Oh Chief Ramsey

Today I was startled to read in the Edmonton Journal that one of my favorite Chinese food kiosks in West Edmonton Mall had been fined $12000 for sanitation and cockroach problems.

The article describes a scene of food being stored on the floor, raw meat soaking in stagnant water and cockroaches scurrying around the kitchen.

Where is Chief Ramsey and one of his profanity filled tyraids when we need him!!

The place makes some of the best ginger beef around, but now the thought of it makes my stomach turn. Who knows what it's been thawing in or where! Then I start wondering if it really is 'beef' in the first place. (enter Eric's favorite name for a Chinese restaurant here)

I've read stories like this before, but it's never been about a place that I eat at with reasonable regularity (no that doesn't make it worse, it just makes me want to blog about it!!)

Clearly this kind of problem is all too prevalent in the restaurant business, as indicated not only by the existence of food inspectors but the ability to Chief Ramsey to devote an entire TV show to cleaning up different restaurants with similar problems.

In all seriousness, I don't think I'll ever be eating at the Szechuan Chinese Food kiosk again. (it's in phase 3 of WEM, beside the Dairy Queen... lest you confuse it with one of the other 2 large chinese food kiosks in the same food court!!)

I guess I'll be eating more Greek and Italian food there from now on!

Here's to coakroaches and....

scratch that...

here's to a large BEER!

Peripheral Vision

Tonight I decided to go down to Kinsman to work out.  Pam bought me a month pass for Christmas, so I'm diligently trying to use it!  Most of the time I go in the morning, but today was totally booked up so I thought I'd go in the evening.

I will NOT be doing that again.  It was packed. When I first got there the parking lot was so full that I assumed a special event was going on.  I had to park in the overflow lot. (which is actually better because it's closer to the main entrance than the further away spots in the normal lot)

I'd planned on doing some weight training but immediately recognized that my plans needed to change as there were simply way too many people in the weight room.  I decided to ride the bike and go for a brief jog.

As is my custom, I ended with some time in the sauna, but it too was quite full which wasn't all bad but I just don't like being too near other sweaty people.

This leads to the point of all this: later, as I was leaving the shower area, out of the corner of my eye something bizarre caught my peripheral vision.  My head shot to the left only to have my visual senses assaulted by this very large naked man standing on a scale, who was extremely tanned and had the most nasty tan lines..... well I'll let your imagination figure it out....

Damn!

What on earth was this guy thinking?  BTW, he wasn't at all 'buff-in-the-stuff', so it's not like... oh never mind.

Have you ever noticed that in locker rooms it's the older people who seem to wander around in the 'all together'?  Pam says it's the same way in the women's change room too.  I've enjoyed this month long pass to Kinsman, but I have to say that I've definitely had my fill of male nudity!  

Most of the time I am very thankful that I have very good vision.... most of the time!

Short

This morning as I was doing some work around the house an old song came into my head:

'Soon and very soon, I am going to see the King

soon and very soon, I am going to see the King

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, I am going to see the King'.

Believe me, I have not had opportunity to sing that song or even hear it, anywhere in a very long time, so it certainly struck me as odd that this old chorus would come into my head. (as strange a head as I may have!!)  Very quickly I recognized the evidence of the Spirit in all this and began to pray around it all.

Not to worry! I am not speaking of my imminent demise; I sensed God remind me of how short life is in the light of eternity and that this is only a brief internship in this age.  The Spirit whispered to me an encouragement and reminder of the worthiness of devoting my life to pursuing God.

Show me O Lord, my life's end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life.
Ps. 39:4

'Soon and very soon, I am going to see the King
soon and very soon, I am going to see the King
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, I am going to see the King'.

Songs of Deliverance

I've been really enjoying Psalm 32 for the past few days.  There's just so much there to feed the prayer life!

Nearly half of the Psalm is about confession of sin, and while I've been engaged in that there have also been some other things that God was highlighting to me:

1) praying that my spirit would be cleansed of all deceit (v. 2).  Not only do I need to be forgiven (v.1) but I need to have all manner of deceit driven out of my spirit.  This prayer is a new addition to my prayer list.

2) praying for a return to the hiding place (v.7) or as I've called in earlier blogs, 'the secret place'. 

3) I've been focusing a lot on being surrounded with 'songs of deliverance' (v.7).  Each day I have been coming back to this and in the morning asking God to surround me with songs of deliverance.  There has been a distinct touch from God in praying this.  The other day as I prayed around this, I suddenly found myself beginning to sing my prayers.  This went on at length (one of the joys of being home alone!!) as I prayed and worshipped God.

V. 7 is a fantastic verse to pray for others as well; praying that God would surround them with songs of deliverance.

One final note from my prayer time today:  Today is the day that the Lord has made.  In the midst of prayer I found myself making declarations about the goodness of the day, speaking against the fears and curses that surround (however humorously) 'Friday the 13th'.

May today be a day of blessing and goodness, and not fear and evil.  

May the Lord surround each of us with songs of deliverance today!

New Connections

I was at the city prayer gathering today and Jeremiah Abel read out from Eph. 5:13-20. A couple of verses stood out to me as I listened and then read it over in my Bible:

15 Be very careful, then, how you live--not as unwise but as wise,
16 making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.
17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.
18 Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit.
19 Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord,
20 always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ

The passage in verse 18 is a long time favorite because it speaks of being continually filled with the Spirit. As I read on I was struck by v. 20 and the call to always be giving thanks to God, because just yesterday I felt the Lord speaking to me about the great need I have to grow in thankfulness. This morning as I read these verses I sensed God showing me that the two things are very much connected: Being filled with the Spirit and living a life of continual thankfulness.

I am very often a 'cup half empty' type of person. Translated more bluntly, I think that means I'm an unthankful person. I'm just not very good at it (there I go again!)

I usually have thought about being filled with the Spirit in different terms than being continually thankful. Yet the apostle Paul seems to mention the need for thankfulness over and over again (i.e. Col. 2:17 & 1 Thess. 5:18)

I realize that I have some real stereotypes in my head surrounding exhortations to thankfulness and that I need to purge myself of.

That will be quite a process, but for now I'll just say 'thanks' to God for showing me some new connections about being filled with the Spirit.

Standing

Last night I had the image in my mind (not a vision) to me being in a shelter and then making the choice to walk outside of the shelter wearing only a pair of shorts. When I did so, dozens of birds suddenly descended on me and furiously pecked at me; they didn't kill me but I was a bloody mess when they were done, as I attempted to crawl back to the shelter.

For me this is a spiritual picture of my choosing to leave the secret place and not having any covering (such as the armor of God).
I do so at my own peril. I've done it before and yet somehow do it again. Such decisions defy logic and reason.

the end.

IHOP intercession - Cory Russell

Click to Play

Cory Russell prays for San Francisco at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City

Feeling like Crap

Today my wife feels like crap. She had a couple of students drop out of one of her classes and she feels like it's her fault; now she's feeling terrible about herself as a teacher (as if she needed to feel like that more often!!)

I can't stand the pressure that the schools put on teachers to pump out kids with great grades. There's so much pressure on teachers... what about the STUDENTS? In my day, if you got lousy grades it was your own bloody fault. The teacher might be a dud (and I had some, let me tell you) but if I got 55% as a final mark, it was MY responsibility.

Today... NOOOO!!!! It's the responsibility of the teachers to make sure that little Mikey get a good grade. We wouldn't want him to fail, even if he skips lots of classes and doesn't even turn in assignments, because we don't want to bruise his precious self esteem.

Today if you want to be able to teach the top level subjects you have to be turn out students who get honors... no matter what. Otherwise it's on your head and you feel like a lousy teacher.

I'm tired of watching my wife work her ass off week after week, working hours and hours making exams and marking and creating assignments only to end up feeling like crap because little mary jane hardly does any work in class and then wonders why she's not getting honors!

I don't think that kids are simply entitled to get good grades; and I don't think that we should expect that every kid is going to get great grades. I was lousy at math in school. I got really average grades in math and guess what: I didn't snivel about it and blame it on my teacher. I'm not good at math. Plain and simple. Not everybody is good at math!

So here's a novel idea: let's evaluate teachers through observing their classes and factoring in ALL the student evaluations, rather than simply looking at the specific grades themselves. Let's have some balance between responsibility on the teacher AND responsibility on the students.

Maybe then we'll have less days like today.