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Welcome to the One Word At A Time Blog Carnival – this week’s word is: Romance.

No matter how you’ve come to be here or where you’re coming from, you’re welcome and we’d love for you to come back and visit us again soon.

The idea of the carnival is simple. We pick one word every two weeks and all write a blog post inspired by that word, this week being the word romance. It’s fascinating to see the range of different trains of thought that can come from just one word.

Below this, you’ll find a little widget called Simply Linked. All the participants add their links to the widget and that way, we can all find and read all the entries into the carnival. You’re welcome to join us, the carnival is open to anyone.

To see all of the upcoming words and their dates, visithttp://peterpollock.com/category/faith/carnival/

Renewing Your Romance

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*This post is adapted from a post on my romance site: Renewing Romance*

Relationships are always fragile. They require commitment and dedication from both parties.

If your marriage is suffering, you could be guilty of one of the following:

• not giving your spouse enough of your time
• not paying attention to your spouse
• being stubborn about something in your relationship and not being prepared to compromise to make your spouse happy
• becoming complacent about your relationship and losing focus on it

Think of your relationship like a flowerbed. When you plant it, you spend time tending it and watering it until it grows and blooms. Once it is in full bloom though, you still need to keep watering and weeding it or it will get dry and choked by the weeds and will start to wither. Get your watering can out and your gardening gloves on and start tending that flower. It may be hard, messy work at first but a little dedication will result in a thing of beauty growing again.

Then…. keep tending it. It only takes a little work to keep that flowerbed healthy!

The same is true of your relationship with God.

God is always putting in the work and effort, but very often, we don’t. We let the weeds grow up and we stop watering it and all of a sudden we find that our relationship with him is dry and almost impossible to see for all the weeds.

As we head toward Valentine’s day, why not take a new look at your relationship with God as well as your relationship with your spouse and see what you can do to improve both!

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Times they are a-changing and how people form their opinions of you are changing along with them.

There was a time where the strength of a man’s handshake or the state of his shoes could tell you everything you need to know about him but those times are rapidly disappearing… at least, they are for many of us.

Sure, we all learn a lot about the people around us from seeing how they act in public, but in the twenty-first century we also get more of a look into how they act in private than ever before – and what we see can be VERY revealing.

You see, there’s this wonderful thing called the internet, which is a place where people lay their lives bare for all to see in a way that most people wouldn’t have dreamed of doing even just twenty years ago.

I still know that looking someone in the eyes and conversing with them for a few moments is extremely valuable in understanding and getting to really ‘know’ someone but increasingly, I jump online soon after meeting them to learn more and to verify what I think I already know.

For instance, someone I met once told me that he still holds a record in a particular sport at a certain university. It took me less than ten minutes of research online to discover that he doesn’t, in fact, hold that record and while the university has online records of the members of its sporting teams, his name appears in none of them for the last thirty years.

Hmmmm….

We recently realized we needed a new babysitter because our long-time sitter is now at college and has very inconvenient night classes which really disrupt mine and my wife’s dating schedule.

We identified someone who seemed to be the perfect sitter. The daughter of some friends from church and sister of one of my daughters’ best friends. She seemed on the surface like she’d be a great fit…

But you know kids, you see them at church with their parents but they probably don’t really have any choice but to be there – and like most of us, they probably put on their ‘church face’ on Sunday mornings anyway.

So I decided I’d do a little research, just to check up on her (in a totally non-creepy, non-stalkerish way, obviously ) and a quick visit to Facebook gave me everything I needed to know about her.

You see, she goes to public school, so she has friends who are not just ‘church’ friends.

Seeing how she interacts with her friends online and how she portrays herself there is very telling of her true character.

I have to tell you (and she’ll probably be embarrassed reading this) but I would be PROUD if my daughters turned out like her.

What I know is that ‘Sunday Christian’ teens don’t post their favorite bible verses on their public facebook timelines or post pictures of their favorite bible-based inspirational sayings and they definitely don’t have an ‘about me’ section which simply says:

She knew that she was formed by God’s hands, dreamed up in His heart, and placed in this world for a purpose.

i can’t wait to see what God has in store for my life.

It just doesn’t happen.

Her online presence tells me all I need to know about her… and my kids LOVE having her over to babysit, which helps a lot, too.

So… what does YOUR online presence say about YOU? Does it match up with your offline life? is it truthful?
..Because increasingly, people will believe what they see from you online is your true heart, so is it the true you?

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Over the last few years, I have heard many times (and have said myself) that one of the proofs that the disciples weren’t lying about who they claimed Jesus was is that they were prepared to die for what they believed.

There’s a problem with that though….

People die every day for what they believe, but that doesn’t make them right!

So at first glance it seems that maybe the argument that they were prepared to die for their beliefs doesn’t hold as much water as we think…

Or does it?

You see, here’s the problem: They changed their minds. Why did they change their minds?

Let’s go back to before Jesus was arrested.

Everything was rosy and wonderful. Jesus was healing people left, right and center and the disciples were even sent out to do the same at one point.

Things were going well.

They were never going to get rich off of this gig but with Jesus around, they never lacked for anything… in short, it was all good.

Then Jesus got arrested and what did the disciples do?

They high-tailed it out of there.

They were terrified.

The whole thing had come crashing down around them and they essentially went into hiding until the heat died down.

Even Peter, possibly Jesus’ closest follower, the bravest, most faithful one denied even knowing Jesus.

These were not men who were prepared to die for the cause.

Not at all.

Then Jesus was crucified and the game was over.

There is absolutely no reason that I can come up with why the disciples would then sit around and decide that they would follow Jesus to his own fate. None. Nothing. Nada….

Except one.

Jesus did, as the disciples claimed, rise from the dead.

This is a crucial turning point here.

You see, there’s no benefit to them in claiming that Jesus rose from the dead if he didn’t.

If he didn’t rise from the dead, there would be no incentive for them to change their minds about being willing to die for him.

But history records that they DID change their minds. They decided that this Jesus was someone who they would be willing to be beaten, tortured and crucified for.

They changed their minds, so something HUGE must have happened… Jesus MUST have risen from the dead.

I can’t see any other answer to the disciple problem – can you?

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Welcome to our ‘Marching’ blog carnival.

No matter how you’ve come to be here or where you’re coming from, you’re welcome and we’d love for you to come back and visit us again soon.

The idea of the carnival is simple. We pick one word every two weeks and all write a blog post inspired by that word, this week being the word marching. It’s fascinating to see the range of different trains of thought that can come from just one word.

Below this, you’ll find a little widget called Simply Linked. All the participants add their links to the widget and that way, we can all find and read all the entries into the carnival. You’re welcome to join us, the carnival is open to anyone.

To see all of the upcoming words and their dates, visit http://peterpollock.com/category/faith/carnival/

Time is Marching on!

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I’m old!

I know in the grand scheme of things I’m not old… but I’m just heading for my 37th birthday… and I feel old.

It’s not the aching back and memory loss that’s making me feel old so much as it’s the fact that my life is flying by and I really haven’t achieved much yet.

I was looking at one of my cousin-in-law’s Facebook pages the other day and found it kind of weird a bunch of adults were commenting on this seventeen year old’s page.

Why were all these adults getting in on OUR thing. Can’t they just leave us young ‘uns alone?

Then I realized I AM one of the adults… probably one of the older ones.

I’m old.

… and what have I done?

Maybe I’m having a mid-life crisis…

I wonder, do you feel the same way?

Is your life full of achievement or do you feel like time is marching on and you’ve missed out on something or haven’t done enough in the year’s you’ve had?

… or is it just me?

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My father’s sermon on New Year’s day 2012 defined twelve ‘resolutions’ extracted from Luke chapter six – and I want to challenge you with them today.

I wish I had been there to hear the sermon but he summarized it the comments on the New Song 40 blog.

These are the resolutions:

12 Resolutions from Luke chapter 6 verses 27 to 31 and 37 to 38

1. I will show love to my enemies
2. I will do good to those who hate me
3. I will bless those who curse me
4. I will always pray for people who treat me badly
5. I will always offer the other cheek
6. I will not stop a mugger from taking whatever he wants from me
7. I will give to anyone and everyone that asks
8. I will not demand restitution of anything stolen from me
9. I will not judge people
10. I will not condemn people
11. I will forgive
12. I will do to others as I would have them do to me

Many of these ‘resolutions’ fly in the face of how our society and culture teach us to act… but they are absolutely how the bible tells us we should act.

These ‘resolutions’ really hit to the heart of what being a Christian really is.

I’m not going to waffle on and try to analyze them – I just want to ask you this:

Could you keep any of these resolutions this year? If not, why not?

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Welcome to this ‘Fresh’, first One Word at a Time blog carnival of 2012.

No matter how you’ve come to be here or where you’re coming from, you’re welcome and we’d love for you to come back and visit us again soon.

The idea of the carnival is simple. We pick one word every two weeks and all write a blog post inspired by that word, this week being the word fresh. It’s fascinating to see the range of different trains of thought that can come from just one word.

Below this, you’ll find a little widget called Simply Linked. All the participants add their links to the widget and that way, we can all find and read all the entries into the carnival. You’re welcome to join us, the carnival is open to anyone.

To see all of the upcoming words and their dates, visit http://peterpollock.com/category/faith/carnival/

A Fresh Start

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I left 2011 with a lot of loose ends and a lot of regrets and I really want to make a fresh start here in 2012… although there’s a lot to tie up from last year still.

There were many people I let down last year and I’m REALLY sorry.
There are websites I haven’t quite finished, problems I haven’t quite fixed and emails I haven’t responded to.

I got into the web hosting business wanting to provide a better level of customer service than I’d found at other providers and while some people definitely saw that from me last year, others found the service they received to be less than good.

I haven’t received any complaints as such, but at the same time, those people won’t be shouting about the great service they got from me… and that needs to change.

So I’m making a fresh start.

The biggest single change is that I went to my doctor and told him, “The drugs don’t work, they just make it worse…”, so I’ve just started on some new drugs which will hopefully help me concentrate and focus and will lift me from the fog of depression.

It will take a couple of weeks for them to take effect.. but hopefully things will change soon!

I also suffered greatly from a lack of short term memory. I could read an email then go to my browser to do whatever it was asking me to do and not only forget to actually do it but completely forget I had even read the email. It’s horrible to be so forgetful and hopefully the new medication will help that, too.

I also got into building websites last year which is lucrative and fun but distracts me from my other work and so I’m putting a halt to that this year. I might take on one or two projects a month, but nothing like the four or five I often had on the go last year!

I have just created my first editorial calendar. It’s not complete yet, but I’ve set it up so that I can write three to four days a week and cover all of my writing obligations.

I’m already behind on it, surprise, surprise, but I’m picking things up.

My blog posts will probably be shorter, maybe in the 300-400 word range, but that should help me stay on top of things and hopefully I’ll be able to remove the fluff and say what I need to say in fewer words…. I am rather fluffy though, so we’ll just see how it all works out!

How about you, are you making a fresh start?

If you haven’t heard of Stephen Hawking, there are two things you should know about him:

1. He’s smarter than you, me and your mom put together.
2. In 1963 he was diagnosed with Motor Neuron Disease and given just months to live.

Here’s what he has to say about his disability:

 The human race is so puny compared to the universe that being disabled is not of much cosmic significance.

How incredible is that?

This isn’t coming from someone who knows nothing about these things.

Oh no, this is coming from a man who has lived for almost fifty years with physical disabilities so bad he requires round-the-clock care… and from a man who has a better grasp on the size and complexity of the universe than almost anyone alive.

Stephen Hawking has managed to encapsulate into nineteen words a truth that we should all take note of.

This thing we call life is WAY bigger than we could ever see or comprehend and infinitely bigger than we allow ourselves to think.

We get so caught up in the small things, some of which are even small by human standards, and we fail to see that we are a part of something so much bigger, so much more significant.

I’m sure that Mr Hawking has his moments. He’s only human, after all, and there must be times when his disabilities are frustrating, to say the least. That doesn’t change the fact that he has recognized a much bigger, and deeper truth.

I want to learn to think bigger, the way he does, to be able to see past my ‘problems’ and see things in a more realistic light.

I want to think BIGGER!

How about you?

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Welcome to the last One Word at a Time blog carnival of 2011, which this week is on the word ‘recover’.

No matter how you’ve come to be here or where you’re coming from, you’re welcome and we’d love for you to come back and visit us again soon.

The idea of the carnival is simple. We pick one word every two weeks and all write a blog post inspired by that word. It’s fascinating to see the range of different trains of thought that can come from just one word.

Below this, you’ll find a little widget called Simply Linked. All the participants add their links to the widget and that way, we can all find and read all the entries into the carnival. You’re welcome to join us, the carnival is open to anyone.

To see all of the upcoming words and their dates, visit http://peterpollock.com/category/faith/carnival/

Recover from 2011

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It hardly seems any time at all since that horrible day when my hard drive crashed back in 2010, costing me over $1500 to recover the data.

Yet it’s happening all over again.

This time, however, it’s not my hard drive that has crashed but my head.

2011 has been a fascinating year but now I feel like I have overloaded and crashed – and the fact I’m writing this at 3am probably shows how difficult it’s proving for me to reboot.

Hopefully normal service will resume later today or tomorrow as I recover from this downtime, depending on what ‘normal’ means, of course!

How about you? Do you feel you need to recover from the last year, or are you full of life and energy ready to hit 2012 head on?

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All too often we look down on others because they are complaining about something which we see as nothing compared to the problems we’ve had – and the recent criticism of Tim Tebow’s NFL credentials are a good case study as to why that is ridiculous.

Introducing Tim Tebow

If you don’t know of Tim Tebow, he’s a young man (24 years old) who is a phenomenal athlete and one of the most polarizing football players in America. (For those of you reading outside of the USA, the football I’m referring to here is American football, not soccer).

Tebow’s story is much longer than you would expect for a twenty-four year old and includes highlights such as winning the coveted Heisman trophy in college along with two national college football championships. In fact, many people consider him to be the best college quarterback ever!

His transition from beloved Florida Gators quarterback to NFL star has been much more difficult than you might expect with most people who consider themselves experts in such things believing that his particular style of play which was so successful at college level is simply not compatible with professional sport.

Drafted #25 in 2010 by the Denver Broncos, Tebow spent most of his first year sitting on the bench, occasionally being brought on to mix things up a little in what was referred to as ‘the Tebow package’.

Through the first five games of the 2011 season, Tebow remained on the bench, occasionally making a bit-part appearance but generally being overlooked by everyone.

A losing record of one win and four losses to start the season forced the Broncos to make some major changes though and Tebow was promoted to starting quarterback – and one of the most talked about players in the league.

Detractors

He and the Broncos won the next game but lost heavily to the Detroit Lions a week later. By this time, the vultures were circling, pointing out all of the supposed inadequacies in his game and baying for him to be dropped and never heard from again.

A run of six wins in a row following that defeat did little to dissuade his detractors though with many of them claiming that he had faced easy-to-beat teams and that he wouldn’t be able to stand up against any truly tough opposition.

This is what really started to get my hackles up. Okay, you can point out the weaknesses in his game and the almost unbelievable luck he and the Broncos have had with their opposition making huge mistakes at crucial times to give Denver the opportunity to pull out the win but the fact is this: The Broncos record with Tim Tebow as starting quarterback this year is seven wins with only one loss. Without him it’s one win and four losses.

What more do you want from the guy? He comes in and helps the team start winning and winning and winning.

You can postulate all day long that he wouldn’t beat this team or that team but the fact is, you can only win the games you play in.

This post was written prior to the game on December 19th 2011 where the Broncos lost to the New England Patriots but then, ten other teams have lost to the Patriots this year so that’s hardly an indication of Tebow’s impending doom.

Comparing Others Unfairly

What really stands out to me in all this is how so many people look at what he hasn’t had a chance to attempt and measure him by how they guess he will perform in those circumstances, not at how he does perform in the games in which he plays.

We can sit here and think how ridiculous that is, but in reality many of us do something similar every day.

How often do you compare someone else’s struggles with your own and belittle them because they are not big as your own?

How often do you see someone coping well with adversity and think to yourself that they wouldn’t do so well if their problems were the same as yours?

Even worse, how often do you look down on someone because they are not handling what you think is a ‘small’ problem as well as you handle your ‘big’ problem?

It’s easy to compare others to ourselves and elevate our own struggles or our own accomplishments over theirs but the truth is, we can only win the games we play in. We can only fight the battles we are presented with and can only achieve the things we attempt.

Do you judge people for games they didn’t play in?

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It has never ceased to amaze me that in a country as rich, advanced and powerful as America, a country which believes so strongly that it’s rules and beliefs are the best that it tries to impose them on other nations, can have:

• 42 Million people living in poverty
• 48 Million people living uncertain where their next meal is coming from
• 50 Million people with no healthcare coverage
• 1.5 Million people a year who experience homelessness

In fact, apparently, there is no city or county in America where a worker earning minimum wage can afford a one bedroom, fair market, apartment.

These figures are very sobering, particularly at this time of year when many or even most of us eat and drink in excess, spend outrageous sums of money on unnecessary presents and generally over-indulge ourselves.

The question of what to do about it though is difficult.

You see, America is a democratic, capitalist republic. It is a land where many find that through hard work and dedication, you can carve out for yourself a little piece of the American dream.

It is a nation designed to have a government that is not there to control people’s lives but to enable them to pursue happiness and prosperity.

Take from the Rich and Give to the Poor

To many here in America, taxes are unconstitutional. The idea that the government can impose taxation on the people and make them give up some of their hard earned cash flies in the face of what America is all about.

Indeed, whenever the prospect of tax increases to help pay for social security and free healthcare for those who need it rears its ugly head, most of us complain. After all, why should I give the government more of the money I work so hard for just so it can give it to people who don’t work as hard as me?

There is a conundrum here because a nation as civilized and forward as this surely shouldn’t have millions of people starving in it and dying for lack of health care, yet for the government to take money from the ‘rich’ to give to the poor smacks of socialism or even communism – two things which capitalistic freedom is opposed to.

There are many reasons why someone would need help, but the question remains… is it the government’s responsibility.

If it IS, then America needs to become more socialist because it simply cannot afford for the rich to get richer whilst the poor get poorer. Even now, many cities are reminiscent of cities in third world countries where the rich live like kings and the poor are literally starving to death on the streets.

Not Their Job

I truly believe that helping the poor is NOT the responsibility of the government, it is the collective responsibility of the people – and as Christians, we are even Biblically mandated to take responsibility for it.

There are numerous passages in the bible which I could quote, but the best is probably Jesus’ summary in Matthew 7:12:

So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

It’s perfect.

If you became homeless and you couldn’t feed your kids or buy them clothes to wear, what would you hope that other people would do?

Would you hope that someone would give you a helping hand?

Would you hope that even just one of the rich people you see throwing away half-eaten dinners every day would at least give you twenty cents to buy some Ramen noodles to eat?

I think you would… which means that you need to look again at Matthew 7:12 and ask yourself what that means you need to do with the relative wealth that you have?

So my question is… do you do to others what you would have them do to you?