Earlier today during an instant message conversation, a friend said she was looking for a devotion for her worship team tonight… and I said the words, "Where are you looking?" And almost immediately, it struck me.

Where are we looking? Simple words, but a deeper meaning. I was referring to the collection of human thoughts about God… other folks understandings of God’s revealings of Himself through life and Scripture… and that’s the way it was interpreted…

But where are we looking? Where am I looking? Is my nose too buried in my book about God’s Kingdom that I am missing His Kingdom in my life? Am I so devoted to reading my daily Bible that I am missing the subject of my devotion?

I am not sure. But I think perhaps maybe. Been busy again recently, and well, today I was just longing for some time with my Father. I think I might just cancel some stuff next week and hang out with Him. I want to stop and look around me for ideas for "devotions"… and aim my devotion more pointedly at the Devotee – Jesus.

Wanna join me? Where are YOU looking?

You know what… our finances are REALLY tight right now. I mean, we literally made NO money last weekend (that’s when we make our money) and there hasn’t been a whole lot coming in anyway the past month or so. AND, March looks… bleak.

BUT, you know what else? God is God. Really. He showed me again today. I have been asking Him to do something neato cool like when strangers from a distant land put a check in the mail for $2195.47 because they thought God was leading them to do that. And that is the exact amount needed for some certain thing.

Well, last night I transfered $200 from our CD fund to our bank account, just so some checks I wrote would not bounce… cause I think they would have. And I felt bad doing it, but the money just wasn’t there… and I knew I would put it right back…

I opened the mail today, and we got checks for $90, $65, a rebate for $30 and I thought… this is too funny! In fact, I added it up and said, "How are you gonna bring in the $15, God?" I couldn’t believe it! It was almost exactly what I thought we needed from our savings.

A couple hours later… I checked e-mail… and Amazon.com had deposited some money in our account for book sales over the last couple weeks. They have been fairly sparse, but, it’s still some extra cash.

Wanna know how much it was??? Can you guess????

Yup. $15. 🙂

Just thought I’d put this up here, too… 🙂

http://basicmm.com/personal/baby

(no anonymous guesses!)

So, last night just as I was going to bed, Jen is in the bathroom and tells me that something funny is going on… she thought perhaps it was the McDonald’s hamburger she ate earlier that night… but there were some signs that perhaps the baby was coming!!!! Whoohoooo!! We were excited.. but, just tried to sleep and see what happens.

There was not much sleeping going on for Jen (and consequently for Greg) 🙂 And the contractions continued from around 1:30am on… till we both got up at 6:30 this morning and started to prepare to spend a day at the hospital! 🙂

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3:14pm – at the hospital, Jen continues to labor and I am trying to lend as much support as I can. She’s also trying to get some rest if she can in between contractions. We were hoping for that faster-with-every-baby labor and delivery… but so far it is not turning out that way… more later…

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I spoke too SOON! IT is now the next day, and what happened after that last paragraph was extraordinary!!! Jen was working HARD, and so I suggested that they check on things and perhaps even think about breaking her water… and, as soon as that happened Jen kicked into high gear! I was going to journal along the way… but, NO TIME!!!

Contractions came hard and fast and often and pretty soon, Jen was ready to get the baby out!!! It all happened really quickly, and once the baby was out there was a bit of confusion … just lots of things happening… so we could not tell for a good 10 sec or so if they were saying we had a little girl or not…

Well…

WE DO!!!! 🙂

Kirsten Rae Campbell was born at 4:58pm on Saturday February 28th, 2004. She weighed 8 pounds and 5 ounces (actually, 4.9) 🙂 at birth and was 20.5 inches long. They measured her head, too… but I don’t know what that measurement was… 🙂

SHE’S AWESOME!!!! Please do check out her first web page 🙂 We have posted some photo slideshows and other fun stuff there.

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Well, like I said, it is now the next day, and we are hanging out at the hospital till evening, when we are scheduled to return home and begin life with a daughter! The boys are very excited. I am very excited. I think Jen is, but how can you tell? She just had a baby… 🙂 It is so very cool that God gave us such a perfect little girl – and a great labor/delivery and everyone is healthy… SO COOL! THANK YOU GOD!!!!

For now, this is all I can think to say. 🙂 I am just happy to have a little girl. 🙂 In fact, I am the happy, photo-flashin’ dad… seeeee

Hey, just got the first video of Kirstie up, along with some new photos. Stop by the now official "Kirstie Rae Page"!

http://basicmm.com/personal/baby

I miss blogging. I miss my normal life. But, I have loved beyond words every minute of the past week and a half. A new daughter. LOTS of time with my two awesome boys (who LOVE this time with their dad!) A happy wife. A nice house to enjoy. Great friends who come and encourage, help with the boys, bring food, and just share the joy of life. AND, I have still been able to get some work done as well. At times it’s been overwhelming… but overwhelmingly it’s been a great time.

Just wanted to share.

How about another photo of Kirstie?

Ever since I was a kid… one of my most fun things to do was to create on the computer. I loved working in BASIC programming language – creating little games and programs… I even remember taking up ALL 16K on my TI-99/4a Computer with a program that displayed the American flag and played the 4-part star spangled banner…. entering each note’s frequency and duration… painstakingly… but it was WORTH IT.

Well, now, here I am… following God’s lead in music ministry, and my love of computer programming has never dwindled. 🙂 I found an outlet in our website. You may have seen it? Quite extensive and fun. Have redesigned it about 5 times and keep learning more all the time.

Well, now I have gotten into doing such things for other folks. Even started an official business. basic web designs & graphics. (www.bwd-graphics.com) And have even had a few clients.

All of a sudden.. it seems to be taking off! Last week, I finished working on a couple sites for a friend (in exchange for recording time in his studio) Perty neato. Check out botwstudios.com and theophilusband.com. Then I got two more clients — some missionary friends of ours, and our local community center. Very cool.

Just today, I got two MORE new clients… a construction contracting company from here in palmyra, and the Town of Manchester (a nearby town… a friend of mine knows the mayor, i guess?)

I’m starting to feel like Joe Boyd. 🙂 (He gets all the cool gigs…)

So… just wanted to write this down, as I am a bit amazed and amused. Looking forward to seeing how the week unfolds.

Oh yeah! I have another friend’s studio and t-shirt business sites to do this week too!! Goodness! On top of that, it’s a fairly busy music week!

Should be interesting.

Stay tuned.

🙂

Every once in a while, a few of my friends from High School and I get into an e-mail discussion. You know, where everyone copies everyone and we’re all in on every reply. Sometimes that gets hard to keep up with, but last night i went through the past couple weeks worth and had some replies. One of the main topics has been this new rise of the gay marriage issue. If you have not heard, the mayor of San Fran has married thousands of gay couples… and then some ministers out east here did, and it’s really becoming an issue of public import in many states. I do have some opinions … I copied a bunch from the e-mails I was sending out… read at your leisure….

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Is this an issue of "racial" equality?

"Guess my issue is I believe the Bible is true. Homosexuality is not a race of people, or a disease or something… it is a choice to go outside the bounds of God’s creation. So… when we legalize homosexulaity, then gay marriage… eventually it could follow that we will "legalize" perhaps prostitution (when done lovingly and in a clean environment… isn’t it a woman’s right to do what she wants with her body?) and then perhaps consentual pedophilia? After all, some people just like little children? And then how about incest… (wait, that may already be legal in west virginia, I think…) 🙂 What’s wrong with marrying your sister if you’re going to provide a loving stable relationship? What about three-somes or MORE? (aka polygamy….) as long as they love each other… what’s wrong with that?

Well… God includes homosexuality in the same wrong category as all of those.

We as a society are not following his rules anymore… so, what we accept today in the name of inclusion or tolerance or progress will only continue to move toward all those other things.

In my opinion.

And, they will begin to not look as bad as they might seem in my email right now. 50 years ago we would not be talking about gay rights. (from my knowledge of history) As we move away from God’s standards… times do change. And, in my opinion, they change for the worse.

I am praying that God will help us move back to him.

That would be good."

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How can you equate this with prostitution and incest??? Some people are just born that way! Isn’t it just a matter of genetics?

"…there are already LOTS of folks trying to make genetic excuses for behavior that goes against God’s standards… alcoholism is a disease, ADHD (kids shouldn’t be expected to focus… they need to be DRUGGED UP!) and so on and so on… more than 50% of the commercials on tv are about drugs to fix our problems. it’s all about genetics and science and stuff… courtrooms and lawyers talk about insanity pleas and all that stuff where no one is held accountable for their actions – they couldn’t help it because of their genetic make up or the current altered state or something. While I will grant you that we are certainly controlled by a very many things (including things that impair our judgment and stuff) we still need to be held accountable for our actions… not just make up new categories of people to make something "OK" that God specifically says is not."

I think.

🙂

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Can we legislate Christian morality anymore in this secular country?

"What I may have been trying to say here (don’t know at this point… it’s nearly 2 am…) was that years ago when laws were made that said homosexuality (the ACT, cause there was no such thing as A homosexual PERSON) is wrong (illegal) and stating that marriage was between a man and a woman… we were a homogeneous people then… with a homogeneous faith and belief system. (just wanted to say homo two more times…)

Now we are not. And, public policy should be determined accordingly. I don’t like it. It will hurt us (according to what God says) … but… where we as a country have chosen to go… Christians can not dictate behavior by legislation stemming from their morals and ethics and beliefs."

I think.

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Slightly different topic… was Jesus out to conform people with a set of rules to follow? (Like Christians seem to be today in the courts and elsewhere…)

I think with a deeper look at what Jesus said and did… you’ll see that he was certainly not a conformist… he clashed with the establishment all the time… and when he "preached conformity" he was not talking about following rules (like, he didn’t teach folks to follow all the current rules of the day – was accused often of the opposite) he was more about a new way of thinking… love each other, love your enemy, help the poor and hurting and rejected… are those rules? Read Matthew 5 if you want… it’s Jesus’ famous "sermon on the mount" — it’s some good preaching about not-rule-following, but a new way of thinking.

AND, later on, Jesus goes through some rules of the day and says, "Dude, it’s not about like murder and stuff… it’s even deeper. When you’re ticked off at someone… it’s just like murder. AND, you know, like, adultery is bad and stuff… well, when you are diggin’ a chick a little too much – wishin’ you could… ya know… well, you have already committed adultery in your heart" Jesus’ point was not to create more rules (as the church today has so nicely done in many cases…… but that’s another topic…..) He was saying that in fact it is NOT ABOUT following all those rules… it’s about a new way of thinking, about doing life with a kingdom view. And then… the cool part? He lived it out! He didnt’ just tell other folks to do it, and make them feel bad if they did not… he loved people who others wouldn’t (they were not loved because they were sinners, doing bad stuff… so people didn’t want to be seen with them) BUT Jesus did. Cause he ROCKS.

I’m pretty glad to say he wants to be seen with me. I think that’s amazingly cool. And I look forward to thanking him in person.

🙂

Sorry… tangent…

All that to say… if you read again the NT (especially gospels, where Jesus is) you really see that Jesus was nothing like the Jesus that churches present today. Churches are good at making folks follow rules and feel guilty when they don’t … I can’t remember a story at the momeht of Jesus doing that to someone…

You?

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more to come…

I just wanted to add a bit to one of the paragraphs below.

I think Christians make a couple mistakes. (Well, we make LOTS of mistakes, but re: this issue… a couple.) 🙂 (1) believing that we are still living in a Christian country. (2) That legislation (laws) will actually bring about a change of heart.

(1) This country was founded by God-fearing people who wanted to live out their beliefs in freedom. They were very cool Christian folks who loved God and loved each other. The revolutionary war would probably not have happened had those people not had the conviction to do what is right and honorable, no matter the cost to themselves. (IT may have, but it was certainly aided by the fact that they were led by a higher call…)

Today, we can’t do enough (as a country) to get away from God. We removed him from any public setting, claiming the "separation of church and state" is paramount. We fight hard to make sure that any reference to God is inclusive and non specific. No Ten Commandments at court rooms, obviously no prayer in schools, no religious symbols at holidays… we, as a society have decided to put God in a nice little religion box, and make sure he stays there.

(2) THEN, there are organizations like the American Center for Law and Justice that attempt to work within current legislations and to petition new ones that will keep America governed by laws based in a Christian morality. They are quite active (along with others) in protecting Christian morals through legal means. Which, on the surface … is cool.

But, that’s just it. It’s only surface. You can not legislate morality. "The law … can never … make perfect". (Heb 10:1) The law was really only to show that we could not measure up to it (God’s law, that is…) But, I think in general, the same applies to governmental laws. They protect people to a degree, but really, they are powerless to change hearts, to change thinking. They only affect outward behavior, and they can not always stop that. (That’s why we have courts that determine punishments for law-breakers… because law can not change people. So, people will break laws.)

We can not assume that if we enact legislation that either protects marriage or prohibits undesirable sexual practices that by itself that will change the way Americans think and act. That must come from another source. (From God changing hearts and minds) Laws that attempt to conform to a certain morality will only create frustration, tension, and eventually chaos.

Our battles in this country will not be won in the court rooms, or on capitol hill. They will only be won by God’s grace in living rooms and back yards and school yards and front porches and kitchen tables. To get America in line with God’s thinking on social issues… we need to get connected with Jesus. We need to live as he did, and understand the fullness of life is not in our own way of doing it, but in Jesus way of thinking and living. His laws are not laws to surpress… they are a new way of thinking – to set us free (see below – yesterday’s post).

I have said a lot.

Essentially… we can not change people’s hearts through legislation. So, an ammendment to "protect" marriage … will not.

Only God can do that.

Just been thinking again about what the church really is. This past week I was reminded (while I was in a mostly empty church building) that it is not about any of the programming we do (sorry to you worship planners out there…) it is so much about being the church. The group of people who are extra-noticeable because of their changed lives. How they love each other and do life together with a bond that’s stronger than family. A commitment to engendering in each other that fullness of life that Jesus said he came to give us.

We are a part of so many churches, we see so many great things churches are doing to try and connect people with The One who loves them… and even to connect them with each other and to reach out to eveyrone around us. But so often, our energy is poured into organizing such things to that it is an efficient process. And there I think we miss the point.

The church does not have a product (such as a trained and equipped disciple) the church is a living organism. The body of Christ in fact. Jesus is the head. He gives us directions, we listen and follow, and do our part. (That does not mean, necessarily, that we should listen for where he wants us to serve, like, the nursery, or teaching 3rd grade sunday school, or on the board, or whatever…)

It means, we get to love each other, and those around us, like he did. As though we were his hands and feet. Take care of our body (feed it, clean it, groom it, rest it, etc…) and then use it to go love others.

It might be as simple as just "being&quot the church instead of "doing" church… which is what I think we are oh so good at these days.

I am in a small group that is good at being the church. We do life together. We are always there to help each other. No one is left out. We are accountable to each other. We share life’s joys and hardships. Good stuff.

That’s the church.

Not the building. Not the programs. Not the staff. Not the budget. Not the outreach events. Not the mission trips. Not the worship services. Not the small group programs. Not the children’s minstries. Not the big easter productions. Not the potluck dinners. (Actually… that might come close…) 🙂

It is the sharing of life together by believers. Every bit of it. Not once a week, or even twice. But genuine caring, relationship oriented, living, breathing, thriving life-together.

That will change the world.