I was listening to this message by Rob Bell of Mars Hill Church on Suffering. There was a part of 2 Corinthians 6 that he read that hit me between the eyes, particularly in light of the stuff my church has been going through for a while now. I sometimes get so discouraged about our church, about where we're at, the people that are being impacted - focused on everything we're not doing instead of what we are doing. This verse just resonated with my heart in such a huge way when I read it.

⁴Our work as God's servants gets validated--or not--in the details. People are watching us as we stay at our post, alertly, unswervingly . . . in hard times, tough times, bad times; ⁵when we're beaten up, jailed, and mobbed; working hard, working late, working without eating; ⁶with pure heart, clear head, steady hand; in gentleness, holiness, and honest love; ⁷when we're telling the truth, and when God's showing his power; when we're doing our best setting things right; ⁸when we're praised, and when we're blamed; slandered, and honored; true to our word, though distrusted; ⁹ignored by the world, but recognized by God; terrifically alive, though rumored to be dead; beaten within an inch of our lives, but refusing to die; ¹⁰immersed in tears, yet always filled with deep joy; living on handouts, yet enriching many; having nothing, having it all.

The second part reminded me of a conversation I'd had with a friend of mine on Sunday night. We were talking about how easy it is to get wrapped up in our own worlds, and the best way to get out of our funks can be to focus outside of ourselves. Paul continues on in 2 Corinthians 6:

12We didn't fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren't small, but you're living them in a small way. ¹³I'm speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively!

Noel's message last week talked about the concept of Open Theism which is basically the. According to this, I'm a Freewill Theist. The first I'd heard of the idea of Open Theism was when I read the book, Letters from a Skeptic by Gregory Boyd
. Great book, but the part that didn't sit with me was the part where he explained his perspective on God's fore-knowledge of the future and free will.

This is a video of Yale punking Harvard. They get 1800 harvard fans to hose themselves. Check out the video and web site at www.harvardsucks.org

Had a pretty uneventful morning. The kids and I let Cathie sleep in for a while and then I went to the gym and then picked up Riley from Nicki's (Thanks Nik!). Nate and I went out to buy the gifts for the Angel Tree child we were helping out and then out to lunch. We had a great time, getting lots of unhealthy food, like milk shakes. We have great conversations when we go out, coming up with hypothetical questions for each other like "If you could choose between shooting a rocket laucher or a sniper rifle, which would you choose and why?" As we're driving, our favorite past-time is for me to pick random songs on my iPod and tell him the story behind the song. Today, we were talking about and listening to songs by Peter Gabriel, U2 and Yes.

We got back last night from our Thanksgiving extravaganza. On Thursday, we got together at my parent's house and had our annual Kurt Family Thanksgiving dinner. Between my mom, dad, grandma, brothers, sisters, spouses, nieces and nephews there are 19 1/2 of us. My mom cooked an amazing meal with 5 or 6 different desserts. We ate our fill as we watched the Lions lose miserably. That evening, we headed over to Cathie's parents house in Dewitt.

The next morning we got up and a bunch of us went on our annual Christmas Tree Farm expedition. We chopped down a tree as usual. We headed back to Cathie's parents where we began the annual Lebbon Thanksgiving extravaganza. Cathie's brother Ed and his wife Stacy were both there and we had a meal that could have easily fed twice the number of people there. Again, an awesome meal. We hung out there until about 7ish and most of us headed back. Madeline stuck around to spend the night.

I got back last night and met up with Matt, Will and Jason to play some Halo 2 at our church office on the big screen. What a game! I sucked, but not as bad as Will, so there's some solace in that for me.

We had our first big snow, so the kids and I went out first thing this morning to play while Cathie got things packed and ready to head out for Thanksgiving. Our dog Riley was having a great time until Emily tried to hook the sled up to her, convinced that she's a sled dog.

Reason #437 why you don't let a 3 year old maker her own hot choclate:

Couple of pictures from Monday Night Football:
This Ross, Matt and I - a couple of my good friends from work who I went to the game with:

This old gal is one of the die hard Cheifs fans I saw at the game. The cigarette completes the picture:

I've been listening to this message from Rob Bell at Mars Hills Church in Grand Rapids, part of the series 15 part on Mastering the Art of Living. Great series, but there are two messages on truth that have really caused me to think, which I guess is what a good sermon does. Part 11 deals with finding and claiming truth in the world around us as Christians. It was a concept I'd heard, but taken to a new point that I hadn't. Part 12 takes it quite a bit further, talking about God in terms of the definition of Ultimate Reality. I've been reading about this same idea in the book I just started called The Divine Conspiracy, by Dallas Willard.

In Rob's message, he makes a leap somewhere in the message iin how he interprets John 14:6 which is where Jesus states:

"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him."

I'm just not sure I'm tracking with where he takes this. Rob seems to take the position that this is not about Jesus saying that he's the gatekeeper to heaven but that he's pointing to the ultimate reality that is God and himself. It seems to be such a fine line between Christianity and Universalism. It's caused me to do a lot of thinking and studying, which I guess is the goal of a great message. Take a listen and let me know what you think. I've had some great conversations with a friend of mine Mark who's been looking into Kaballah, about this verse and how it lines up with what he thinks, but I still can't follow how Rob Bell comes to the conclusions that he does with this.

As a family, we're participating in the Angel Tree program through church. Angel Tree helps prison inmates to provide Christmas gifts to their kids while their in prison. Cathie and Madeline, Nate and I each picked an family to help. I was talking with Nate tonight and he had a choice between getting the boy we chose one gift, or getting him two gifts at the expense of giving up one of his own christmas gifts. Being 7, I figured he'd go with giving the boy one gift and take the extra christmas gift. He didn't even hestitate to say that he wanted to get the boy the extra gifts. I'm a proud dad.

I just barely made it home from Kansas City this morning. For some reason, I woke up at about 3:30 AM and was wide awake. Since I had to leave the hotel in an hour and a half, I decided to stay up. When I looked out the window, they already had 6 inches of snow. There was none when I went to bed. I got the airport, and they'd closed it down to clear the runways. Our flight ended up taking off at 7:30 instead of 6. I'm not sure what I was thinking traveling today, the busiest travel day of the year. Rookie move on my part. Luckily, I made it home. I can't imagine the poor schmucks who travel later today with all of the weather problems going on around the country. I'm just glad we're driving for thanksgiving tomorrow.

In my message on sunday, I quoted from James 2, talking about the relationship between our faith and our actions. According to Jerry Fallwell and some of his buddies mentioned in this article, this shouldn't even be in the bible. I knew I should have checked with Jerry before using it. This is just one of those things you learn over time.

If you haven't already, check out the movies that Amazon.com's been showing. They're short features (<3 minutes) either starring or directed by big names, that have no product placement or amazon.com mention. They're very well done and worth watching.

Nothing like getting back form the gym to find that you didn't pack any changes of underwear.

I went to my first Monday Night Football game ever last night at Arrowhead stadium to wastch the Kansas City Chiefs play the New England Patriots. It was a great experience. When you first drive in, there is a huge haze over the stadium from all the barbecuing. Being Kansas City, people don't grill burgers or brats down here, there was the smell of steak in the air. People had some amazing tailgaiting setups. I've never seen a stadium so blanketed by the team's color. It was red everywhere you looked. I would guess that 98% of the fans there were wearing some kind of chiefs jacket, hat or shirt.

There was this really cool camera that was connected at four axis points over the stadium that could move three dimensionally to stay over the action. Seems like a fun job to have. My video games skills could truly be utilized there.

I thought my message today in church went well. I felt really good about the whole thing. The title of the message was "Duct Tape Christianity". It went longer than I thought, so I had to cut it on the fly to keep it to only 35 minutes. You can download it here.

I've been going back and forth with the nigerian royalty trying to figure out where he can send me the $15M. An exceprt of their e-mail to me:

IN ORDER TO FULLFIL THE WISHES OF HER LATE HUSBAND, SHE HAS DECIDED THAT SHE WILL ASSIST THE NEEDY AND THE LESS PRIVILEDGED PEOPLE IN OUR SOCIETY. BEFORE HER HUSBAND`S DEATH HE DEPOSITED SOME AMOUNT OF MONEY TO THE TUNE OF US$15.240,000(FIFTEEN MILLION TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY THOUSAND UNITED STATES DOLLARS) WITH A SECURITY COMPANY ,UNDER THE GUISE OF LOCAL GOODS TO BE PRODUCED IN EUROPE. THAT WAS WILLED TO HER AFTER HIS DEATH. WHAT SHE REQUIRES FROM YOU IS FOR YOU TO GO TO THE SECURITY COMPANY AND MAKE CLAIMS OF THE DEPOSIT , SEND 50% OF THE TOTAL SUM TO HER HERE IN AFRICA TO ASSIST THE LESS PRIVILEDGED,THEN YOU WILL DISBURSE 30% TO DO THE SAME ABROAD (SPECIFICALLY CHILDREN`S CHARITY) WHILE YOU WILL RETAIN THE REMAINDING 20%.

My latest communication with him:

My church and I would like to participate. We are in desparate need of money to feed the poor in our area. This money would be a huge help. Please advise on how we can be of assistance to you.

My son's cub scout pack collected 6,900 cans of food for our local food shelter. It's a great thing for hurting families, but it was a great thing for the kids. They got as much out of it as anyone!

I met a friend of mine for lunch yesterday. As we were leaving the resturant, my friend handed me something they'd printed out for me to read. Before heading outside, I told them I had to use the restroom. My friend then replied (rather loudly) "Can I hold it?" Of course they meant the document they'd just given me, but people turned around and stared as I laughed hysterically and my friend quickly added "....the document". We laughed very hard about this.

Like everyone else, I periodically get spam e-mails from people claiming they would like to deposit large amounts of money in my bank account in order to escape the tyranny of their country. I've started replying to the e-mails, telling them I'm all in and seeing how long I can string them along. I'm currently going back and forth with DR.EMMANUEL KUMAHLO. Occasionally I tell them I'm a pastor and my church would like to give him our bank account number in order to help them out. Suprisingly, this turns most of them off.

Madeline was sick and out of school last week three days. On his own, Nate made her a get well card. I have no idea what the picture is on the card, but the caption read "Get well soon. I miss you very much. You're the best sister a boy could ever have. I wish you good luck getting well. From Nathan."