My daughter is currently caught up in the craze of selling through eBay (Note: Selling, not buying; thank God for small mercies!).

Last year, she went on an unchecked spending spree (she calls it her “retail therapy”) when she was able to earn quite a bit of money. Finding herself without many bills and having just discovered the supposed “wonders” of the consumer credit system, she amassed for herself “bargains” from such brand-names as Gucci and Louis Vuitton.

Now that her credit card bills are catching up on her she is beginning to see the errors of her ways and have begun to let her prized-collection go via eBay auctions.

Because all of the items she is auctioning off are genuine brand-name articles that she picked up at so-called “discounts”, she is getting bids that are now equaling or surpassing what she originally paid for the items, even though the retail prices are even much higher Read the rest of this entry »

When I was in Perth, Western Australia, I called this church “home.” My family and I still miss the church in many ways.

Some of the things this poster wrote about the church may still be true about it although I didn’t think it was too engrossed what he called the “prosperity doctrine” even when we were attending.

I was especially intrigued by his take on some of the things that he was critical about the church and thought that we Christians seem to be guilty of them universally.

One is “clique-ism.” I remember as the young people at a smaller church we used to deal with this problem. Our youth leaders used to urge the regulars at the youth group to go out of our way to reach out to those who are new and not stick to those we like to hang out with all the time.

I also remember that the first time I attended the church I go to now, I stood after the Sunday service merely a few feet from some others who gathered around greeting, chatting, smiling, hi-fiving each other. Read the rest of this entry »

About three months ago, my wife and I attended our church retreat where we were challenged to be authentic in our faith.

Specifically, we were challenged to love.

Our pastor opened the retreat by re-iterating the importance of the greatest two commandments:

He said that the most important thing we Christians must “get” are the Greatest Two Commandments - to love God with all our hearts, all our souls, all our minds and all our strength; and to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Then he divided us all into small groups to share and challenged us to go “deep” with each other - to be vulnerable. My wife and I decided to open up ourselves to the group.

I posted a little about this right after the retreat, that we told them how we felt we were misunderstood Read the rest of this entry »