Equal Opportunity Field Day???

I just witnessed the  most depressing Field Day event ever.  What were your Field Days like when you were in elementary school?  I have happy memories of people cheering and classmates enjoying healthy competition with one another.  I was always the too-tall chubby kid, but even I was able to win some 1st place ribbons, especially since some events were team events.  Our whole class competed against other classes in events like Tug of War.  I still remember how exciting it was to see the flag move over to our side as our class pulled the other class over.  There was excitement in the air.  

Move forward about 30 years.  My daughter told me last week that her school would be having Field Day on Halloween.  I talked it up to be a really fun thing, and I told her I'd come watch her.  So this morning I went up to the school ready to watch the fun.  I knew something was wrong when the teacher announced that the kids had to stay with their buddy.  They could only compete against that one partner.  So there were no races with different heats, no races with more than two people competing.  And when I say "competing," I'm using the word very loosely.  I rarely heard anyone saying "On your mark, get set, go!"  It was more like, "Whenever you feel like starting, go ahead."  

Welcome to the equal opportunity Field Day.  When I started writing this post, I did not intend to relate it to politics.  I was just really disappointed that kids today don't get to experience Field Day the way it was meant to be.  But as I was writing, I realized that this is a perfect analogy to our political situation today.  Some would say that the Field Day was a success because there were no losers.  But the downside to that is that there were no winners either.  So do you know what I saw on that field today?  I saw lots of kids roaming around wondering what they were working toward.  With no clear winners, there was no goal to reach for.  There were no ribbons to reward accomplishment; the kids just had each event checked off a piece of paper as they went around the track/field.  I heard no cheers and I felt no excitement.  The kids did not get to experience the joy of playing on a team (you should've seen the sad Tug of War game...two kids holding a rope with no flag in the middle...what's the point??).  Some kids got tired of the whole thing and just went to sit in the swings.  My daughter must have wondered why I had made such a big deal out of this whole Field Day thing.  

Today I saw redistribution in action.  There were no winners and no losers, thus no motivation to excel.  If you vote for Obama, then you are saying that this is what you want your world to look like.  Obama's redistribution would actually be the equal distribution of misery.  Taking more from the wealthy and giving it to the poor gives the poor absolutely no incentive to make better lives for themselves.  The poor already get plenty of help through our all-too-generous welfare system (otherwise, we wouldn't have so many people staying on welfare year after year...welfare should be a temporary fix until you get back on your feet, not a permanent way of life).  Why make more money if the government is just going to take it away?  Why go out and actually get a job when Obama's big government will take care of you?  I personally don't want my world to look like the Field Day I saw today, because I saw lots of sad faces.  I saw kids sitting on the sidelines who are usually high energy kids who love to have fun.  But it's no fun to run a race that you have no hopes of winning.  IT JUST DOESN'T WORK.  It's not how our country became strong, and it will bring our country to destruction.  

If you don't want to see this happen, vote for McCain...vote for America...

vote for DEMOCRACY!

Should kindergartners be taught about sex at school without parents' consent? HECK NO!

I would say that I can't believe this, but since it happened in California, I guess it makes sense.  This disgusts me, not only because this school is promoting the homosexual lifestyle, but because KINDERGARTNERS SHOULD NOT HAVE TO HEAR ABOUT ANY KIND OF SEXUAL RELATIONS AT ALL!!!  If you start trying to explain the gay lifestyle to 5-year-olds, then you're opening up a whole can of worms that they're just not ready to hear yet.  Unless, of course, you want your kids to end up being oversexed 10-year-olds.  I would not be any less angry if my 5-year-old were taught about heterosexual sex at school.  Sex ed should not start in elementary school.  Please, let's allow our children to keep their innocence as long as possible.  And it's atrocious that the parents were not informed.  I would have yanked my kid out of that school so fast.  I admit that I'm not the most gifted teacher in the world, but if this kind of crap spreads to the rest of this country, then it's homeschooling, here we come!

The Patriarchs

I'm taking part in a Beth Moore Bible study right now called "The Patriarchs - Encountering the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." I've read most of these passages from Genesis many times, but I've only done one other in-depth study about this part of the Bible. This morning, we were reading the passage where God asks Abraham to take Isaac up Mount Moriah and sacrifice him. Ever since I first heard this story, I've struggled to imagine how a loving parent could do such a thing, even if the God of the universe asked him to do it. I always rationalized it to myself by assuming that Abraham knew in his heart that God would stop him at the last minute. I just couldn't imagine it any other way. And now that I'm a parent, it's even harder for me to imagine being obedient in this way. Beth Moore had an interesting insight when she said, "We'll give Him most of what we love, but we won't give Him what we love most."  How true that is.  Another interesting thing I had not thought of before is that Isaac could have resisted the sacrifice.  He was probably an adolescent by this time, and it shouldn't have been to difficult for him to overpower his quite elderly father.  But, like Christ, he willingly submitted to his father. 

One particular thing that floored me this morning was what we read in Hebrews 11:17-19. This passage says that when Abraham was preparing to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead. This is just amazing to me for two reasons:

1) What faith Abraham had! Scripture does not document any instances before this time where God raised anyone from the dead, yet Abraham reasoned that God could do such a thing. He was a friend of God and knew Him well enough to know that He could do the impossible. Before climbing the mountain, Abraham told the servant to wait for them. Abraham used the word "we" when he told the servant that he and Isaac would be returning, so he had complete faith that Isaac would come back down that mountain with him.

2) Abraham fully intended to sacrifice Isaac on that altar. He was going to follow through with giving his son's life because he trusted God. God had told him that Isaac was the son of the promise and that he would be the father of many nations through Isaac, and Abraham believed that God would keep that covenant. I just never fully grasped the fact that Abraham really intended to give his son's life.  Abraham's only recorded words to God in this chapter are, "Here I am."  Oh, that I would live my life with that kind of obedience to God.

But the most beautiful thing about this passage is that it foreshadows the crucifixion of Christ. As Beth Moore says, it was like God was staging the future event; Abraham played God and Isaac played Jesus. There are many parallels (Isaac carried the wood on his back foreshadowed Christ carrying the cross, etc.).  The difference was that Isaac got up from the altar.  Abraham commemorated the place by naming it "The Lord Will Provide."  When God spared Isaac, he provided a ram for the sacrifice.  And many years later, on a mountain near this one, God sacrificed His only begotten son as payment for our sins.  Praise God.