also known as ghetto fabulous

It seems that all I have lately are random thoughts, but here are some more.

I picked up a devotional this morning put out by Relevant Publishing. It’s a decent little devotional and I immediately turned to a devotion on cynicism. Call me dense, but I had never thought of cynicism as a sin. But, after reading this devotion, and giving it some thought, I guess it is. Hhhhmmm…well that sucks. One more thing.

As cynical as I can sometimes be, I’m always happy when New Years resolution time rolls around. For some reason I love the idea of a clean slate and a fresh start and am never one of those people rolling their eyes when I see others grasping for that fresh start every year. With that in mind, I began thinking this weekend about what this year’s resolutions might be. I also began to think that maybe I didn’t need to wait another month before I started working on those resolutions.

One of our bursary students visited a “Jewish synagogue” this past weekend. I put that in quotations simply because, evidently this particular synagogue wasn’t real concerned about which god you worshipped, just that you worship one. Evidently the entire service was also in Hebrew as well. But here’s the kicker. After the service, a woman from the synagogue walked up to our student and informed her that she really shouldn’t be wearing jeans in the synagogue. ??? Seriously? You can worship any god that you want to in the synagogue, but don’t wear jeans? Wow. Talk about some jacked up priorities. Do I even need to point out the correlation between this synagogue and some Christian churches, as extreme as this example might be?

Phil Laeger, a friend of mine, has just posted his new EP that can be downloaded for free. You can check it out at here It’s worth the download. Especially check out Pride in E which sounds like a mix between Rich Mullins and vintage Michael W. Smith.

Jamie and I are going to Egypt for Christmas. We’ve been putting money away each month in anticipation of those last minute vacation deals that you always see. Well, one came up and we happened to have the money, so we’re off. We’ll be there from the 18th through the 25th. And, before any of you ask to see our pyramid pictures, we’re probably not going, so don’t ask. We’re going to relax, not to be vacation Nazis and, since we’ll be on the other side of the country with a one year old, seeing the pyramids doesn’t seem like much of a priority. We will be near the Mt. Sinai mountain range and the mountain that most scholars agree on as the Biblical location of Mt. Sinai, so we may make that trip. We’ll also be on the border of Israel and Jordon so we may sneak across and see Petra. But mostly we’ll just not be answering the phone for a week. And I can’t wait.

Merry Christmas Chick Yuel.