can draw the line somewhere, can't we?!  Nobody is arguing that I should have the right to operate a thermonuclear missile from my backyard because there's no possible positive outcome of that scenario.  Well, um, the same goes for the assault weap...

The defending champions strolled confidently onto the football pitch (soccer field, for you Americans).  They carried themselves as befitted a team that had come from behind the year before and decisively crushed all opposition.  This was a team that knew what it meant to play hard, to play with heart, to give it your all. The opposition came in from the other side, somewhat intimidated but determined nonetheless.  They knew they had done all the preparation they could possibly do for this game.  They knew that on paper they had a good chance.  But ... the game wasn't going to be played on paper, now, was it?  They were worried, but they were determined to give it their best. The challengers won the toss and the game soon moved into a fast-paced, skilled match.  The teams were so evenly matched!  The ball moved from one end of the field to the other, resembling tennis more than football! Then something strange happened.  The challenger...