@roadlesstaken

@junbelievable

a "crazy story".. well, I'll skip the time that i was invited not to return to Westport and a few other stories that might put me in an unfavorable light and tell one that's more amusing than "crazy".  this is something that happened about... 12 years ago i think. 

I had taken up a hobby called geocaching; it's quite popular now but back then hardly anyone had ever heard of it. For those of you who don't know what geocaching is, it's a treasure hunting game wherein one person takes a container that they have filled with "treasure", which could be anything from McDonald's toys to coupons (scored some free buffet on one cache) to money, whatever they want. That person then puts the GPS coordinates online and others download those coordinates and use them to hunt the cache. Upon finding the cache the seeker takes whatever was in the container and leaves something of their own behind. 

I convinced a group of friends to come out caching with me there were seven of us there, if memory serves, including one who was mentally and physically disabled; I believe the correct term is savant; his name was Leroy. Two things make his presence notable on this particular excursion; 1) Leroy is afraid of police and 2) he is obsessed with keys; he carries with him literally hundreds of keys at all times and every one of them works and he knows where every one of them goes. the reason these things are notable will become plain later on. 

So, we decided to go caching out at Shawnee Mission Park. We all piled into a van which we were borrowing from one of our parents, his name was Jason. Jason was a very large fellow; not fat or bulky, but tall and muscular. He was into martial arts, sword fighting and renascence stuff (on a side note our little group often stayed up late into the night making chain mail and having sword/nerf gun fights). When we got to the park it was already getting dark and the gates had been closed. Of course, that only meant that we couldn't drive in, we could still walk and did. By the time we got near where the cache was supposed to be hidden it was very dark and we could hardly see. We hadn't thought to bring flashlights, so Jason removed his shirt, wrapped it around a stick and lit it on fire. We now had light. After a short while of searching however we began to hear voices. These voices it turns out were the police over their loud speakers ordering us to come out of the woods. While we did end up complying we did not comply in their direction; or at least not to them. After cutting back behind a patrol we made our way back, with Leroy complaining about the police and his keys jingling through the night air, to where we had parked. The van was gone. 

With our vehicle missing it was time to get moving even faster. None of us knew where it was and we speculated it may have rolled down a hill into a pond; we later found out that the police had run the tags and called Jason's parents to come pick it up so that we would be stranded and easier to catch; that plan backfired like a 1985 POS with built-in backfire enhancers. To our amusement we could see the tire tracks where they had parked their cars behind trees lying in wait for us, but by this time they had given up and driven off. We made our way out just under their noses, we could actually see them standing around talking and Jason and my friend Nathan approached close enough to hear them; we then called for a ride from another friend and while our ride in for 6/7 people was a minivan, the getaway vehicle was a Geo Storm. 

@sonychak

@roadlesstaken @flipguy310 @cakalusa

i thought that in the spirit of good sportsmanship i should mention a couple of people that impressed me with their performances..

@swtaznxtc90@xanga.com for her cover of moon river; she has a beautiful voice, lilytran@lovelyish.com for her dress designs, pretty cool and sheegwa@xanga.com for her 4 languages recording and @pika_whoosh@xanga.com comedic genius. dude needs to have his own variety show. 

There are two mainstays in the Christian faith, forgiveness and repentance.

Primarily we tend to focus on forgiveness. God forgives us, we forgive others(sometimes), others forgive us. It goes on and on, we are all familiar with the verses.

• Matthew 6:12
• Luke 6:37
• Luke 17:3,4

With that comes the subject of repentance, which we mosty deal with using 1 John 1:9 mostly because it deals, once again, with God forgiving us. It seems to me however, that we are missing something. We say "We repent to God" but if we offend our brother we demand forgiveness with no repentance. We use the above verses to strongarm a placebo for our conciences. I submit we are missing a vital element here; repentance toward one another. there is no room for misinterpretation here. Scripture is very clear.

Matthew 5:23-35 ²³"Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, ²⁴leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.

    ²⁵"Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way, or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. ²⁶I tell you the truth, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.^[d]

I want to look at both parts of this. The first part is 23 and 24.

²³"Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, ²⁴leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.

Do you catch that? Does it look familiar? Let's hit these questions seperately.

• Do you catch that?

God is placing the unity of believers AHEAD of worship. If we are going into worship, if we are giving our offerings and our hearts are not right with our brothers or sisters, we are to drop everything and get right, then, and only then are we to come back and resume our worship. Take special note here, it does NOT say, "if your brother owes you an apology." or "if you have something against your brother." the language is very clear, if YOU owe someone an apology, tend to that BEFORE you come to worship. "That's crazy talk" you say, "God's already forgiven me"(oooh we'll adress this too) you say "no man can judge me or bar me from worship". Lets look at the second question.

• Does it look familiar?

It should. God said something very similar hundreds of years before, something i believe ties directly in to this.

malachi 1:10 ¹⁰ "Oh, that one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would not light useless fires on my altar! I am not pleased with you," says the LORD Almighty, "and I will accept no offering from your hands.

The context of this verse is that people were offering crippled, lame, diseased, tainted offerings at the temple. Hear this; If our bodies are living sacrifices and if we come to offer our praises in spirit, then are we not offering crippled, diseased and tainted offerings when we do so under division amongst the brethren? According to God Himself, He would rather you not even bother, it's rather insulting(to Him) really.

Let's go even further though, and look at the second part of that passage.

 ²⁵"Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way, or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. ²⁶I tell you the truth, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.^[d]

Jesus often used examples such as Judges/courts and prisons to represent God and judgement. In this example it seems clear that He is talking about two believers, therefore the judgement in question is not a matter of heaven or hell, but of reward. We know that believers will be judged and rewarded according to their works, and it seems here that none shall escape justice. that is to say the old argument "well, if i forgive them they get away with it" rings false. It would seem here, that even if someone forgives me, if i do not make the effort of reconsilliation, it is held to my account. While this may not end in damnation, it would most certainly end in diminished reward and position in the final Kingdom.(remember, some will be saved, but with nothing to show for it, as one escaping from a fire.). How often do we allow our pride to cause us to pay this price because we feel the other person is "not worth it" or we can not humble ourselves enough to admit we are wrong, and ask forgiveness from the other person, and not only forgiveness, but a restoration of the relationship.

I have to once again(for the first time on revelife) give recognition to squeakysoul, with whom I fought bitterly for a long time. She has been the embodiment of this reconsilliation, and deserves some recognition for it.

what would you rather be, a pastor, a counselor or a biker?(think hard, more to come later.)

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the pastor and the counselor head to a booth in the back as the biker heads to the bar. while they are waiting for their food they make small talk about their day. "you know, on my way over here, i came across this homeless guy. the state of our city is getting out of hand, he was sitting there, IN PUBLIC, dressed in rags and probably drunk, it looked like he'd hurt himself, he was bleeding."

to which the counselor replied. "i saw the same guy, i thought he might try something, so i crossed the street."

meanwhile, the biker paid for the two meals he had ordered to be taken out "sorry shirley, i cant afford to tip so much this time, i gotta make sure i have enough for the doctor, i found a guy on the street all bloodied up, turns out some kids mugged him, they worked him over pretty good, say a prayer for him will ya?" and walked out the door.

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