Whoa!

This morning I was frying up some red pepper and onion to put in my omelette. I added some tomato and cilantro and it turned into yummy salsa! I was amazed, but now that I think about, I guess it's not that surprising.

Salsa is one of my favorite foods. When I was a kid I would put salsa on everything. My specialty was the cheesy salsa hot dog.

Anyways, I just remembered that Ghana is playing Nigeria in the Africa Cup of Nations right now! Go GHANA!!!

Haiti and Stupidity

"I also want to say a word about God and evil. Pat Robertson said that Haiti’s earthquake was caused because of the country’s “pact with the devil.” I don’t even know what he means, nor do I care. But I want to say this: My God does not cause evil. God is not a vengeful and retributive being, waiting to strike us down; instead, God is in the very midst of this tragedy, suffering with those who are suffering. When evil strikes, it’s easy to ask, where is God? The answer is simple: God is suffering with those who are suffering." 
-Jim Wallis on his God's Politics blog (read full article here)  

When I was in elementary school, my younger sister and I went to a day home after school. One afternoon, in the midst of an intense game of cops and robbers, my sister fell off of her bike and scraped up one of her knees. My sister went and sat on the edge of the sandbox to examine her wound.

The rest of us kids joined her, offering consolation and promising that she could be a robber in the next game. One kid, though, wanted to help her clean up her knee. His idea was to cover the wound with sand so that it would stop bleeding. So, he threw a bunch of sand onto my sisters bleeding knee. Not only did this cause my sister increased pain, it did nothing to help. In fact, scabs formed over the sand and she later had to have the skin on her knees cut open again to get it all out. Kids are stupid sometimes. 

So is Pat Robertson (but I guess the White House beat me to that observation). Why would someone throw sand on that? Something is wrong when a response to suffering is so damning.

"Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another."
-Romans 12:15-16

God, I want to be right there with you, suffering with those who are suffering. I pray that, as a church and as people living on this planet together, our response to great suffering would be genuine empathy. Help us to cling to your goodness and your love even when awful things happen.

World Juniors

It's kind of too bad that the American hockey team won the World Juniors. I think it's safe to say that most Canadians (at least the ones I know) were at the very least interested in the tournament. A lot of Canadians could probably tell you who Team Canada beat on their way to the gold medal game and would perhaps be able to rattle off a couple of statistical comparisons between current player Eberle and former player (and current NY Islander) Tavares.

The average American? "Huh? What hockey tournament?" Oh well, I'm sure they'll (we'll?) pay closer attention when it is time for Olympic hockey.