God Must Get The Credit

Deuteronomy 32:38- When Israel trusted other gods, God had to let them fail so they would now that those gods are useless. Why would God give blessing if they would give the credit to demons? In the same way, God has to let us fail when we are relying on someone other than him (like ourselves!) so that we realize how useless our "Wizard of Oz" really is.

Grandmas: The Gory Details!

Thank you to everyone who prayed for me Saturday morning! Not even I knew how important those prayers would be. The night before was beautiful- too chilly for just a T-shirt and cloudy. PERFECT running weather. The next morning, however, we had direct sunlight and the temperature at the start (7:30 in the morning) was already in the 70s. As we ran it kept getting hotter and hotter. We checked a thermometer after the race and it read 90+ degrees. I have been known to run 15+ miles without water. On Saturday I was grabbing water, Ultima, and ice every two miles, and I was still feeling overheated. I saw one elite runner sprawled out and panting on somebody's front yard at about mile 16. By mile 19 they had placed black flags on the course, indicating that the temperature had reached a severe level and the race might be called off at any moment.
By then my friend Trey was cramping up every half mile or so, so we kept having to stop. It was too hard on me to keep stopping and starting again, so as we approached mile 20 I took off solo. That wasn't exactly a mistake, but it was super hard. I cruised along for about 2 miles and then crashed. I hit the wall, got overheated, lost my running partner, and my heart started acting up, all around the same time.
The last 4 miles were one the longest, most miserable things I have ever experienced. Because of my heart (I have atrial fibrilation so I have to be careful) I had to stop jogging and walk every minute or two, but it hurt just as much to walk as it did to run and the buildings moved past slower. No matter how fast or slow I moved I felt like the sun was going to bake me alive if I had to stay out in it for one more hour. I had already been on the course for more than 3 hours.
I got an orange slice and some strawberries at mile 22. I have never tasted better fruit and probably never will. It gave me energy for a couple minutes of jogging, which was a huge blessing because my family and a bunch of my friends were right around the corner and I would have felt really bad if I had been walking when I passed them.

After that I still had 3 miles to go. They were painful miles. I don't remember much. For a while I just stared at the bricks passing under my feet, wishing they would go faster. I tried looking ahead but it always depressed me because the next turn was 4 or 5 blocks ahead and I couldn't see it.
People kept cheering but I tuned them out. I really didn't care. However, I was wearing my old high school jersey. It is the only running jersey I own, and it has "Sauk Centre" proudly displayed across the chest. Several times in those last miles I heard people cheering for the Mainstreeters. I knew they had to be from Sauk Centre because nobody else would know the team name, and I didn't dare put my town to shame- so I would start jogging again. Those random people will never know how much they helped me.
Finally, 4 hours and 45 seconds after my "griddle march" began, I crossed the finish line with tears of relief in my eyes.
And your prayers didn't end there.
After finishing I forced myself to drink two bottles of water and a cup of yogurt, attempting to replenish. I felt rotten so I tried to keep walking around, but I couldn't. I laid down under a tree and felt a little better after 10 or 15 minutes. I cautiously sat up to take some Ibuprofene and ended up puking everything out of my body. After that I felt a lot better, but then I was shaking uncontrollably because of the lack of nutrients, carbs, or anything else in my body. Finally, after about 45 minutes, I got another three bottles of water and some food (thanks to friends and family who went to get it for me) and my body got back to mostly normal.
So I want to send out a huge Thank You to God, for giving me the strength to finish and watching over me to keep me safe, to my friends and family who came to watch and support me, and to everyone who said a prayer for me. I heard that more than 30 people went to the hospital from the marathon, and I praise God that I was not one of them. I am a little frustrated that I trained so long and hard and then got nowhere close to my goal time, but mainly I am just happy to be able to say that I finished.

Praise God!

Marathons have a color-code system. White means there is a hypothermia danger, green means perfect running weather, yellow means be careful, red means there is serious heat, and black means you are a stupid if you are still running and they may cancel the race at any point and FORCE you to stop running. Well, they put out the ugly black flags about the time that we got to mile 18, so we ditched any hope of making our goal time and just kept trucking for the finish. It was miserable. I will probably go into great contemplative detail about in a day or two, once I have had more processing time. For now, I will simply say that I had tears in my eyes when I finally crossed the line and I praise God for giving me the ability to finish.

Grandmas Marathon

If you want to follow my race, you can do so without leaving your couch!
Verizon Wireless is providing a texting and email update service that lets you get my split times during the race. Sign up for the service at

https://secure.marathonguide.com/runnertracking/grandmas2009/

Just look up my name and choose either text message or email. The race starts at 7:30 Saturday morning.

If you are thinking about making the voyage to Duluth, you can find spectator information here:

http://www.grandmasmarathon.com/support/spectators.php

But be warned, every hotel and campground in the area has been booked since May.

PETA

The problem with people who do not believe in God is not that they worship nothing, but that they will worship anything.

When you are an animal rights activist, there is no end to the holocausts that can consume your time and attention. The latest outrage? President Obama swatted a fly. He didn't even use mechanical leverage to ease it's pain, he smashed it with his own bare hand, and on national television! PETA released a statement on their website saying that they will be sending a humane insect catcher device to the white house to deal with future insect incidents in a more insect- friendly way. I am filled with a combination of intense curiosity (how do you make a live trap small enough to catch a fly but big enough to not hurt its self-esteem?) and nausea. Do these people also drive less than 15 miles per hour at all times to avoid catching dragonflies in their grill?

Basic Politics

Democrats and Republicans will never agree. In order to understand the basic positions on any topic, simply insert the issue into the blanks.


Democrats: How could a government that cares about its people not ____________?

Republicans: Since when is it the government's constitutional right to ____________?


Example:

How could a government that cares about it's people not provide health care to everyone?

Since when is it the government's constitutional right to provide health care to everyone?

He will not fail you or forsake you.

God made two promises to Israel in Deuteronomy 31:6. First, that He would not fail them. Only God can promise this, and we should praise him for that. No man can promise to not fail. Second, he promised to not forsake them. This is amazing, considering how often Israel forsake Him. A perfect God has every right to forsake such wretched creatures as us, but he doesn't. Praise God for his mercy to us!

Marathon

For anyone interested in watching Grandmas, I plan to put up some details about the race later today.

Sunday and Battleships

On Sunday I got to talk to some good friends I haven't talked to in a while. That afternoon we played softball and then went to a wedding reception. Yet another friend of mine got married- another one who is younger than me! What is this world coming to? Congratulations, Nathan and Amy!
This morning my brother dreamed up the idea of building boats out of clay and aluminum foil and shooting at them with a BB gun. So we did it.
Last but not necessarily least, I saw a '57 Chevy limo on the way back to the cities this afternoon so I had to take a picture for my dad.

Celebrate God's Faithfulness

Deut. 26:1-10 When God fulfills a promise we need to deliberately review the story of God's provision and praise Him for His faithfulness. And Worship Him! And, in some way, we should maybe try to uphold the tradition of bringing Him and offering. Not an animal, but something else. Maybe a special tithe.

Cyborg Robot Squirrel Romance

Out in the hallway I said, "Hello,"
"The dance is this friday,
do you want to go?"
"Probably not," she promptly replied
"But kudos for asking, you're such an nice guy"
I should have known I'd end up alone
watching my star wars box trilogy

But here is the truth
if she only knew
that i've got a secret she'd never believe
This girl doesn't know that I'm an evil genius
with a sidekick dog named Grover Cleveland
and she'll never know that we could take over the world
with cyborg robot squirrels

-Thank you, Eleventyseven, for making my week with this song.
To hear the delicious ridiculousness in all its splendor, visit www.myspace.com/eleventyseven

Rollin'...

I have now passed the first round of the VISA application process. Praise God! Now comes round 2.

Befuddlement

Most of the book of Deuteronomy is a (very long-winded) speech by Moses on behalf of God at the border of Canaan. In this speech, lasting from Chapter 4 to chapter 30, and probably a couple of days, Moses reiterated the law given on Sinai and added a number of new commandments as well. Blessings are described for those who obey and curses for those who don't. Then, in Chapter 30 verse 11, God says through Moses, "Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach."

Many, many times I have heard it said that the Old Testament law was impossible to keep, that it's sole purpose was to show us how impossible it is to please God. How, then, do we wrestle with this verse? We can't just write it off as hyperbole. We certainly can't call God a liar. Could we say that hypothetically a human being could keep the law but in practice none but the God-man ever has? I suppose we could. But it seems like a half-baked beat around the bush to me. God's justice would still seem slightly un-God-like if He made such a proclamation with the full knowledge that in practice no one would ever live up to it.

Lest I get lumped into the dispensationalist camp (or any other theological marshmellow roast), I am not saying that our salvation is through anything but grace through faith, and I find it highly doubtful that even a Jew could find salvation in any other way. Yet somehow that assertion needs to be balanced with a verse in scripture that causes questions, rather than simply tossing the verse aside as some old testament eccentricity that lost its relevance when the Beta version of Torah 2.0 was released (aka Acts and the Pauline letters). Unlike computer programs, scripture does not go out of date and is not replaced by later releases- only illuminated.

Duckies!

I have been running past this Mallard family for the last couple of weeks, watching the ducklings grow and thinking, "Yup, I should get some pictures of them before the babies are big enough to swim out of range quickly." Last week they were significantly faster in their getaway, so I knew the time had come. I took a detour after work one evening and went duck hunting.









As a bonus, I saw this squirrel taking a drink.