Oh, c'mon......again?  Yet another looney-tune wingnut announcing "beyond the shadow of a doubt" that Jesus is coming back....tomorrow?  That's right----tomorrow!  And if you don't happen to see this until Saturday you're in some deep weeds.  (Good grief, I hope it's after the Lightning game!)  If you're still around Sunday to see this....well, you know what that means.  Enjoy the Tribulation, reprobate!

Somebody please help me understand what Mr. Camping and people of his ilk are thinking.  It may be more reasonable to ask if they're thinking at all.  Never mind that he already made himself look utterly ridiculous in 1994 with a similar prediction that his followers (Yup, he has followers) have attempted to explain away in another context.  Never mind what the Bible clearly states.  Never mind that his prediction mocks and flies in the face of God the Father's authority and exclusive claim to know the time and date.

It would be so easy and it certainly is a strong temptation to tap into a deep and rich vein of sarcasm within me begging to express itself on this page.  And there's so much material to make for a really good time.  However, there's enough of that flying around on the internet, Facebook, and about every other media source capitalizing on Mr. Camping's ignorance.  So, I'll try to refrain from any jibes. 

Well, okay, maybe just one.  Today's St. Petersburg Times (5/20/11) has an article about Camping with a headshot photograph.  His article is directly beside an article about a donkey military mascot from Iraq (with a headshot photograph) being given a new home in Nebraska.  The photos are virtually interchangeable.

Actually, there is something that runs even deeper in my spirit when I see this kind of foofaraw.  Let's call it heartache.

After the initial disgust wears off I find myself saddened that a misguided "evangelical" (whatever the heck that is) finds himself in such desperate need of attention, which a skeptical and unbelieving world is more than happy to give him, that he literally drags all that is sacred into the category of the ridiculous.  The promised return of Jesus, the Christ, the Alpha and Omega, the King of kings, and Lord of lords, an event of indescribably and cosmic proportions that will give final and triumphant definition to all history preceding it......is trivialized.  Skeptics smirk.  Serious thinkers yawn.  And, of course, many folks will simply turn this into an excuse to drink.  Thousands are planning parties to celebrate.  Celebrate what?  That Camping will be wrong....again?  That Jesus didn't return.....again (proclaimed tongue in cheek)?  That another ridiculous religious prediction is disproved....again?

Maybe it's just me but I find that painful.  It makes me shudder.

Even so, let's stay focused.  Nothing in all of this changes the fact that His day is approaching.  It doesn't take much investigation into what the Bible teaches about His return to prompt the conclusion that it would be most unwise to make light of it or, worse yet, try to own it.  Mr. Camping and I agree at one point.  Jesus is coming back.  But to usurp the exclusive privilege of God and presume to pin down the date "beyond the shadow of a doubt"---I'd rather hear the donkey bray, thank you.

I recently saw a t-shirt that read, "Sarcasm is my body's natural response to stupidity."  That will explain, but probably not excuse the following.

It was early in the morning.  The sun wasn't even up yet and wouldn't be until the women were well on the way to their destination.  However beautiful a morning it turned out to be would do little to offset their gloom and heartbreak.  He was dead.  It was nothing short of wrenching to try to take in the whirlwind events of the past few days.  His message of God's kingdom had been politicized, he'd been arrested, subjected to a mock trial, victimized by the spineless Pontius Pilate, and then crucified.  How would they ever erase the seared memory of watching him die?  And for what?  Healing the sick?  Feeding the hungry? 

As they made their way to his burial place they wondered how in the world they would ever move the enormous stone sealing the tomb so they could complete the preparation of his body for burial interrupted by Sabbath regulations.  But they pressed on. 

Now they could see from a short distance that the stone had somehow already been moved and the tomb stood open.  Fearfully, they approached and looked inside.  You won't believe what they saw. 

There before them was 6 foot, gleaming white.....rabbit.  Actually, it was obviously somebody in a rabbit costume.  He was all so fluffy, his plastic face with its black nose and toothy smile, long, pink ears askew, and those enormous feet!  Golly, he was so cute!  Curiously, he held a colored basket in each hand, one pink and the other green.  In one of them nestled amidst colored "grass" there were multi-colored eggs with all kinds of decals and designs.  In the other basket an assortment of candy including......get this........chocolate rabbits!

Their jaws were hanging slack while they tried to take it all in when...........the rabbit spoke!  With a high-pitched, silly little voice he said, "Hey, who you're lookin' for isn't here---but I am---and I've got all kinds of good things planned.  Go back and tell your friends we're going to have a parade!  We'll have marching harp bands, "floats" entered by local merchants, and local political officials in their chariots and full regalia.  This won't be just any parade, but what we're going to call an "Easter" parade.  Where did that term come from?  It doesn't matter--just tell everybody you meet to rush into town and buy a new robe and sandals for the "Easter" parade and a special celebration of.......SPRING!"

With growing enthusiasm he exulted, "WooHoo, it'll be great!  I've even got some new music for the occasion.  Forget those stodgy old praise psalms.  How about "Here Comes Peter Cottontail" and "In Your Easter Bonnet"??  Catchy, huh?!  It's really going to be for the kids anyway so we want to be happy and carefree.  The last thing we want to do is burden them with sadness and empty graves, for crying out loud!"  

As he hopped out of the now empty tomb he turned the women back in the direction from which they had come and like an old friend, put his arms around them as they moved along.  "So, here's what we're going to do.  While you and your friends are getting dolled up for the parade, I'm going to hide the eggs in this basket along with 500 more and we'll have the kids see how many they can find.  Won't that be fun!  What's that?  Why?  Oh, I dunno know---do we have to have a reason?  And then for every egg they find I'll give them a chocolate rabbit!!  How cool is that?"

The women did just as they had been told.  They returned to their grieving friends and excitedly told them all about the fluffy white 6-foot bunny rabbit and his incredibly ingenious plans for the celebration of SPRING! with the egg hunt, chocolate candy, parade, music, and new clothes for everybody.  As they tried to take it all in it was just what the doctor ordered.  Everybody felt better and they jumped to their feet, high-fived one another and headed for the egg hunt.  The last woman out the door paused, put her finger to her chin and wondered out loud, "Let's see....have we forgotten anything?"

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No, this isn't a boycott.  It's more like a plea.  I'm no curmudgeon and I've had my share of chocolate bunnies.  But the secular world has piggy-backed the most important event in history and tried to diminish the life-changing power and beauty of it.  And they've done a pretty good job!

Moms and Dads, after the egg hunt or maybe when they've recovered from all the candy, sit down with the kiddos and tell them about a living, loving, risen Jesus.  The greatest story of all......is true.         

I recently saw a clip of popular "Real Time" television talk show host Bill Maher being interviewed as he concluded a rather intense tirade with, "Most of the Bible is bull****!"  The audience cheered. 

Maher has ascended to the unrivaled kingship of snide skepticism, ridicule, vicious satire and incivility toward Christianity up from among his "peers", past and present.  Were you to visit the Heretics Hall of Fame his would be the newest and largest display designed to accomodate volumes of new broadcast/internet material being added seemingly every day.  I'm told admission is free but that visitors find the temperature in the facility so unbearably warm they can't fully appreciate the exhibits.  Oh, and by the way, leave the kids at home....

So, how do you react to Maher's scatological disparagement of God's Word?  Or do I want to know?  Do you want to reach in the TV and slap that arrogant, sarcastic grin off of his face?  Do you take deep satisfaction from immediately envisioning judgement day and seeing him cast into outer darkness amidst the unquenchable fires of hell?  Would you like to see him pop out in boils, lesions and leprosy as retribution for his ridicule of a holy God or have his tongue cut out and put on a pike as an example to any other potential blasphemers who would dare profane sacred writ?  Hmmm, deja vu the Middle Ages....

For me, Maher's rant was a kick in the shorts.  I found it to be painfully convicting and it prompted a period of reflection and self-examination. 

Stay with me here.  

Yes, his nastiness is over the top and offensive.  But at a bare minimum Maher comes right out and tells us God's Word does nothing for him.  He does not see merit or legitimacy in recognizing it as such.  It isn't worth his time.  He certainly isn't going to devote himself to understand it or try to live it.  By his own decision, faith and rationality simply don't mix for Maher.  Should you choose to listen to him bloviate to any measure you are sure to hear him reference believers as completely irrational.  If any measure of faith is required in this scheme Maher simply resorts to comedic ridicule, if not outright disdain.

Hopefully, the following will come as no surprise to you.  I believe the Bible to be what it claims to be:  the divinely inspired Word of God.  For me to openly demean it, belittle it, abase it, despise it or scorn it, much less profane it, is inconceivable.  I genuinely shudder at the thought.  So, with that you know only what I have to say about it.  And I'm sure most of you reading this are in complete agreement.

Here's where it hits me.....hard.  In light of my unqualified declaration of belief in God's Word, what space does it actually occupy in my life day to day--functionally, attitudinally, emotionally, intellectually, and personally?  Do I deem it worth my time?  If I say I do, what kind of time do I actually invest in seeking Him there?  What level of priority does scripture command in my reading list and my desire to be "well-read?"  Do I go to it first or think more in terms of it being one of my daily "chores" to get done if and when I can?  Am I honestly able to say I "hunger and thirst" for what is to be found there?  To whatever degree I understand it, how willing am I to at least attempt to consistently live it?

Bill Maher makes no apology for ignoring the Word of God.  He openly admits (boasts?) the Bible is of no functional value to him and not worth his time or focus.  For the purposes of this discussion it is at this point that Bill Maher and I are quite different, but not for the obvious reason.  You see, he is not a hypocrite.

An award winning documentary film from the 2006 Sundance Film Festival is entitled "God Grew Tired of Us."  An estimated 27,000 young boys ranging in age from 5 to 15 fled the Sudan at the outbreak of Civil War when government Muslims began destroying villages en masse.  They marched north to Egypt where they were sustained for a few years and then marched south through their war-torn homeland seeking refuge in Kenya.  By the time they arrived over 14,000 had died along the way from disease and starvation.  Those surviving were emaciated, disoriented, many barely alive.  They had forged their own version of "families" and close-knit relationships to support each other during their tragic migration.  UN agencies managed to provide them care and rudimentary education after which there was nothing left for them to do but sit and consider that God had grown tired of them.  Relief organizations in the U.S. were alerted to the situation and thus begins the portrayal of 3 young men who were randomly chosen to come to America for the "opportunity" of making some sort of life for themselves.

To watch them being introduced for the first time to running water, electricity, toilets, and supermarkets, not to mention what had to be an almost traumatic experience of a transatlantic flight when many of them had never seen an airplane, was a wrenching experience for me.  They had been told America was a very strange place and seeing a world that was utterly new and foreign to them only underscored how "strange" we are to 75% of the world's population living in "poverty" who have absolutely no concept of our "prosperity."  Two of the three "boys" being monitored experienced such loneliness, disenchantment, and disorientation that they went back "home" to the Sudan to help their people.

I'm not even sure why, but their experience got me to thinking about our current tough economic times and all the dire predictions of commodities going through the roof, double-dip recession, tax increases, inflation, and a host of other concerns we hear mentioned every day.  We're all taking some hits relative to our station in life.  I'm not aware of anyone I would consider immune from suffering losses of some kind in this economy.  Just about all of us know someone who is at the point of losing "everything."  And it could get worse.  Many are convinced it will.  What then?  Can we even remotely entertain the thought of having to "survive" at a level akin to the boys of Sudan?  Ten years ago most people didn't know what the word "angst" meant, much less how to spell it.  Now, everybody does.  Has God grown tired of us?

Faith has been defined as "going to the edge of all the light you have.....and taking the next step."  Times like these present us with a choice.  We can crawl toward the darkness in fear or we can walk toward it confidently by faith.  If we somehow knew where that next step was going to take us, where is the faith in that?  Those of you who know me have heard it over and over.  "Worry is praying to the wrong God."  Anxiety over an uncertain future is tantamount to looking into the face of our heavenly Father and so much as saying, "I'm just not sure you can handle this....!"

As Thanksgiving approaches do yourself a really big favor.  Go back and read Matthew 6:25-34.  Then follow that up with Philippians 4:4-7.  Read them several times.....as many times as it takes to generate the confidence and trust sufficient to get comfortable with the fact that the Father is going to guide and direct you just as He promised.  He will never grow tired of us.    

Try this thought on for size.  In which set of circumstances would living by faith come easier--when we desperately need Him or when we think we don't?  Hmmm.    

I think I'm all healed up from a broken collar bone (bicycling) and carpal tunnel syndrome (old age?  Not!).  Between the two, typing wasn't much fun!   But I'm ready to get back to these ramblings on a more regular basis.

This much-anticipated election day is underway.  With all the enthusiastic prognostications or dire predictions, depending on your point of view, I'm almost to the point of looking ahead to the evening's television coverage as an event.  All indications point to history in the making, whatever that may mean. 

But then, we've been witnessing history being churned up for over 18 months now as the country and the very fabric of our society has been turned on its head in fulfillment of the president's campaign pledge of the "fundamental transformation of America."  Polls would seem to indicate voters today will decide to slow down the rate of the now infamous "hope and change" which, in reality, has been nothing more than pervasive discouragement and political business as usual.  It is altogether clear that this election is a referendum on Obama's presidency as much as it is to elect individual candidates to office.  So, we'll vote.....and pray.

A friend of mine forwarded this quote to several of us and I actually want to go on record as having passed it on to you.  It is of particular significance to me on this election day and I certainly hope we can recall it on the next one.  Sadly, we don't know the source but we do know it came from within the Czech Republic written by someone observing from a distance with laser for a pen.  After you read it you'll probably react like I did.  "Why couldn't I have written that?"

"The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency.  It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president.  The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America.  Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince.  The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool.  It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president."   

Here's one more timely quote. 

"If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land."

I think we all know who said that one.