FRIDAY UNSCRIPTED

Let's roll into the weekend with a good laugh. Here are some additional Vavrinaisms that crack me up. A big shout out and thanks to Robin Meadows for putting ROLL on her Friday Finds check it out here

• A fool and his money will soon part ways

• Always try to be humble, and be proud of it

• Plan to be spontaneous tomorrow

• Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today... procrastinate now
  

• A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel too good

• If a mime is arrested do the cops still say you have the right to remain silent

and last but not least and just to be P.C. my lawyer buddies said this would be OK

• 99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name

Have a great weekend and enjoy your Feb. 29th, we won't get to see another one of these until we are tired of another presidential campaign (just a joke for all you lovers of politics)

STUCK BETWEEN TUTOR AND TUTEE

There have been 2 times in my life that I have been involved in tutoring. Both times I was in College. I was the tutor in one instance and the tutee in the other. They both stunk (no pun intended).

Roll mental camera…

I was the tutee in the most fun college course of all time, CALCULUS. It was a 5 hour everyday of the week nightmare for me. So I had Allan, my now brother-in-law, tutor me in the subject. He was the Master Po of math Kung Fu and I was Grasshopper attempting to snatch the pebble from his hand (sorry for the reference for those of you who aren’t old enough to remember or didn’t watch the show Kung Fu). Allan was so advanced in upper math that he knew all the cool shortcuts and taught them to me. It was great until the final where I had to show my work but had no idea how to do it the way the professor wanted me to.

Being the tutor was strangely similar. I was tutoring Shelly, my now wife, in algebra. We were just dating at the time and I should have known better (just kidding Shel). I wanted to make sure that she knew how to do the work to get to the correct answer. Shelly on the other hand, just wanted the shortcut to the answer. She believed then and still does to this day that Algebra would never be used by her for any reason. In hindsight I think she is right.

I feel like I am pulled between these 2 scenarios in my faith. Many times I am around someone so well versed in scripture that I get lost in their conversation. Other times I am the one giving an opinion to someone that may give me just enough attention to spit out the answer but I lose them on the explanation. I would think everyone would be stuck in the middle to some degree huh? But man it can be confusing. So I guess I will just focus on what is important and let Him tutor me.

Do you ever feel like you are under educated in your own faith?

Or do you feel like you have so much to tell but nobody will listen?

JUMP TO GLORY

If you are a Jars of Clay fan, like I am, then you probably remember their song about having faith like a child. Something I really need more of.

Roll mental camera…

My buddies and I were sitting on our bikes one day. I was probably 8 or 9. When what to our wondering eyes should appear, but a dump truck full of dirt. It rolled down our street and deposited a huge mountain of dirt at the end of the block. You could feel the electricity in the air as we all looked at each other with that Evel Knievel spirit. The fact that it sat no more than 10 feet from an intersection with no stop signs could not dissuade us. The fact that it looked 10 feet tall and as steep as Everest couldn’t hold us back. Helmets… we don’t need no stinking helmets. We were determined to jump to glory.

Bike after bike rode up the mound and down the other side. I remember like it was yesterday, launching off of the top of that mound traveling at the speed of light and doing no less than 3 back flips before hitting the ground. In all reality you might have been able to see sunlight between my tires and dirt and that is about it. But there was never a reservation. Never any doubt or fear. BLIND FAITH…

The mound only lasted a few days before the dirt was moved but that feeling has always stuck with me. I want to have that blind faith back and not second guess it. I want to filter out my own logic and reason when faith is concerned. Not the other way around.

Do you have a story of when you had blind faith as a child?

How about as an adult? That is a much harder questions isn’t it.

How do we get it back?

POWDER KEGS

I often think about the powder kegs that I have carelessly tossed around in my life. They may not blow up in my face, but they might in one of my family members.

Roll mental camera…

When I was young my father made decorations for our living room. Being pharmacist he brought home a huge assortment of expired pills of all different colors and shapes, layered them in huge glass bowls, and put them on top of our book shelves.

Is the “powder keg” coming into view yet? As I said I was young probably around 4 or 5 and these bowls fascinated me. So, I of course had to investigate. I slowly climbed the book shelf until I got to the top. I reached out to move the bowl over so I could see it better and I am sure you can envision the rest. Yep, you guessed it, the glass bowl fell to the floor and exploded in a rainbow of fruit flavors (And no these were not skittles). Well to a kid my age the explosion was even more fun then the pills in a bowl. If my parents wouldn’t have come in to pull me away I probably would have tried eating a few to see if they tasted as good as they looked (pick your favorite skittle color and insert here).

My dad had innocent thoughts when he brought home the “powder keg” of pills, but to a 4 year old it was too intriguing just to look at. I had to light that fuse and BOOM!!!! Now I try to avoid creating “powder kegs” with words or actions that might lead a person I care about into harms way.

Did you set off any “powder kegs” when you were younger that put you in harms way?

Who left a “powder keg” for you to investigate?

How many have you rolled out there yourself?

How do we teach our kids to avoid these “powder kegs” in life?

OVERLY NEEDY

Thanks to Scott over at Big mentioning the Difficult People series that LifeChurch did a few years ago I found a message that really brought back one of my mental home movies. I am leading a group today that is studying the second message in this series about overly needy people. You can see it here. I have really struggled with these types of people.

Roll mental camera…

A now ex-employee of mine was always broke and was always one day away from having their utilities shut off. I felt sorry for her because she had young children. So anytime she asked for help I gave her money to pay bills. I am a trusting person and never second guessed her need nor its validity.

After a long time of handing out I finally started looking at the story behind her story. I noticed that she would go to McDonald’s or Sonic everyday for lunch and always had money for cigarettes. I also learned that her husband was a painter but rarely had work. So I decided to stop giving the hand out and gave her a hand up. I told her that I could hook her husband up with a paint crew that could keep him working. I also told her that I would give her money until he started painting if she would bring lunch from home and stop buying cigarettes.

I never heard from her husband and she kept buying cigarettes and never asked me for money again. But even after giving her that hand up, that she didn’t take, I still felt guilty. This message really showed me that sometimes it is better to let someone hit rock bottom then enable them to keep making bad decisions.

Is it time to let someone fall in your life so they can learn how to stand?
Are you the one that needs to take the hand up and not the hand out?
And the question that is hardest for me to answer,
When do you know that someone has crossed the line from real need to freeloader status?

FRIDAY UNSCRIPTED

I will at some point in the future "roll mental camera" on the first time I met my now father-in-law of almost 13 years, but until then just sit back and relax and enjoy some of his best one liners. Since his last name is Vavrina these are called Vavrinaisms
(no guarantee that these are totally original)

• WHEN THE CHIPS ARE DOWN, THE BUFFALO IS EMPTY

• THOSE WHO LIVE BY THE SWORD GET SHOT BY THOSE WHO DON’T

• MY MIND IS LIKE A STEEL TRAP—RUSTY AND ILLEGAL IN 17 STATES

• THE EARLY BIRD GETS THE WORM, BUT THE SECOND MOUSE GETS THE CHEESE

• THE COLDER THE X RAY TABLE, THE MORE OF YOUR BODY IS REQUIRED ON IT

• ALWAYS BORROW MONEY FROM PESSIMISTS—THEY DON’T EXPECT IT BACK

• EVER WONDER WHERE BARN OWLS LIVED BEFORE THERE WERE BARNS

and my personal favorite... drum roll please...

• HE WHO LAUGHS LAST, THINKS THE SLOWEST

WHAT WOULD YOUR KIDS SAY? 3 OF 3

Consuming is just going to be part of our life just like eating is right? I don’t want my child to be obese so we put vegetables on their plates and show them what a balanced diet looks like. I also try to show them a balanced version of every other kind of consuming.

roll mental camera…

My youngest son Cade, he is 4, was at a little kids self defense class and the instructor asked him if he could make a mean face and scowled at him. Cade started crying and ran over to us because he thought the instructor was trying to get him in trouble. You see we don’t want anyone in our family making mean faces and Cade has been in time out from time to time for doing just that. My wife and I tried to hold back the laughter as we tried to explain to the instructor why he was so upset. The instructor thought he had scared the pants off of him.

You are now asking what this has to do with selfishness. Cade saw what he knew to be bad and turned away from it. It is usually pretty easy to show your kids how to act around things that are bad. But how do I show my kids how to act when you are faced with something they will have to do every day and is not really bad, like consuming?

Buy them the new Heelys but wait until you can afford 2 pair and take your son down to your local rescue mission and have him give the other pair to boy his age in need? Take your daughter to Build-A-Bear Workshop and make 2 and let her put the other one in the hands of a girl her age who could never afford one?

I would bet that the memory of the face of the person your child just helped will be burned on his or her soul for a lifetime. Every time they wear those shoes or play with that bear I would hope that vision would come back.

How else can we balance the equation?

WHAT WOULD YOUR KIDS SAY? 2 OF 3

Gina over at Jabberfrog says… “Children are not subordinate Christ followers,” and I couldn’t agree more. They are also not subordinate consumers. They may not have the ability to spend the way we do, but they still have the same urges.

roll mental camera…

In Toon Town (kid church) this week they asked an ice breaker question to the kids about asking someone what their favorite car is. I immediately thought that I would hear answers like sports car, SUV, convertible or something else as generic. Boy was I wrong. The first 5 answers that I heard were Lamborghini, Ferrari, Porsche, Aston Martin and then convertible. And I thought adults had high expectations for their cars.

So, as I mentioned in the last post, the hour in kid church every week isn’t the answer to selfishness but part of the equation. We have all heard the saying “kids are like sponges.” The hour worth of living water they absorb at church is not going to outweigh the selfish cocktail we give them to suck up the rest of the week.

Do you find yourself driving down the road and commenting on cars that is nicer, newer or cooler than the one you have now with your son within ear shot?
Do you find yourself drooling on the new purse you want with your daughter in tow?
We are guilty in one way or another.

Do you worry about setting your kids up for a life of habitual selfishness?

I do

WHAT WOULD YOUR KID SAY? 1 of 3

Thanks to Gina over at Jabberfrog for allowing me to guest blog. That was one of the reasons I decided to blog.
The original title to this series was YOUR SELFISH CHILD. Which I admit was a bit brutal. I had given Gina the OK to change what she felt needed to be changed. I definitely like the tone of the new title and the new lead in questions. Thanks Gina
Please show us both some blog love and hit http://www.jabberfrog.com/ for the first part of this story and I will see you back here tomorrow...

DAY ONE

I have been in debate over if I should blog or not and thanks to my wife and a few friends I have been convinced to do so. Roll Mental Camera is a corny way to lead into my personal home movies I have stored in my brain. I often watch them and use them for life lessons. The older I get the more these lessons have changed even though the movie is still the same.

That may not make a lot of sense to those reading but over time I think it will. So lets get started.

Roll mental Camera...

Last night at Konnect we used a can of sardines to act out when Jesus ate the fish to prove that he was not a ghost and to totally gross out the kids. For anyone not familiar, Konnect is a high energy small group bible study for kids filled with games and snacks that all focus on a specific verse or story from the bible. The sardines difinitely grossed the kids out but some were actually brave enough to eat a piece. The fish also made the room stink like crazy.

That smell kept reminding me of the kids that stink up the room with their attitudes and lack of self control. I kept having to fight the smell to stay focused and keep the night moving. That is just how I feel with these kids that are always being negative or cutting up. Then it hit me, just like Jesus used the fish to prove he was alive, maybe that fish will stick in those kids mind and at some point will grab hold and show them how they need to act.

After all it isn't the good kids with all the right answers that we are after but the ones that are not on the right path. It may take a while but the effort I put in today may pay off for them in years to come and could effect generations in this child's family.

How do you feel about that kid or adult that is always stinking up the place?
How far are you willing to go to help change them?