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at the top of a mountian, so cold and so bleak,
there lived a man,
of which no one did speak,

people would only whisper his name,
"the grinch," they would say,
a one and the same,

the grinch would look down,
from high on his perch,
anger and malice from his heart would lerch,

for he had no love for the town,
smiling their smiles,
but never a frown,

meanwhile back in the village of who

the people all did as they should,
eating their veggies,
and cleaning their room,

curling their hair, in the way the law said,
doing their chores,
and making their beds,

they knew of all the right answers
to the wrong questions
and were excellent dancers



"how ya doin sir?"
"good!" they'd exclaim

Imbrace Your Inner Grandma

if life were filled with roses,
that stretched from sea to sea,
and we could be like moses,
amazing that would be,

to journey down unto the depths,
reaching forth our hand,
living filled with God's breath,
that flowed from land to land,

His voice would be a battle cry,
waking all to see,
His lasting light flowing,
out from you and me,

if we would live the life,
that we all know we should,
then the world would tip from the knife,
into a place of good,

violence wouldn't be an issue,
if we loved as He did,
our broken hearts would need no tissue,
and we would laugh and kid,

our minds would be filled with hope,
not the dull and empty lies,
that we get from watching soaps,
and other poisen to our minds,

that is the world as it could be,
but why is it not so?
if we could only see,
there's one thing we need to know,

God's love is perfect, pure, and strong,
loving unconditionly,
when filled with Him you can't go wrong,
though others, this, can't see,

They think that God don't love them,
because of times of bad,
His arms are spread wide to hug them,
but they don't which makes Him sad,

if we could be his lamppost,
shining for all to see,
showing love the very most,
an outporing from His to me,

yes, people need a change of heart,
yes, we sin and lie,
but the homeless guy by walmart,
deserves not the glares from our eyes,

we all make mistakes
they are wrong thats true
but judgment comes not from us
but from the Maker of the sky a'blue

Jesus love us
this i know
for the Bible tells me so

and if you don't believe thats true
then i have got a story for you

Freedom

You laugh at the Isrealites just freed from bondage, just stepping from the sea parted by God, just taken out of slavery by God's power shown through signs and wonders.You laugh because they've forgotten, while there backs still ache from slavery they whine and complain of the toils of a road of freedom, they've forgotten the power of the God that led them there.
But tell me, why do you laugh? Hasn't God freed you from your bondage? Hasn't he set you free? Free from sin. Free from the law. Free from your past and everything that binds you to your old life. Yet you aren't free. You, like the Isrealites, are a stiff-necked people, God has broken the chains yet you sit willingly in your dungeon, you forget the power of God. You may pray, may read your Bible, may worship God, but when that moment is over you fall so quickly back into your old ways. With your actions you cry out, "We were better off in Egypt!"
Do you not understand? Are you so quick to forget the power of God? If the Son shall make you free, you are free indeed! Do not worry what other think of you. Do not worry about your struggles and cares. Let go of your old life. Cast your cares upon God. For He loves you, and He cares for you.

Pain

Ok, i wrote this for one my classes, thought some of you might be interested

The Ethics of Justices Pain Removal

As the Worthing saga ends, Justice ends pain, for the small village of flat harbor. The Day of pain was over. It would not be as it was before. Justice played no tricks on memory, and death itself she would not hinder, but the pain was at an end in Flat Harbor, and would be as long as she lived.[1] But was she right to do this, to remove pain from everyone? To answer this we have to look a bit deeper into the subject of pain, what causes it, and whether it is good or not.

As we look at pain we find there are basically four causes. First off, Nature. This is basically the effects that natural law has on our bodies, if we step on a nail we are going to get hurt, if we jump of a cliff we are going to die. These aren't punishments for our heinous crime of *gasp* stepping on a nail, they are merely the results of an action. While God could quite easily make the nail turn soft as rubber when people step on it, the same properties that make stepping on the nail painful (its sharp, and doesn't bend easily) also make it possible to build a house with the same nail. If every time something was going to cause another pain God changed its natural properties, our free will would be torn away, and the laws of nature couldnt exist.

Second, Mankind. After the fall, man became evil. Due to this and having free will its only natural to assume that peoples free wills would eventually collide in a painful way. Once again, God could stop this pain, either changing the physical properties of an object intended to harm, or removing all desire to harm others, but both of these would again remove free will from society.

Third, the devil. He, like men, has a free will and is evil. And his will collides with ours and Gods in the same way.

Forth, God's punishment for sin. This is by far the hardest to explain; there are several analogies the bible uses to explain mans relationship with God. In Jeremiah we see the example of the potter and the clay. If we imagine for a second a sentient wad of clay, its imaginable that it would be pained by the constant remaking process, annoyed and frustrated that just when it was getting set in its ways some giant hand smashed it again, forcing it to work through the process of becoming something lovely again. Next, we can draw the analogy of a man to his dog. A man doesn't own a dog for the dog to love him; he owns it to love the dog, but the dog naturally has some things that make it less lovable. The way it smells and acts can at times make it hard for the man to love it. So what does the man do? He gives the dog baths, trains it to obey, and other such stuff. The dog might not appreciate any of this, might find it painful at times during his training, but it is necessary to make the dog lovable. We arent created to love God, but for God to love us. He loves us as we are, but that doesnt mean he wants us to stay that way. God desires for us to be Christ like, and pain is sometimes required to do this.

People often wonder how God, being so merciful, can allow pain. The say, "Sure Ive sinned, but hasn't everyone?" they don't understand, we can't be justified by the faults of others, "We are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.[2]" People think of sin like a sunburn, everyone gets one occasionally but with time it will go away and people won't even realize it was there, or maybe they'll see it faded to a tan, and think how strong you must be to have made it through that sin. If people grasped what their sin actually was, understood how it must look to God, they wouldn't wonder why there's so much pain, they'd wonder why there is so little. But people are so wrapped up in there facade of kindness and the wishy-washy political correct terms that they don't realize that there is much more to loving others than being kind. When we look back at the middle ages, one of the cruelest times in history, do we think, "Im sure God will over look their cruelness, I mean they had chastity and courage like no other generation." No, we are horrified by the cruelties committed, just as they, looking on us, would be horrified by our lack of courage and chastity. This horrification must only be a fraction of what God feels when he sees our sins. Pain is Gods way of shaping us into what He wants us to be, making us aware of our sins.

Another good thing about pain is it lets us see our good deeds for what they are. For example, if the doctor tells you that you have to eat carrots every day, at first youre like, Stupid carrots I hate eating um. But as you eat them, you start liking them and you eat them all the time, you enjoy eating them, it gives you pleasure. At that point are you eating carrots to obey your doctor? Who knows, its probably more likely that you just like eating carrots now. Its the same way with Gods rules at times, we get to the point were we like doing things the right way, we like fulfilling our call, but when we get there are we using the call as a means to an end(pleasing God), or an end in itself? We dont know, but as long as there is pain involved in our obeying, in our pleasing God, then we know that we arent doing it for us, but for Him.

Do I mean to say that we should seek pain? Not at all, Im not in the least trying to say that pain in itself helps you do anything, pain is good and totally healthy as a means to an end, but as an end itself it doesnt accomplish anything, in fact I would even call it a sin. Things like cutting, self-injury, eating disorders, and causing pain to yourself whether mentally or physically is wrong. God doesnt desire for us to be in pain, but it is sometimes necessary to get his point across, God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain.[3] Its not the pain thats a good thing; it's what we learn from it.

So pain, while being useful for good, isnt in itself a good or healthy thing. The Bible tells us to Not withhold good from those who deserve it, when it is in your power to act. (Proverbs 3:27) so we know that it was right for Justice to remove pain from each person, as individuals, just as it is right for doctors or anyone to remove pain from an individual. It is right to help people through their painful experiences, through their troubles; in fact I feel that sitting back and watching idly-by is wrong.

Now, are things that are good for each individual good for society as a whole? The movie Bruce Almighty gave an interesting look at how this would turn out. In the movie, Bruce - given the powers of God says yes to everyones prayers. If everyone got what they wanted, what was good for them, society would collapse, as the mass riots and chaos in Bruce Almighty showed. The story of John Tinker is another excellent example of why this is. In the story, he came to the town of Worthing and would heal everyone. But during one winter he couldnt keep up with all the healings, and was eventually killed because of this. He hadnt stopped healing, he had tried to save as many as he could. While the individuals that had been saved were grateful for this, the society as a whole didnt think he had done enough, they werent grateful for the lives he had saved. Now you may say he was killed because he didnt heal the whole society, but this isnt true. He had healed the whole society before, therefore, the peoples expectation was for him to heal the whole town again, if he had never healed anyone, and then came during the hard winter they wouldve been grateful, even if he hadnt saved everyone.

Removing pain from a society as a whole removes our ability to make choices. In nearly all decisions the result is either painful or not, if we eliminate one of these possibilities we force people down a path they didnt want to take. The other path may be better, but if God wanted robots he would have made us that way. Love and pain and beauty. They all seem to go together like one little tidy confusing package.[4] We cant have one without the other, if we only experienced good, then one of two things would happen. Life would become like a communistic society of emotions, everything is equally good, but some things are more equally good then others, or happiness would just be an empty blah feeling, the same old thing all the time.

Lessons learned by pain are some of the best and most important lessons, not because of the pain, but what we learned from it. No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.[5] Christ suffered pain more than most people ever will, and only when He had made it through the pain did He complete His goal. Without His death, there wouldve been no resurrection. Without pain, our lifes goals would never be completed, or they would lose their sweetness after completion. Life is filled with pain, but if we struggle through it - push through the cocoon that holds us in we will emerge all the more beautiful because of it.

Bibliography

http://www.quotationspage.com

The Bible NIV

The Worthing Saga - Orson Scott Card First Edition December 1990, Copy write 1990 by Orson Scott Card

The Problem of Pain C.S. Lewis Harper Collin Edition 2001, Copy write 1940 by C.S. Lewis

Conversations with Rachel, Misha, and Gabbie

---

[1] The Worthing Saga Page 270

[2] The NIV Romans 3:24

[3]The Problem of Pain C.S. Lewis, Page 91

[4]Henry Bromel, Northern Exposure, The Big Kiss, 1991

[5] William Penn

tagged

ok here's how this works. read my weird things/ habbits below. then, since you've been tagged, you have to post a new blog about 6 of your weird things/habbits. then at the bottom write the names of the next 6 people you're going to tag. then go tag them and tell them to do the smae thing. get it? got it? good.

6 weird things/ habbits about me:

1: i can live a week behind the rest of the world, and totaly not notice...

2: i'm addicted to root beer and chocolate

3: i enjoy asking random questions involving penguins or zebras

4: i like my pizza as well as any spicy doritos dipped in apple sauce

5: i can do the wave with my eyebrows, did i just say that?

6: i have 5 messages on my phone right now

next 6 people i'm going to tag : hmmm, who hasn't been done yet...jake, ashley, heather, aaron, rachel, jace

Yertle the Turtle

how can this be?!? i no longer understand this crazy world, where people don't know who yertle the turtle is....has no one read the great works of doctor suess!?! what trying times, next i'll be told that fox in sox isn't required to read and memorize at school. well for all of your enjoyment, i have included the full unedited story of yertle the turtle, unfortunitly, it is lacking the brilliant pictures that make it so wonderful, so y'all will just have to look at my pic and drift into euphoric memories of yester-year.

On the far-away island of Sala-ma-Sond,
Yertle the Turtle was king of the pond.
A nice little pond. It was clean. It was neat.
The water was warm. There was plenty to eat.
The turtles had everything turtles might need.
And they were all happy. Quite happy indeed.

They were... untill Yertle, the king of them all,
Decided the kingdom he ruled was too small.
"I'm ruler", said Yertle, "of all that I see.
But I don't see enough. That's the trouble with me.
With this stone for a throne, I look down on my pond
But I cannot look down on the places beyond.
This throne that I sit on is too, too low down.
It ought to be higher!" he said with a frown.
"If I could sit high, how much greater I'd be!
What a king! I'd be ruler of all that I see!"

So Yertle, the Turtle King, lifted his hand
And Yertle, the Turtle King, gave a command.
He ordered nine turtles to swim to his stone
And, using these turtles, he built a new throne.
He made each turtle stand on another one's back
And he piled them all up in a nine-turtle stack.
And then Yertle climbed up. He sat down on the pile.
What a wonderful view! He could see 'most a mile!
"All mine!" Yertle cried. "Oh, the things I now rule!
I'm the king of a cow! And I'm the king of a mule!
I'm the king of a house! And, what's more, beyond that
I'm the king of a blueberry bush and a cat!
I'm Yertle the Turtle! Oh, marvelous me!
For I am the ruler of all that I see!"

And all through the morning, he sat up there high
Saying over and over, "A great king am I!"
Until 'long about noon. Then he heard a faint sigh.
"What's that?" snapped the king
And he looked down the stack.
And he saw, at the bottom, a turtle named Mack.
Just a part of his throne. And this plain little turtle
Looked up and he said, "Beg your pardon, King Yertle.
I've pains in my back and my shoulders and knees.
How long must we stand here, Your Majesty, please?"
"SILENCE!" the King of the Turtles barked back.
"I'm king, and you're only a turtle named Mack."
"You stay in your place while I sit here and rule.
I'm the king of a cow! And I'm the king of a mule!
I'm the king of a house! And a bush! And a cat!
But that isn't all. I'll do better than that!

My throne shall be higher!" his royal voice thundered,
"So pile up more turtles! I want 'bout two hundred!"
"Turtles! More turtles!" he bellowed and brayed.
And the turtles 'way down in the pond were afraid.
They trembled. They shook. But they came. They obeyed.
From all over the pond, they came swimming by dozens.
Whole families of turtles, with uncles and cousins.
And all of them stepped on the head of poor Mack.
One after another, they climbed up the stack.
Then Yertle the Turtle was perched up so high,
He could see fourty miles from his throne in the sky!
"Hooray!" shouted Yertle. "I'm the king of the trees!
I'm king of the birds! And I'm king of the bees!
I'm king of the butterflies! King of the air!
Ah, me! What a throne! What a wonderful chair!
I'm Yertle the Turtle! Oh, marvelous me!
For I am the ruler of all that I see!"

Then again, from below, in the great heavy stack,
Came a groan from that plain little turtle named Mack.
"Your Majesty, please... I don't like to complain,
But down here below, we are feeling great pain.
I know, up on top you are seeing great sights,
But down here at the bottom we, too, should have rights.
We turtles can't stand it. Our shells will all crack!
Besides, we need food. We are starving!" groaned Mack.

"You hush up your mouth!" howled the mighty King Yertle.
"You've no right to talk to the world's highest turtle.
I rule from the clouds! Over land! Over sea!
There's nothing, no, NOTHING, that's higher than me!"

But, while he was shouting, he saw with suprise
That the moon of the evening was starting to rise
Up over his head in the darkening skies.
"What's THAT?" snorted Yertle. "Say, what IS that thing
That dares to be higher than Yertle the King?
I shall not allow it! I'll go higher still!
I'll build my throne higher! I can and I will!
I'll call some more turtles. I'll stack 'em to heaven!
I need 'bout five thousand, six hundred and seven!"

But, as Yertle, the Turtle King, lifted his hand
And started to order and give the command,
That plain little turtle below in the stack,
That plain little turtle whose name was just Mack,
Decided he'd taken enough. And he had.
And that plain little lad got a bit mad.
And that plain little Mack did a plain little thing.
He burped!
And his burp shook the throne of the king!

And Yertle the Turtle, the king of the trees,
The king of the air and the birds and the bees,
The king of a house and a cow and a mule...
Well, that was the end of the Turtle King's rule!
For Yertle, the King of all Sala-ma-Sond,
Fell off his high throne and fell Plunk! in the pond!

And tosay the great Yertle, that Marvelous he,
Is King of the Mud. That is all he can see.
And the turtles, of course... all the turtles are free
As turtles and, maybe, all creatures should be.

the new revized standard Version 2.0 goals list.

heres a list of my goals....
1. to love God, and serve him in all i do

I wrote like a bunch and realized i had forgotten the most important one...^

1.walk from maine to southern california
2. ride on horse back across texas
3. climb the highest mountain in all 50 states
4. canoe the great lakes
5. write an album
6. learn to sing
explore...
7. the Nile River
8. Amazon River
9.Congo River
10.Colorado River
11.Yangtze River, China
12.Niger River
13.Orinoco River, Venezuela
14.Rio Coco, Nicaragua
Climb...
15. Mt. Everest
16. Mt. Aconcagua, Argentina
17. Mt. Ararat, Turkey
18. Mt. Rainier
19. Mt. Cook, New Zealand
20. The Matterhorn
21. *Grand Tetons (I've done a bit of hiking here)
22. Mt. Baldy, California
23. Mt. Fuji
24. Mt. Vesuvius
25. Mt. Bromo, Java
26. Mt. Popocatepetl, Mexico
27. Learn to fly a plane
Visit...
28. every country in the world (2 down)
29. Iguacu Falls, Brazil
30. Victoria Falls, Rhodesia
31. Sutherland Falls, New Zealand
32. Yosemite Falls
33. Niagara Falls
34. North and South Poles
35. Great Wall of China
36. Panama and Suez Canals
37. Easter Island
38. The Galapagos Islands
39. Vatican City
40. The Taj Mahal
41. The Eiffel Tower
42. The Blue Grotto
43. The Tower of London
44. The Leaning Tower of Pisa
45. The Sacred Well of Chichen-Itza, Mexico
46. Climb Ayers Rock in Australia
47. Follow River Jordan from Sea of Galilee to Dead Sea
48. Grand Canyon on foot and by boat
49. Retrace travels of Marco Polo and Alexander the Great
Swim...
50. Lake Victoria
51. Lake Superior
52. Lake Tanganyika
53 Lake Titicaca, S. America
54. Lake Nicaragua
55. across an ocean
56. *become an eagle scout
57. Dive in a submarine
58. Land on and take of from an aircraft carrier
59. Fly in a blimp, balloon and glider
60. Ride an elephant, camel, ostrich and bronco
61. Skin dive to 40 feet
62. *hold breath two and a half minutes underwater
63. learn bass, and drums, and violin
64. Type 50 words a minute
65. Learn water and snow skiing
66. go skydiving
67. Follow the John Muir trail
68. *go on a missions trip
69. Bag camera trophies of elephant, lion, rhino, cheetah, cape buffalo and whale
70. Learn to fence
71. Learn jujitsu
72. Become a ham radio operator
73. Build own telescope
74. High jump five feet
75. Broad jump 15 feet
76. Run mile in five minutes
77. *Weigh under 175 pounds stripped
78. *Perform 200 sit-ups and 20 pull-ups
79. learn french, arabic and russian
80. Study dragon lizards on Komodo Island
81. chase hurricanes and tornados
82. Read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica
83. *Read the Bible from cover to cover
84. Read the works of Shakespeare, Plato, Aristotle, Dickens, Thoreau, Rousseau, Conrad, Hemingway, Twain, Burroughs, Talmage, Tolstoi, Longfellow, Keats, Poe, Bacon, Whittier, and Emerson
85. Become proficient in the use of a plane, motorcycle, tractor, surfboard, rifle, pistol, canoe, microscope, football, basketball, bow and arrow, lariat and boomerang
86. Milk a poisonous snake
87. Light a match with .22 rifle
88. Visit a movie studio
89. Climb Cheops' pyramid
90. Circumnavigate the globe
91. Marry and have kiddos
92. Visit the moon
93. Go bow hunting
94. Love and be loved
95. Buy one book a week, and read two
96. Watch a rainstorm from a porch swing with someone I love

and thats all i can think of...enjoy.