COW Tipping

COW = Can ‘O Worms

Used to you could get a tin can opened up with a hand-powered opener and use it to hold your fish bait. Worms and grub of all varieties would stay securely sealed into this low-tech wonder because the lid was still attached. When you dropped your newly acquired fish-morsel into it you could bend the lid back down and it would stay in place.

Well, if your lid wasn’t on tight enough or you had wiggled it so much that the little hinge broke the one thing you didn’t want to do was tip the can. At that point, the lid would roll off and all your bait would wiggle all over the place because I’ll tell you what, they were much less interested in being skewered on a hook and fed to a fish than you were in doing it. Thats the problem with opening the can ‘o worms that is sin: no one wants to deal with it and when you open the lid and let in some light, they all take off.

Let’s tip some ‘cows’, OK?

“Eddies in the space-time continuum…”

When I was in junior-high I ran across a book that changed my life.

I was a awkward, fat, maladjusted teen from a broken home living with my Father who was at least attempting some sort of normal childhood for me. I had a bike and a dog and huge seemingly endless wood to explore out back of my grandmothers house and books. I couldn’t get enough books, particularly Fantasy and Science Fiction books of all varieties. Here’s the part where I find the book, thanks for waiting on it. It wasn’t the Bible even though the radical change that wrought in me is indescribable.

It was “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.”

Not exactly a deep theological tome as Douglas Adams was an athiest. The mere concept of aliens blowing up the Earth would probably send a theolog in so many directions at once he might never get his tongue un-knotted. But I loved this book and the idea that a dork like Arthur Dent could be a hero in any situation. Here’s what I mean:

“Are we talking about,” he asked cautiously, “some sort of Vogon laundromat, or what are we talking about?”
“Eddies,” said Ford, “in the space-time continuum.”
“Ah,” nodded Arthur, “is he. Is he.”
“What?” said Ford.
“Er, who,” said Arthur, “is Eddy, then, exactly, then?”
Ford looked angrily at him.
“Will you listen?” he snapped.
“I have been listening,” said Arthur, “but I’m not sure it’s helped.”

See? Dork through and through.

The point is that my world was fairly dark and dismal at that point but God sent this book my way so I could have a little laughter. I read the Bible too. I read it quite a bit and I was pretty familiar with it for a 12, 13, 14 year old but these others gave me a fresh perspective. Something to think about besides getting my butt whipped in basketball six or eight times a week.

Here’s what I mean. On down toward the end of this discussion Ford is having with Arthur we see that Ford finally gives up and says to Arthur, “Just believe everything I tell you, and it will all be very, very simple.” and even Arthur has the sense to reply as follows:

“Ah, well, I’m not sure I believe that.”

Even he has it figured out that nothing is ever as simple as it seems.

Insert head shake here…

Founders Ministries Blog: Interview with Kevin Larson: an axed Missouri Baptist church planter

I don’t know what to think when I read things like this. I wonder why Southern Baptists continue to labor under the delusion that young ministers will put up with this type of treatment? This is the type of person we need to plant churches. Is the Southern Baptist ‘we ain’t never done it that way before’ so ingrained that we can’t get around it? How can we accept things like “Purpose Driven Church” as the gospel and then get upset about something trivial like this? I don’t get it.

The other question is, ‘How long is God going to put up with this?” Worship is a privilege the Jews lost two or three times? Something like that…. Go back and read about the Glory leaving the temple. It didn’t go all at once, it left in stages. I think its time for the SBC to realize that even its present state is a sort of a gracious pause, a calm before the storm…