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You are right about mis-handling the topic. My eldest was most traumatized when we finally convinced her that dinosaurs were extinct.

Have experienced them. Christ protected me. Holy Spirit spoke for me. They lose, of course. Thank God.

This is beginning to feel like a vain activity however, each and every one of us is made in Gods image with value imbued by not me nor you nor anything my dirty rags have done or left undone, or yours, but by God. I respect that value in you and if I can honor Gods beautiful handiwork in you than I am building you and that handiwork up saying THANK YOU GOD for this precious dear one of YOUR making. That in some ways may prevent some deminishing some perishing of the Holy SPirit working on and within you, each and every one of you. If I do this with music as the justification for being in your presence, or this forum as justification for being in your presence, so be it. They are merely tools for relationship and we use them or not. I hope I am being used to use them because: You are worth it. God made you

The pastor was defeintely doing the right thing. Telling kids to believe in Santa, the easter bunny or the tooth fairy is decieving them. We serve a God of truth. There is no deception in Christ. When you lie to kids, you don't do them any good. It is not spoiling nothing for them to tell them the truth that ther eis no such thin as some guy in a red suit who lives at the north pole. No-one can repesct someone who lies to them. I had a bunch of sleigh bells wired together and hung in the rafters above the kids rooms that had a string that came down into a closet at the end of the hallway where mommy and I, daddy, could watch and listen on Christmas eve. We taught our children to question their own senses with those sleigh bells - We taught our children to question what christmas was really about, always steering them back to Christ in spite of worldly distractions - We taught our children they could tell us anything they thought or percieved with those sleigh bells up in the rafters on Christmas eve and we taught them that they could trust God with those things too - We taught the older ones each in turn how to bring the joy of belief if for only a moment into the ears and eyes and heart of their younger siblings as each took turn pulling on the string to ring those sleigh bells over the years, and we taught them how to teach that belief is more real than what one hears or sees and that belief in God sometimes requires not hearing and not seeing - Those kids rooms are gone from us now as are the rafters but we all remember the sleigh bells and the lessons and I think they ring true in some ways still in the living houses of God that God is growing our children into, and their children into, and their grandparents into.

Part of what I have been taught is that God, through the efforts of The Trinity, longs for us, his created dear ones. There exists a relationship between our creator and us the created. We are limited in all ways. God is not. Even so that relationship is what we are to strive for for ourselves and others. I prefer music without words so the words aren't there to lie to me or those with me but if the music draws people together in healthy relationship, that is an expression and a learning that we need as reminder of the first and fundemental relationship each of us has with God. That said, their is music in other things too. Like the sounds of working together. Like the sounds of nature around us. Like the very deep and heartbreaking realizations that come while in service to, for , and with others who are just beginning to know that there is a God who made them.. and that God made them valuable.. and that God loves them more fully and in ways no one else with a million songs and a million years can.

I think it's cool, I just don't like the conclusions that the scientists think they might be able to reach. All they are observing is (potentially) how God did not... not how science can explain the first nano second of creation without God. God leaves bread crumbs for his children to follow. To see who laid the bread crumbs there for us to follow we still need to change our perspective. We need to regard things larger than ourselves. We need to look up.

Thank You!

Missions away or missioning at home. Ambassadorship for Christ is wherever you are and often calls one into new vocabularies or back into more ancient ones. While in the third world with people who have been made with Gods face and confronted with: incomplete nutrition foul and or distant water supply nearly exhausted indigenous fuels available for food preparation Words from haughty mouths have no affect. One is rightly ignored when the beatitudinal work given us is not addressed by us as a willing pathway for Gods miraculous. That pathway of Gods works is what draws our siblings of this common creation closer to their creator. Safely prepared and consistent nutrition with clean water and warm fire brings rest from the distractions of malnutrition and dehydration and disease and slow motion physical death. That rest and the trust that accompanys it are a huge example of Ambassadorship for Christ. Please help me find christ centered and willing Optical engineers polimer and film chemists willing to listen to new ideas intended not to make a few people wealthy, but instead bring rest and trust and opportunity to share The Word of God with those whose struggling with physical darknesses, may have them on the way towards eternal ones.