I Just Felt Like Sharing This With You Today...

No commentary from me on it, I'll just let the scriptures speak for themselves.

Best Wishes,
Allen

Psalms 50: 1 - 23 (King James Version)

The mighty God, even the LORD, hath spoken, and called the earth from the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof.

Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined.

Our God shall come, and shall not keep silence: a fire shall devour before him, and it shall be very tempestuous round about him.

He shall call to the heavens from above, and to the earth, that he may judge his people.

Gather my saints together unto me; those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice.

And the heavens shall declare his righteousness: for God is judge himself. Selah.

Hear, O my people, and I will speak; O Israel, and I will testify against thee: I am God, even thy God.

I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices or thy burnt offerings, to have been continually before me.

I will take no bullock out of thy house, nor he goats out of thy folds.

For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills.

I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine.

If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof.

Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?

Offer unto God thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the most High:

And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.

But unto the wicked God saith, What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth?

Seeing thou hatest instruction, and casteth my words behind thee.

When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers.

Thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit.

Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother's son.

These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes.

Now consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver.

Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me: and to him that ordereth his conversation aright will I shew the salvation of God.

Priorities

It is not bragging to say that my non-profit work with ISAA could probably gain me some kind of celebrity status; I've done an incredible amount of media spots on television, radio, newspapers and magazines...and there is no doubt that this work has helped people obtain valuable information to empower themselves and make choices to improve their lives. I'm happy to do this work and I love to help people whenever possible.

Recently, however, I've had to pull back from that work and do some delegating to other ISAA volunteers. The Lord used my minister to help me prioritize my focus...not to stop all my non-profit work but to give some much-deserved extra attention to my wife and kids as well as my day-job. It was just in time, too. The Lord has really blessed me in my communications with my wife and being able to be a more integral part of my sons' lives.

I still coordinate efforts in ISAA and maintain the ISAA website (which is not a daily task). I still read a tremendous amount of e-mail in efforts to keep up-to-date on matters that affect the size acceptance movement. But ultimately, I have to take care of home and family before I can help anyone else. That's biblical and I stand by it. The Lord has really enriched my life, even in a short time, as a result -- and I am very grateful.

Best Wishes,
Allen

When Allergies Attack...

This morning, my wife was ill (bad allergies), so -- having already taken my boys to school, I realized I would have to rearrange my work schedule to be able to pick them up. You see, my oldest son goes to a charter school with hours of 8 am to 12 pm and my youngest son goes to public school with hours of 7:45 am to 2:45 pm.

I feel blessed to have understanding supervisors...

The upside is, I got to spend more time with my boys and take unnecessary pressure off of my wife while she's under the weather. It's days like this that I feel great about my marriage and parenthood. The Lord helped me to switch gears the moment I realized Angel wasn't feeling well and just do what needed to be done. I'm very grateful to the Lord for that because if He hadn't given me a good understanding of what to do, this could have turned out very differently and been much more stressful.

Anyway, just sharing...

Best Wishes,
Allen

Mild Modifications and Near-Future Plans, etc.

I've updated some links on IR Haven, mainly to take out newly "broken" links. I also added the "Free Dakota" banner, about an 8-year old boy taken by Child Protective Services in Valparaiso, Indiana because of the boy's weight. ISAA has decided to be supportive of this child and his mother, based upon overwhelming evidence in the mother's favor. Please check it out, you can help reunite a little boy with his wonderful, loving mother. Just click the Free Dakota button below:



In other news, my church is gearing up for a wonderful "Youthfest 2004." This is a program where our church works with other churches to send the positive message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to today's youth of all nations. First Light will be performing, as well as several other musical groups from our church, in addition to youth-oriented skits, statistics and performances by groups from other churches. The date for Youthfest 2004 is October 23, 2004 in Austin, Texas at the Delco Center. I'll give more details, including times, as I get them.

I want to do more blogging on IR Haven, but I've been wanting to keep everything relevant and not just relay talking points from the news or talk radio or what have you...

Best Wishes,
Allen

My Sons, The Photographers...

Here's some neato pics that my sons took (with my wife's help, on a couple of them) when my oldest son, Adam, begged and pleaded for a camera (we got a disposable, turned out pretty good, considering the boys are 8 and 5, respectively).



You might say Adam has a different perspective on the world!




Not to be left out of the action, it's "Super Josey" to the rescue!




Bubbles, anyone?




Josey is proud of the Lego spaceship that he built!


This could lead to more "Photo-blogging With Adam & Josey!" Stay tuned...

Best Wishes,
Allen

Sometimes Others Say It Better...

From The New York Times

Cult of Death
By DAVID BROOKS

Published: September 7, 2004


We've been forced to witness the massacre of innocents. In New York, Madrid, Moscow, Tel Aviv, Baghdad and Bali, we have seen thousands of people destroyed while going about the daily activities of life.

We've been forced to endure the massacre of children. Whether it's teenagers outside an Israeli disco or students in Beslan, Russia, we've seen kids singled out as special targets.

We should by now have become used to the death cult that is thriving at the fringes of the Muslim world. This is the cult of people who are proud to declare, "You love life, but we love death." This is the cult that sent waves of defenseless children to be mowed down on the battlefields of the Iran-Iraq war, that trains kindergartners to become bombs, that fetishizes death, that sends people off joyfully to commit mass murder.

This cult attaches itself to a political cause but parasitically strangles it. The death cult has strangled the dream of a Palestinian state. The suicide bombers have not brought peace to Palestine; they've brought reprisals. The car bombers are not pushing the U.S. out of Iraq; they're forcing us to stay longer. The death cult is now strangling the Chechen cause, and will bring not independence but blood.

But that's the idea. Because the death cult is not really about the cause it purports to serve. It's about the sheer pleasure of killing and dying.

It's about massacring people while in a state of spiritual loftiness. It's about experiencing the total freedom of barbarism - freedom even from human nature, which says, Love children, and Love life. It's about the joy of sadism and suicide.

We should be used to this pathological mass movement by now. We should be able to talk about such things. Yet when you look at the Western reaction to the Beslan massacres, you see people quick to divert their attention away from the core horror of this act, as if to say: We don't want to stare into this abyss. We don't want to acknowledge those parts of human nature that were on display in Beslan. Something here, if thought about too deeply, undermines the categories we use to live our lives, undermines our faith in the essential goodness of human beings.

Three years after Sept. 11, too many people have become experts at averting their eyes. If you look at the editorials and public pronouncements made in response to Beslan, you see that they glide over the perpetrators of this act and search for more conventional, more easily comprehensible targets for their rage.

The Boston Globe editorial, which was typical of the American journalistic response, made two quick references to the barbarity of the terrorists, but then quickly veered off with long passages condemning Putin and various Russian policy errors.

The Dutch foreign minister, Bernard Bot, speaking on behalf of the European Union, declared: "All countries in the world need to work together to prevent tragedies like this. But we also would like to know from the Russian authorities how this tragedy could have happened."

It wasn't a tragedy. It was a carefully planned mass murder operation. And it wasn't Russian authorities who stuffed basketball nets with explosives and shot children in the back as they tried to run away.

Whatever horrors the Russians have perpetrated upon the Chechens, whatever their ineptitude in responding to the attack, the essential nature of this act was in the act itself. It was the fact that a team of human beings could go into a school, live with hundreds of children for a few days, look them in the eyes and hear their cries, and then blow them up.

Dissertations will be written about the euphemisms the media used to describe these murderers. They were called "separatists" and "hostage-takers." Three years after Sept. 11, many are still apparently unable to talk about this evil. They still try to rationalize terror. What drives the terrorists to do this? What are they trying to achieve?

They're still victims of the delusion that Paul Berman diagnosed after Sept. 11: "It was the belief that, in the modern world, even the enemies of reason cannot be the enemies of reason. Even the unreasonable must be, in some fashion, reasonable."

This death cult has no reason and is beyond negotiation. This is what makes it so frightening. This is what causes so many to engage in a sort of mental diversion. They don't want to confront this horror. So they rush off in search of more comprehensible things to hate.