balloon boy

greetings, I'm sure you have all heard the "balloon boy" story, you know the Colorado family who let the world believe their 6 yr old boy was adrift in a homemade helium balloon. It was all over the news in an instant, CNN was doing live coverage and every media outlet across the continent were giving minute by minute updates... and everyone was in a panic. They had weather and balloon experts trying to figure out where the prevailing wind patterns would take this the balloon and child, or if a child could survive at that altitude or survive a crash. Everyone was talking about "balloon boy" and people were really concerned about this. At my dentist that afternoon they all stopped working on my teeth with each update (ya they have a little TV in the corner of the room but I'm not sure if it's for the patient or the dentist because I can't see anything with that bright light shining in my face and a couple of hands pushing and prying on my teeth anyway... but I digress) and they would gasp at the commentators latest worst case scenario. They're breathed out a huge sigh of relieve and "thank God" could be heard throughout the office when the balloon landed with out a child on board, although then they began to worry if the child had fallen out at some point and the panic started all over again. The next day the world learned this was an elaborate hoax and the father had set the whole thing up for some reality TV show, so all the millions of folks who were engrossed in this story were needlessly stressed and worried for nothing. But we live in an instant information age, we need to know about everything right now and forget the facts. The media buys into this feeding frenzy and fuels the hunger by getting stories out as they happen and if need be corrections can be made the next day. There have been a couple you tube videos recently of the police arresting unruly students and everyone was up in arms about it but we only see a 1 min clip of a 30 min event. Why are people so ready to pass judgement based on a mere 3% of the facts. My point is that maybe we need to step back and look at the big picture once in a while, wait to get all the facts before passing judgement. Sometimes I fear that we expect God to give us instant answers too, we pray or ask for something and we expect immediate results don't we. Read 2 Peter 3:8-9, God's time is a little different than ours and He truly does see the big picture better than we. When we pray to God give Him time to answer, trust that God knows how and when to respond. peace, m

catching up

greetings all... I know it's been quite a while since I've updated this thing, doh! I've had time to come up with a lot of new subject material for the blog but before that I think we have some catching up to do. It was a great summer! I actually had time for some R&R and enjoyed a wonderful camping trip with my wife, although our house was burglarized while we were gone... which sucked but oh well, it's just stuff right? I did get a lot of work done though, we renovated a large portion of our small house, and it looks good. My son (youngest child) went off to Redeemer University this fall which was exciting and my daughter (oldest child) got married earlier this month which was even more exciting! And my wife and I celebrate our 21st anniversary today... and we are both still very happy and we thank God for the many blessings He has given us! Anyway that's enough catching up... promise I'll post more soon... peace, m