We humans can be so brutal. We convict and crucify people as a way of life. We can shake someone’s hand and before the sweat of their palm dries on ours, we’ve judged them. Harshly.

No wonder we slaughtered Jesus in our sin. He did nothing but love, heal and make whole and we returned the favor by hanging Him on a tree.  Man, we are a complete mess without Him. BUT, with Him we are the righteousness of God. Simply put, what is filthy can be made clean through the sacrifice of Jesus. That is the Good News. Live it … today.

Dinosaur tippers see their depravity without the Savior but embrace their new life as a ”new creation” in Him. How about you?

I’ve known a few guys who are colorblind and as I’ve listened to them tell me their struggles with separating the nuances in various colors, I’ve been thankful that I can clearly see various shades of any color. Certainly being colorblind is not a huge “disability” but it is one, I think, that can dull a little of the beauty of the world.  Of course, there is a “type” of colorblindness that makes this world much more beautiful…

When Jesus walked the earth, the separation of people in society was dramatic. Everyone had their place and the differences could not have been more vividly seen. Not surprisingly, Jesus broke all the rules. As a Jewish man, He talked with and touched those who society told Him to disregard or distain. For Jesus, it was all about the heart.  (Matthew 15) Jesus was the perfect kind of colorblind; class or color had no bearing on His view of another. 

In this past election, we’ve seen some colorblindness and some things that make you scratch your head. I won’t talk about the radical right or left here; that just tends to distract from the real issue. But, when looking at the nation as a whole 97% of blacks voted for Obama. In contrast, 57% of whites voted for McCain. (source) In an election that we were told was not about race, the facts lead to some interesting observations and begs the question: What role did race have in THIS election? Who was more motivated by color? 

As Jesus showed us, the color of someone’s skin should never determine their worth…or to put it another way, we shouldn’t cast a vote based on someone’s external appearance. Has it happened before? Yep. Was it right? Nope. Did it happen on November 4th 2008? Yep. Both ways? Yep. Was it right? Nope. 

Dinosaur tippers are colorblind when it counts. How about you?

Last year my wife and I took a little day trip up to Flagstaff, AZ (”Flag,” as it is known by the locals). It is a cool little mountain town with a cozy, historic downtown. On our hunt for the morning fix, we bypassed the my normal corporate cup in search for a local/homegrown variety. We stumbled upon the perfect spot, “Late for the Train Cafe.” The cafe is in an old turn of the century store front, the perfect setting for a great quad shot with room (for the taste, not the cream) americano. The cool surprise came in the tshirt I picked up there. All it says on the front is ‘Caffeine’ and on the back is a drawing of the chemical makeup of caffeine. Simple. Perfect.

That one word, ‘Caffeine’, got me thinking…what is my ‘Caffeine?’ You know, what makes me go?  What’s yours? What is it that fuels what you do?  People that know what drives them are the people who make a difference.  They change the world.  If you don’t know what fuels you, you’ll follow those that do.

Dinosaur tippers know what drives them…

“You knit me together in my mother’s womb….”  Psalm 139:13

Everyone once and a while a statistic grips you…makes your jaw drop.  On Friday, it happened to me.  Last week I wrote about the potential impact of the election. During that conversation the topic of the war in Iraq came up and, specifically, the number of causualites that have happened there.  The number of total deaths on all sides is projected at 100,000. Tragic.  That, for whatever reason, caused me to do a quick search on the number of abortions that occur each year…and what I found stopped me cold. Did you know that

There were 1.21 million abortions in the US in 2005. There were 42 million world wide.

That means 3315 in the US or 115,000 worldwide each day.

138 (US) or 4791worldwide each hour

2.3 (US) or 80 worldwide each minute

1.33 every second worldwide.  So, from the time you began reading this post until the time you are reading this sentence approximate 40 more preganancies were ended.

While I cannot begin to understand every situation behind these 42 million decisions, I can only imagine that behind many choices there is tremendous pain and guilt. The loss of life itself is unspeakable. What can we do? What can I do? Pray, for sure. Seek out a place to help? There are so many wonderful organizations that do so much, yet the tragedies continue. 

Final question: Would ending the practice of abortion (except in those most rare, extreme circumstances) bring about the biggest societal change in the history of the world?  I think it might.

Talk about a dinosaur that needs to be tipped…

If Obama supporters are right:

…we will have a peaceful end to the conflict in Iraq and they’ll be governing themselves soon…

… we will see more troops in Afganistan …

… have national healthcare sometime soon…

…have alternative fuel automobiles soon…

…see more jobs soon…

…etc…

But, if the other side is right then we might…

…see our national security weakened …

…look a lot like a socialist society soon …

…lose more jobs due to higher corporate taxes …

…ensure that abortion remains a viable option for birth control for the foreseeable future…

…put a larger burden on the ones who already pay all the taxes…

…etc…

We’ll see what happens. Brings me back to my point from the last post: pray for our elected leaders…they aren’t changing anytime soon.  Makes me glad that the God of the Bible is so predictable, so right, so trustworthy and so consistent.  Wow…aren’t you glad we aren’t God!

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is NO authority except that which God has established. The authorties that exist have been established by God. Romans 13:1

Even though the electoral vote wasn’t close, at last count about 47% of Amerians voted for McCain and 52% voted for Obama. So today some are overjoyed and many others are extremely disappointed.  For everyone out there who believed that this election was a choice between what God desires and what He doesn’t, I think we need to understand that if God didn’t want Barack Obama to be our President-elect, then Obama would not be. I hope that doesn’t sound like I’m over-spiritualizing what happened yesterday but the truth of the Scripture cannot be denied. God has established the authority we live under and we are called to submit ourselves to that authority. Regardless of how we voted yesterday, come January 20, 2009, our President will be Barack Obama.  (I have to give Barack some dinosaur tipping props.)  Nothing happened yesterday that surprised God or that will take the world off the ultimate path that God has us on.

Okay, so what does this all mean for us personally? I think we all need to take a deep breath and understand that what happened yesterday is a reflection of where our country is, not a sudden shift from where it was.  I don’t believe that a lot has actually changed in America from yesterday to today.  Our mission hasn’t changed; we don’t have “better” news today than we had yesterday; our purpose for living remains exactly as it was on November 3rd. We still serve the same Jesus, speak of the same “best” Good News, share the perfect Hope, and have the same calling as before.  When I look at the life of Christ, I see a man who was never really concerned with the political power of the day.  As much as His disciples wanted him to be, He just had more important things to do.

So, today rejoice that you had your vote; give congrats to Barack Obama and Joe Biden our newly appointed leaders and get back to work on the most important mission there is.

Share your thoughts….

I’ve played and watched sports all of my life and typically when I watch a game I have a team I am cheering for; but, on those occassions when I don’t have a routing interest, I always gravitate to the underdog.  (BTW, Underdog was my favorite cartoon growing up even though I was too young to grasp the true meaing of his name.) Most of us do. There’s just something about seeing the team that no one expects to win do the impossible. The most famous upset in the history of American sport (maybe in the history of sport period) is undoubtedly USA’s upset over the USSR in the 1980 Olympics, aka The Miracle on Ice.  Most of us in our 20’s and 30’s have a hard time understanding the magnitude of this victory because it was much more than one hockey team beating another.  It many ways it was democracy vs. communism and it was a tremendous victory for the American way of life. 

Politically speaking, there was the infamous Dewey vs. Truman election in 1948 where the nations newspapers declared Dewey the winner before the election was over. Dewey was predicted to win in a landslide but it didn’t work out that way. 

So, today we have the underdog John McCain vs. the favorite Barack Obama. Of course, we are not talking about a sporting event and the stakes in a presidential campaign are markedly higher. But, regardless of who you have voted for there’s something compelling about the underdog in today’s race. I’m not predicting a McCain victory (I think Obama will be my next president) but you never know….

ps: dinosaur tippers enjoy a good upset from time to time.  What’s your favorite upset?  Why?

Blasphemy! … That’s what I want to say about such a suggestion, but the fact is, I think there might be some truth to it. Last night, the Hornets (a great team, btw) held a comfortable 15 point margin late in the 3rd when Nash went to the bench. All the Suns did was run and DEFEND themselves back into the game, trailing only by 3 midway through the 4th. Then, Nash came back in and turned it over 3 straight times (he had 7 to’s for the game). And, he got beat to the rim all night by the younger, quicker Hornets.  Game over.

Steve Nash is my favorite Sun and the favorite player of my son….hands down. He’s a huge reason I’m a diehard Suns fan.  On this blog, I’d say Nash is a big time dinosaur tipper…he’s accomplished so much and proved so many wrong. BUT, the question remains, are they better with him playing less? 

ps - teaching point: what are we hanging onto that we need to change or let go of? Just because it worked great 2 years ago doesn’t mean it does so today.

ahh…you thought I was talking politics.  Sorry. Enough people are serving politics these days. No, this post is about earphones. (stay with me) I have small ears. (side note: I guess this is good since they say that our ears never stop growing so when I’m 70 my lobes won’t double as windsails.) Not freakishly small, mind you, but small enough where I have serious earphone issues.  Those cool ergonomic wrap-around models sag and slip off my ears after about 5 strides on the treadmill. I gave up on my $15 panasonic set (yes, I know being cheap is part of the problem) and went back to the standard ones issued with my iPod. And, what do you know, they stay in my ears….but, they didn’t sound that great.  I tried to adjust them, but still, the sound was muffled.  When I was just about to give up on them, I thought I’d try the left ear in the right and vise versa…and, what do you know, it sounded great.  I discovered that my ears were not only small, but they are deformed interally as well.  Awesome. 

Okay, where I’m going with this? Well, I think it might be time for some of us to change it up. We’ve tried the same thing over and over and the sound has become muffled and we don’t even know what clear, crisp sound is anymore.  Jesus told us plainly that the last would be first (Matt. 20:16) and that if we wanted to gain our life then we needed to lose it (Matt. 10:39), BUT we refuse to apply that to our everyday lives. We want to do exactly what the world does yet we want a God-like result.  Won’t work. If you consume what the world offers the same way everyone else does, you’ll get exactly what the world gets and hear exactly what they hear. Time to switch it up. You’ll be shocked how different things sound.

Dinosaur tippers experience the world differently.  How about you?

As an attorney at Sprint Corp I often chuckled at the endless business jargon we used.  ”Do you have the ‘bandwidth’ for a new project?” ”Can I be ‘above-board’ with you?” ”Hey, if we need to take this ‘off-line’ we can.” “That might be a good idea. I think we need to ‘level-set.‘”  I know that some of you are tracking with me because no “business” is immune, whether corporate law departments or church staffs. And, fact is, these little business cliches can be helpful to a healthy organization. This week, I feel the need to “level-set,” that is, to take inventory and analyze where we are on some things.  Here are a few questions we might ask ourselves:

Why am I at my current job? Do I have a passion for it? Am I settling? Am I working as “unto the Lord?”

How about my marriage? Good? Bad? Have I considered the vision for the future of my family? How are the kids? Where are they succeeding? Struggling?

God? Is He a big part of my life? Hmm.  Maybe football, sitcoms, the web, blogging, kids, work, _______ has replaced Him as No.1 in my life?

Yes, this week, I think it is time to “level-set” a few things. But, level-setting is only worthwhile if you take the next step: making needed changes and living intentionally so when you do this same exercise 6 months from now your responses to the questions above are different.

Dinosaur tippers understand where they are, consider the cost and have a plan to advance beyond today.  (see Luke 14) How about you? What part of your life needs some serious level-setting?