Preaching to the Choir

I had an opportunity to work with a friend today. In the 90's, I attended the same church as this kid and had been the youth pastor for him. I won't go into full details but the youth group was eventually torn apart by an over reaching and micro managing preacher. The Pastor who caused all the grief was full of ambition and was using every stepping stone that he could in order to get ahead and move up the ladder. The preacher's best weapon was his deception or skill in lying. We didn't discuss the past too much today but this guy made a great observation about the pastor in question. "He should have been a politician" was the exact quote. There's just so much truth in that one simple statement. It use to be that everyone understood that politicians were not the most honest people on the planet and church folks never put their trust and hope in political leaders but instead, in their faith. Preacher's who run for and achieve political office can never hold the moral high ground because the two things are basically polar opposites and a conflict of eternal and earthly interest.

This is basketball season and I am blessed to be able to coach my youngest daughter who plays on a team of 3rd-5th graders. We've had roughly the same team for 3 years in a row and these girls are awesome. They not only play well together, having only lost 1 game in the past 2 years but they get along off the court as well. One thing that I've learned in coaching is that there are 2 types of coaches. The best coaches are the ones who are able to coach their own children and not push them above the team by allowing them to start or play every minute when there are others who might be better on the team. The others are doomed for failure because they prefer playing time and vicarious living over team success.

Some people never know what to focus on or how to appreciate the small things in life. Don't look at the negatives in every situation but always find any glimmer of hope and goodness. Don't be a "but" person. If your first instinct after someone speaks to you is to say yea but, you have some work to do.

It's amazing that some folks are incapable or unwilling to ever see themselves at fault. They blow up every relationship or situation and then always find a way to blame others. Sometimes it's a short ride to the true fault.

There was another G.O.P debate tonight and once again, it was a collection of clones and clone lights (Ron Paul). There is hardly any diversity within the ranks of those running for the republican side of the ticket. They know the trigger words to use...abortion, jobs, Obamacare, spending, cuts, and state's rights but where is the substance? The entire party is great at slogans but they don't have any valuable solutions to our daily problems. You'll never hear them talk about giving everyone access to health care or income disparity or real job creation. Deregulation and tax cuts have been proven wrong and yet that's the only ideas that they have. Given the choice, as they have proven in the ranks of the House of Representatives, they would rather vote to restrict reproductive rights than to create jobs. They also have proven that they have no interest in bringing jobs back to the USA when they voted down the Democrats plan to give employers tax breaks for hiring US workers and for creating new jobs at home.

The current blogging of the Southern Donkey Blog are brought to you by insomnia. I am attempting to provide some random thoughts and highlights from the day. I will also try to end them with the date and time of the writing just as a reference.

01/08/2012 12:49 am